Billy Hooten

by Tom Sniegoski

  “Figured if I couldn't draw comics anymore, I could at least sell them,” Cole continued, absently stroking the dog's large head. “And the Hero's Hovel was born.”

  “You miss it, don't you?” Billy asked.

  Cole nodded. “More than you know, kid. More than you know.”

  The silence was becoming uncomfortable, and Billy glanced toward the big windows at the front of the store. The sun had started to go down, and he remembered his mother's warning.

  “Well, thanks for showing me all your Owlboy stuff,” he said, finishing off the last drop of his soda. “But I need to get going.”

  “Hey, kid, it was my pleasure,” Cole said, taking Billy's empty bottle and placing it with his own in a wooden box in the corner of the room.

  Billy had just started to walk out of the room when he heard Cole call to him. He turned back to see the shop owner walking toward him carrying a small white box.

  “Here,” Cole said, putting the box in Billy's arms. “These should fill you in on just how cool a character Owlboy was.”

  Billy put the box on the floor, removed the lid and looked inside. He felt his heart do a little dance as he saw dozens of issues of Owlboy.

  “Wow!” he exclaimed, thumbing through the books.

  “You can't have them,” Cole warned him. “They're my personal copies. But you're welcome to borrow them, just as long as you promise to keep them in mint condition.”

  “I sure will,” Billy said. “Thanks!” He hefted the box into his arms and left the store, feeling luckier than a hundred-million-dollar lottery winner.

  Carrying the box in his arms and his book bag on his back, Billy walked home faster than he ever had before. Ordinarily, he would have stopped and rested, but just the thought of what was in the box was enough to keep him moving.

  Finally, dinner was over and Billy had the rest of the evening to himself. He switched on the ceiling light as he entered his room. He had a lot to do tonight. If this whole Owlboy thing was going to work, something had to be done about the costume.

  “Heroes do not look like they're wearing a diaper,” he muttered to himself.

  He went back into the hallway and rummaged through the linen closet, looking for his mother's sewing kit. He'd goofed around with sewing last year; unfortunately, what was supposed to be the greatest alien invader costume ever built by human hands somehow ended up looking like the Easter Bunny's evil twin, with tentacles. No matter, he was just going to have to get better to make this Owlboy costume work. He hauled out the white plastic sewing kit and returned to his room.

  Then his eyes fell on the box of comics on the floor.

  “I'll read one comic now and then work on the costume,” he decided aloud, eagerly lifting the cover from the box and removing the first book.

  “Wow,” he said, his eyes taking in the illustration on the cover. It was Owlboy fighting a giant mechanical gorilla. Can Owlboy defeat the mechanical menace from beyond time?!, the cover read, and as Billy gingerly removed the comic from its plastic bag, he certainly hoped so.

  Soon he was lost in the world of Owlboy again. Owlboy was better than the Snake. In fact, Owlboy was probably the greatest superhero Billy had ever read about. This guy had it all: he wore a cool costume and lived in a city loaded with monsters, and he had a secret headquarters called the Roost, all kinds of cool inventions of his own creation and an awesome yellow car that was shaped like an owl's head.

  What wasn't there to love? This guy was rad, and if all went according to plan, Billy would soon be having these adventures for real.

  One comic turned into two, and more followed. Billy just couldn't get enough of his new favorite hero. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, the comics came to an end. And to make matters worse, the last story was a cliff-hanger.

  Had Cole really forgotten to give Billy the last chapter of a story that had the hero in hot pursuit of the master of mind control, the Brainworm, who had managed to take over the Monstros City police force and turn them against Owlboy—or had something far more sinister occurred? Billy double-checked the box and then flipped through the comics he'd already read, thinking he might have mixed them up.

  Finally, he remembered what Cole had said about Monster Comics and how the publisher had mysteriously disappeared. Was it possible that the last part of the story had … never been published?

  He couldn't even begin to think of anything quite so horrible. It was bad enough to have to wait a month for the next issue of a comic, but to be waiting for an issue that would never come?

