by Zoe Quinn
“I have no doubt,” said Grandpa. “Now, listen to me carefully, Zoe. About Electra Allbright …”
“I'm so excited, Grandpa! If I learn enough during this work-study program, maybe someday I'll be a comic-book author, too.”
“Yes, but I think you should know that—”
“Zack,” came Gran's voice through the kitchen door. “Did you remember to pack the suntan lotion?”
“Yes,” he called back.
“And the passports?”
“Got 'em.” Grandpa turned his attention back to me.
Gran came out, closed the kitchen door behind her, and double-checked the lock. “Well, then, that's everything. Zack, we'd better get going—we have a plane to catch. Zip or no Zip—we'll never make it to the airport in time if we hit rush-hour traffic.”
Grandpa looked at me as if he was trying to come to a decision. Then, with a sigh, he gave me a hug and got into the car.
“Be careful out there, kiddo,” he said.
Gran kissed me on the cheek and climbed in behind the wheel.
I watched Gran back out of the driveway and waved as she drove away. “Have a good time!”
“You too,” called Grandpa. Gran tooted the horn and they disappeared down the street.
Oh, I will, I thought, heading for home. I definitely will.
I was surprised at how quickly the weekend went by. I'd expected time to drag since I couldn't wait to start my internship with Electra Allbright. But I was so busy that the days seemed to fly. I spent Saturday helping Emily pick out her “work wardrobe” for the next two weeks. Talk about a major mission— I bet there are superheroes out there who've never faced such an incredible challenge! I learned everything I will ever need to know about matching a belt to a purse.
For my hard work and dedication, Emily lent me her favorite sweater to wear on my first day as a comic-book author's apprentice. It was pale yellow with blue speckles, the colors of storm clouds and lightning.
When I left Emily's, I decided to cut through the small patch of woods that separates our neighborhoods to work on some superskills. I spent a good half hour climbing tall trees at super-speed, pretending they were skyscrapers. Then I pried a few enormous rocks out of the ground and practiced throwing them. Unfortunately beneath the third rock was a slithery little snake. It was hard to tell which of us was more startled—me or the snake! I shrieked and tossed the rock over my shoulder, then turned and ran out of the woods at superspeed. I may be a superhero, but I still get pretty creeped out by snakes. They're just … creepy!
On Sunday, my parents and I rented some DVDs and hung out together, which was great. Before bed I worked on my Federation essay, using the scrapbook, careful to return it to my superbackpack when I was through. Then I dug out several old issues of Lightning Girl comics and quizzed myself on the details of her powers and her list of enemies.
In school on Monday, no one could really concentrate, so we didn't get much done in class that morning. Mr. Diaz just smiled as if he'd been expecting that.
Finally, it was twelve o'clock—time to head out to work!
I met up with Emily and Howie on the front steps of school.
“Hey, look,” said Emily, pointing to a police car pulling up to the curb. “Zoe, it's your dad.”
Sure enough, there was my father in the driver's seat of the Sweetbriar PD cruiser. I giggled, because I knew that detectives like my dad usually travel in unmarked cars and that he'd arrived in the one with the blue lights and the giant silver badge painted on the side for Howie's benefit. I glanced at Howie, who looked about as thrilled as I had ever seen him.
“There's your ride,” I said.
Howie just nodded hard, smiling like crazy, and bounded down the steps toward the cruiser.
I waved to my dad, who was rolling down his window.
“Need a ride?” he asked.
“No thanks,” I said. “It's nice out. I'll walk.”
When Howie and my dad were gone, I turned to Emily and gave her a hug. “You go win that Cool-litzer Prize!” I said.
“And you go create an awesome comic-book adventure!”
“Count on it!”
I hoisted my backpack higher on my shoulder and headed down the steps.
I'd only seen Electra Allbright's mansion on the hill from a distance, but up close it was bigger than I ever could have imagined. On the outside, it looked like a cross between a fairy-tale castle and a giant birthday cake, with lots of unexpected porches and balconies and turrets with pointed roofs that were shingled with blue slate. It was exactly the sort of place a person as mysterious and creative as Electra Allbright should live.
