Apparently he is a cool gym teacher, though, pretty much letting the fat kids sit in the corner during dodgeball and counting every pull-up you do double if your arms are like Twizzlers, which mine are.
I wouldn’t know, of course, because I never go to gym. That would be fourth period on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which happens to conflict with my participation in our school’s highly selective environmental club, otherwise known as the Highview Environmental Revitalization Organization.
Our job is to keep the trash off the streets.
I’m not kidding. That’s what our T-shirts say: H.E.R.O. WE KEEP THE TRASH OFF THE STREETS. There is a picture of a teenager dressed in a cape and tights, slam-dunking a crushed tin can into a recycling bin. Our club’s faculty sponsor designed them. I guess the thought was that nobody would put two and two together because it was simply too obvious. Sometimes it’s the thing that’s right in front of you that you keep looking over.
There are only six of us in the program, the only one of its kind in Justicia, maybe the only one of its kind in the world; at least the only one I know about. It’s basically a training program for would-be sidekicks, who then become would-be Supers. Kids with powers who hope to use them someday to fight the forces of evil, save damsels, help the meek inherit the earth, that sort of thing. Saving the environment is just a cover, though we do spend a few days each year planting trees and planning recycling drives to keep up appearances. Nobody ever questions the time we spend together—you can’t say that cleaning up the environment is a waste. Besides, our program director can be very convincing when he wants to be.
His name is Mr. Masters, and in addition to being the head of H.E.R.O., he is also the eighth-grade science teacher. A tall, clean-shaven, square-headed man who looks a little like a bald Lurch from The Addams Family, he has a forehead that would make Mr. Booner proud. Mr. Masters always wears horn-rimmed glasses and patterned sweater vests over long-sleeved solid-color shirts, and he keeps a tarnished old rail conductor’s watch on a chain tucked into his right pocket.
Like the rest of us in H.E.R.O., Mr. Masters isn’t exactly normal. That watch is the thing. His thing. The key to his power. No one besides him is ever allowed to touch that watch, and most people who are around when Mr. Masters checks to see what time it is find themselves feeling a little lost, wondering what they have been doing for the past minute or so. Sometimes it can even make you forget what you were thinking or doing long before that. That’s the kind of watch it is. The time-stopping, memory-befuddling kind.
Both his father and his father’s father used that watch to various ends, not all of them noble. His great-grandfather, Michael Masters, first found the watch during a hunting expedition in Kenya. It saved him from being gored by a rhinoceros—at least, that’s the story. His grandfather, Roger Masters, used it when fighting the Nazis, often catching unsuspecting German soldiers off guard, leaving them wondering where their rifle had gone and why there was a grenade in their lap.
Mr. Masters’s father, on the other hand, used it to steal—wallets, cars, artwork, you name it. He was one of the few men to be kicked out of every casino in Las Vegas. He would have left his son a stolen fortune had he not squandered it all.
Instead, he left him a watch that can stop time, though only for a minute before having to reset.
That watch represents the extent of Mr. Masters’s powers. No weapons. No laser vision. Not even a costume, really. The sweater vests are just a fashion statement. Still, he is highly connected in the superhero network, a former agent in the Department of Homeland Security’s Supernormal Activities Department. H.E.R.O. is his baby. He built it from the ground up, recruiting each and every member, gathering us like lost sheep, helping us to hone our powers, giving us a sense of purpose.
And clucking after us like a big, balding mother hen.
The H.E.R.O. program meets three days a week for two periods—not counting special training sessions on some weekends—which for me means skipping gym and lunch. Missing gym is always a bonus, but skipping lunch is hit-or-miss. Today is Wednesday. It’s a quesadilla day. So I’m pretty noncommittal.
I walk beside Jenna Jaden as we make our way to the teachers’ lounge on the first floor. Her honey-blond hair is pulled back in its characteristic nerdy ponytail. You can’t see the bandage on her side because of the baggy sweatshirt she wears. She has her glasses on, of course, with thick black rims and lenses that might help you discover planets. It is all part of her look. Jenna’s look. Without the glasses, you wouldn’t know who you were talking to. Or who was smashing you in the face.