  It would be torture. Pure, never-ending torture.

  Billy sat on the floor, his back against his bed. He wasn't sure how long he had been like that when there was a knock at his door.

  “Come in,” he said softly.

  His mother opened the door. “What's the matter?” she asked. “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

  “I might as well have,” he answered, hauling himself to his feet and slipping the comic back into its protective cover.

  “Oh, I'm sorry. Anything I can help with?”

  “Naw,” Billy said, showing her the comic as he placed it back in the box. “Not unless you can find the missing publisher of Monster Comics and get him to tell you how this story ends.”

  “Nope, can't do anything about that, but it is late,” she said. “Dad and I are going to bed. Lights out in ten minutes, kiddo.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Billy said as he made a move toward his bed.

  His mother blew him a kiss and closed the door.

  Billy waited a moment to be sure his parents had really gone to bed, then went to work.

  He laid the costume out on his bed, giving it a thorough once-over. The arms and legs definitely needed to be shortened, and something had to be done with all that excess material in the butt.

  He went to the computer on his desk and got on the Internet, finding what he needed on a site called Belle of the Ball after clicking on the article, “Making the Perfect Party Dress with Eloise.” All he had to do was somehow adapt the instructions to fit a superhero costume instead of a party dress. Simple.

  Yeah, right.

  Printing out the instructions, Billy laid the pieces of paper on the floor in front of him and went to work. Sewing was harder than long division and nuclear physics combined, and he was tempted to throw up his hands and quit at least fifty-six times, but he kept going, nearly certain now that this was a test, all part of becoming Owlboy.

  A test that he wasn't about to fail.

  Billy continued to tape, cut, stitch and hem until, just before sunup, bleary-eyed and barely able to hold the needle, he completed the alterations. He was so tired that he couldn't even be excited. Instead, he simply wrapped himself in the finished costume, lay down on the floor of his room, and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

  Billy entered homeroom dressed in his Owlboy costume.

  He wasn't quite sure why he was dressed that way, but it felt right. Crossing the room to get to his desk before attendance was taken, he glanced at the clock on the wall, checking to see how late he was.

  The black hands on the clock were spinning around as if time was passing by at an incredible speed.

  “I think there's something wrong with the clock,” he said, turning to look at Mrs. Buchanan, his homeroom teacher, who had for some reason turned into a chimpanzee wearing a pink cashmere sweater, lipstick, pearls and a blond wig.

  “Don't look at me,” the chimp said, still sounding an awful lot like his homeroom teacher. “I just work here.”

  And then the entire classroom started to laugh, and Billy turned from the somewhat attractive monkey—as far as monkeys go, anyway—to see what the joke was.

  They were all laughing and pointing at him.

  At the costume.

  Billy adjusted the goggles on his face and stood tall, puffing out his measly chest.

  “Is something funny?” he asked, attempting to sound authoritative.

  “You're funny,�
�� Danny Ashwell said, suddenly producing an enormous sandwich from inside his desk and starting to devour it.

  Billy was confused by his friend's words, but the others would soon help explain them.

  “Who do you think you are, Billy?” Reggie asked, his braces glistening wetly in the fluorescent light of the classroom. “I hope that just because a goblin told you you were Owlboy, and you fixed some old costume, you don't think you're some kind of hero.”

  Billy was shocked, and maybe a little hurt, by his friend's words.

  “But I went to Monstros … and stopped a robbery,” he started to explain. “And … and I was the last one standing in a game of dodgeball against Killer Kulkowski and …”

  Kathy B was the next to speak. She stood up from her desk, cleared her throat and looked as if she were about to deliver one of the Shakespeare sonnets she had memorized.

  “You are not a hero, Billy Hooten,” she said with precise pronunciation and power in her voice. “You're just a dork in a costume.”

  Billy was crushed. Even Kathy B didn't believe in him!

