SuperZero

by Jane De Suza

  Something scary and evil. Not squirrels and sparrows (imagine being Sparrow Boy).

  Tiger Boy would be cool. (But what if the tiger didn’t stop at biting and tore my head off?)

  Worms. (You know, because they seem to be the theme of my life!)

  Snakes—yes! I could be Cobra Boy. (Anna Conda and Cobra Boy would be super perfect! I was a little scared though. I may just faint with fear on top of the cobra and crush it.)

  Brave attempts at getting bitten:

  Walked around the streets patting random stray dogs and trying to push my hand into their jaws. All the strays acted totally cute, wagging their tails crazily and jumping all over me. Collected lots of saliva, lots of dog fur, lots of paw marks. No bites.

  Stood under spider webs in Gra’s old garden shed. No bites. Pushed face right into webs in desperation. Started sneezing wildly. Still no bites!

  Patted cows, goats, horses, buffaloes, ducks, hens wherever I saw any. Got chased halfway home by a huge angry goat with big horns. Didn’t want to get butted. Just bitten. No bites!

  And the next morning . . . I woke up with BITES!

  I’d left my windows open all night and when I woke up I had big red mosquito bites on every square inch of me. Would that make me Mosquito Boy? Maybe I could fly? Maybe I could suck blood? I was so excited I went charging down the stairs . . .

  Only to trip over my cape and . . . !!@&*%

  Ow, and no—I couldn’t fly! All I could do was hurt from the fall and itch from the bites.

  Today, finally, we had a promising day planned. The class was taken out for a field day—to practise ice cream cone melting just by staring at it. (Huh. Even I could do that. Just hold it in the sun long enough, and superstare or not, it would melt.)

  But get this. I was EXCUSED! And sent home SICK! Because of the bites. Grrr.

  I itched and itched and itched all through the night.

  Dad, sitting down for breakfast the next day, said to me: ‘You know, you would make a great sportsman. How about going to Sports Academy instead?’

  Mom, burning breakfast, to me: ‘You are going to Superhero School already.’

  Dad, spilling coffee, to me: ‘You could make a great lawyer. Or doctor. Or . . .’

  Mom, dropping pan, to me: ‘Or superhero.’

  Dad, banging spoon, to me: ‘There is no such thing as a superhero!’

  Mom, walking out of room, to Dad: ‘There is no such thing as a free breakfast. Make it yourself!’

  Me, still itching: ‘Why’s everyone shouting? Who’s deaf?’

  Gra: ‘Who’s dead?’

  Itch . . . itch.

  P.S. The spoon that Dad banged has bent double. Hey, cool! Maybe he is an undiscovered superhero, and I’ve got his supergenes. I think I will get him angry enough to bang and bend some more things and take them to school so I can pretend I’ve bent them myself.

  Itch, itch.

  5. Remember it’s always Ladies First (especially when there’s danger)

  Today, we had a surprise visit from our school Double-Headmistress. She came in to our class and gave us a long speech about us being sterling stars of the future and splendid saviours of the city and special specimens of humankind. Both her heads kept talking, so no one else got a chance to get a word in.

  Head 1: ‘Boys and girls . . .’

  Head 2: ‘. . . and mutants and subspecies and . . .’

  Head 1: ‘. . . you have all come together from near and far. Your families have sent you to us. Because you are unique. You are about to change the world. Each of you has been found by your parents to be supremely gifted . . .’

  Head 2: ‘. . . and supremely weird . . .’

  Head 1: ‘. . . stop interrupting me! Now, where was I? Yes, your parents have trusted us to bring out your superpowers, your abilities to fly or teleport, or morph, or read minds, or—’

  Head 2: ‘Yawn!’

  Head 1: ‘Stop yawning. Stop interrupting!’

  Head 2: ‘Stop talking!’

  This went on for half an hour. Double-Headmistress gave us another long, moving, long, powerful (did I say long? Yawn!) speech about how we should use our superpowers only to do good and fight evil.

  Head 1: ‘. . . and so I’d like to end by saying . . .’

  Head 2: ‘. . . who is that rude boy who’s asleep?’

  So of course, they had to wake me up again, from when I’d fallen asleep again, and I bumped my head again and got another lump AGAIN.

