“That’s great,” I tell him. I’m still finding it a little difficult to breathe anyway.
In the halls between periods I look for Jenna, but I can’t find her anywhere. I sit in class and listen for her laugh down the hall. For the sound of her footsteps. For a glimpse of her through the window in the door. For once I can’t see or hear anything else.
The final bell rings, and I head to my locker to drop off some books and grab my jacket, looking for her, listening for her. It takes two tries to get the combination right. I’m obviously not thinking clearly. Normally I can hear the clicks of each pin when the number hits. I swing open the door and out of the corner of my eye notice something taped to the inside of it.
It’s the Jack of Clubs.
17
THE WORST FIFTEEN MINUTES OF MY LIFE SO FAR
The world stops spinning, only for a moment, and then speeds up again. I pull the card free, not thinking that it might be rigged somehow, not thinking that the act of pulling it off the door could cause the whole school to blow up or something.
But I’m just being stupid. Nothing happens. It’s just a playing card. A man with a sword stuck through his head. Smiling at me. Suddenly, all around me, the school erupts in sound. I’ve lost my concentration and let control of my senses slip. Everything is rush and roar, and I feel like I’m submerged beneath a waterfall.
Okay, Drew. Calm down. Remember your training. What do you do when a psychotic villain leaves his calling card in your locker? Panic? Do you panic? Is that what you do?
Yes, I answer myself. Panic first. No avoiding it. Might as well get it out of the way. I stand there, my hands shaking, the Jack of Clubs bouncing up and down.
Now. Take a deep breath. Try to slow it down. Concentrate. You need to tell somebody. He could be here right now. The whole school could be in danger. Get help.
I look around for anyone. Jenna, Eric, even Gavin, that’s how desperate I am.
Nobody. Everybody. Bodies everywhere. I don’t recognize any of them. Why is everyone so loud all of a sudden?
Calm down. Get control.
I head to the corner. Jenna’s locker is down the hall on the left, but she’s not there.
Where is she?
I can usually find her anywhere, but there’s no trace of her. The crowd is shoving, pulling, yelling. I need help.
Mr. Masters.
I quickly head up to his room, remembering that he teaches earth science last period, but he’s not there. I’m still holding the stupid card in my hand. I’m listening for a familiar voice, but it’s the end of the school day and the noise is deafening. I can’t concentrate enough to sift through them all. All the conversations bleed together into a chaotic buzz. I’m sweating. My mouth is dry. I feel like I might pass out.
Then I hear a voice I recognize.
It’s my former English teacher, Ms. Norris. Three doors down.
“Andrew? Is everything all right?”
I catch my breath. “Ms. Norris, you haven’t seen Mr. Masters around, have you? I really need to talk to him about this . . . project I’m doing.”
“I’m sorry, but I think Mr. Masters left early this afternoon.”
“What? What the heck for?” I look around frantically.
Ms. Norris gives me a very strange look. “I’m sure I don’t know, though he is an adult . . . with a life . . . so he does leave this school sometimes,” she says a little defensively. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I look back at her. She’s a nice enough lady and she knows a lot about poetry, but rhyming couplets are no defense against supervillains. I shake my head.
“You can always try and get his home number from the front office,” she calls after me, but I am already headed back down the stairs.
All right. Forget Mr. Masters. I need to find Jenna. If I find Jenna, she can contact the Fox. As I run down the stairs, I pull out my phone. Speed dial two.
It goes straight to voice mail.
“Hi, you’ve reached Jenna Jaden. I’m really sorry I missed you, but I’ll buzz you back later.”
“Seriously?” I hang up.
Crowds of students bustle past me, shoving me aside with their shoulders and backpacks, oblivious. I scan the crowd, looking for Jenna’s pink-and-yellow backpack with the tie-dyed peace sign on it. Nothing.
Everyone’s headed out to the buses.
Who can I call?
