“Jack Coal, aka the Jack of Diamonds. Once an international jewel thief and playboy. He lost his eye when he was twenty-six and had it replaced with what he believed to be a rare, one-of-a-kind diamond. Turns out it was actually a small chunk of meteorite that quickly bonded to his molecular structure, making him nearly impervious to pain and just as hard to take down . . . not to mention he can use it to shoot energy beams.”
Suddenly I’m wishing I had joined the chess club.
“And finally . . .”
The last picture shows the man in the mask, the one who freed the others—eyes like sapphires peering through the mask’s only two holes, his dark-gray fedora, like the color of a storm cloud, cocked to one side. Cold and confident, with more than a hint of malevolence. For well over a year this guy was the poster child for a successful life of crime, wreaking havoc everywhere he went. Until the Titan finally brought him down.
“The Dealer,” Mr. Masters says. “Real name, date of birth, place of origin, all unknown. No one even knows what the guy’s face looks like. He’s the one who brought the Suits together the first time. A mastermind and scientific genius, he purportedly engaged in illegal experiments designed to enhance the kinds of extraordinary abilities found in people like you. No known superpowers himself, though, save for his astronomically high IQ and his uncanny ability to stay one step ahead of everyone who ever tried to catch him. Up until today, he was believed to be dead, killed in the battle with the Legion of Justice so many years ago.”
Mr. Masters touches a button and the lights come back on.
“We don’t know where he’s been hiding all these years, but the fact that he has most of his original gang in tow makes him a top priority for all Supers in the area.”
Most of the gang, I think to myself. He’s only missing one Suit. The Jack of Hearts, who died in the confrontation with the Legion of Justice. Though “dead” doesn’t mean as much as I thought it did. If the Dealer is back, there’s no guarantee he doesn’t have another surprise up his sleeve.
Mr. Masters steps out from behind the podium and walks over to stand right in front of us. “That makes the Dealer our top concern as well. For that reason, I’m putting Jenna, Gavin, and Eric on ready reserve status.”
In front of me I see Erik sink in his seat. Gavin actually says the word oh. Only Jenna seems unfazed. Ready reserve means that your Super can actually call on you to accompany him on patrol whenever he deems it necessary. Not just weekend training exercises—the real deal.
“The rest of us,” he says, referring to Nikki and me, “need to keep our eyes and ears open. We don’t know where the Dealer has been all this time or what he’s been up to, but it can’t be good.”
I look at the photo of the Dealer. It’s blurry and far away and the mask covers everything but the icy blue eyes. Cool and calculating.
I glance over at Jenna. She is looking at Mr. Masters, who stands in front of the image of the man in the gray mask. Her eyes look pretty much the same. Like she already has a plan to take the Dealer down.
10
EAVESDROPPING
“What’s the big deal?”
We are huddled in a circle eating crackers with circles of what might once have been peanut butter between them, a gift from Mr. Masters, who apologized for not buying pizza and apologized yet again for having to interrupt our training to go make some calls, leaving us to fend for ourselves and to cope with the fact that, only two hundred miles away, one of the most notorious criminal gangs in history had just kicked off a reunion tour. I am just about to open my crackers when Gavin shoots off his stupid mouth.
“What do you mean, what’s the big deal?” Nikki replies through chomps of strawberry bubble gum, beating me to it. “Are you nuts? These guys are totally hardcore. The Dealer was a criminal mastermind.”
“Is a criminal mastermind,” I correct. I figure you use the present tense when talking about someone back from the dead.
“Right,” she says. “The Suits went on a crime spree that lasted three years. It took the entire Legion of Justice to bring them down. And you’re asking what the big deal is?”
Gavin straightens up stiffly. “I just don’t see what Mr. Masters is getting so worked up over. So a couple of baddies break out of prison? Happens every day. The Supers will round ’em up and stick ’em back in—and if we’re lucky, some of us might get to help.” He looks at me and smiles. All confidence and straight white teeth.
I glare back. It is bad enough getting it from Mr. Masters. I don’t need to take it from Purple Passion McAllister.
Eric starts signing rapidly.
Gavin shakes his head. “What did he say?”
“He says you’re crazy,” I translate. “And ignorant,” I add, though Eric didn’t sign that, “and that these guys are way out of our league.”
Jenna sits cross-legged next to me. She has taken off her glasses and let her hair down—halfway through her transformation to the Silver Lynx. “Eric’s right,” she says. “These guys were the most dangerous supervillains in the world. Even without the Jack of Hearts,” she adds in a whisper.
“Right. What happened to him again?” Gavin asks. I can’t tell if he doesn’t know or just doesn’t remember. Or maybe he’s just playing dumb. Or maybe he’s not playing.
I look at Jenna, who is fidgeting with the laces on her tennis shoes. I watch her tug on the loops, waiting for the whole thing to unravel. “Nobody really knows,” she says. “Like the Dealer, the Jack of Hearts wore a mask, so no one knew his true identity.”
“Though they say he was the most powerful of all the Suits,” Nikki adds.
“All we know for sure is that the Legion of Justice tracked the Suits back to their secret hideout and there was this huge fight.”
