Sidekicked

by John David Anderson

  “Hey,” the bald man yells. “Stop those two!”

  But instead of stopping them, the crowd parts like the Red Sea—OCs doing what OCs do best: watching, frozen, as the two teenagers bowl through them. They are only three stores away.

  I suddenly get an image of the Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct hanging in the basement at Highview Middle School, chiseled in stone. I look at my sugar-crusted fingers and slushie-stained shirt, then over at Mike in his giant cast wearing that bewildered look on his face.

  We are the forces of goodness and light.

  “We have to do something.”

  It all happens so fast. I think I hear Mike ask, “We?”—but I’m already up and running, jumping right into the path of the looters, instinctively reaching for the belt that I’m not wearing, because I’m not on ready reserve status, because I’m not even really a full-fledged sidekick, because I left it at home in my closet. Still, utility belt or not, I’m determined to stop them.

  Mr. Masters says that when you are faced with moments of danger, time slows down, but he has a time-stopping watch, so I always take it with a grain of salt. Truth is, time moves at the same pace; you just have to think a little faster, is all. Standing in the middle of the mall in the direct path of two stampeding shoplifters, I get a lot of thinking in.

  I try to remember my training, particularly the moves that Eric taught us all in martial arts.

  I think about a picture I saw once, of a man getting trampled by a bull.

  I think about the Code and how, come to think of it, I haven’t actually stopped a crime. Ever. Not once.

  And I think about Jenna, and what she might say if she could see me now, standing in front of these guys, stretching out my hand, ordering them to halt the way policemen always do in movies. Standing firm. Not moving, heroic maybe, even as they barrel straight for me. Even though they look to be twice my size and getting larger.

  Bracing myself as the first one lowers his shoulder and plows right into me, catching my chin with his elbow.

  Spinning, the pain in my jaw so sudden and intense.

  Falling, flat on my butt, as the wind tears right out of me, choking to get it back.

  Watching as the second shoplifter leaps nimbly over me, both of them getting away.

  Then, suddenly, there is a sound, like someone stomping in mud, and I turn to see a woman in her forties, maybe older, standing over the first boy, a smashed shopping bag in her hand, a look of fierce determination on her face, her three kids slack-jawed and gawking behind her. The second shoplifter, seeing his buddy suddenly laid out on the floor, hesitates for just a moment, when he’s suddenly tackled from out of nowhere by a mall security guard. I lie there and listen to the click of handcuffs . . . the store manager cursing the two would-be thieves . . . recovering his two boxes of shoes.

  I suddenly realize there is a hand reaching down for me and see that it’s the girl in the white sweater.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  I stand up and look around. Just about everyone has their cell phone out, capturing the moment on video. Tonight I could be on YouTube, getting bowled over by a sixteen-year-old trying to steal a pair of high-tops, though odds are no one would notice me. I watch as one of the mall cops shakes hands with the mother of three, the hero who leveled the villain with one blow. Then, suddenly, the crowd begins to applaud. Even Mike, who comes to stand next to me, is slapping his good hand on his cast.

  “Did you see that? She swung that shopping bag like a lumberjack. That was awesome. We’ve got to get that woman a cape.”

  “Yeah,” I say, brushing myself off. “Pretty awesome.”

  “You were awesome too,” Mike says as an afterthought. “You slowed that first guy down.”

  All around, everyone is buzzing. I look at the girl in the green shirt. She points to me and then turns to her friends.

  “Did you see that kid get tackled? What was he thinking?”

  I feel the blood rising to my cheeks. I rub my jaw and just stare at the girl until she looks away nervously.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I say.

  As we head to the candy store, I watch the mother of three pull all her kids close to her, hugging them fiercely. I can hear her sobbing.

  It’s tough being a hero, I guess.

  Later that night, Mike and I turn on the news expecting to see something about the attempted theft at the Justicia Shopping Mall. “Mall Hero Mom Comes Out Swinging,” or something like that, but it turns out there’s much bigger news than a couple of shoplifting teens.

