by Dustin Brady
Uh oh.
The footsteps stopped and waited. A minute later, Jared heard the sound of another set of feet running up to the van. Finally, the back door opened. The sudden light made Jared squint. He could see that the van had parked in a secluded spot in the woods — probably the woods next to the school. Two people stood outside: the blond news lady from before, out of breath like she had just run to the van, and a short, muscular man with a camera. Jared cowered in the corner.
“Sorry about that,” News Lady said as she climbed into the van and fixed her hair. “We got kicked out of our parking space in front of the school, so we had to move.”
Camera Guy followed behind her and closed the door.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions before we go on camera?” News Lady continued. “It’s kind of a pre-interview we always do.”
Jared looked around the van. “Uhhhhh, I think I want to go back to school.”
News Lady smiled. “Of course! This will only take a few minutes. We just wanted to find out how you won so many prizes last night.”
“I, uh, I got really lucky I guess.”
News Lady raised her eyebrows and turned to Camera Guy. “Really lucky? Wow, I wish I had luck like that! Right Jim? Hahaha!”
Jim did not laugh.
She turned back to Jared. “Jared, please don’t be modest. Surely you’ve got some secret you could share with our audience. We’re not going to be able to air this segment if you don’t give us anything.”
“I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
She sighed. “It’s OK. I understand. Lenny must be the one with all the carnival skills, right? We’ll just have to track him down.”
Jared suddenly felt very sick. “Wait! No! It was me! It was all me! Don’t get Lenny, please don’t get Lenny!”
News Lady and Camera Guy looked at each other. “OK Jared,” News Lady said. “If you say so. But you’ll have to tell us something.”
“OK, I, well, I have to think about it, uhhhh, you see…”
Camera Guy sighed and shook his head. News Lady took that as her cue to tighten the screws a little bit.
“Jared, I’m going to be honest with you. We know you had some extra help last night. We just need to know what it was.”
Jared looked back and forth at the two of them. “Do you guys work for the carnival?”
This got a huge laugh from News Lady. Even Camera Guy cracked a little smile.
“Because if you do, I’m so sorry. I was just…”
News Lady interrupted.
“You really think the carnival is going to send a $3 million van to find out what happened to a few little stuffed animals?”
“I mean they were pretty big stuffed animals, but…”
“Jared,” News Lady got closer. “Here’s what I think. I think you’ve stepped into a pile of doo-doo, and you have no idea how big it is. Well let me tell you, it is big.”
“Like how big?”
“Like an ocean of doo-doo.”
Jared gulped.
“So let me keep you from putting yourself or anyone else in danger. What. Happened. Last. Night.”
“OK OK OK, I’ll tell you everything.”
But Jared didn’t get a chance to tell them everything. Because at that moment, the back door flew open and something hit Camera Guy in the back of the head. He roared and held his head.
“JARED! RUN!”
It was a girl’s voice. A familiar girl’s voice. She screamed again.
“RUN!”
It was Bre.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Junk City
Jared used the moment of distraction to roll between Camera Guy’s legs. On his way out the door, he saw the object that Bre had thrown at his captor — the magic eight ball. He grabbed it and plopped gracelessly to the ground.
“LET’S GO!” Bre grabbed his arm and started running into the woods. “FIND OUT WHAT WE NEED TO DO!”
“How should I…”
“I KNOW ABOUT THE EIGHT BALL, JUST ASK IT!”
“Where do (gasp) we go?” Jared asked the eight ball while trying to run and catch his breath at the same time.
LEFT
Jared and Bre stumbled left. They heard Camera Guy and News Lady jump out of the van behind them. “Now what?!”
DOWN THE RAVINE
Jared looked at the ravine to his right and swallowed hard. It was super steep. He made it exactly one step before tumbling all the way to the bottom. He cleared his head and turned back to see Bre riding down the hill, using fallen leaves as a snowboard while yelling at him.
“GO! GO! GO!”
Jared got up and led the way along the bottom of the ravine while the news people followed parallel at the top. Jared continued asking the eight ball for their next moves, and it continued to deliver — even if some of the moves seemed really weird.
PICK THE PLANT ON YOUR LEFT
DUCK UNDER THE LOG
TAKE THE PATH ON YOUR RIGHT
GRAB THE SHARP STICK
RUN FASTER
Jared and Bre ran along the path until they emerged from the woods into the part of downtown known as “Junction City.” Jared had been to this neighborhood many times — his mom loved it, and his dad was fond of calling it “Junk City.” It consisted of restored buildings from the 1800s, where shop owners would sell fancy candles, overpriced antiques and popcorn with gross stuff in it.
TO THE FIREHOUSE
Jared and Bre ran into Firehouse Fudge, a candy store inside of the old fire station. It was just opening for the day. When they stepped inside, bells on the door jangled and a cat sleeping in the sun jumped from its spot.
“Be right there!” the shop owner called from the back.
BE QUIET
Jared motioned for Bre to shush.