  He looked to Dwight, who gave him a thumbs-down, and Billy felt the costume begin to change on his body. The sleeves grew longer, the legs of the suit spilled over the tops of his boots, and he could also feel that there was an awful lot of room in the butt.

  “But I fixed this,” he said aloud, struggling to roll the sleeves back so they didn't cover his gloves. “I worked all night so it would fit me right.”

  They were all laughing at him again, and he didn't know whether to go to his seat and just suck it up or leave the room—leave school and just go home for the day to rethink this whole hero business.

  Suddenly, the room began to shake.

  Billy stumbled to the right, grabbing hold of Mrs. Buchanan's desk so he didn't fall. The room became eerily silent, and everyone looked up to the ceiling— except for Danny, who was still eating his really big sandwich.

  “What's going on?” Billy asked.

  “Don't ask me,” said the chimpanzee, adjusting the blond wig on its head before going back to its crossword puzzle. “I just work here.”

  And with the monkey's last words, the roof of the school was torn away with a sound like the worst thunderstorm Billy had ever heard, only ten times louder, exposing the class to the dark, open sky—and something else.

  Something horrible.

  It was a monster, a giant two-headed beast, shaggy and green, that held the roof of the school in one of its enormous paws while glaring with its four bloodshot eyes down into the school, admiring the kids of Billy's homeroom as if they were a freshly opened box of chocolates.

  “Yum,” the two heads said in unison, tossing away the roof of the school. Both heads licked their lips eagerly.

  This is my chance, Billy thought, feeling the power of heroism flow through his body. This was his opportunity to prove to his friends that he could do the job— that he was indeed a hero.

  And suddenly the costume didn't feel quite so big anymore.

  The dual-headed beast reached down into the classroom with a giant green hand for Danny Ashwell, who really didn't seem to notice that he was in danger. It was all about the sandwich with Danny.

  “Wait!” Billy screamed in his most heroic voice.

  And the monster did wait, pausing before plucking Danny from his chair.

  “Don't you dare touch that child!”

  The two horrible faces of the giant creature began to smile, and Billy felt something that could've been a large rock—or maybe even a dodgeball—form in the pit of his stomach.

  He knew the monsters—their faces. They looked exactly like Randy Kulkowski and Mitchell Spivey.

  “And who are you supposed to be?” asked the beastly Randy. Right on cue, the one that looked like Mitchell began to laugh that horrible cackling laugh.

  It was bad enough to hear the normal-sized Mitchell doing it, but a giant Mitchell? It was enough to make Billy want to jam pencils into his ears. Really hard.

  “I'm … I'm …”

  Billy didn't know if he wanted to say it… if he could say it.

  “What's the matter?” the Kulkowski beast asked. “Owl got your tongue?”

  Again Mitchell laughed. Billy had pretty much had enough.

  “I'm Owlboy,” he proclaimed, and found that it really didn't feel all that bad rolling off his tongue. He'd almost started to believe that he could pull this off, when it all went horribly wrong.

  Isn't it always the way?

  The Randy-Mitchell twins produced two enormous pieces of bread and reached for Billy. All he could think was Where the heck did they find bread that big?

  He tried to bat the huge, badly-in-need-of-a-manicure hand away, but the monster was too fast. Monstrous fingers wrapped around him in a powerful grip, yanking him from in front of Mrs. Buchanan's desk. His last sight before being hauled up into the air was the chimp sitting there, filing its nails.

  “Don't look at me,” it said yet again, completely un-fazed by what was going on in the classroom. “I just work here.”

  Billy found himself dropped onto the squishy surface that was one of the giant slices of bread.

  “You ain't Owlboy,” the Randy beast said before placing the other slab of bread on top of him.

  Billy struggled beneath the top slice.

  “Nope, you ain't Owlboy at all.”

  Billy managed to partially squirm his way out from between the twin slices, peeking over the top of the bread as it was on its way to the monster's open mouth.

  “You're lunch,” the Randy monster said.

