“‘Commendable’ just means deserving of praise,” JJ explained. “Like Newt’s drawing.”
“Well, I think it deserves a drumroll.” Cecil pulled two drumsticks out of his backpack and did a quick rat-a-tat on the rock where I was sitting.
Cecil’s dream is to be a drummer, but until his parents break down, get earplugs and buy Cecil a drum set of his own, he’s determined to practice every chance he gets.
Cecil finished his drum solo with a crash—bish!—and then announced, “Okay, listen up! Does anybody remember what this weekend is?”
“Please!” I exclaimed. “It’s the weekend of the Big Game.”
He shook his head. “I’m talking about Sunday.”
JJ and I shared a shrug.
“Hello?” Cecil waved his arms about. “Can anybody say ‘Halloween’?”
“Really?” I said. “This Sunday?”
Ever since we met in first grade, JJ, Cecil and I have always trick-or-treated together, but I guess I’d been so wrapped up in my brother’s final Big Game that Halloween had slipped my mind.
“Y’know what, guys?” JJ twirled a strand of hair around a finger and squidged up her nose. “I’m bored with Halloween.”
“Bored with Halloween?” Cecil yelped. “I got two words for you: Free. Candy.”
“Oh, c’mon, we’re in fourth grade now,” JJ insisted. “We’ve outgrown candy.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy,” Cecil scoffed.
That made me laugh; Cecil can always make me laugh.
“And besides,” JJ added, “our costumes suck. They always have.”
We all nodded glumly. See, the three of us have always been forced to wear hand-me-downs. Like her four sisters before her, JJ had been a flamenco dancer twice, a Starbucks countergirl once, and last year she was Jennifer Lopez. Cecil always wears the same old Wolverine mask that his brothers had gotten so much use out of. And the first year we all went trick-or-treating together, my mom completely forgot that it was Halloween, so at the last minute I searched through the stacks of plastic storage bins in our garage until I found Chris’s old cowboy suit. I’ve been a cowboy ever since.
“I refuse to be J. Lo again,” JJ moaned.
“My Wolverine mask is falling apart,” Cecil griped.
“And my cowboy pants have split,” I sighed.
After a gloomy moment of silence, Cecil looked up. “Y’know what’s wrong with us?”
“I didn’t realize there was something wrong,” I said.
“Me neither,” JJ said. “But if there was, what would it be?”
Cecil swept his arms to indicate the hundreds of kids at play. “To everybody in this school, we are invisible.”
“I don’t think you actually mean invisible,” JJ corrected him, “because our bodies do have mass, and they do reflect light.”
“Okay, everybody ignores us, then.” Cecil turned to me. “Doesn’t it bother you how kids are always stepping on us in the hallways, almost like we aren’t there?”
“We’re both really short,” I suggested.
“And, JJ,” Cecil went on, “how does it make you feel when people shove you away from the water fountain . . .”
“That’s only happened eight or nine times,” she said quietly.
“. . . or what about in the cafeteria when they slide our food off the table and squeeze us out of our seats?”
JJ and I exchanged a look. He had a point.
“Nobody pays any attention to us any other day of the year,” Cecil declared, waving a finger overhead as if he were preaching. “And I say that Halloween’s the one night we get to say, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ And y’know what? People will.”
“Why?” I asked. “Who’re we gonna be?”
“Anybody we want,” Cecil said firmly.
JJ shook her head. “I don’t think you actually mean anybody. There are only a limited number of character costumes manufactured each year, and—”
“I’m not talking about some costume in a box at Walmart! Shrek? Heck! Darth Vader? See ya later! I say we get personal. We gotta dig deep down inside and find our inner . . . other.”
“Our inner other?” JJ snorted. Despite her large vocabulary and extensive knowledge of books, JJ is generally suspicious about new ideas. Especially Cecil’s.
“Yeah! Our inner other is who we would be if we didn’t have to be us.” Cecil was on a roll now. “Think of it like a . . . a personal hero.”
“What if I don’t have one?” I asked. “A personal hero, I mean.”
“We’ve all got one.” Cecil whipped around to JJ. “You! Isn’t there anybody in those books you’re always reading, somebody witchy and wonderful you secretly wish you could be for one night?”
