Just Call Me Spaghetti-Hoop Boy

by Lara Williamson

  So I forget about superpowers for now, and instead I turn to a new page in my notebook and write down a list of things I think a superhero should do. If I can do any of these, I’ll be a superhero for sure.

  HOW TO BE A SUPERHERO IN FIVE EASY STEPS

  Save a cat from a tree

  Help an old person

  Help an enemy

  Save a life

  Save the world

  For the rest of the morning I try to work out how I can save the world, because if you’re going to do a good deed you might as well go BIG. I watch the news to see if there are any local issues I could get involved in. But there’s only a clean-up of Pegasus Park dog poop. And I’m not sure that dog poop is a global threat, unless you stand on it in flip-flops, and then I suppose it is the end of the world.

  Next, I try helping an enemy. I tell Minnie she’s looking particularly gorgeous this morning and she asks if I’m feeling okay and then she says it’s a double-bluff and that I’m up to no good, and I say smugly that I’m actually up to a lot of good. Because superheroes are always up to good. It’s a fact. Minnie tells Mum I’m playing games and Mum asks what I’m playing and Minnie says it’s not Monopoly.

  “He’s being nice to me.”

  Mum looks at Minnie and says surely that’s a good thing. Then she runs her fingers through her hair and sighs like she’s carrying the weight of a baboon on her back. But I give a little smile because if my plan works and I become a superhero, then it’s bound to make Mum one million times happier than she looks now.

  “Do you think I could save your life?” I stare at Minnie, thinking I might be able to achieve number four of the FIVE EASY STEPS without too much trouble.

  “OMG, Mum,” wails Minnie, staring at me like a vampire caught in sunlight, “Adam’s going to kill me!” She narrows her eyes to tiny blades and when Mum leaves the room Minnie jabs her finger towards me and says she knows I’m up to something and she’ll find out what it is.

  So it turns out helping an enemy was a bad idea and I’m glum that I couldn’t achieve numbers three, four or five. It feels like my list is more HOW TO BE A SUPERHERO IN FIVE NOT SO EASY STEPS, also known as HOW TO END UP BALD LIKE DAD BECAUSE YOU’RE TEARING YOUR OWN HAIR OUT. I’m as miserable as Bigfoot with a sore toe, and I go and sit in my bedroom and try to figure out how I can help an old person (number two). Which is when I hear Mum and Dad talking in hushed tones outside my bedroom door.

  “It’ll be a big change,” whispers Mum.

  I stop, straining every fibre of my being to listen.

  “I know, but it’s worth it. And I know the flat is small but we can make sacrifices. Let’s not mention it to the kids yet though.” Dad coughs.

  I swallow and it feels like I’ve got a goldfish swimming about in my tummy.

  “Yes. Let’s keep it as a surprise,” says Mum. There’s a pause and then she says, “Oh, Clark, I’m really nervous about this appointment.” I hear Dad soothing Mum but I don’t hear the exact words, even though I’ve practically got my ear superglued to the wall.

  I’m in shock. It’s worse than when I scuffed my new shoes across the carpet and then touched the metal door handle and was nearly thrown halfway across the room. The reason I’m so surprised is that Mum and Dad are keeping secrets from us. Usually they tell us everything. I try to catch the rest of the conversation but it’s all muffled and I can’t hear anything else they say. Perhaps keeping the secret is the reason why Mum’s moody at the moment. She’s not being horrible or anything, but it’s like she’s on a roller coaster going up and down. One minute she’s okay and the next she’s staring out the window, her eyes glassy.

  I don’t know what Mum and Dad’s secret is but I know if I’m a superhero it’s going to make her less moody. I’ve just looked up the word “ace” in the dictionary and it says a person who excels; a genius, a master, first-rate, wonderful, outstanding, a star and a champion. It also says a playing card ranked as the highest card in its suit. I promise I’m going to be all those things listed (except the playing card – that would be tricky).