  A bank robbery in a small town about a hundred miles north of here. The thief managed to bypass all the alarms and disable the security cameras with ease. A high-powered laser of some sort was used to blast through the locks on the vault itself. No one was hurt, and the robber managed to get away easily.

  In place of the missing cash, estimated in the millions, the thief left a playing card.

  The Jack of Diamonds.

  13

  SOMETHING DOESN’T SMELL RIGHT

  It’s Monday. Grilled cheese day, which is kind of a shame, because I might have actually eaten one of those, provided it hadn’t been sitting in its waxy cocoon under the heat lamps too long. At the very least, I would have eaten the soggy fries that came with it, because the salt sticks to the grease like wet snow and I’ve grown fond of salt. It’s the only spice my delicate senses can tolerate, and I put it on everything. Even my applesauce.

  But it’s Monday, which means lunch will be a granola bar and a banana quickly scarfed down on the way to the teachers’ lounge. Normally I move quickly, but for some reason I take my time walking to H.E.R.O. today. The incident at the mall ruined a perfectly good Sunday set aside for lying around. Mike told me not to worry about it. That it happens to the best of us, and that I certainly looked brave jumping in front of those guys. Still, I don’t see how I am supposed to go toe-to-toe with an eye-blasting supervillain like the Jack of Diamonds when I can’t even tackle a teenage shoplifter. Coupled with the news of the bank robbery and the fact that Jenna was apparently too busy to return my phone calls . . . I’m starting to get the impression that I’m being left behind somehow. That I’m on the outside looking in, like all the OCs huddled in front of their televisions, wondering who’s going to save them next.

  And Mr. Masters doesn’t help, spending the first twenty minutes rehashing everything we already know about the bank robbery, then telling Jenna, Gavin, and Eric that they are to spend the entire day in the combat simulator, fighting robots, while Nikki and I resume our regularly scheduled training, though we can at least sit together. He makes it pretty clear that until I learn to shoot lasers out of my eyes or flames out of my butt, I won’t get to play with the other kids. That is, unless all of a sudden the Titan should find his feet below his gut and get back on the streets. Or until Mr. Masters can find a Super in need of a sidekick who can hear a cricket’s chirp twenty miles away.

  I look through the window of the simulator, watching as Eric and Gavin bash their way through a wave of armored automatons while Jenna leaps over another with lynxlike grace. Just watching her move puts me in a trance. If she had been at the mall on Saturday, she would have mopped the floor with those guys. Even next to Eric and Gavin, she looks like she’s in a league of her own, and before long she has a pile of scrap metal at her feet.

  There is a loud thunk next to me, causing me to leap out of my chair. Nikki has her hand caught inside a chunk of marble and struggles to shake it free. “Sorry,” she says, massaging her fingers.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I get my hand caught inside rocks all the time.”

  I look at Nikki and smile. At least we’re in the same boat. Her mentor, a telepath named Miss Mindminer, has been on loan to the Chinese government for the past month or so, on some top-secret mission, way too dangerous for a novice sidekick like the Wisp to tag along, leaving Nikki Superless until her return. There is talk, Mr. Masters says, of bringing Miss Mindminer back to hel
p round up the Suits, but she is so deep undercover that only another telepath could reach her. There is another thunk as the marble hits the floor this time.

  “What are you doing, anyway?”

  “Composition one oh one,” she says, indicating the twenty or so blocks of stone, glass, and metal on the table. “I’m just trying to get a feel for it. Makes it easier when I try to pass through.” She picks up the piece of marble again, letting her fingers sink into it little by little. “Some are harder than others. Glass is pretty easy. So are most woods. I can pass through drywall without even breaking a sweat. But platinum—don’t even try to walk through that.”

  “I’ll cross it off my list,” I say, opening the box that contains my activity for the next half hour—a series of forty glass vials, each containing the slightest trace of some substance that I’m supposed to identify by smell alone. I don’t know why Mr. Masters makes me do this. I don’t know what good it will do me. Will telling a villain that he had burritos for lunch make him let me go? I have my doubts.