Neither Mike nor Nikki have phones. Nikki’s is in a perpetual state of confiscation and Mike burned through three before his parents realized that he and personal electronics were a bad combination. I never bothered to get Gavin’s number, even though Mr. Masters told me I should. So I quickly send a message to Eric, who can text eighty words per minute and keeps his phone on vibrate in his front pocket.
I type SIT and hit send. It stands for Sidekick In Trouble. It’s the SOS of the superhero sidekick universe. Dot dot dot, dot dot, dash.
I hope he gets it.
All right, Drew. You’re on your own for the moment. What next?
If I was any other sidekick, of course, I would contact my Super. That’s the first thing I would have done. I would press the nearly microscopic button embedded under my fingernail, and a little alarm would go off on the ring on my Super’s finger, showing my exact location. Then my hero would suddenly slip into his suit and rev up the save-my-butt-mobile and be outside the school in five.
But last time I looked, the Titan wasn’t wearing his ring—I doubt he even still has it—and I don’t have the phone number for every bar in the city. So there’s no chance of him showing up for this one, either.
Think.
I could call the police.
I pull out my phone and start to dial 911. It’s the last resort of Supers and sidekicks—to have to rely on the lesser authorities. Kind of like asking your little sister for help opening a jar of pickles. But the school could be in danger. At the very least, I could be in danger. And I’m willing to take all the help I can get.
Then I stop before I press the last one. Because it dawns on me.
How could a wanted fugitive like the Jack of Clubs—someone who has been on the news and on the front page of every paper since last Friday—walk into a school, of all places, to stick a playing card in my locker . . . without being noticed?
And why would he? This is me we are talking about, after all. How would he even know who I am? Or where my locker is? Even if he somehow did sneak past the front office and slink down the halls unnoticed.
But if not him, then who? Only so many people in school know how to break into a locker. There still isn’t an app for it. It’s the kind of knowledge a criminal would have.
Or a sidekick. Like two weeks ago, when we spent half an hour learning to pick a dozen different kinds of locks, including the spin combination variety. If you were a sidekick, and you wanted to scare someone in order to get back at them for something they did to you, say, around lunchtime.
All of a sudden, standing there, holding my phone in one hand, about to bring the S.W.A.T. team down on Highview, it occurs to me. I hold up the Jack of Clubs and give it a sniff.
Which one scares you the most?
“You’re going to miss your bus if you don’t hurry, son.”
I look around to see a janitor motioning to the halls, which are quickly emptying.
He’s right, of course. I should go catch my bus—if it hasn’t left already.
But all I can do is stand there and think about how I’m going to get back at Gavin McAllister.
On the ride home, I fume. The fact that Jenna didn’t bother to call me back ticks me off, even though she is probably at gymnatsics practice by now and can’t get to her phone. And it ticks me off that Mr. Masters wasn’t there today, of all days, or that Eric didn’t bother to respond to my SIT. Even just a text saying, “Sorry, dude. You’re SOL.” And I’m still perpetually ticked off that my Super is never anywhere to be found. But mostly I’m mad at Gavin.
And I
wonder if maybe he didn’t find about what happened on the bleachers at lunch, and if that’s what prompted his little prank. I think about telling Mr. Masters. Maybe it will be enough to get Gavin kicked out of the program. Impersonating a known villain? He could have caused mass panic. School lockdown. What a jerk. Not to mention he nearly ruined the best day of my life. I think of Marc Antony getting revenge on Julius Caesar. “The dogs of war shall be set loose,” he said, or something like that. The rest of the bus ride home I think about my dogs and how best to loose them. Maybe I’ll get Eric to help me. After all, he still owes me for the apple smell incident.
The bus stops at my block and lets me out. I open the front door using the key under the plastic frog and toss my backpack in the corner. Mom won’t be home for another hour, and Dad won’t be home for another two. I slip off my shoes, then fall into the couch and grab my phone. I think about calling Jenna again to tell her what Gavin did. I wonder if he wasn’t in the halls, watching me, waiting to see the look on my face. Laughing with some of his football buddies as I fled, panicked, down the halls.