  The half-term break is almost over and I still haven’t found out what Mum and Dad’s secret is. But in the meantime an opportunity to properly become a superhero has arrived and it’s not a moment too soon, because Mum’s as miserable as a wet weekend. Dad has booked me into a Saturday lifesaving course in the local swimming pool with the Pegasus Park Pool Piranhas, because he thought I might get bored in the half-term break (even though I never get bored doing nothing). I spend the twenty minutes before we need to go in my bedroom, which I’ve renamed SPAM HQ (Special Place of Ace Missions), making up a superhero motto to encourage me to be excellent. Because superheroes always have a motto – like Wolverine says he’s the best there is at what he does, and The Thing says it’s clobberin’ time. I place my teddy bear, aka my sidekick, on the bed and tell him to prick up his furry ears under his bobble hat and listen. I’ve come up with: I am Ace. I will start, righting wrongs ’cause I’m all heart. My teddy bear stares ahead like he’s not listening. Mind you, that’s nothing new. After I’ve said the motto a few times and accidentally said fart instead of heart twice, I figure I’d prefer something easier like “Shazam”, which is what Billy Batson says.

  “Kazeem,” I sing-song, running around the room with my arm held high. “Shazou, shezaam, kazoo.”

  Dad bangs on my bedroom door and says I need to stop shouting about a kazoo and get my wazoo out here or I’ll be late for the Piranhas. Lifting my swimming bag, I fling open the bedroom door and say I’m ready. Dad is swinging his van keys around his finger and says he’ll drop me off in the Surelock Homes van because we don’t want the class to start without me. “Come on, champ,” says Dad, scratching the clock tattoo on his bicep. “Time waits for no one.” He pauses. “Except Minnie when she’s in the bathroom doing her make-up and won’t come out until it’s perfect.”

  We walk down the staircase from our flat and past Mr Hooper’s at number forty-eight. One level down we pass Mrs Karimloo’s empty flat and Dad jerks a thumb towards it, saying she’s gone to The Ganges.

  “What, she’s in India?”

  “No, she’s living with her brother above The Ganges takeaway. I cut her a new key. She’ll stick that one under the flowerpot too, I suppose.” Dad glances down at the flowerpot, touching it with his toe. “That’s what she always did with the key for this flat. You know, whoever moves in here next will need a new lock, because that one’s looking a bit damaged. Wait…” Dad reaches into his pocket and pulls out a leaflet for Surelock Homes and puts it through the letter box. “They need to talk to the best in the business.”

  Ten minutes later, Dad drops me off at the pool with a wave and shouts, “Do your best, sunshine.” Then he zooms away in the red van like he’s in a race and wants to win. I watch as the big silver key on the back glistens and then it disappears over the horizon.

  “Superheroes always do their best, Dad,” I whisper. The words flutter away like old chip papers on the wind.

  So, I’m not going to lie, I’m excited that I’m about to save a life. Mum will be so happy she might even give me some extra pocket money. There’s a Zorbitan comic called The Zorbitans Take Over that I want to buy if she does. I’ll say, “Mum, no money is necessary because I did it to be excellent. But if you’re offering, I’ll take the cash.” I might even say, “It was nothing really. I just want to make everyone happy, including you.” Mum will smile and pat me on the bobble hat before passing me a fiver, and whatever mood she’s been in recently will disappear as quickly as the last chocolate biscuit in the tin.

  Fifteen minutes later the instructor introduces himself as Mark, chief Piranha of the Pegasus Park Pool Piranhas and we introduce ourselves. He says it’s lovely we’ve joined him this Saturday to save a life. I don’t hear what he says next as I’m watching a used plaster float past in the pool. Then Mark introduces Tyler, a gangly goon in flip-flops who I recognize from Minnie’s class at Blessed Trinity. “He
’s my work experience for the half-term break,” says Mark. Tyler grins and gives a tiny salute which looks so ridiculous that even he realizes it halfway through and pretends he was just scratching his head.

  “Right, I see you’ve come in your clothes, as instructed – that’s good. This is important because…” Mark waits for someone to answer.

  A boy to my left whose name I forget says, “Because you can only go naked on a nudist beach, my nana says.”

  Mark replies, “Um, right, let’s just erase that image from our heads. The chances are if you had to save a life you wouldn’t have time to get your swimming trunks on, so you’d jump in fully clothed.” Mark looks at my bobble hat. Clearly, he is impressed that I’ve come more than fully clothed because I’m wearing a hat. I nod at him and my bobble wobbles. That’s got to be a gold star for me. Mark tells Tyler to go and get the willing victim.