  Anyway, Double-Headmistress finally came to the point. There was apparently a chain-snatcher loose in the city and we superkids had been called in to the rescue.

  Hoodie hoo!

  ‘I wanna go!’ I jumped up.

  Double-Headmistress’s two heads swung around and dashed each other. Ow!

  Head 1: ‘Ouch! And why, rude boy, must you go?’

  Head 2: ‘Ouch! And why not?’

  Anyway, Masterror made the team which, if anyone asked me, was useless. (Of course, no one asked me.)

  There was Vamp Iyer, who’s of no help in violent situations since he wouldn’t draw a drop of blood and only drank milk, and Anna Conda (okay fine, she’s not useless). And the last potential Catcher of the Chain Snatcher was . . . All the kids kept leaping up and holding their hands high. I just closed my eyes and focused. Good things come to those who wait (and focus). Focus—fowcussss—focussss—

  ‘Slime Joos!’ barked Masterror.

  Huh?

  I headed home feeling lousy. Mom got hyper again. ‘My baby’s got more spots. It must be measles. Let me feel your head . . . oh no—you’re hot! You must have malaria. Or dengue? My god, you have dengue! From those mosquitoes. Or you could have that thing where your brain starts swelling—see all those lumps on your head—oh no! You also have a red gash on your cheek!’ And then she wiped my ‘red gash’ to find out it was only her lipstick. That shut her up for a while, and she went off to google what else I could possibly have got.

  I sat near Gra who’s always busy. I love looking at what he’s up to and talking to him, though I know he can’t hear half of what I say. He was pouring some orange stuff into a jar now.

  ‘I am no good at being a superhero, Gra. I just don’t think I have it in me, y’know.’

  He looked up at me and squinted. ‘What?’

  ‘I AM NO GOOD,’ I said louder. ‘NO GOOD!’

  ‘No food, I know, I know,’ he muttered. ‘There’s never any food here. Your mother can’t cook to save her life. I’m making guava jam. You want a lick?’

  So I sat and licked a spoon of jam and told Gra about my rotten school day and finally ate half the jar of guava jam, and got a thumping tummy ache! (Mom is now googling diseases that have red spots and brain lumps and stomach pain.)

  Itch, itch!

  6. Don’t attack the good people

  The day of the Great Rescue came. Anna Conda was sliding around the city, followed by Vamp Iyer and Slime Joos . . . and a big coconut tree branch (which, if you looked carefully . . . was me in disguise! You thought I’d really sit back quietly and let them do all the brave stuff?)

  We went up one street and down another—nothing.

  Our city has a lot of tall buildings in the office area, and the streets are usually blocked up with cars and people in a hurry. Only if you go out into the suburbs will you find pretty houses. And if you go further, to the blue hills on the edge of the city, you’ll find our Superhero School. We’re hidden in the middle of the hills, among tall pine trees. It’s a pretty place to have a school full of nutjobs.

  ‘HELP!’ The cry came from around the street corner.

  Anna Conda slid over in a second. I saw her long tail disappear around the corner, with the other two charging behind.

  My coconut branch and I went chasing after them, s-l-o-w-l-y. It’s a little tough to run with a long cape and duckie undies and a coconut branch, you know.

  ‘Stop him! He stole my gold chain,’ a hysterical red-faced woman was screaming and pointing.
Of course, there were so many people on the roads that I had no idea who she was pointing at.

  Anna Conda streaked after someone with a vegetable basket.

  Vamp Iyer tried to grab someone selling sun shades by the neck.

  Slime Joos started spurting slime at a whole bunch of tourists with cameras.

  So, who do you think was the wisest? Me, of course. I ran at the woman. I would be smart and logical. ‘Tell me what happened,’ I said, going up to her and patting her arm to calm her down.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed again. ‘Here’s another one! He’s trying to steal my bangles!’ She began to pummel me with her handbag, and suddenly, there was a whole crowd of people around us.

  ‘Where’s her chain, you thief?’

  ‘Small boy like you and so evil!’

  ‘No, no!’ I protested, ‘I’m the good guy!’

  ‘Then why are you hiding in coconut trees and attacking women?’