No connection.
I look at my phone. Call lost. No bars. Funny. It was working less than an hour ago.
Pressing lots of random buttons over and over again doesn’t help. Nor does walking into three different rooms. So I flop back on the couch and stare at it for a while.
Then I pick up the ancient landline phone from the end table beside me.
No signal.
“That’s so weird,” I say to myself. I’m holding the dead phone to my ear.
No sound at all.
Except breathing. I only hear breathing.
I hold my breath.
And my heart stops.
It’s not my breathing.
I turn just in time to see the club flying toward me—like a police officer’s nightstick, but rounded on both ends like an oversized, deadly Q-tip. I manage to duck, and it careens into the bookshelf on the opposite wall, sending several volumes to the floor. The club somehow circles back, like a boomerang, and I peer over the edge of the couch cushions to see a hand catch it.
A hand attached to a man in a black suit with a black shirt and solid black tie. With mousy black eyes, a scarred face, and an oily black handlebar mustache twisted on the ends. He is standing by the front door. Smiling. Even his teeth are black. Some of them, anyways.
“The Sensationalist?” the man asks.
For a moment I think he’s got the wrong guy. This is the first time anyone I don’t know personally has called me that. In fact, pretty much only Mr. Masters uses that name. Someday, he says, it will be famous. Someday it will be in headlines. Staring at the Jack of Clubs standing in my doorway, I decide fame is overrated.
“Who?” I say. I am instantly aware that I don’t have my mask on, but it clearly doesn’t matter. This guy already knows who I am.
The Jack of Clubs reaches back for another toss. I use the Lord’s name, partly in vain, mostly in earnest, and roll off the couch and into the coffee table, catching the corner of it with my head as the club goes whizzing past me again. This time it smashes into the forty-two-inch LED television that was my father’s Christmas present last year and gets stuck in the glass and plastic.
Now’s my chance. I take off toward the kitchen and the back patio door. Behind me I hear a grunt and footsteps on broken glass. I slide on the kitchen linoleum in my sock feet and slam into the counter, smashing my knees into them. I turn to see him coming down the hall behind me, club in hand.
I look down just to confirm that my utility belt is, in fact, still stashed away in my backpack by the front door and hasn’t somehow magically appeared around my scrawny waist. If it were there, it would afford any number of solutions to the problem that is stalking me down the hallway. Paralyzing gas, cryogenic bomb, even just a smoke grenade. As it is, I have a used gum wrapper in one pocket and sixty-five cents in the other.
I need a weapon.
I look around frantically.
Knives.
Our block of kitchen knives. Right beside me. I grab the biggest handle—the big butcher knife, the Psycho knife—and launch it, but it clatters uselessly off the wall, missing its mark by several feet. The Jack of Clubs stops. I’ve gotten his attention, at least. I grab two more—a bread knife and the other long, skinny one. The first sails right past. The other he blocks easily with his club. I toss the rest, including the paring knife, five steak knives, and even the scissors (miss, miss, block, dodge, miss, drop, big miss); then I throw the block of wood for good measure. He manages to avoid them all with ease, except the block, which hits him in the shoulder and falls to the floor with a pathetic thunk.
Jack looks at his shoulder, then back at me. I think his mustache actually twists around by itself. He flicks his wrist, and the club soars out of his hand again.
I dive to the left, past the center island, headed toward the dining table as, behind me, I can hear the splintering of our wooden cabinets. There is the sound of more glass breaking as I crawl beneath the table, facing the patio door. I can tell from here that it is unlocked. Through the glass I can hear a dog barking, many houses down.
I wish I had a dog. A Rottweiler or a Doberman. With big yellow teeth. And rabies. Dripping, nasty, froth-at-the-mouth rabies. I’d name him Chopper. Or Jack Ripper.