  My mouth drains of saliva as I watch Tyler flippety-flop round the pool towards the spectator area. I half expect him to ask a spectator to come down, but instead he stops at a cupboard under the steps. At that point I swear a vision of Harry Potter floats in front of my eyes because he’s the only person I know that lives in a cupboard under the stairs. Unfortunately, five seconds later, after a load of pool noodles fly from the cupboard, I realize it’s not Harry Potter.

  “It’s Manny,” exclaims Mark as Tyler throws a life-saving dummy on the floor at our feet. “Short for mannequin, if you’re asking.” Everyone looks at each other in confusion – nope, no one was asking. I’m so fixated on Manny that I barely hear what Mark says next. All I make out is blah-de-blah…jump in…blah-de-blah…find him…blah-de-blah…put your arm around his chest. I watch as Manny is launched into the pool and Mark finishes explaining what we have to do. Thinking about HOW TO BE A SUPERHERO IN FIVE EASY STEPS, I realize saving a life is not the same as saving a dummy. This isn’t looking as promising as it was five minutes ago. Mark looks over at me and says he likes my hat and then proceeds to tell me why he doesn’t like it. “That’ll get waterlogged immediately. It might weigh you down it’s so woolly. It’ll be like having a wet sheep on your head.”

  “I don’t take it off,” I reply bluntly. And I don’t. I’ve been wearing a bobble hat since I was little and I love it. Mum says it’s my security blanket, although that’s crazy because it’s nothing like a blanket. Even the school let me wear it – Mum cleared it with them. She said when I was little I liked to hide inside it when I was sad or angry and they said that was fine. There was no fuss and now the bobble hat is part of me, like my eyebrows and freckles. And I only still hide in it if I really need to.

  “Okay, fair enough,” says Mark, turning away. Next, he encourages us all to do a little warm-up before getting in the pool. And that’s when it happens. A giant sabre-toothed beast clamps its jaws onto my calf – otherwise known as the twinges of a cramp.

  “Who’s going to jump in first?” asks Mark then, his eyes scanning us like heat-seeking missiles. Everyone is glued to the floor, probably by all those stray sticking plasters. “Come on, don’t be a banana, be a piranha!” bellows Mark. Suddenly his missile-eyes hone in on me and he tells me to jump in: “Show us how it’s done, Adam.”

  I remember that superheroes have courage, so I ignore the fact that my calf feels like it’s a sheet of A4 going through a paper shredder, and I jump.

  By the way, I have no idea where Manny is as I hit the water, which snaps around me like a cold bangle. Anyway, it doesn’t matter where he’s gone, because I’m distracted by the red-hot pokers jabbing my calf muscles. As I twist and turn on the surface of the water I hear muffled voices telling me I’m supposed to be a piranha not a curled-up prawn. Bubbles go up my nose and I clutch my leg and open my mouth to yell, but as I go under it fills with water and no sound comes out except burble burble burble (translation: my calf is tighter than a jam-jar lid).

  “Cramp!” Blimey, someone up there is multilingual because they understand my bubble language. Bobbing up again, I hear, “He’s got cramp!” As I thrash around someone shouts, “Look, he’s not swimming properly.”

  I’ve no idea who says it but I suddenly see a flashing figure split the water like a knife through soft butter. I go under once more and Tyler appears in front of me, his fringe floating around him like a golden halo. Then he pulls me up, tells me not to struggle and drags me out of the pool. Spluttering and sodden, I flump down on the floor as applause explodes around me. I hear the spectators shouting “superhero” and I’m about to stand and give them a bow when I glance up and see Tyler doing a lap of honour.

  No one remembers Manny has drowned.

  Back at home in SPAM HQ I add assess danger to the list of qualities a superhero should possess. It was stupid and dangerous to jump in the pool when I had cramp and couldn’t swim properly because of it. Disappointed by my attempt to save a life, I tell myself that I must try harder, and a little dose of good luck coming my way wouldn’t go amiss. Anyway, saving a lifesaving training-aid dummy wouldn’t have counted. I glance over at the certificate that I got at the end of the course.

