“Hi,” I said and gave a little wave.
“What d’you think you’re . . . ?” he sputtered. “How did you even . . . Who are you?”
“I’m Newt Newman?” I said. “Chris Newman’s younger brother?”
“You’re joking!” Reggie snorted. “I didn’t even know Chris had a younger brother.”
“That’s okay,” I sighed. “Nobody does.”
“Hmm. Weird,” Reggie said. “How is Chris?”
“He’s still . . . out.”
“Man,” Reggie shook his head sadly, “that sucks.”
And y’know what? In that moment, I liked him. Because of his long rivalry with Chris, I guess I had always imagined that Reggie Ratner was some knuckle-dragging, heartless jerk. Instead, he seemed sincerely bummed out about my brother.
“But what’re you doing here?” he asked. “And what’re you wearing?”
“Can we talk about the clothes later?” I said, edging a little closer. “Right now, I . . . I have to talk to you about something important.”
“Are you nuts?” Reggie cried. “What could be so important that you’d—”
“I know you didn’t knock out my brother!”
Reggie stared at me.
“I was there, outside the end zone fence,” I explained. “I saw everything. Chris was hit by Darryl Peeps’s helmet. You weren’t anywhere close.”
“Thank you!” Reggie shouted. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people all week! Especially your brother’s teammates. But they came after me anyway.” He looked away and sighed. “It’s been bad.”
“I know,” I said. “I go to the same school as your cousin Ricky . . .”
“Oh, yeah?” Reggie brightened. “You’re friends with Ricky?”
“We’ve, uh . . . met,” I said. “He told me what you’ve been going through, and I’m really sorry about all that.”
Reggie squinted in confusion. “Wait . . . You climbed up here to apologize?”
“Not exactly,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “I came because I’m the only person who knows the truth, so I’m the only person who can change your mind.”
“Change my mind? About what?”
It was right then that I noticed something weird. Sticking out of the pockets of Reggie’s hoodie were a couple of cans of spray paint with orange and green caps. Orange and green? Merrimac’s school colors?
I blurted, “You’re not up here to jump, are you?”
Reggie blinked. “What?”
“You came up to spray ‘Go Merrimac!’ or something like that on the water tank, didn’t you?”
“Why else would I be here?”
“People on the ground are saying that you got so depressed from being hassled all week that you climbed up here to . . .” I joined my hands and made a diving motion. “And I thought I could talk you out of it.”
“They think I’m up here to kill myself?”
I nodded.
“Oh, please!” Reggie scoffed.
Suddenly a voice crackled through a bullhorn way down below us.
“REGGIE RATNER? THIS IS SERGEANT SCHMALZ OF THE APPLETON POLICE DEPARTMENT. LISTEN, SON, WE KNOW YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH A LOT LATELY, BUT I WOULD JUST ASK YOU TO REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE YOUNG, AND YOU’VE GOT YOUR WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF YOU.”
Reggie whirled toward me, his eyes bugging. “They think I’m up here to kill myself!”
“In a nutshell.”
“Oh, no! What a mess!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “What a big, stinking pile of mess.” He looked me in the face. “Newton? Can I tell you what really happened?”
I nodded.
“Ever since the Big Game,” he began, “people have been coming down on me from all sides. All those jerks from Fillmore. People on the street. Even my classmates! The world hates me, my reputation is shot, my stomach’s in knots 24/7. So finally I made a decision. I had to do something I’d be remembered for besides knocking out Chris Newman . . . which I didn’t even do!”
“I know, I know.”
“So, I got up here early this morning, with my paint and my rope.” He held up a coil of rope I hadn’t seen before. “And I was all set to lower myself over the edge, and then this happened!” He pulled back a corner of his jacket to reveal that his left foot was stuck through a hole in the shingles.
“Wow,” I said, studying the opening. “You stomped a hole in the roof.”
“I was just walking,” he insisted, “but this roof . . . this whole tower . . . it’s rotted clear through. I wish somebody had told me.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s condemned?” I suggested.
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “It probably doesn’t help that I weigh two-eighty. Plus I had seven bagels for breakfast.”
I wriggled closer and peered through the hole his foot had made.
“Looks like your shoe’s stuck between two beams.”
“It’s more than stuck . . . it’s, like, wedged,” he sighed. “And when I brace myself and try pulling it out, I only end up breaking off more of these shingles. When the cops first came, I thought they’d send a guy up. Or maybe the fire department would raise a ladder. But, nah, they know this place is falling apart. I mean, who’s gonna be stupid enough to climb up here?”
I almost raised my hand, but that’s when Sergeant Schmalz belched through his bullhorn, “IT’S NOT WORTH IT, SON!” and we both flinched.
“I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THE CITIZENS OF APPLETON ARE WILLING TO FORGIVE WHAT YOU DID TO CHRIS NEWMAN . . .” But then his voice was drowned out by a horrendous roar as the police helicopter was now joined by three more choppers from local TV stations. They crisscrossed the sky, making my cape flap wildly around my head.
Reggie shouted above the roar, “Can you help me?”
“I-I don’t see how I could,” I stuttered.
“But you’re my only hope!” he pleaded.
