Heck Superhero

by Martine Leavitt

  Mr. Bandras switched off the radio. “So, Heck, why weren’t you at school today, instead of getting into trouble?” Mr. B. didn’t look all that happy.

  “I was sick. It was a stomach thing,” Heck said. That was almost true.

  “That’s why taxpayers pay for school toilets,” Mr. B. said.

  Nope, Heck thought, Mr. B. was not happy, not happy at all.

  “You need to be at school, Heck, not out digging graves for small furry animals.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was it a stomach thing yesterday?”

  “No, sir, I had a … rash.”

  “A mess of plagues at your house, isn’t there?” Mr. B. said. His face was getting redder.

  “Sir, your blood pressure …”

  “If you’re concerned about my blood pressure, don’t make me have to pick you up at police stations!”

  Heck didn’t answer. He decided he would not rescue Mr. B. when aliens abducted the man to perform their fiendish experiments on him.

  “You haven’t got it easy, Heck. I know that. But you’re not the only kid in the world who’s had it tough. Skipping school and getting into trouble is no way to make it better.”

  “Yes, sir,” Heck said, but he was thinking Mr. B. didn’t really understand the situation. He had to rescue his mom out of hypertime. The longer she was there, the closer he got to the dimension of Your Mom Is Gone.

  “You’re thinking I don’t really understand, aren’t you?” Mr. B. said.

  Some kind of mind-meld trick.

  “I do understand,” Mr. B. continued. “I understand that skipping school is selfish. And getting into trouble like this is selfish. How will your mom feel when she finds out where you’ve been today? And she will find out, because I’m going to tell her.”

  Heck’s head suddenly felt too heavy for his spindly neck. He couldn’t figure out why, since his head was obviously pretty empty and shouldn’t weigh too much. Mr. B. was right. The worst thing in the world he could do would be to get himself in trouble. That would push him closer to the dimension of Your Mom Is Gone for Good.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Mr. B. must have been able to hear the acknowledgment of idiocy in his voice, because the teacher’s voice was a lot softer when he spoke again.

  “You’ve been drawing superheroes again,” Mr. B. said. “Every time things are out of control for you, you start drawing superheroes and you stop producing artwork.”

  Heck felt his face flush all the way down to the three hairs he had recently sprouted on his chest. True. All true.

  “Comic art is artwork,” he protested weakly.

  Mr. B. ignored him. “One day I see you drawing superheroes, later I find out you flunked your math test that day. Another day I see you drawing superheroes, and come to find out you and Spence are on the outs. Next day you two are best buddies again, and you start producing this artwork. Okay, it’s astigmatic—”

  “What does that mean?” Heck asked.

  “You factor the earth’s axis into everything you draw. But I’m going to tell you something, Heck. I’ve been teaching for twenty-four years. For twenty-four years I’ve been telling myself that my work is meaningful, that I’ve been enriching the lives of children by introducing them to the soul-expanding visual arts. Maybe I’ve done that. But some of the kids I taught my first year are turning thirty-seven this year. They are clerks and salesmen and mechanics and doctors. None of them go to art galleries, never mind pick up a paintbrush. Sometimes they dazzle their kids and draw a really good horse. Are you hearing me, Heck? If I had a nickel for every time a student came back and said, ‘Thanks for enriching my life with the visual arts,’ I’d have a whole fifteen cents. I’ve spent fifty-one thousand eight hundred and forty hours of my diabetic and therefore shortened lifespan babysitting art students.”

  He pulled up and parked in front of Heck’s ex-apartment building. He sighed. “Then you came along, Heck. Once in a lifetime a student like you. Someone with art eyes. It was worth twenty-four years to get you. Now, I know you, and I know something’s going on.”

  Tell him. Tell him, tell him, tellhim tellhim tellhimtellhimtell—

  “Everything’s okay. Thank you, sir.”

  “You need money? You got groceries at home? Off the record. No one but me has to know.”