  Mark hasn’t even filled in my name, which is probably because he was so preoccupied trying to stop Tyler giving autographs on swimming floats to the girls who were squealing about him being a superhero.

  Fed up that I’m not as excellent as I thought, I take off my soggy bobble hat and give it a good squeeze. Pool water leaves a puddle on the bedroom carpet. If you squint really hard it could look like a superhero’s broken mask.

  The Monday morning after half-term arrives like a sneaky villain you’re trying to avoid – bleak and grey and full of misery. Mrs Chatterjee ushers us into the classroom and I sit down beside my best mate, Tiny Eric.

  “Cześć,” says Tiny Eric. Tiny Eric’s full name is Eric Kowalski-Brown and he’s not tiny. In fact, he’s about the height of King Kong’s taller brother. He joined Pegasus Park Juniors in Year Five and he lives at 35 Kink Street, Pegasus Park with his mum and dad. I haven’t visited him at his house yet but Tiny Eric says I should come over sometime soon. Tiny Eric’s mum is from Poland and Tiny Eric sometimes says things in Polish.

  “Greetings,” I reply, but I don’t look up because I’m still miserable that I haven’t got anywhere with being a superhero. It’s harder than trying to get dried-up breakfast cereal off a bowl. If I was being truthful, I’d say I expected it to go more smoothly than this. I thought I’d be excellent straight away.

  “What’s with the long face?” asks Tiny Eric, in between getting out his pencils and notebooks. “You’re in a right mood. And we’ve only been in class five minutes so you can’t be bored to death already.”

  I don’t want to tell Tiny Eric anything yet so I say, “I am drained of energy. What I need is some serious good luck to cheer me up.” I take my notebook out of my bag and flick through the pages, stopping at my drawing of a rose.

  “You want good luck?” Tiny Eric looks concerned and then his face brightens. “You’ve come to the right place.” He taps his nose knowingly.

  “What, school?” I mumble, looking around the classroom. I tap my nose unknowingly. To be honest, it doesn’t look all that lucky to me.

  “No,” says Tiny Eric, leaning towards me and waving his arm dismissively. “Don’t be daft. Me. I’m a master of good-luck charms.” I look at Tiny Eric like he’s got two heads and neither of them are making any sense. This is the first I’ve ever heard of Tiny Eric being interested in charms. “In Poland they carry czterolistna koniczyna and they’ll bring you as much luck as you can handle.” Turns out he’s talking about a four-leaf clover. But when I ask him if he’s got one on him, Tiny Eric says no, he hasn’t been lucky enough to find one yet. Oh. I think my face says it all because Tiny Eric adds cheerfully, “I’ll draw you one instead. It’s almost as good.”

  Tiny Eric is a master of art. He got a gold star at the end of last term for his drawing of his dad. It looked really lifelike. You could totally imagine his dad was in the classroom with
us and it was so good Mrs Chatterjee put it on the wall. I drew Velvet wearing her tiara, but Velvet insisted I also draw a castle and when I said we didn’t live in a castle she said yes we did because we lived in the clouds. Anyway, I got a bronze star for that because Mrs Chatterjee said she loved my octopus and I said they were turrets and she quickly changed the subject.

  Already Tiny Eric has drawn me a four-leaf clover and coloured it in, and now he tears it out of his notebook and hands it to me. I look at the drawing and it reminds me of four hearts joined together on one stem. “There, your luck will change. All you need to do is stare at this four-leaf clover drawing and believe good things will happen. Then they will.”

  How can a drawing bring me luck? If it was that easy, I’d not be sitting here like a melted welly worrying about becoming a superhero and cheering my moody mum up. “Okay,” I mumble, staring at it. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.” I make a mental note to shove it in my bag and forget about it.

  Tiny Eric grins and says we’ll talk more about it in the playground and I can stare at the drawing properly then. I make a mental note not to shove it in my bag and forget about it.

  Tiny Eric is insisting I stare at the four-leaf clover drawing for at least one minute to get myself in the right frame of mind to receive luck. We’re in the playground next to the water fountain and I lean against the wall, pretending to stare at the drawing. Tiny Eric asks why I need good luck anyway. “I just want a bit of luck, it’s no crime,” I respond, blinking because my eyes are beginning to feel like tiny soldiers are pricking at them with bayonets.