  As the crowd began to grow, with me protesting my innocence and getting nowhere, I changed tactics. I managed to slide between their legs and run. A few gave chase. I ran as fast as I could, my legs pumping and the stupid cape flying behind. Someone would just grab that cape now and pull me . . .

  . . . up . . .

  . . . up into a tree! Huh? I found myself on a branch, wrapped up by a snake!

  Anna Conda uncoiled herself from around me and before I could even say ‘Thank you’ she glared at me. ‘Next time, just stay back in school!’

  Number of chains snatched: 18

  Number of chain-snatchers caught by superkids: 0

  Number of times Masterror screamed at me back in school: 127

  7. Superheroes shouldn’t use the stairs

  There was so much excitement today in class that as soon as the morning bell rang, everyone stampeded in. Even the stairs began to yelp. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ cried the stairs, ‘you guys are going to kill me!’ Obviously, that stopped us for a bit, and we looked at the strange new talking stairs. I mean, they were not talking yesterday.

  Of course, then Blank made himself reappear from the stairs, and he was all red and bruised. Serves him right for being invisible.

  Anyway, the reason we were all rushing in was that it was our first flying class—and it was going to be taught by a guest lecturer. No Masterror! It was too good to be true.

  Double-Headmistress was dressed to kill. Head 1 had a pink scarf, and Head 2 had a red wig on. They both looked flustered and giggly.

  Head 1: ‘Today, we have the greatest master of the greatest art from the greatest . . .’

  Head 2: ‘. . . well, he’s the tiniest actually.’

  Head 1: ‘This grand flying master has come down to teach you at my invitation.’

  Head 2: ‘Well, mine really. He likes red hair.’

  While we tried to figure all this out, biting our nails in anticipation of our great guest lecturer, we heard a shout. Lizzie Lizard was running around in the class, her long tongue flicking in and out, trying to zap an insect. ‘It’s a fly. Ah, got it!’ she yelled.

  Head 1: ‘No, no, no, not the Fly!’

  Head 2: ‘That’s our great guest lecturer! The Fantastic Flying Fly!’

  There was a stunned silence in the class. Had our class on flying ended before it began? Lizzie Lizard hung her head, embarrassed, and poked out her long tongue again, dropping the Fly on to the teacher’s table. The Fly looked green and sticky. He lay on his back with all six legs stuck in the air.

  ‘I have come here from the jungles of the Amazon,’ he finally said. ‘I have escaped iguanas and eagles on the way. I will not let it all end in the stomach of a hungry girl! Let the class begin.’

  And so the class began.

  And it was epic!

  ‘Each one of you is amazing. Each one of you has a superpower that no one else has,’ said the Fly, and he seemed to be looking at me straight in the eye. I saw hundreds of images of myself in his eye. Flies have compound eyes, in case you didn’t know. They can see 360 degrees around them. I was really beginning to be in awe of this great little guy.

  ‘Some of you can fly, and some of you can climb. The main question is not how high you go up but how you come down.’

  He wrote on a big piece of paper: ‘Fear of flying’. And then he folded it into a paper plane and threw it out of the window. The class was on the second floor and we all rushed to the window to see it flutter a bit in the wind and then swoop down to land in the playground sandpit. ‘Get it, Anna Conda,’ everyone said. Anna Conda gracefully slipped right out of that window, and down the rainwater pipe and in a jiffy, she’d picked up that plane.

  ‘See?’ said the Fly. ‘The flying class is not just about flying. The main thing is to channelize whatever power you have inside you.’

  Everyone started practising. Slime Joos ejected this long stream of slime and slid his way down it. Blank just disappeared and reappeared down in the sandpit. I sat at my desk and made more paper planes.

  There was a buzz in my ear.

  ‘SuperZero, go use your power, boy,’ said the Fly.

  I shook my head. ‘I have no powers.’

  The Fly said, ‘Look me in the eye.’ I did, again, but all I saw were images of a boy who could not fly or do anything cool. ‘I’m a zero,’ I said. ‘SuperZero.’

  ‘You can be the biggest hero of them all. But only if you believe you are.’ The Fly flew off.

  I closed my eyes and felt miserable. If only I had some way to get that paper plane. But I could not fly. Planes could fly, not boys. I felt so tiny and useless. I was a huge disappointment to everyone. And then I felt my head burning—that inexplicable heat. I felt something pointed hit my head. Loud gasps erupted from the rest of the class.