Cecil’s question caught JJ by surprise. Ever since she read a ten-part epic called The Crystal Cavern Chronicles , JJ has been hopelessly hooked on stories about witches, wizards and dragons.
“I don’t know . . . maybe,” she stuttered.
“Maybe?” Cecil taunted. “That’s not the JJ I know.”
“Well, okay, Mr. Motivation,” JJ fired back. “Who would you be?”
“Yeah. Who’s your hero, Cecil?” I asked.
“Me?” Cecil squinted until a thought hit him, and he smiled. “Music! Music’s my hero.”
JJ frowned. “But you can’t dress up as music.”
“Who says?” Cecil threw up his hands. “I can wrap myself in sheet music and come as a symphony!”
“What about you, Newt?” JJ asked. “Who’s your inner other?”
“Yeah, you’re always whippin’ up those crazy cool crimefighters,” Cecil said, pointing to my Secret Superhero Sketchbook. “Which one of them is you?”
I flipped through my drawing pad, but nothing caught my eye.
“I . . . I have to give it some thought” was all I could manage.
“Okay, how’s this?” Cecil’s eyes were sparkling. “We’ve got three days. We make our own costumes, and then, on Halloween night, we surprise each other.”
JJ still seemed nervous. “But even if I knew who I wanted to be . . . ,” she stammered, “let’s just say . . . where . . . I mean, how do we get the clothes?”
“Oh, right. Where do we?” I wondered.
“Where’s your imagination, people?” Cecil cried. “Are these not the top three minds in the fourth grade?”
We shrugged in agreement.
JJ started again, “But what if I can’t—”
Cecil held a finger up to her lips just as the first bell rang. “Hup! Zip it!” he ordered. “No more ‘can’t,’ ‘don’t,’ ‘won’t.’ We’re gonna think positive, heroic thoughts. And in three days, we’re gonna have our own Halloween parade. Whaddya say?”
JJ and I smiled at each other as we gathered up our stuff and headed to class.
“That’d be so cool,” I said. “Let’s do it for us.”
“For us,” JJ echoed.
“And,” shouted Cecil, “for the free candy!”
3
IN WHICH I SEARCH FOR SOMEBODY I’M NOT
All through class that morning, Cecil’s questions rang in my ears. Who is my inner other? Do I have a personal hero? Every time we switched to a new subject, I desperately looked for an answer.
In social studies, before our teacher Mrs. Young did a slide show about the gods and goddesses of ancient Rome and Greece, she called them “the heroes of old.” I sat up, thinking, Wow! Isn’t that what I’m looking for?
I imagined myself as Zeus, god of lightning. Or maybe Neptune, who ruled the seas. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hurl thunderbolts or control the waves?
But once Mrs. Young projected their pictures on the screen, I lost my nerve. In slide after slide, these guys were massive, muscley giants. Giants in white robes with flowing beards. Even if I could whip up a white robe and glue on a beard, where was I going to get the muscles?
Forget that.
During American History, I got excited by the stories of the p
ioneers who crossed the dangerous frontier and built our country with their bare hands. “If those people aren’t heroes,” I said to myself, “I don’t know who are.”
I raised my hand. “Yes, Newt?” Mrs. Young responded.
“Mrs. Young, what did the pioneers wear?”
Behind me, Bobby Asher—who insists on being called “Basher”—snorted, “Clothes, you jerk!” A dozen other kids laughed.
“Newt has a good question,” Mrs. Young said, shooting a look at Basher. “In the early days of America, the pioneers didn’t always have fabric, so they used whatever was available. Sometimes it was animal skins or furs, but if they were desperate, they might make clothes from birds’ feathers or even tree bark.”
Feathers and tree bark?
I started to itch. And scratch. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out to be a pioneer. I’d have to keep looking.
That day, school let out early so we could line the street—like everyone else in town—and watch the Big Game Pep Parade go by.
Since Fillmore won last year’s game, their band marched past first, trumpeting and drumming up a storm. Behind them came their football players, waving from the backseats of convertibles.