  Just before taking a really big bite of his Billy Hooten sandwich.

  Billy woke up on the floor of his room, the rough material of the Owlboy costume wrapped around his head, muffling his girlish scream.

  “Oh, jeez,” he said, pulling the costume from his face, his eyes darting around the room, searching for any sign of the Randy-Mitchell beast. He felt the top of his head, just to be sure that it hadn't been eaten.

  “Billy!” he heard his mother call from the bottom of the stairs. “Time to get up, pal. Let's shake a leg!”

  “Okay, Mom!” he replied, trying to keep from freaking out.

  He got up from the floor, a little shocked to see that he was still wearing his clothes from yesterday, and then remembered how he had spent the entire previous night and how hard he had worked. He snatched up the costume from the floor, holding it by the shoulders at arm's length.

  Memories from the freaky dream flooded his mind: his closest friends telling him that he could never be a hero, never be Owlboy, and then the fact that he had become the meat in a giant sandwich. At that moment, Billy wasn't feeling very confident and was tempted to fold up the suit, put it back inside the box and throw it way in the back of his closet where it couldn't be seen.

  But then he remembered the crazy grocery store in Monstros City and how good he had felt when the shopkeeper had thanked him.

  “Billy!” his mother called again from downstairs. “Are you ready, kid?”

  He smiled.

  Yes, he was ready.

  CHAPTER 7

  The next couple of days were torture. Billy couldn't wait for school to be over.

  He had big plans for Friday night—monster-sized plans.

  He could barely hold in his excitement. Whenever one of his pals asked him what he was doing for the weekend, it was all he could do not to start babbling about putting on his costume, heading to Monstros City and becoming Owlboy—for real.

  So he just smiled uneasily and told them …

  “Nothing special.”

  Billy had no idea what the weekend had in store for him. He knew that he was going to Monstros on Friday night, and hoped that if he didn't screw up too badly,he'd be allowed to go back on Saturday and maybe even Sunday, too. But he would have to see.

  The last bell on Friday was like the firing of a starter's pistol. Billy was gone in a flash, gathering up from his locker all the stuff he wo
uld need for school-work over the weekend and heading home with only one thing on his mind.

  His journey back to Monstros City. And this time, he would be ready.

  If Billy had thought the last few days of school were bad, that night at home was at least fifty times worse.

  Friday nights were always special at the Hooten house. His father would pick up takeout from the Chinese Dragon and a movie from the Video Vault downtown. Billy usually loved Friday nights: gorging himself on spicy General Tso's Chicken and heaping piles of the house specialty fried rice, followed by a movie, usually something filled with lots of violence and explosions, because his dad loved movies like that. But tonight, he couldn't wait for the leftovers to be put away and the movie started so that he could get his own special night underway.

  “Think you're gonna like this one, Bill,” his dad said, eyeing the DVD package. The movie was something with that big dude with the weird accent, and Billy was certain they had seen it at least four times over the last year, but his dad loved the movie and would pretend he didn't remember seeing it.

  Which in a way was probably sort of true.

  Friday movie night wasn't much different than any other night at the Hooten household, in that once the movie was put inside the player, it wasn't too long before his parents were watching a different kind of movie—the one playing on the inside of their eyelids.

  But for some reason, tonight was different.

  Billy sat stiffly on the loveseat, waiting for his parents to doze off, but they didn't. His father sat attentively in his recliner, a big stupid grin on his face as he watched the muscle-bound dude wipe out a hundred bad guys without ever reloading his gun. Billy's mom was curled up in the corner of the couch wrapped in her favorite comforter, busily working on a crossword puzzle.

  This is insane, Billy thought, unable to ever recall a time when his parents hadn't been asleep fifteen minutes into the movie. Tonight of all nights.

  He was very close to losing it when he saw the first signs that things were about to take a turn for the better.

  Gazing down into her puzzle book, his mom was the first to go. Billy watched as her head began to dip, the grip on her pen going limp. It wasn't long before she was out like a light.