GIVE THE CAT YOUR PLANT
Jared handed the cat the small weed he had picked in the woods. When the cat smelled the plant, its eyes lit up, and it started rolling on its back like crazy. It batted the plant, and in the process, batted the bells some more.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
HIDE BEHIND THE COUNTER
A gray-haired woman emerged from the back, looked around the store and noticed the cat.
“Whiskers! How did you find the catnip?”
While she took the plant away from the cat, Jared and Bre snuck into the back room and up the old staircase to the firehouse roof. From the roof, Bre could see News Lady and Camera Guy. They were sprinting through town, looking around corners and inside of shops. “I think we’re safe for now, Jared,” she said.
But Jared wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy firing questions at the magic eight ball.
“Jared? We’re just going to hide up here for a while, right?”
“Nope,” Jared said as he untied one end of the rope from the flagpole on top of the firehouse and unlooped it a few times.
“Why not?!”
“Because if they can’t find us, they’re going to go after Lenny. We can’t let them go after Lenny.”
“So what’s the plan?”
Jared remained silent until he finished tying the rope around the stick he’d taken from the woods. “This,” he said as he walked to the edge of the building. “HEY!” he called out.
News Lady and Camera Guy, who were crossing the street again, looked up.
“UP HERE!”
They bolted for the firehouse.
Bre pushed Jared. “What’s wrong with you?!”
“It’s all part of the plan,” he said before throwing the stick like a javelin as hard as he could. The rope was just long enough to reach the store across the street (Sandy’s Sassy Scarves ‘n’ Such in the old courthouse), where it looped around the bell tower. Jared grinned at Bre. “See! It’s a zipline!”
Bre pushed him again. “I literally just told you that I hate heights!”
“Oh, uh, I forgot about that.”
Bre got right in his face and held up her finge
r. “You are the WORST person to protect.”
“To what?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she took off her jacket, looped it over the rope, squeezed her eyes shut and jumped.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Jared did the same with his belt. As the eight ball predicted, they both made it safely into the second-story window of the courthouse. Also as predicted, a police car pulled up in the middle of the street to check on the ruckus.
“They’re after us, and they have guns!” Jared yelled to the officer.
“Who’s after you?”
“THEM!”
Jared pointed to News Lady and Camera Guy, who had reached the firehouse roof.
“You two! Stop!” the officer shouted at them.
They didn’t hear him. They were too busy mounting the zipline — the hastily made zipline that to this point had been fortunate to hold two skinny sixth graders.
RRRRRRRRRRRIP!
Sure enough, the line snapped from the firehouse as soon as both of the thugs put their weight on it. News Lady screamed and hung onto the rope as it swung them…
THUNK!
…Smack onto the police car. The officer cuffed them both as they struggled.
“That. Was. Awesome!” Jared said as he turned to give Bre a high five.
She ignored the high five and walked to the opposite side of the building.
“You think that’s it?” she asked as she opened the window and hopped onto the fire escape staircase outside. “Thanks to you, it’s just the start.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Superhero for a Day
“The start of what?” Jared asked as he followed Bre onto the fire escape.
“What time is it?” Bre asked.
“I don’t have a watch.”
Bre rolled her eyes and turned around. “You have an eight ball that tells you everything you could ever want to know! JUST ASK IT!”
“OK, OK. I keep forgetting. No need to get huffy. What time is it?”
11:08 A.M.
Great,” Bre said. “And what time did you get the eight ball?”
“I don’t know, like 3:30?”
“Wonderful. You’ve wasted almost 20 hours.”
“I haven’t understood a word you’ve said for the past five minutes.”
“Of course you haven’t. Just follow me and make sure nobody sees us.”
Bre led Jared back to the woods. She turned off the path, avoided some prickly vines and found a single boulder near the creek. She put her shoulder against the boulder and pushed until it moved a bit, revealing a big hole underneath. She motioned to the hole. “After you.”
Jared slipped into a shallow cave. Bre followed, then covered the hole with something before turning on an electric lantern in the corner. The space lit up to reveal a cave the size of a bedroom with rugs on the floor. One side of the cave had beanbag chairs, and the other was lined with crates filled with comic books — lots and lots of comic books. There was Spider-Man and Wonder Woman and the Fantastic Four and a million others all neatly organized into color-coded crates.
Jared whistled and walked toward the comic books. “Cooooooooool.”
“Don’t touch anything!” Breanna said.
Jared spun around. “What’s wrong with you? You’re always like the happiest girl in school, and you were being super-duper nice to me this morning.”
“Yeah, because I was undercover!”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!”
“Why don’t you ask your little eight ball?”
Jared looked down.
BRE WAS SUPPOSED TO GET THE EIGHT BALL
Jared looked back at Bre, more confused than ever.