JJ, Cecil and I stood together at the back of the crowd. Cecil and I couldn’t see much over all the people in front of us, but JJ assured me that my big brother was waving and smiling from the front car.
Next, the Fillmore Spirit Squad rolled past on the back of a long flatbed truck, clapping and screaming over a PA system.
“WHO’S GONNA MASSACRE MERRIMAC?” Clap, clap. “WE ARE!” Clap, clap. “WE ARE!” Clap, clap. Because Cecil can never resist a rhythm, he clapped along with the cheerleaders.
Suddenly JJ groaned. “Ugh! Do you believe that?” She wagged a finger at a truck going by.
I craned my neck to see what was upsetting her. A banner stretched across the Spirit Squad truck said, BEHOLD THE FEROCIOUS FIGHTING FERRET’S OF FILLMORE!
“Why did they have to put an apostrophe in Ferrets?” JJ exploded. “It’s not possessive. It’s plural. F-E-R-R-E-T-no apostrophe-S.” She shook her head in dismay. “I wish they would ask me before they paint these mistakes four feet high.”
“Hey,” I said, “are you guys coming to the game tonight?”
“How can we?” Cecil threw his hands in the air.
“My uncle tried getting tickets last week, and they told him the Big Game has been sold out since August!”
“And did you know,” JJ said, “that people are auctioning tickets online for, like, four hundred dollars apiece?”
“Wow,” I said.
“Besides,” JJ continued, “I have tons to do if I’m ever going to be ready for Halloween.”
Cecil’s eyes widened. “So you know who you’re gonna be?”
“Maybe,” JJ smiled mysteriously. “Don’t you?”
“Are you kidding?” Cecil scoffed, tapping the side of his head. “I got my whole thing planned from head to foot. And Newt, how’re you doing?”
“Yeah,” JJ asked excitedly. “Did you make a decision?”
I looked at their expectant faces and shrugged. “Oh, y’know. I’m weighing a couple possibilities.”
JJ nudged Cecil with her elbow. “Bet you he’s already got the whole thing drawn up in his Secret Sketchbook.”
“Course he has! And y’know why?” Cecil winked, still clapping along with the cheerleaders. “Because he’s Newt!” Clap, clap. “Newt!” Clap, clap. “Newt!” Clap, clap. “The Newt-ron bomb!”
I smiled weakly as a bead of nervous sweat rolled from my right armpit to my waist.
I raced home from school and pulled out a stack of my old Secret Superhero Sketchbooks from my closet. I hoped I might find inspiration from one of the characters I had created over the years. But with every page flip, that hope faded.
For one thing, most of my heroes stretch and transform their bodies into fantastic shapes. Tommy Origami, for instance, can fold his body into a packet the size of a postage stamp.
Who was I kidding? I can barely touch my toes.
And even if I did dress up as one of my sketches, I’d have to explain who I was to everyone I met. After all, nobody but Cecil and JJ have ever even heard of Dwight, The Mighty Termite, who can chew his way through a wood wall in ten seconds. Or what about Gas Man, who can empty a shopping mall full of people just by . . . well, never mind.
I went online and Googled “hero.” The first thing that came up was the headline “Hero Saves Stranger from Sharks.”
“Whoa!” I clicked on the link.
The story was about a lady who was taking a sight-seeing tour in San Francisco Bay when she fell overboard into a school of sharks. Before they could eat her, though, another tourist—a guy who didn’t even know her!—jumped in the freezing water, punched one shark in the snout, poked another one in the eye and pulled the lady to safety.
The man who saved her was interviewed, and when he was asked if he considered himself a hero, he said, “Heck. I’m just the guy next door.”
Maybe that’s the kind of hero I have inside, I thought. Not a shape-shifter or a pioneer, but an everyday, guy-next-door kind of hero.
I was getting all excited about this idea until I scrolled down to a picture of the shark-puncher. He turned out to be a skinny guy in blue jeans. His wet hair was plastered to his forehead and his dripping T-shirt read, I ♥ KETCHUP.
Uh-oh, I thought. If I wear that, how will people know I’m a hero?