I was reaching for the lightning-bolt-shaped knocker when the door swung open and there stood Electra.
“Zoe! Right on time.”
“Hello, Ms. Allbright.”
“Come in, come in!” She swung her arm in a welcoming gesture and I stepped into the high-ceilinged foyer.
“Here, let me take that backpack.…”
“Uh … well … it's really …”
Electra easily lifted the pack from my shoulder.
“… heavy.”
Electra paused, then quickly put my backpack on the gleaming marble floor. “Yes. It is quite heavy, isn't it?” She gave me an extra-bright smile. “So, are you ready to get to work?”
I picked up my backpack (easily) and returned the smile. “Yes, ma'am.”
“Good. Studio's upstairs.”
I followed her through the front hall and up the broad, winding staircase, taking in the half-emptied moving boxes, ladders, paint cans, and drop cloths strewn throughout the living room.
“Pardon the clutter,” Electra said cheerfully. “I'm still moving in.”
When we reached the first landing, I could see that the upstairs hallway was being redecorated. The walls had been stripped and had a gritty, chalky look to them. Stacked in the corner were several rolls of wallpaper.
“Cool!” I cried, noticing the pattern.
“Like it?” Electra picked up one of the rolls of paper and unrolled a section.
“I love it!” I ran my fingers over the crisp paper, which was printed with hundreds of little lightning bolts! Glittery lightning bolts! The sunlight coming through a tall window above the stairs made each bolt twinkle. I would love to have my bedroom walls covered in a pattern like that one! When my mom redecorated the dining room last year, she lugged home about a trillion wallpaper books, and none of them had anything as cool as that.
“Where did you find it?”
“I had to custom order it,” Electra answered. “It was between the glittery bolts and glow-in-the-dark ones.”
“I'm glad you went with the glitter,” I said.
“Yes, the glow-in-the-dark just seemed a little too trendy.”
I laughed. I was positive that Electra Allbright was the only grown-up on the planet who would ever pick out wallpaper like that.
At the end of the hallway was another, less elaborate stairway, which brought us to her attic studio. For a minute, I just stood there, taking it all in.
“WHOA.”
“Pretty terrific, huh?”
I nodded. The room was enormous—it was one huge, open space, the width and depth of the whole house, with extra-high ceilings and several windows. Some of the windows were oval, others were diamond paned, and still others were made of stained glass. The studio is sparsely furnished, with one wide, flat table and two smaller ones like desks with tops that can be adjusted to tilt upward. There were two sturdy office chairs and a big, comfy-looking one upholstered in a lightning-bolt-patterned fabric— another custom design, I was sure. Shelves hold sketch pads and other artist's tools.
On the bigger table was a large piece of heavy paper, like a poster. When Electra saw me looking at it, she explained, “That's a storyboard.”
The storyboard took up most of the tabletop; it was a rough sketch of an entire book, with all the ideas and actions either drawn or writte
n into consecutive blocks. Electra explained that when the comic book was produced, this one large board would become several comic-book pages. This technique allowed her to see the whole story play out at a glance on one enormous page.
“So,” I said, unable to contain my enthusiasm any longer, “where do I start?” I had visions of Electra teaching me how to draw Lightning Girl—I'd always wondered how she achieved that perfect almond shape that made Lightning Girl's eyes so distinctive. Maybe she'd let me come up with a new and unique supervillain.… Now, that would be a challenge!
Electra tapped her chin with her finger. “I think I'd like you to arrange my colored pencils.”
“Oh.” That didn't sound like much of a challenge. “Um … okay.”
I put my backpack down and Electra pointed me toward a cupboard. Inside was a large plastic box filled with colored pencils in varying lengths and degrees of sharpness. The pencils were in every color I could imagine—and a few I couldn't. Beside the box were a bunch of smaller, empty containers.