  “We’re fine, sir.” Heck climbed out of the car carefully. If he bumped his head all the air in there would leak out, creating a vacuum. “Thanks, Mr. B.,” he said. He meant it. Thank you, Mr. B., for bringing me to my senses, or my knees, or maybe both because my sense is in my knees …

  Mr. Bandras got out, too. “I’ll go in with you, Heck, leave a note for your mom.”

  Heck’s heart screamed, causing his kidneys to faint and his bladder to give up the ghost. Fortunately there was nothing in his system but tuna sandwich. “No,” Heck said as calmly as he could. “You’d better not come in. The place is saturated with germs, big juicy germs. I told you, I’ve been sick. Don’t I look sick?” Heck tried to look as sick as he could. It wasn’t hard, since it was making him feel a bit sick to lie, and since the bacteria in his teeth were dining on his juicy tooth pulp with pointy forks and knives.

  “You look terrible.” Mr. Bandras considered Heck for a moment. “Remember, Heck, when you told me about … about that comic book artist—what was his name?”

  “Oh, yeah, that guy,” Heck said. Leave, he was thinking. Please just leave.

  “Remember you told me he was one of the greats? That he was an innovator in the way comics are drawn?”

  Heck stopped nodding. “You mean Will Eisner?”

  “That’s it. Eisner.”

  “You remember me telling you about him?” Heck asked.

  “Of course I do. You told me that everything used to be drawn inside the panels. This Eisner was the first to break outside the borders.”

  Heck was impressed. “Pretty good memory for someone your age,” he said.

  Mr. Bandras spoke over him. “That’s right. Will Eisner. You be like him, Heck. You do a little border-breaking of your own. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.” He did know what he meant. He meant not to be framed in by people’s low expectations of him. He meant for Heck to be bigger and better than what the picture said right now.

  Mr. B. relaxed. “You have an assignment due tomorrow. Self-portrait. No superhero stuff. You’ll be in school tomorrow, right?”

  “I should be,” he said. Yes, he should be.

  Mr. Bandras nodded curtly. “No superheroes. Self-portrait.”

  Heck nodded.

  “All right. And if you’re not at school, I’m coming to your place to check on you.” Before he got back in the car he pointed. “And don’t forget, the semester portfolio is due Friday,” he said.

  Heck waved as Mr. Bandras drove away. It was Tuesday. He had three days before he had to tell Mr. B. that all his work was gone. It was probably being sold on the homework black market at this very minute.

  He felt guilty. Guilty for lying and guilty for not going to school. Maybe his mom had worked something out. He needed to call Dierdre, but he’d given his change away for popcorn. Why had all his Good Deeds gone for naught? Was he somehow trapped in a negative zone, heading for a life of hard-boiled crime? Had he swapped souls with his diametric double and become trapped in a world where Good Deeds only had bad outcomes?

  Then he remembered the five dollars that boy had shoved in his pocket.

  He pulled it out and gazed at it.

  Wow.

  It was all okay.

  The Forces for Good in the world were alive and well.

  He bought a Happy Meal and gave his toy to the first child he saw. Then he phoned Dierdre.

  It rang a long time. On the last ring Heck remembered she worked the night shift at the casino and she’d be sleeping.

  “Hello?” she mumbled.

  “Dierdre? Dierdre, it’s me, Heck.”

&nbs
p; She dropped the receiver and picked it up. “Who’s dead?”

  “Dead? Someone’s dead?” Heck said, his heart going from zero to light speed.

  “I’m asking. What time is it?” He heard her light up a cigarette.

  “It’s almost five-thirty. I wouldn’t have called, but I really need to talk to my mom.”

  Dierdre yawned. “She’s not here, buddy.”

  Heck felt the spin in every one of the elementary particles of his brain. “Not … there?”

  Dierdre slammed the receiver three times on something hard, then came back on the line. “Echo in my phone,” she muttered.

  Heck changed ears. His spit was the consistency of goo. “Well, have you seen her lately?”