I always wished I could do that. Just whip off a pair of glasses and instantly be in character. Instead I have to keep my mask in my backpack and run around looking like Zorro’s pathetic second cousin with blue spandex on my head and a belt full of homemade gadgets wrapped around my waist. All to compensate for the fact that my powers are not “combat compliant,” which is a fancy way of saying I’m next to worthless when it comes to fighting bad guys. Though Mr. Masters says there is more to being a hero than punching people.
“So did your parents say anything about yesterday?” Jenna whispers.
“No. Masters called before I got home.”
“Yeah. Me too. Though he just left a message.”
Jenna’s parents take almost no interest in her life. I suppose it helps her keep her cover, but the way she talks about them, I sometimes wonder if she’d rather it be the other way. I look around to make sure none of the other kids in the hallway is taking an interest in our conversation either. Not that they would. We aren’t exactly at the top of the popularity pyramid, though I sometimes wonder about the value of that, too.
“Are you okay?” I motion to her side where the harpoon got her.
Jenna shrugs. “It hurts a little. You?”
I know exactly what she’s referring to. She told she me she was sorry yesterday as we made our escape. She really thought he’d show this time. “I’m fine,” I say. I know she knows I’m lying, but I know she knows I don’t want to talk about it right now.
We meet Eric and Gavin right outside the teachers’ lounge. Mike won’t be here today. He is still in the hospital, recovering from his “skateboarding” accident. With Mike out, that means we are only missing Nikki. She’ll probably show up late, like always.
I wave to Eric, who makes the sign for bee, and then spells out the word awesome. I roll my finger around in a circle, the universal sign for whoop dee freakin’ do. Eric Ito has been deaf since birth, but it doesn’t stop him from totally kicking butt as a sidekick. There are some days when I think his sense of sight is better than mine, and he’s an expert in, like, six hundred forms of martial arts, including one he calls the Dance of the Striking Viper, where his hands move so fast even I can’t see them until he pinches my nose. Once at lunch he caught a fly between his fingers, Mr. Miagi style. I found one in my cheese dip last week, but it was already dead.
I try to make up a sign showing a person dangling from a rope and then plummeting to his death, using my first two fingers as little legs kicking. Then I strangle myself. Eric laughs and flashes a sign that I think means something like moron or doofus. Or maybe that’s just how I feel about having to be rescued by someone else’s Super.
“Hey,” Gavin says, giving Jenna a smile that is irritating in ways I can’t really describe. “I heard you got stung yesterday?”
“We really shouldn’t talk about it here,” Jenna says, though she returns Gavin’s smile easily enough. He looks at me with that one cocked eyebrow of his, and I just glare back at him. It’s this little game we play where we pretend not to like each other to hide the fact that we really don’t like each other.
Gavin McAllister is my antithesis. I think that’s the best way to describe our relationship, at least if I’m keeping it PG. He came here from Chicago at the start of the school year, at Mr. Masters’s request. I guess he thought we could use a little more muscle in our group. Or less brain
s.
Gavin’s taller than me—by quite a few inches—and better looking, I guess, if you believe in that whole blond hair, creamy complexion, straight white teeth thing. He looks like the kind of person who plays six sports and kicks puppies, though I think he really only plays two and I’m making the puppy thing up. He does lick his lips a lot, which I guess means something—maybe they taste better than other people’s lips or something, I don’t know. It’s still annoying.
Oh, then there’s the fact that he can secrete a substance from his pores that causes his skin to turn to granite, making him nearly invulnerable. At first I thought it was a pretty stupid power, but the truth of the matter is that it is way better than mine and I am just insanely jealous.
“They got a great shot of the Fox on the news last night. It was wicked cool how she managed to break your . . . I mean, break those chains, blast that missile, and cut off that dude’s wings, all in, like, one move.”
“Yeah. She’s pretty good,” I say, trying to remember the last time I had heard anyone say “wicked cool” and not get beat up for it. But Gavin is on the football team, which means he has bully immunity, even without the turning-his-skin-to-stone thing.