“Bring the box and those empty ones over to my worktable,” Electra suggested. “We can chat while we work.” She pulled the extra desk chair up beside hers and we took our seats.
“We're supposed to start off by asking questions,” I said, suddenly feeling shy. “Do you mind?”
Electra laughed. “Of course not. That's how we learn. By asking questions.”
“Okay.” I put the pencil boxes on the table and sat down. “Did you always want to become a comic-book author?”
“Not exactly,” Electra said. “I had other … um, career aspirations. But even while I was pursuing those, I was always a doodler.”
“A doodler?” I giggled, thinking of my school notebooks, which, lately, I'd been covering with little hearts and a certain name. “I'm a doodler.”
“I noticed!” Electra grinned. “So, who's Josh?”
My eyes grew round with surprise. “How did you know about … I mean …”
Electra motioned to my backpack. My social studies notebook was sticking out, and it was plain to see that the whole cover was decorated in various versions of Josh's name—bubble letters, block letters, script.…
“Oh.” I felt my face getting warm. “Yeah. Josh. Well, he's … he's …”
“A special friend? A secret?”
I shrugged, smiling in spite of my embarrassment. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“Well, don't worry. I'm good at keeping secrets.”
Suddenly, I was eager to get back to the topic of comic books. “How do you get your ideas?” I asked, hoping it sounded like a very professional inquiry. “Do you know what's going to happen from the start, or does it come to you as you work?”
“Oh, there's always a story in my head. All the different pieces of an adventure are swimming around in there, like memories.”
“Memories?” I thought back to Lightning Girl's last adventure and wondered how Electra—or anyone, for that matter, besides Grandpa Zack and, well, me—could have a memory of tunneling to the core of the earth to douse a volcano. I supposed Electra was just making a comparison.
“Anyway,” she continued, “it's really just a matter of taking the different elements and putting them in a proper, exciting, storylike order.”
“Sounds difficult,” I said.
Electra nodded. “Chronology is always the toughest part.”
It was quiet for a moment. Then Electra picked up a black marker and uncapped it. “Now, about those pencils … I'd like you put all the red tones in one container, all the blues in another, then the greens, and so on. Got it?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping that I'd eventually get a chance to use those pencils to draw an actual Lightning Girl scene. But if I had to start with sorting them, I was going to sort them the best I could. I wondered if I had any supersorting powers I could call on.
I reached into the large box and pulled out a sky blue pencil, then dropped it into one of the empty boxes. The next one was bright red, like fresh strawberries; I put it in a different box.
The third pencil I grabbed was a green one. Well, actually, it was a sort of a greenish blue. Or maybe it was more of a bluish green. It reminded me of a mermaid's tail. Green-blue, blue-green. Okay, so did it go in the green box or the blue box? So much for supersorting.
I stared at the pencil for a long moment.
“More complicated than you thought it'd be, hmmm?” Electra said, not looking up from the background she was sketching. I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“That's one of my favorite things about color,” she said, her marker moving swiftly across the page. “So many possibilities, so many subtle mysteries. Colors are complex, they can be more than one thing—kind of like people.”
I'd never thought of it like that before. “I like that!” I said, rolling the bluish greenish pencil between my palms. “But I'm still not sure which box to put this in.”
Electra glanced up from her drawing and checked the pencil.
“Let's call that one green-blue,” she said. “I see a touch more of the cobalt tone in it, so put it in the blue box. Somewhere in that box you'll find one that's similar, but with more of an emerald tint.”
“When I find that one, I'll put it in the green box, right?”
Electra smiled. “Color … such a wonderful way to learn the concept of compromise!”
After that, I picked through the pencil collection and Electra explained to me some of the technical aspects involved in drawing and producing a comic book.
“I don't go in much for all that computer-graphic stuff,” she said, using the side of her thumb to smudge and blend the edge of a sketch. “I like good old-fashioned art.”