  Mr. Masters says I may someday be able to sniff out danger from miles away, which is all well and good if I knew what danger smelled like. Gunpowder I’ve got. I can identify nitrous oxide, acetylene, and chloroform. I can even tell you if Bobby Ellis was stupid enough to bring fireworks to school again. But until bad guys start wearing their own unique brand of cologne, I don’t think my nostrils are going to save the day.

  “Bubble gum,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry. The smell. Bubble gum,” I say again, holding the vial out to Nikki, who takes a sniff and shakes her head.

  “Can’t smell a thing,” she says.

  “And I can’t walk through walls,” I say.

  I screw the cap off the second vial and take a whiff. “Fresh pear,” I say, passing the tube back and forth under my nose as if it were wine . . . and I knew anything about wine.

  “You look like a dork,” Nikki says to me, and then promptly shoves her head through a piece of wood so that she looks like a hunting trophy displayed on the wall of a cheap hotel.

  “Ditto,” I say, guessing ginger ale and then checking my answer to make sure I’m right. “Have you talked to your Super?” I ask, opening the next vial and taking a big whiff. Corn chips, no question. “Or, you know, has she . . .” I put my hands to my head and make a funny humming noise. Because I don’t have the slightest clue what using telepathy looks like. If I could read minds, I would know why the Titan won’t get off his stool. Why Mr. Masters keeps looking at me funny. And why Jenna has been avoiding me lately. I’d know what my parents were really thinking every time I came home late and what the OCs were really thinking whenever a Super dropped out of the sky.

  “Not really,” Nikki says, shaking off a cement block. “I don’t think she likes me much. I’ve read somewhere that telepaths prefer to work alone. I don’t know why she even signed up to take on a sidekick.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I say.

  Nikki looks over at me and frowns. “It kinda sucks, doesn’t it? Being tacked on.”

  “Yeah. Kinda,” I say. “Though at least you have a boyfriend.”

  Nikki holds up two fingers and smiles slyly. I shake my head, then look back through the glass of the simulator just in time to see Jenna drive her fist into one of the robot’s sensors before flipping it over and smashing it with her heel. I can see the intensity in her eyes. The concentration. It’s a little frightening. I take a sniff of my next tube and guess fish, then read the label.

  ICELANDIC COD. Now, apparently, I’m supposed to identify where the smells come from, too.

  “I don’t know,” Nikki says, looking down at the metal table, dipping her fingers into it, and stirring them in a way that is mesmerizing. “I think it’s different with you. I mean, with everything that’s happening, and what happened before, with the Dealer back, you would think . . .” She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t have to.

  You would think he’d come back.

  “You can’t make someone be a hero,” I say.

  “Whatever,” Nikki counters. “But if it was me, if it was my nemesis come back from the dead, breaking those guys out of prison and robbing banks and stuff, you can best be sure I’d be out on the streets kicking some serious tail.” She thrusts her fists clear through the table for emphasis.

  She’s right. I think she’s right. But it doesn’t matter what I think.

  I reach for the last vial in that row, twist off the cork, and bring it just under my nose. “Oh, gyyyahh, gross.” I choke and hold the tube away from me, grimacing.

  “What? What is it?” Nikki asks, alarmed.

  I hand the tube over to her and she takes a sniff. Even she can smell it—that’s how bad it is.

  “Oh. Oh, god. What is that?” She hands it back.

  I look at the label on the back. The words MACINTOSH APPLE are crossed out. In its place is written Eric’s Fart.

  I look back through the simulator window at the rest of H.E.R.O. standing triumphantly over their imaginary foes. Shizuka Shi turns and waves to me.

  “I am so going to get him back for that.”

  I make it through all forty vials, only missing two. I couldn’t identify cauliflower or arsenic. The first doesn’t bother me—I can’t imagine any villain who would try to kill a superhero with a head of cauliflower, unless the superhero was a toddler and the villain was his mother. Arsenic, on the other hand, seems like something I should be able to identify. I think about how in demand I could have been, like, four hundred years ago, when everyone went around poisoning everyone else. I could have been the royal sniffer, sitting beside the king, shoving my snout into his pot roast and pomegranates. But most bad guys don’t bother poisoning anyone anymore, now that it’s so much easier to shoot them. Though the worst kind just find someone else to do their work for them.