  “Yeah. She was over yesterday. Wait a minute—you mean she hasn’t come home yet?”

  Heck didn’t answer and Dierdre didn’t fill up the silence.

  “Hypertime, I think,” Heck said finally, low and soft.

  Dierdre swore, but at least all the sleep was gone from her voice. “I should have known. She didn’t talk much, just said a couple of times what a great kid you were …”

  “Did she stay overnight?”

  “No. I sent her home, told her she shouldn’t leave you alone like that in the apartment.” Dierdre sucked on her cigarette like she was dying for breath and there was a superior form of oxygen in there. She swore again.

  “Dierdre, do you think she’d be with that guy she went out with a while ago? She told Levi to forward her check there.”

  “You never know what she’s gonna do. Are you okay, though? I’m going to call the cops if you’re not okay.”

  “Mom would hate that.”

  “Okay. I’ll wait a day. You call me tomorrow and we’ll talk. You got milk and bread in the house? Listen, I’ll come by with some groceries, okay?”

  “I’m okay, Dierdre. Everything’s okay.”

  Dierdre understood maybe even better than Heck about his mom, how she was a good mom, she just had this hypertime issue sometimes when things weren’t okay. Sometimes, when people found out about Heck and his mom, they judged her. But Dierdre knew his mom would never enter the dimension of Evil Motherhood. She went instead to the dimension where you got to be a little girl and wear watches that never said it was time to grow up.

  He looked at the money left in his hand. Which would make him feel better, a chocolate bar or phoning Spence?

  He dialed Spence’s number.

  Spence picked up the phone quickly. “Why weren’t you in school again today?”

  “I was in jail,” Heck said. “Solitary confinement and no doughnuts.”

  “Yeah, where all truants end up, but usually not so fast. You’re joking, right?”

  “It was a case of mistaken identity,” Heck said, which was almost true.

  “So, seriously, are you sick or something?”

  “Flat,” Heck said.

  “Again?”

  “Still.” He knew what the answer was going to be, but he asked anyway. “I don’t suppose my mom called?”

  “Your mom?”

  “You know, the birth parent?”

  Spence said, “Why would she phone for you here on a school night?” After a pause he said, his voice lowered, “You mean—are you supposed to be staying at my house? Is that why she phoned Sunday night?”

  Heck reached into his pocket and fingered his sketching pencil.

  “Speak!” Spence said. After a moment he said, “I mean it, Heck! If—if you want me to be your friend, you’d better spill.”

  Heck had to tell him before he drowned in dark matter. “She probably thought the landlord was just trying to scare her when he kept giving her notice. She didn’t even open the last couple. When I was at your house she came home and—and the locks were changed.”

  There was a long silence, a silence so deep it had suction to it.

  Finally Spence said, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “The no-sleepovers-on-school-nights policy,” Heck said.

  Spence spluttered, then screeched, “It didn’t occur to you that this might be different?”

  Heck could hear Spence’s eyes going red-hole. Spence was the nicest guy in the world as long as his eyes didn’t go red-hole. Heck admired pure mad. He could never unflatten his nerves enough to get that way, though.

  “Okay, okay,” Spence said, “so where have you been staying?”

  “In the parking lot,” Heck said. “Mr. Hill’s ’58 Thunderbird.”

  No answer. “It isn’t that bad,” Heck said. “Hello?”

  “What are you, hard-wired for self-destruction?” Spence said finally. “Why didn’t you talk to me? I thought we were like, you know, acquaintances, you know, on speaking terms.”

  “I couldn’t,” Heck said. “What if it wasn’t just one night? Which it wasn’t. She said she’d call and she didn’t. How long do you think I could stay there before your mom started asking questions? My mom’s been in trouble before. People just don’t understand how she and I work.”

  “I’m telling the police,” Spence threatened.

  “Sure. Get my mom arrested and I go to a group home and share a room with someone who crawls into my bed at night.”