She sighed, plopped down on a beanbag chair and started talking. “Last year, I found a note in my locker. It said, ‘Do you want to be a superhero for a day? Circle YES or NO.’ I thought it was a weird joke, but of course I circled YES, because — just in case, you know? The next morning, the note in my locker was gone. In its place was a pair of white sneakers. They were completely plain except for the Spider-Man motto printed under the tongue.”
“What’s the Spider-Man motto?”
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
“Oh.”
“Anyways, I put the sneakers on and found that they let me run fast. Like super fast. Like supersonic. I could run so fast that time seemed to stand still. That day, I ran to California and back. I jumped across the Grand Canyon. At the end of the day, I even found out that I could walk on water.”
“Sounds pretty awesome.”
“It was very awesome. I ended up falling asleep at like 3 a.m. with the shoes on. When I woke up the next morning, they were gone. They’d disappeared. That’s when I understood — superhero for a day. I turned on the TV to find out if any of my adventures made the news. What I saw instead was the Hamilton Hotel fire. Remember the Hamilton fire downtown last spring? Remember all those people trapped on the sixth floor?”
“Bre…”
“Remember those firefighters who kept running up and down stairs to get people until it was too late?”
“Bre…”
Bre’s eyes started getting watery as she talked faster. “Remember those five people who didn’t get rescued in time? One was a first-grader named Jackson. He had a big cowlick and three teeth missing in that picture they showed of him on the news. Do you remember that? Because I remember it every day.”
“Bre, come on. You can’t think that you’re somehow responsible for what happened to them.”
“With great power comes great responsibility. I had great power. So yeah. I was responsible. But I was too busy having my own fun to notice anyone else around me.”
Jared looked down. The cave was silent for a bit.
After a few seconds, Bre collected herself and continued. “I got another note in my locker that morning. ‘Don’t feel bad. We all have to learn this lesson. I’m truly sorry you learned it the hard way.’ That’s all it said. A few weeks later on the first day of summer vacation, I found a gift addressed to me on the front porch. It was a pair of X-Ray glasses that really worked! I put them on and ran all over town, trying to figure out how to use them to help people. We had record high temperatures that day, do you remember?”
“Mmmhmmm,” Jared said, even though he didn’t remember in the slightest.
“By the end of the day, I was soaked in sweat and no closer to helping anyone than I was when I left that morning. But at 5 o’clock, when I was ready to go home, I saw something move in a car as I walked through the Kroger parking lot. I looked closer and saw that someone had forgotten a baby in the backseat. The car’s windows were tinted — nobody else could have seen the baby. I ran as fast as I could into the store and got help. The store manager broke the car window and someone else called 911. The paramedics who came told me that I’d found the baby just in time.”
“That’s so cool!”
“Probably six or seven times since then, I’ve gotten another superpower for a day. Always a day — exactly 24 hours.”
“Why 24 hours?”
Bre shrugged. “I’ve been reading a lot of comic books lately to learn about the best ways to use different superpowers. It seems like most people with superpowers either turn bad or become miserable. Superpowers that last for only 24 hours let you do something great without getting into a lot of the trouble that comes with being a superhero.”
“And you don’t know who’s giving you these notes?”
Bre shook her head. “No clue. Anyways, the superpower always comes just in time to stop something awful, and it always comes in the form of something that looks normal — a baseball hat, a squirt gun, a jar of Silly Putty.”
Jared started putting the pieces together. “Uhhh, or perhaps a magic eight ball?”
“Yeah. Perhaps a magic eight ball.”
“Oh boy.”
“My note yesterday morning said that I would find a magic eight ball inside a tree at the park on my way
home from school that I could use to stop something bad.”
“Well if the eight ball’s yours, can’t you just use it now?”
Bre shook her head. “The superpower only works for the person who touches it first. Probably for protection in case they get captured. When you picked it up, you felt a tingle, right?”
Jared nodded.
“That was the eight ball starting the 24-hour timer. So after you got the superpower, my new job was to protect you from yourself so you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“That’s why you were hanging around me so much this morning?”
“Until you decided to jump off a building.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I didn’t realize you’d already done something stupid last night by getting your face in the paper as the carnival king.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not the only superhero, you know. Others are popping up too, and criminals are starting to figure it out. So they’re on high alert for anything suspicious — like someone who can win enough carnival games to build a mountain of stuffed animals.”
“But we got the bad guys arrested, right? Isn’t everything fine now?”
“No everything is definitely not fine! Once they figure out the first two goons got arrested, they’ll send more! That’s why we’re staying safe in here for the rest of the day.”
Although Jared definitely wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the day in the Batcave, something was bugging him. “You said that you were supposed to use the magic eight ball to learn about something bad that was going to happen, right? Can’t we still do that?”
“Too dangerous with people looking for you.”
“But they’re still going to be looking for me after the superpower goes away, right? Isn’t our best bet stopping them while the eight ball still works?”
Bre thought about it for a second. Jared tried to help by showing her the magic eight ball’s answer.
YES
Bre sighed. “Well you made things real hard for us by wasting so much time and bringing so much attention to yourself.”