  At the end of H.E.R.O., Eric, Gavin, and Jenna emerge from the training chamber, laughing and clapping each other on the back. I see Gavin throw his arm around Jenna and whisper in her ear, and even though it’s probably none of my business, I listen anyway.

  “You rocked today,” he says.

  That’s actually what he says. I resist the urge to vomit in my mouth. I wonder if that will be his catchphrase, the one they print on fan T-shirts when he becomes a famous Super ten years from now. “Hi. I’m Stonewall, your friendly neighborhood Super, and I totally rock!”

  I wonder what mine would be.

  “I’m the Sensationalist, and I smell better than you!” Maybe I have a future as a deodorant pitchman.

  Mr. Masters calls out a few reminders as everyone heads back to the stairs. This Wednesday is small blade disarmament training and we only have three days left to decide if we need our costumes altered—turns out some of us are already outgrowing our spandex. Then he reminds us all to be especially careful, that the Suits are still at large, that evil never sleeps, and to always follow the Code. He adds a “good work today,” but I don’t think he’s talking to me. I head to the stairs, hoping to catch up with Jenna, to offer to walk her to her next class, when Mr. Masters intercepts me.

  “Number forty?” he pries.

  “What?” I try to crane my neck to look over his shoulder and see if Jenna is waiting for me, but the man is just too blasted tall.

  “Number forty. What was it?”

  Mr. Masters always saves the hardest scent for last. It’s the only one he ever asks me about, and he never puts the answer on the back. “Sodium chloride,” I venture. “My guess is one crystal dissolved in about two ounces of water.”

  “The Sensationalist does it again,” he says, smiling.

  Yeah. Goody, I think to myself. Somewhere out there a teenage shoplifter is having nightmares about a mother of three with a heavy shopping bag and a wicked left hook, and I’m in here smelling salt.

  “And you,” I say, “had doughnuts for breakfast. Jelly filled.” There’s a spot of jelly on his collar. It doesn’t always ta
ke a superhero

  Mr. Masters drops his smile. “Listen, Drew,” he says. “We need to talk.”

  I step to the side and watch Jenna disappear, listening to her footsteps on the stairs. I know her walk. I could pick out the sound of her step in a crowd of hundreds. I could find her anywhere.

  “I’m concerned,” Mr. Masters says, stooping a bit to make eye contact.

  This snaps me back. When adults tell you they are concerned about you, what they usually mean is that they think you are up to no good and are about to have you tested, or increase your medication, or transfer you to military school. The lines on Mr. Masters’s face all crease downward.

  “About me?” I ask.

  “About the Titan,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. I unconsciously glance sideways at the giant stone tablet hanging on the wall.

  “I know in the past I’ve told you to be patient. To see if he won’t come around. But things are more serious now. The Dealer. The Suits.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I say. A lot can change in six years. Mr. Masters should appreciate that. He can change a lot in sixty seconds.

  “But some things aren’t easily forgotten,” Mr. Masters presses. He takes a moment to just stare at me. I take the time to count the hairs that just barely poke out of his nostrils. I’m not sure what he wants from me. Why he keeps holding me back.

  Mr. Masters’s hand lights on my shoulder again, holding me.”I’m afraid the Titan might be in danger,” he says. “If you have any idea where he is, or if he has tried to contact you at all recently . . .”

  I look into Mr. Masters’s burrowing brown eyes, see the little bubbles of sweat forming above his brows. Why is he even asking me this? He knows the Code as well as I do.

  And yet part of me feels like I should just tell him. About the shape the Titan is in. I should tell him because Mr. Masters was the one who assigned the Titan to me to begin with—and maybe he is the only one who could convince him to put the outfit back on.

  But I can’t. I made a promise. I can’t tell anyone where he is if he doesn’t want me to. If the Titan had wanted Mr. Masters to keep tabs on him, he wouldn’t have gone off the grid.