I thought long and hard before I said, “I maybe have one idea.”
“What? What? I’ll try anything!”
“Untie your shoe and pull your foot out of it.”
“Don’t you think I tried that already?” Reggie hollered. “Yeesh!”
I squinted into the hole. “But your shoe is still tied.”
“Well, that’s only because I . . . I triple-knotted the shoelace,” he stammered, embarrassed. “And with these fingers”—he held up hands the size of skillets—“I can’t untie it.”
“It also doesn’t help that you bite your nails,” I pointed out.
“You sound like my mother,” he scowled.
“Let me see what I can do.”
I edged closer and reached through the hole in the roof. At first, my fingernails chipped on the tightly knotted cord. After just a few minutes, my fingertips were rubbed raw and my hands started shaking from exhaustion. But little by little the loops started to loosen.
“I made it too tight, didn’t I?” Reggie wailed in despair.
“Yeah, you did,” I said, still facedown. “But try pulling your foot out now.”
“Are you serious?” Reggie asked, startled.
“Pull!” I yelled.
With a single grunt, Reggie slid his foot from the shoe, which tumbled down into the blackness of the empty water tank we were sitting over.
“You did it!” Reggie yelled, wiggling his toes and rubbing his foot. “You’re a genius.” He started to stand.
“Don’t move!” I ordered.
“I wanna get outta here.”
“If you walk back across the roof, you could make more holes, and the roof could cave in. Then we’d both end up where your shoe is right now.”
He sat back down, fuming. “So, okay, how do you suggest I get from here to the ladder?”
“You need to crawl.”
“Crawl?” Reggie exploded. “That’s really why you’re here, isn’t it? I haven’t been humiliated enough, and now you won’t be happy until you see me—”
“Reggie!” I shouted. “You have
to lie on your belly and . . . slither. Like Sticky Ricky.”
“Who’s Sticky Ricky?”
“Just do it!” I barked.
“All right, all right,” Reggie grumbled. “I’ll slither.”
He followed my example and lay facedown. Like soldiers squirming under barbed wire, we wriggled across the roof to the ladder without punching a single hole.
The news helicopters seemed to get very excited by our journey. They droned closer, like humongous, curious bumblebees. Through their Plexiglas bubbles, I could see reporters following all of our moves with video cameras. We’re on TV, I thought. We’re being seen all over Appleton.
Once I got into position at the top of the ladder, I yelled above the copter noise, “Reggie? You wait here.”
He grabbed my arm. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
I leaned close to his ear. “I don’t think this ladder can take our combined weight,” I tried to explain calmly. “So you have to hold off till I’m at the bottom before you start down. Can you do that?”
He gulped and nodded nervously.
“And the middle of the rung is the weakest part,” I said, “so be sure to step on the far edges. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he jabbered, anxious for me to get going so that he could follow.
I swung a leg over the roof’s edge and found the first step. With great care, I set my feet and eased my weight onto each descending rung. I found that it helped to count, “One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand” between each move.
I’ve got rhythm! I smiled. Cecil would be so proud of me.
When I got to “nine, one-thousand,” though, I stopped counting. A tremor in the ladder grew to a shudder, and the rusty braces screwed to the water tower’s supports began to groan. What’s happening?
I looked up quickly and was met with the sight of Reggie Ratner’s butt as he swung himself off the roof and began his descent.
“No, Reggie!” I screamed. I’m sure he was freaking out all alone up there, but what part of “Wait!” hadn’t he understood?
To make matters worse, one of Reggie’s feet snapped a rung, sending pieces of wood tumbling around me. I winced and tried to dodge the debris, but my gyrations only added to the herky-jerky motion of the ladder. To steady myself, I put both feet onto the same rung, which immediately shattered, leaving me dangling in space!
Frantically, I bicycled my legs, trying to find a surface, any surface. And I might have been able to regain my balance if it weren’t for that last, unexpected chunk of Reggie’s rung that bonked me in the middle of the forehead. I was so startled that my hands popped open.
“Huh?” I grunted.
And I fell.
It’s amazing how fast a brain can operate in times of intense stress. Like I told you, I’ve been falling for what seems like hours—well, certainly enough time to bring you up to speed on my story—and I still haven’t hit the ground.
Isn’t this where you came in?
21
IN WHICH I FINISH FALLING
Like the folding of a pirate’s spyglass, time collapsed in on me, and I was suddenly dropping so fast that I left the scream I was screaming somewhere far above my body. I was pure motion, tumbling, tumbling, eyes wide open in terror as everything rushed together.
There’s the sky!
Then the ground!
Sky!
Ground!
Skygroundskygroundskygroundsky . . .
A blue pillow rushed up to greet me and—
WHOOMPH!
I was swallowed by a massive, inflated rubber mattress.
I was on the ground, and I was alive!
“Yahoo!” I was about to holler, except that the word caught in my throat when I looked up to find that Reggie Ratner—two hundred and eighty pounds of muscle and seven bagels, too—was plunging down on top of me!
In a blink, he blotted out the sun. In the next ticktock, he landed on me, driving me into the blue mattress with a powerful WHUMP!