With a groan, I laid my head down on my arms. I must have fallen asleep for a moment, because the next thing I knew, I was having a terrible dream in which I was trick-or-treating on my block. When a neighbor answered her door and asked, “Who are you supposed to be, little boy?” I looked down to see my costume only to find that . . . I was totally naked!
I woke up panting like a racehorse.
Downstairs I heard Mom and Dad loading up their SUVs with supplies for the pregame cookout.
“Newt!” Mom yelled up. “Where did I put the plastic forks?”
“You left them in the guest bathroom,” I called down. “I’ll get them.”
With a heavy heart, I turned off my computer and put my Secret Superhero Sketchbooks back in the closet. My search for my inner other was going to have to wait.
It was time for the Big Game.
4
IN WHICH FOOTBALL IS PLAYED AND MISTAKES ARE MADE
That night, so many people showed up for my parents’ tailgate barbecue in the stadium parking lot that in just a half hour we ran out of hot dog buns. And coleslaw. And napkins.
“It’s Chris Newman’s last football game!” shouted our neighbor Mr. Hennessey between bites of his cheeseburger. “We wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”
As Dad worked the grill, he kept checking his pager and answering his ever-ringing cell phone. “Come on down!” he told everyone who called. “The more the merrier.”
While arranging trays of chips and dips, my mother muttered, “I wish I could remember where I put the egg rolls.”
“Mom,” I said, “they already ate the egg rolls.”
“Well, no wonder I can’t find them!” She sighed. “I was afraid I was losing my mind.”
I carried the chip trays through the growing crowd. Most folks helped themselves without interrupting their conversations. Once in a while, though, someone would look down and notice me. Then they’d all ask the same question.
“Hey, Newt! You must be so excited for your brother, huh?”
“Yeah. Real excited. You want a chip?”
And I was excited. I swear. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be home, making a costume for Sunday night.
At seven o’clock, the Fillmore High School marching band paraded through the parking lot and into the jam-packed stadium. We shut down the barbecue, loaded all the picnic stuff into my parents’ SUVs and took our seats.
As usual, my mom and dad had reserved a section halfway up the bleachers on the fifty-yard l
ine where they could be surrounded by tons of neighbors and friends. I had a ticket for a seat somewhere in the middle of that mob, but as more and more people crammed in around Mom and Dad—hugging and chatting and eating and drinking—I found myself being squeezed out of my place, squished down the row, and squashed onto an end seat next to a very large lady, who jumped to her feet and shrieked like a fire engine during the opening kickoff. When she sat back down without looking where she was going, she just about flattened me. I scooted sideways in the nick of time . . .
. . . and landed—splat!—in the aisle.
I didn’t really feel like fighting my way back to my seat. Halloween was still on my mind, so I wandered down the aisle and leaned against a railing. I watched the game with glazed eyes, worried that I was totally going to disappoint my only two friends in the world.
But then things began to happen on the field that made me forget my Halloween blues.
For three years in a row, the #1 defensive end in the county has been this guy from Merrimac High named Reggie Ratner. Reggie weighs about two hundred and eighty pounds and has a neck as thick as a telephone pole. My brother used to joke, “Reggie Ratner looks like a concrete truck with hair.” In the two previous years’ games, Reggie had chased my brother all over the field, but he’d never been able to bring Chris down, not once! So the day before this year’s Big Game, the headline in the Appleton Sentinel asked, “Will Ratner Finally Get Revenge?” In the article, Reggie was quoted as saying, “You watch. I’m gonna snap Chris Newman like a day-old breadstick.”
From the opening drive, it looked like Reggie was determined to keep his promise. The Fillmore Ferrets tried their best to control him, but time after time Reggie broke through two, three, even four Ferrets and charged after my brother. In every case, though, Chris was able to hand off the ball or pass it at the last possible second. Reggie actually got so frustrated at one point that he yanked off his helmet and smashed it to the ground.
“Crybaby! Crybaby!” yelled the Fillmore fans.
“Crush him, Reggie!” shrieked the Merrimac fans.
It went on like that, with both teams bashing each other senseless for the first two quarters. Fortunately, as the halftime horn sounded, the Fillmore Ferrets were leading, 21-14.
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