Before I knew it, the clock on her desk (with the lightning-bolt-shaped hands!) was striking three.
“Zoe, would you mind seeing yourself out?” asked Electra, fishing through the red box for a raspberry-colored pencil. “I'm in the middle of a great thought and I don't want to lose it.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Looking forward to it.”
I grabbed my backpack, made my way downstairs, and closed the front door behind me. When my feet hit the front walk, it was all I could do to keep from breaking into superspeed, I was so excited.
Electra Allbright was looking forward to seeing me!
Man! How cool was that?
I'll tell you how cool that was: supercool!
AT home, I had a marathon IM session with Emily. She all about her day at the magazine. I probably should have gotten a jump start on my chores for the week, but it seemed that the whole sixth grade was online and wanted to share their first-day news.
Howie was the only one who wasn't online—knowing him, he'd stopped at the video store on the way home and rented every police movie ever made, just to bone up on the lingo.
I stayed on the computer until Mom called me down for dinner. I could smell something spicy and I knew what we were having.
“Tacos. Awesome!” I slid into my chair and happily began to pile shredded cheese and tomatoes into my corn tortilla.
“How was your first day on the job?” asked Mom, handing a bowl of chopped olives to my dad.
“Well …” I scanned the table for the taco sauce. “It was good. Electra was drawing a really cool background page, and she told me all about how comic books are made while I sorted pencils.” I bit into my taco, remembering the blue-green/green-blue issue. “It was way more complicated than you'd think.”
“Sounds like you learned your first lesson about grown-up work,” said Dad. “Even the little things can be challenging.”
“And important,” Mom added. “In any profession there are a million small jobs that can make or break the end result.”
“Even if you're just sitting there at a desk for hours, sorting pencils,” I said with a nod. I sounded very wise and experienced.
Dad took the bottle of taco sauce and dr
izzled some over his dinner. “Nobody starts at the top, kid.”
Except superheroes, I thought, hiding a smile behind my taco. And it's true. Even the smallest superhero duty is a big deal. I supposed I should be glad that my nonsuper job for the next two weeks was going to be a low-stress one.
“And sooner or later,” Mom said with a sigh, “we all feel like we're just chained to our desk.”
“Speaking of being chained to a desk,” said Dad, “would you like to hear about Howie's first day on the job?”
I gulped down the bite of taco I'd just taken. “Howie got chained to a desk?”
“Well, handcuffed, to be precise,” Dad said, chuckling.
“TELL ME!”
“Well, it was lunchtime when Howie and I got to the station house, so there weren't too many detectives around. Anyway, one of the uniform cops, Ted Morrison, came down to our department to consult on a case. Of course, he had his sidearm and his cuffs with him, and Howie was pretty fascinated. He was staring at Morrison as though he were some kind of superhero.”
I let out a loud choke of laughter.
“Morrison offered to show Howie the cuffs. One minute Howie was just holding them, and the next he'd somehow managed to cuff himself to the bottom drawer of the chief's desk.”
“My goodness,” said Mom, filling a second taco for me and handing it across the table. “Poor Howie!”
“Oh, it gets better,” said Dad, smiling. “At this point, Ted and I still hadn't noticed what Howie had done. And Howie was too embarrassed to ask for the key, so he quietly opened the chief's top drawer, took out a paper clip, and tried to pick the lock on the handcuffs.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The paper clip broke in the lock and jammed it.”
“Right! How did you know?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dad, I've known the kid for ten years. Trust me, that is such a Howie thing to do!” It wasn't that I didn't feel any sympathy for Howie—I did. But after being friends with a boy like Howie for so long, the goofy things that happen to him don't surprise you so much anymore.
“Poor Howie,” said Mom again.
“The worst part,” Dad continued, “was that the chief keeps his lunch in the bottom drawer, but with Howie hooked to the handle, there was no way for the chief to get to his pastrami on rye. It took three detectives and a janitor with a hacksaw to finally solve the problem.” Dad was trying to keep from laughing as he finished the story.