“She certainly saved your butt,” Gavin says. “By the time Hotshot got there, there was nothing left to do.”
Hotshot is Gavin’s mentor and one of Justicia’s regulars. He’s a flamer—one of those guys who shoot fire from whatever body part is most convenient. A common sight on the vigilante scene, he was considered by many to be Justicia’s most powerful Super until the Fox came to town. He still looks cool shooting through the sky, though, and thinking about him and Gavin working out on the weekends just makes me even more irritable.
I start to say something not nice about Gavin’s butt and how it probably bears an uncanny resemblance to his face when I catch a look from Eric telling us to shut up as Mr. Masters appears behind us, watch already in hand.
“Talking about the latest vampire movie, I hope?” The stripes on today’s vest zigzag and hurt your eyes if you stare at them too long. We all look down at our feet. We aren’t supposed to talk H.E.R.O. business in the halls.
“It’s time,” he says, his eyebrows arched in disapproval. He puts a hand on Jenna’s shoulder, and the rest of us stand close enough together so that at least a part of us is touching the next person. Like a lot of things in the hero business, it only works if you are connected—otherwise we will be frozen just like all the others. I put my shoulder next to Jenna’s. Eric’s foot is touching mine. I take a deep breath. Gavin reaches out and takes Jenna’s hand.
Now they’re holding hands.
I can see the little beads of sweat in between his knuckles.
I can smell coffee on his breath.
I can hear her heart speed up ever so slightly when he touches her.
What kind of thirteen-year-old drinks coffee?
He licks his lips again.
I decide I hate coffee.
Mr. Masters clicks the button on his watch once, and everything is suddenly silent and still for everyone but us. I shake my head a little and regain my focus. This is, like, the hundredth time I’ve had time stopped around me, but it still leaves me a little disoriented.
“One minute,” he says.
I glance down the hallway to see the horde of students completely frozen in place. Some girl I don’t know is about to get pummeled by a pile of books that are tumbling out of the top of her locker. My instinct tells me I should go stack them back up and save her the embarrassment, but I know what Mr. Masters would say. That it’s not a life-or-death situation. That the books were meant to fall and she was meant to pick them up, and him stopping time for a moment doesn’t change that. Masters opens the door to the teachers’ lounge, and I feel Eric pull me inside.
The lounge is deserted, as it always is at this time of day, all a matter of careful scheduling. Mr. Masters takes one last look at his watch and then tucks it back into his pocket. Even if he wanted to stop time again, he couldn’t. It takes the watch three full minutes to reset. It’s the law of the universe, he says. Every power comes at a price.
Outside the door, I hear the commotion of Highview Middle School kick back in. The girl with the tumbling books curses as one lands on her foot. Three or four people nearby snicker.
“Does anyone know where Nikki is?”
Mr. Masters looks at me specifically. I concentrate a little bit to see if I can hear her characteristic shuffle run in the hall outside, but there is too much other noise. I shake my head.
“She’ll show,” he says, and fishes in his other pocket for a couple of quarters while the rest of us stare silently at the school’s only snack machine.
We all watch the pork rinds. Salt-and-vinegar flavor. Even the name is revolting. Nobody else ever eats the pork rinds. In fact, most of the teachers have apparently complained to the administration, suggesting that the vending machine space would be better served by some peanut M&Ms, but Mr. Masters insists that he loves them, and he has a way of convincing people to forget what they were complaining about anyway.
So when Mr. Masters drops his sixty cents into the snack machine and presses B-1, it is with every confidence that he is the only person who ever does. The pork rinds drop to the bin, and Mr. Masters pulls them free.
Suddenly the vending machine slides back along the wall, revealing a hole and a steep staircase spiraling downward into a gray hall lined with fluorescent lights. Mr. Masters opens the bag of Pete’s Vinegar Spice Pork Rinds and pops one into his mouth. I hold my breath. Even without my super senses, those things would make my stomach turn.
“Let’s go,” he says. “We have a lot to talk about today.”