“They were all there,” Nikki says, “Corefire and Mantis . . .”
Venus, Eric signs.
“Venus, Kid Caliber . . .”
“The Titan.”
Nikki pops a bubble.
I realize everyone is looking at me, and then just as suddenly making an effort not to.
“Can’t forget him,” I say. There is another long pause, and then finally Nikki speaks.
“So they had this big battle. And everybody kind of gets split up. And the Titan and Kid Caliber chase the Dealer and the Jack of Hearts into this lab. And the next thing you know, the whole place goes up in flames.” Eric’s hands fly wide in accompaniment, the universal sign for kerplowy. “The Titan emerges from the smoke with an unconscious Kid Caliber in his arms and says it’s all over.”
“Supposedly the Jack of Hearts and the Dealer were both caught in the blast,” I add. “The other three Jacks were captured and imprisoned.”
“End of story,” Nikki says.
Gavin shrugs his shoulders. “Right. See. My point exactly. Good guys win. We did it the first time, we will do it again.”
I stare at Gavin. If it’s true that we all have a little voice inside our head, I’m pretty sure his is a bubble-headed cheerleader. “Sure,” I say. “Except the Legion of Justice doesn’t exist anymore. They’ve all retired or gone solo.”
“Or disappeared,” Jenna says, looking at me sideways.
I don’t bother to say anything back. I think about the Titan straddling his stool at the bar. What would he say if he knew the Dealer was still alive? If he knew the Suits were on the loose again? Would it make any difference? And what about the others? The ones who may still be around somewhere? Kid Caliber? Venus? Corefire? Would they even care?
“So maybe they’ll come back,” Gavin says, somehow reading my thought. “Like old times.”
Nikki rolls her eyes. “Tcha. Last I heard, Corefire was in Australia and Venus was retired out on the West Coast, using what’s left of her fame to convince kids to say no to drugs,” Nikki says. “And Mantis, didn’t he die . . .?” She can’t bring herself to say it. She looks at Eric.
He solemnly holds up two fingers. I remember reading about it in the paper. Turned ou
t his chitinous exoskeleton was actually a form of skin cancer that slowly spread to his lungs and then to his brain, taking him, finally, in his sleep. He died two years ago.
“All the more reason for the Dealer to make his comeback now,” Nikki says. “Now that nobody who stopped him the first time is around to try again.”
Or almost nobody, I think to myself.
Gavin shrugs. “Whatever. Forget those guys. Our Supers are just as good as them. Screw that, they’re even better. Hotshot would toast those guys in seconds flat, and especially with the Fox—”
Of course. Justicia’s knight in tight white armor. Jenna says nothing. Gavin’s about to launch into another spiel, probably about how he could take the Dealer down himself with one hand tied behind his back, when Eric stomps his foot and points emphatically to the window of the office on the other side of the room. Mr. Masters is pacing back and forth, gesturing frantically, talking on the phone. He looks like he’s about to pop. We all just sit and watch him for a moment.
“Wish I was a fly on that wall,” Nikki says.
“Maybe it has something to do with us,” Gavin adds.
Jenna leans next to me. She looks concerned. “You could . . . you know.” She tilts her head behind her, toward the room.
“What? Seriously? On Mr. Masters?”
Eric sits up a little straighter, having read our lips. Nikki pauses in midbubble. Gavin looks at me, then at Jenna, then back at me.
We all huddle a little closer together. “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Jenna asks. “I mean, with everything that’s just happened, Gavin’s right. It could be about us.”
“Could be about you, you mean,” I say, reminding her of her new upgrade in status.
“He looks really worried,” Nikki says. Eric nods.
Jenna is staring at me.
“Yeah . . . I don’t think when Mr. Masters told us to keep our eyes and ears open, he meant we should spy on him.”
But I already know I will.
In part because Jenna asked me to.
In part because, for once, my powers would come in handy.
In part because of the look that Gavin is giving me.
But mostly because I want to hear what he is saying as much as anyone. I look over my shoulder at Mr. Masters’s office. “All these rooms are soundproof,” I say. “Believe me. I’ve tried to listen in on what you guys are doing, and I can’t.”
“That’s from inside your room,” Jenna says. “This is different.”
She offers up one of her pouty smiles.
“Forget it, Jenna. He already said he can’t do it. Leave him alone,” Gavin says.
That clinches it.
“Okay, fine, everybody shut up.”
Nikki locks her mouth shut with an invisible key and swallows it. Eric sits on his hands.
I close my eyes to block everything out.
I hear Gavin snort, and I give him one open eyeful. I guess it looks evil enough, because he doesn’t make another sound. I take one last glance at Mr. Masters.
Eyes shut again, I let in all the sounds around me.
A hundred voices talking all at once.
The loud ones are teachers, but there are many more softer voices trying to drown the loud ones out, or at least ignore them, whispered voices creating an acoustic fog, a kind of white noise. I hear shouting from the gymnasium and the sound of balls being dribbled. I hear a volcano erupting and an announcer discussing the properties of lava. “The molten rock reaches temperatures up to twenty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit and can travel great distances before cooling.” I hear the squeak of shoes and the hum of the air conditioner, and the sound of chalk scraped across a board, and the click of keys from the computer lab.