  Spence said nothing. Heck could hear him gnawing on his fingernails, thinking. “It’ll be bad for your mom, this whole apartment thing.”

  “Don’t bite,” Heck said. “Hey, man, everything’s okay. I’ve got it all worked out.” He loved it when Spence worried for him. It made him feel stronger. “The microverse is on my side.”

  “No. Please. Not that again.” Spence swore. He had practiced swearing and now he was getting pretty good at it.

  Heck raised his voice. “It works. You know it works every time.”

  “No, I don’t know any such thing.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No.”

  “Yes!” Heck said. “Remember Jennie Abram and the fifty-dollar bill?”

  “You know that was a fluke.”

  “You admitted yourself that shoveling Mrs. Tingle’s walk brought that storm that closed the school.”

  “I was tired of arguing with you about it. I never did think they had anything to do with each other,” Spence said. “And don’t even mention the cat in the tree.”

  Heck didn’t say anything. That was one of his favorites.

  Finally Spence said, “So what should we do? You can’t sleep outside and hang out all day. You’ll end up in the Speed Force or something.”

  “Too late,” Heck muttered to himself.

  Spence was silent a moment. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did you say?”

  Heck said, “I’ll never do it again.”

  After another silence, Spence said very calmly, “So you did the stupid thing, huh? You did Velocity Nine?”

  Heck didn’t answer.

  “You’ve joined the stupid crowd, become one of the stupid.”

  “I know,” Heck said. “I won’t—”

  “Didn’t we talk about the Hi-Ho stupidity of that?”

  “It’s just that my teeth—”

  “But don’t worry,” Spence said, his voice rising. “You’re so smart you could become the Zen Guru of Stupid. You could become the Royal Emperor King of Stupid.”

  Heck let him yell himself out. When Spence took a breath, Heck said, “Wow.”

  “Wow?”

  “Yes, wow. I mean, wow, thanks.”

  Spence said nothing.

  “I mean, wow, that helped!” Heck said loudly. “That was just what I needed to hear. I’m cured. You could, you know, take that to the drug-addicted everywhere. Tell them they’re stupid and they’ll get their lives back on the straight and narrow. Tell them they’re stupid and that’ll help them get their act together and their heads on straight. They will forever give you the credit. You could, you know, start a rehab based on that. You could call it the Stupid Cure.”

  Heck was talking to a dial tone.<
br />
  He slammed the phone down.

  He’d show Spence. He was capable of taking care of himself. He’d get so topworld it would make Spence dizzy to look up at him.

  No one could figure out why Spence hung out with Heck, never mind why they were best friends. Spence himself was probably wondering that right now. But maybe it was time to show Spence and the whole world that Heck was a power to be reckoned with.

  Heck leaned against the phone.

  Stop it. Spence was right. He was stupid. He should go talk to Spence’s mom and trust her.

  But. That would take care of food and where to sleep at night. It didn’t solve the problem of his mom.

  He would go to Spence’s as soon as he found his mom. He’d ask the Carters to put them both up for a few days.

  Think. Where would she go? Sam’s? After he thought about it a minute, he decided no. Sam had wanted to get all serious, and his mom didn’t feel that way. Sam would be her last resort. Where else? To a shelter or something? He’d heard in school about a shelter, but he didn’t know where it was.

  He walked the streets, looking for a shelter, or maybe someone who looked like he would know where it was. What would he say to her when he found her? Let’s go stay at the Carters’ for a while? No, she’d never go.

  When he passed the Art Store he saw that it was still open, and the Help Wanted poster was still in the window. “Temporary gallery assistant required. Duties include facilitating installation of exhibition for Young Artists Contest. Also, assistance in coordination of events and help in developing strategies that will increase attendance. Could lead to permanent position.”

  Heck didn’t really understand it, but he was pretty sure he could do it.

  The Forces for Good in the world were at work.

  “Successful applicant will have customer service skills and understand visual art practice.”

  That’s me, Heck thought.

  He stepped into the gallery and looked around.