4
THE SUPERHERO SIDEKICK CODE OF CONDUCT
I walk down the familiar stairs into the basement of my school—a place that very few non-Supers even know about. The head of the CIA, probably. The president of the United States. The bigwigs at Homeland Security’s S.A.D. It’s important to keep our training under wraps, to help protect our identities and the identities of the Supers we serve. Our principal, Mr. Buchanan, is oblivious. As are the rest of Highview’s teachers and students. It’s all very hush-hush. Even the mayor of Justicia doesn’t know there’s a training program for sidekicks being run out of the basement of a neighborhood middle school. “Your identity is your most important possession,” Mr. Masters is constantly reminding us. Of course we don’t own magic watches, so maybe he’s right.
Though it has the same cement walls as the rest of the school, the Highview basement looks more like something out of a science-fiction film. Filled with the kind of technology that would make FBI agents drool, with monitors and tracking devices and lasers and satellite imaging equipment, all state of the art, and all for a group of kids barely in their teens. A basement I have been coming to for about a year now. Ever since I promised to uphold the Code.
1. A SIDEKICK MUST ALWAYS USE HIS POWERS IN THE SERVICE OF JUSTICE AND HONOR, TO DEFEND THE GREATER GOOD AND TO HELP THOSE IN NEED.
2. A SIDEKICK MUST NEVER SAY OR DO ANYTHING TO COMPROMISE HIS SUPER’S SECRETS OR HIS OWN.
3. A SIDEKICK MUST NOT ENDANGER THE LIVES OF INNOCENTS AND SHOULD NEVER TAKE A LIFE SO LONG AS THERE IS ANY OTHER RECOURSE.
4. A SIDEKICK IS SWORN TO ACCOMPANY HIS SUPER IN ALL ACTS OF HEROISM, TO PROTECT HIS SUPER WHEN THE OCCASION ARISES, TO WALK THE PATH THAT HIS SUPER SETS FORTH, AND TO TRUST IN HIS SUPER ABOVE ALL ELSE.
The Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct. That’s it hanging on the back wall, engraved in stone and illuminated by a single fluorescent light. The four simple rules we all promised to play by when we joined. Our shalts and shalt nots. Like the Girl Scout motto or the Pledge of Allegiance or the four or five commandments from the Bible that people still pay attention to. The thing has been around for ages. I read the last one again to myself as I enter the room. Above all else. Even above a swimming pool full of acid, apparently.
Compared to the Code,
the H.E.R.O. program is pretty new. In the past, Supers who were interested in taking on an apprentice usually went out and found one themselves. A traveling circus, an orphanage that mysteriously burns down, a bus full of tweens that takes a wrong turn and plows into a toxic waste dump—all prime opportunities for recruiting a sidekick. But over time, Supers started complaining that sidekicks took too much time to train and ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Like the Sparrow, who accidentally hit “accelerate” rather than “override” on the conveyor his Super was chained to at the meat processing plant, sending Nighthawk to a too-early retirement. Or Velocigirl, who ran away from her first fight so fast that the resulting sonic boom caused Mr. Molecular to lose his balance and fall right into the clutches of Professor Von Callous. In fact, there was a whole string of incidents involving rookie sidekicks who couldn’t cut it. Hence the need, Mr. Masters said, for apprenticeship programs to help us learn to control our powers and acquire a few of the more rudimentary skills—basic tumbling, self-defense, mind control resistance—so that when we eventually did pair up with our Supers, we wouldn’t always lead them into traps.
I’m not quite there yet. Jenna is. Maybe Eric. Gavin, I guess, except he’s only been working with his Super for a month or so. The truth is, we aren’t ready for the front lines. Unlike our mentors, we aren’t supposed to be chasing down the bad guys. Our job is to learn: to master our powers, to follow orders, to work as a team.
And to keep a secret.
Someday, Mr. Masters says, the time will come when each of us will stand back-to-back with his or her Super, twin beacons of light in the darkness, providing the great fuzzy comforter of justice that the ordinary citizens of the world snuggle up with at night. We will fight side by side against the forces of evil, until, one day, we decide to strike out on our own and become Supers ourselves.
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