And I start to slowly filter it all out. Everything. The lawn mower outside on the school grounds. Ms. Kyle finally snapping and telling everyone to sit down and zip it. At least a half dozen “oh . . . my . . . god” squealed almost simultaneously.
I push it all out.
And I open my eyes and stare at Mr. Masters through the soundproof glass. Still pacing. Still shouting. I concentrate on the door, on the window, on the slightest crack or hole I can find. And I feel like my eyeballs are going to pop.
But I can hear his voice. Muffled at first, then louder.
I hear the word “Dealer” and the word “impossible.”
I hear “. . . told me he was dead.”
I catch something that sounds like “only one who knows for sure” and something else that sounds like “can’t find him” and “we really don’t know who it is.”
He says, “. . . possible that all of our identities have been compromised.”
And then he says something that makes my heart stop.
“I think they’re watching me.”
Then he quickly hangs up the phone, turns to the window, and looks at us.
At me.
I quickly look over at Jenna, away from Mr. Masters, my heart racing. There is a look of concern on her face. She is pointing at me.
“Your nose is bleeding,” she says.
I touch my hand to my nose and smear a streak of red across it, then chance one last look at Mr. Masters.
He’s still standing in the window. Watching me.
Jenna hands me a tissue from her bag, then turns and stares right back at Mr. Masters, who eventually looks away.
PART TWO
IN WHICH I ALMOST DIE . . . AGAIN
11
PROMISES
I met Jenna Jaden a little over a year ago.
We just ran into each other. Or she ran into me, is more like it.
At the time, I wasn’t a part of the Highview Environmental Reclamation Organization. I had just started middle school, of all things, and my biggest concern was suddenly having no recess for the rest of my life. Not that I loved recess. Just that it usually smelled better outside school than inside it. Imagine being able to hear and smell it every time a kid loses his lunch in the trash can, and you’ll know what I mean.
And of course there was all the other junk that came with the move to middle school: having to learn how to operate a locker; having more than one teacher to suck up to each year; organized sports teams, which gave guys who like to pick on guys like me even more occasions to bond and slap each other on the butt; having to get up early to catch the bus; having to stay up late finishing homework; girls whispering and pointing even more than usual; guys who like to pick on guys like me picking on me even more than usual to impress girls who whisper and point . . . that sort of thing.
I ventured into middle school with very few friends in tow. Being able to hear everything that anybody says about you tends to make you selective in who you hang out with, and I was cagey about my power even before I became a member of H.E.R.O.
Most of my friends from Crestwater Elementary split during the summer. My friend Max headed to private school, and my neighbor Josh had to move to North Carolina when his father was reassigned to a new army base. The other kids in my neighborhood—the few who were even my age—were more casual acquaintances than friends, which left me basically alone going into a new school.
Then along came Jenna.
When we first met, I didn’t know she had a fifteen-foot vertical leap. That she had lightning-quick reflexes. Or that she could bench press twenty of me stacked one on top of the other. Maybe that’s because Jenna couldn’t. The Silver Lynx could, and I didn’t meet her until later.
When I met Jenna, we made an instant connection. It was sixth-grade gym class—unfortunately, not yet being a member of H.E.R.O., I still had to go to all of my classes—and we were playing kickball. They let me play catcher, because in kickball almost nobody misses, and nobody really throws the ball to a base, preferring instead to chuck it at the runner, so there really isn’t a lot to do if you are the catcher except stand behind home plate and hope that Davy “Biohazard” Hutchinson doesn’t let one rip in front of you when he comes up to kick.
Then Je
nna stepped up. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that bobbed with each step. Her green eyes peered through her thick glasses, homed in on the ball like a sniper’s sights; her freckled arms flexed. She was new to town, and nobody knew very much about her. I think she preferred it that way. Crouching behind her, I stared up at the long curve of her neck and shoulders, trying not to look at her butt, which fit nicely in the tight red-and-blue gym shorts, unlike a lot of girls there. I didn’t even realize the ball was coming toward us.
And then she took a shot all the way to the back of the gym, actually hitting the ceiling, nearly busting one of the lights. The ball bounced twice before the outfielder could grab it and toss it in. By then Jenna had already rounded second base.
Of course somebody tried to throw it at her and missed. Instead the ball bounced right to me.
And I actually managed to grab it, just as she was rounding third, me standing directly in her path. And I could hear all the other sixth graders shouting for her to stay on third and for me to throw the ball at her already. And I could hear the slap of her tennis shoes on the hardwood floor. And I could smell everybody, because it was near the end of the class and our secretions had mixed together into a miasmatic fog of B.O. that made my stomach do the mambo.
And I could see the look in her ocean eyes. And I could see the wicked and determined smile on her face.
And I knew she wasn’t going to stop.
I should have gotten out of her way, but I held the ball out in front of me and closed my eyes and prepared for impact. In three . . . two . . . one.
I felt the red rubber of the ball in my face, in my mouth, up my nose. In fact, that ball was all I saw and smelled, as if it had been a bloodred moon eclipsing the sun of Jenna’s face.
I heard the air rushing past as I fell.
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