All the breath—OOF!—was pushed from my body.
A lightning bolt of red-hot pain—ZING!—ripped up my right leg.
And, just as the darkness behind my eyelids erupted with about a thousand shooting stars, I passed out.
22
IN WHICH I FINALLY GET TO THE HOSPITAL
I opened one eye. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling were blindingly bright. My right leg and chest were throbbing with pain. I squeezed a fist and found that someone’s hand was holding mine.
“Newt?” It was my mom’s voice. She was standing over me, stroking my head and calling over her shoulder. “Honey, he’s awake!”
Dad joined her and laid a hand on my chest. Their faces were twisted with concern. “I’m fine,” I tried to assure them, but my voice cracked with the effort. “No, really,” I tried again.
They both laughed a little. “Is Reggie okay?” I croaked.
“Not a scratch,” Dad said. “You broke his fall.”
“And he broke your ankle and two ribs,” Mom added.
“Oh.” So that’s where the pain was coming from. “Where am I now?”
“In a recovery room,” Mom said, indicating a white curtain that bordered my bed. “The doctors taped your ribs and put a cast on your foot. See?”
I looked down to find that my toes were sticking out of a mountain of white plaster.
“And the nurse just gave you a shot for the pain,” Mom continued, “so you might feel a little drowsy, but—”
“Wait a minute!” I cried out. “I’m at the hospital?” I tried to rise up on one elbow, but a huge jolt of pain smacked me back onto the mattress.
“Try to lie still, sweetie,” Mom cautioned.
“But if I’m at the hospital, can I visit Chris?” I asked excitedly.
“You boys are going to be sharing a room,” Dad said.
“Really?”
“At this point, the doctors say it’s okay,” Mom said.
My heart started double-thumping. After a whole week, I’d finally get to see my—
Hold on.
What was that?
Behind my parents’ heads, in a corner of the room, a television hung suspended from the ceiling. Although I was groggy, I could swear that on the screen I was seeing . . .
“Cecil?” I squinted. “Is that Cecil on TV?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dad laughed, turning to look. “He and JJ are doing interviews on every channel in town.”
“What for?”
“Somebody has to explain how Captain Nobody got mixed up in the most daring rescue in Appleton history!” Mom declared proudly.
“Huh?”
“We’d better start at the beginning,” Dad said.
“Apparently,” Mom began, “only one TV station was covering the Reggie Ratner story at first.”
“But when you climbed onto the roof,” Dad said,
“the media went wild! Every station in the county sent news crews and helicopters . . .”
“Oh, I saw the helicopters,” I groaned.
“. . . and they all interrupted their regular programming to switch over to the water tower. And suddenly, there you were, on the TV in Chris’s hospital room. Your mother and I couldn’t believe our eyes!”
“Can you imagine how scared I was?” Mom asked.
“I have a pretty good idea,” I muttered.
“And while you were up there,” Dad continued, “lots more people rushed to the tower. Hundreds!”
“By the time we jumped in the car and tried to drive over,” Mom explained, “we couldn’t get within a half mile of the place. The streets were gridlocked, so we pulled over and tried to go the rest of the way on foot. But just as we got close to the tower . . .”—her voice faltered—“. . . just as we arrived . . .”
Dad put an arm around her shoulder.
“We got there in time to see you fall,” he explained.
Mom raised a trembling hand to wipe her eyes.
“I’m
sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be silly!” Dad laughed. “You’re okay, and that’s all that matters.”
“Fortunately, I was able to join you in the ambulance,” Mom said, “and your father drove the car.”
“And by the time I got back here,” Dad said, “you were all over the news.”
“Really?”
“Really! You in your Captain Nobody suit . . . that’s all anybody is talking about.”
“Remember that nice Mr. Clay, the locksmith I always used?” Mom asked. “Well, he phoned a radio program and said that he recognized your costume. He remembered your name was Captain Nobody and that you had helped him find his house when he recently got lost. Is this true?”
I shrugged. “He just ran out of his medicine.”
“Next thing you know,” Dad said, “that lovely Irish couple Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan called a TV crew to their jewelry store because they had been watching the news and wanted to tell the world how Captain Nobody had prevented a robbery at their shop.” He smacked his forehead. “You stopped a robbery and you never said a word about it?”
Before I could explain, Mom jumped in. “Did you know the thief had a gun?” she gasped. “You could have been hurt!”
“It was right about then,” Dad went on, “when all the reporters started wondering, ‘Who is this mysterious Captain Nobody?’”
“And that’s the first time we saw JJ and Cecil on the air,” giggled Mom. “They were so funny! Cecil grabbed the poor reporter’s microphone to explain that Captain Nobody was actually Chris Newman’s younger brother . . .”
“. . . and the reporter had the gall to say, ‘I didn’t know Chris Newman had a younger brother!’” Dad fumed. “Do you believe that?”
Then Mom blew up. “And what were you doing on the freeway yesterday?”
“Why?” I tried to sound innocent. “What are they saying?”
“Dozens of people are now telling the police how they saw Captain Nobody stop traffic on the Westside Highway!” Mom wailed. “What have I told you about playing in the street?”
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