I slide out from under the table and put both hands on the door handle. I pull hard, but it only opens an inch. It’s stuck somehow. I push and pull. The sound of metal hitting wood. I look down to see the dowel rod that my parents use as an extra precaution blocking the way, meant to keep the bad guys out.
The sound of air being split as something whisles through it. I duck just in time and squeeze back under the dining table as the club soars past in an arc, nearly taking my head off.
Then I hear something large—probably Jack of Clubs size—landing on the table above me. For a moment I’m paralyzed. I can see the backyard. I can see the Powells’ house beyond it. I can even hear the sound of children playing in the street.
There’s no way I can make it out the patio door in time, not unless I try to crash through it. He’s right on top of me.
I wish I had Nikki’s powers. I would melt right through the floor and into the basement. Surely linoleum is no platinum. But I’m no Nikki, either.
I turn and look the other way—back down the hall at the front door.
Which way to go?
I turn to look back at the porch.
I scream.
His face is right there, hanging down over the table. Grinning with all of his black and yellow teeth. For a moment I think his mustache is reaching for me.
“Hi there,” he says.
I scream louder and scamper backward, kicking out and catching him square in the jaw with one socked foot.
I wish I had been wearing cleats. With three-inch spikes. Coated in poison.
I’m free of the table and see him stand up and spin around, rubbing his jaw with one hand. I manage to pull myself up and head toward the front door, my lungs already burning, my senses kicked into overdrive. I can smell the orange soda seeping into the carpet. Then I hear the slightest grunt of effort and manage to twist sideways and onto the stairs as the club wings past, lodging in the front door. Scrambling up the stairs on my hands and knees, I fall into my room, slamming the door shut with my feet.
The whole world is spinning.
I can hear his footsteps on the stairs.
I stand and lock my door and press my ear against it. He is breathing right outside.
He smells like sweat and licorice.
That, apparently, is what pure evil smells like. Like black licorice.
The Jack of Clubs jiggles the knob. There are very few things more unnerving than watching your doorknob jiggle, knowing there is a crazed killer on the other side.
I scramble into my closet and dig through piles of clothes and old blankets till I find my trunk—an oversized toolbox that I keep most of my sidekick supplies in,
including a few gadgets I don’t have room for on the belt. Inside the box, at least, is a Taser with enough juice in it to bring down a rhinoceros. It might not be enough to take down the Jack of Spades, but it should at least trump the club.
I open the box.
It’s empty.
“What the what?”
Suddenly I hear one smashing sound followed by another and watch as my doorknob falls to the floor and the door swings open.
He stands there, looking at me trapped in my closet. His black shoes are dusted with broken glass. There is a spot of blood in the corner of his mouth, presumably from where I kicked him. He grins wickedly.
He opens the bag slung across his shoulder and pulls out some of my stuff, including the Taser and several smoke bombs and even a nifty little device Jenna helped me design for blocking phone signals and radio transmissions. I had kind of forgotten about that. He tosses the gadgets back inside.
“Kids your age shouldn’t play with toys like this,” he says.
He takes a few steps toward me, his club in his right hand, down by his side. I scoot backward until I am tucked into the corner of the closet, frantically considering my dwindling options.
My closet is filled with dirty laundry, old board games, and neglected sports equipment that my former football-star grandfather buys me every year for Christmas. I grab a hockey stick, figuring it at least makes for a better weapon than a basket full of dirty socks.
“What do you want?” I say, pulling myself into a crouch, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. I wish I had Gavin’s powers. I would turn into a mountain. A very small mountain, but solid rock nonetheless. Then I would just let him whack at me until he got bored and left.
The Jack of Clubs stops for a moment, listening. He turns and looks out my bedroom window and then back at me.
“Actually, I was hoping for a little more of a fight. But I guess I’ll have to make do.”
He takes another step.
I look up expectantly. This is the moment. The one when the Titan comes crashing through the ceiling, all flexed and fisted, tackling the Jack of Clubs and pummeling him through the drywall, beating the snot out of him while I cheer him on. Rule number four, again.
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