  The paper plane had launched itself from the sandpit and seemingly flown up two floors to zoom in through our class window . . . and straight at my head. Another windy day? Or was there a chance—a teeny-weeny-micro-weeny chance—that I’d made it happen? But how?

  The Fly was in front of me again, hovering and smiling.

  I saw hundreds of images of a very happy boy smiling back at him.

  8. Befriend an alien

  The next few days I felt like I was walking around on a cloud. Anna Conda looked at me like I was this huge plane-flier. ‘It’s called a pilot, not a plane-flier,’ said Vamp Iyer grumpily. He was grumpy because Anna Conda wasn’t looking at him with puppy eyes.

  ‘How did you doooo it, SuperZero?’ Anna Conda cooed. ‘Teach me please.’

  ‘Ah, it’s nothing.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s easy-peasy lemon-squeezy!’ (I had no idea how I’d done it, of course, so I couldn’t do it again, let alone teach anyone else.)

  Blank and I were hanging out a lot too. Of course, that was a little weird, because Blank was always blank, see? So it looked like I was hanging around by myself. And talking to myself. But then all super people were weird, right? Superman was afraid of a piece of green crystal. A rock from the planet Krypton—like all those alien things really exist, huh!

  Wait a minute.

  ‘Blank,’ I said, ‘do you believe in aliens?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Blank!’

  Oh, so he wasn’t there. That’s the problem about having an invisible friend: you never know when he’s around and when he’s not. Well, now I know he’s not.

  I sat down next to Vamp Iyer, who was drinking his morning bottle of milk. ‘Do you believe in aliens?’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t ask me to eat them. They don’t taste so good!’

  I looked at him to see if he was joking. He was choking over his milk, spluttering and laughing. Hmpf.

  I bet if I could find an alien to befriend, I wouldn’t need all these pseudo friends. I’d also learn a whole lot of superpower stuff too. Aliens travel millions of miles in minutes to visit from faraway galaxies.

  I talked to Anna Conda over lunch. ‘Do you know any aliens?’ I asked, chomping on my potato wedges.

  ‘No. Oh, SuperZero, do you know
aliens?’ Her eyes were so wide and so full of admiration that I didn’t have the heart to break her heart.

  ‘Oh yeah. In fact, I’m going to meet an alien today. A good friend, really. He’s going to teach me some powers.’ Ahem. So I might have stretched the truth a bit.

  ‘Take me. Please, please!’

  I chewed some more on my potato wedge. I had actually swallowed it long ago, but I kept pretending to chew to keep thinking. What a lousy, stinking lie to make up. How would I find an alien now to introduce Anna Conda to?

  Of course, I kept diving in deeper. ‘My alien’s very shy. He disappears when girls are around. Like Blank, you know. All my friends disappear. Haha.’ I finally pretend-swallowed my pretend potato wedge. ‘Anyway, I’m late, and aliens fade away after sunset.’

  ‘You’re making that up,’ said Vamp Iyer. ‘It’s us vampires that fade away after sunrise. Only the blood-drinking ones do, though. Not the milk-drinking ones like me. We don’t fade. Our bones are really strong because of all that milk calcium we drink. So no fading and fainting and . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said impatiently, not wanting Vamp Iyer to take away my spot of gold in Anna Conda’s eyes yet. ‘But aliens are way cooler than vampires. Vampires are just big bats.’

  ‘Take that back or I’ll bite you,’ said Vamp Iyer and flew at me, his wings flapping.

  I began to dance around like I’d seen the boxers do on my dad’s TV show, and then slipped on a real potato wedge that had fallen on the floor. I ended up hitting my head on the cold canteen floor and oh, did it hurt! Great, more bumps.

  Anna Conda offered me her dainty hand. ‘Bye, SuperZero. Remember our secret, okay? Take me to meet your alien.’

  I was in a bad spot. I’d lied. I’d made up an alien. I’d fought with my friend. I’d bumped my head. Again.

  That night, as I sat moping over my dinner at home, I saw something very interesting in Dad’s newspaper—a small headline tucked away on the back of the page he was reading. His thumb almost covered it but I managed to read it.