While everybody was busy talking to the TV reporters, I took the chance to get away.
In half a blink, I was outside Mrs. Connor’s office. The door was open, which was lucky. Mrs. Connor was behind her desk, which was not so lucky.
“Freddie?” Mrs. Connor called when she saw me. “Did your teacher send you?”
“No.” I put one purple shoe inside the room. “I just came for a visit.”
Mrs. Connor was typing at her computer. “Sit down,” she said.
There was a round table on the left. It had markers and coloring sheets. Was this a clue? Did my principal paint the squirrel with a purple marker?
“Do you like to color?” I asked Mrs. Connor.
She looked up from her computer. “Sometimes.”
“What about squirrels?” I asked. “Do you like them?”
“No, Freddie.” Mrs. Connor stood up at her desk. “I do not.”
“Why?” Squirrels had cute little faces and whiskers that twitched just like my guinea pig, Claude the Second.
“Squirrels are a nuisance,” she said with a frown.
Grown-ups who like little kids should like little animals, too. What was wrong with Mrs. Connor?
“So tell me why you came to visit.” Mrs. Connor sat down at the table and picked up a purple marker, like she wanted to color something. I didn’t want it to be me.
“No reason,” I said, jumping up.
It sure felt good to know I could get away fast.
After school, I went home, called my mom, and took care of my own little animal, Claude the Second.
CRUNCH! My guinea pig chomped on his carrot while I watched.
What could make his brown fur change color? He ate carrots every day without turning orange. Once, he chewed part of a magazine that got too close to his cage. That didn’t change his color, either. If Claude the Second turned purple like the squirrel, it would have to be from something he touched, like paint or markers. Mrs. Connor—the only squirrel hater I knew—was looking guiltier by the minute.
I put on my silver goggles and looked in the mirror. Jason was right. I did look like a crime fighter. Whoever gave me my goggles wanted me to be a hero. I left 29G, ready for action.
The first place I went was Starwood Elementary. Maybe I could catch Mrs. Connor in the act.
I ran around the school, with my eyes open wide behind my goggles, looking carefully at everything. Workers had taken the tree off the gym roof and put up blue plastic. Suddenly, it started moving like someone under bed covers. A second later, the purple squirrel wiggled out and dashed down the side of the building.
I followed him through the woods, past the train station again. This time, the squirrel didn’t stop to visit the man in the yellow vest. He hurried down the trail I used to see my mom’s train come in from downtown. I looked at my watch. Mom’s train wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes.
When we got to the bridge, the purple squirrel stopped to check out a paper bag on the ground. My Zapato Power smoke was still swirling around me and I could see his fur clearly, even from a distance. There were spots of gray. If Mrs. Connor did this, she was a lousy painter.
The purple squirrel looked up. Our eyes met. For a moment he looked just like Claude the Second when he’s begging for a carrot. Then he ran off. From the bridge, I could see him scamper up a big tree near the tracks. The tree looked funny, like it was leaning over, sick. I remembered what Mr. Vaslov said about the storm and bad winds hurting trees. Then I heard: Crash! Crack!
The big tree fell, and the purple squirrel jumped off. I didn’t even think about chasing him. I had a much bigger problem. The tree was lying across the tracks. A train would be coming through soon. My mom’s train! And when it hit that tree, it would crash!
7. Stop the Train!
What should I do? I wasn’t big enough to move the tree. Somebody had to stop the train! Who?
I remembered the man in the yellow vest. If the squirrel visited him every day, he probably worked at the train station. Maybe he could help.
Most of the time when I raced, it was just a game. This time, my mom and everyone else on the train depended on me.
I stopped at the train station in a cloud of smoke. Where was the man in the yellow vest? My Zapato Power eyes spotted him just beyond the gate. You needed money to go through the gate and I didn’t have any. But I did have super bounce. I pressed the second button on my wristband.
BOING!
The man in the yellow vest took a step back as I landed in a puff of smoke on his toes.
“Help!” I cried. “There’s a tree on the tracks!
“Where?”
After I told him, he ran to tell another man in a blue uniform with a badge.
“A tree on the tracks!” The other man shouted. “How do you know this?”
The man in the yellow vest pointed at me. “See the kid over there? With the purple shoes and the silver goggles?”
“Stop the train!” I pleaded. “It’s going to crash!”
“We will,” the man in the blue uniform said.
They picked up their walkie-talkies and gave all kinds of orders. I didn’t stick around. The action was back at the tree down on the track halfway between this station and downtown. Could they keep my mom’s train from crashing?
Yes! I reached the bridge just in time to see the train wheels screech to a stop. A man in a uniform jumped out to look at the fallen tree over the tracks. He put his hand on his heart and opened his mouth wide. I watched with my mouth opened, too, in a wide smile.
Sirens whistled and all kinds of officers dashed through the woods and into the train. They didn’t let anybody off. I waited and wondered about my mom. Was she scared?
“It won’t be too much longer, Freddie,” a deep voice said.
I turned around to see Mr. Vaslov. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your mom called to check on you. She couldn’t get you, so she called me.”
“Is she okay?”
Mr. Vaslov nodded. “Everybody is.”
“Zapato Power really helped today,” I said. I told Mr. Vaslov what happened.
“You make me proud I invented it.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
Finally, the driver went to the other end of the train and drove it back downtown. My mom and all the people on the train were safe. And I was a hero.
But I hadn’t told the man in the yellow vest my name. Nobody knew who saved the train, except me and Mr. Vaslov.
8. A Hero (At Last)
Mr. Vaslov drove me to the downtown station to pick up my mom. We hugged and cried and said lots of mushy stuff. Then Mom looked at me.
“Freddie? Why are you wearing silver goggles?”
My mom had just been in an almost train wreck. It didn’t seem like the best time to tell her I’d gotten a gift from a stranger in Ohio, so I started slowly.
“They came in the mail,” I said.
“From Uncle Jorge?” Mom asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Did he move to Ohio?”
“No.” Mom laughed. “But he told me he was ordering you some super goggles on the Internet.”
“So that’s why they came from Ohio!” It all made sense now. “Uncle Jorge bought me goggles for summer camp.”
“You’re a lucky guy!” Mr. Vaslov patted my back and grinned. We both knew I would be using my silver goggles for more than just swimming lessons.
And another job was waiting for me. Could I find the purple squirrel before Mrs. Connor did?
The next morning, all I wanted to do was rescue the squirrel. But I wasn’t sure how, and I was stuck in my desk at school.
“Check the schedule on the board,” Mrs. Lane said. “Math is first today, then music.”
During math, I thought about the squirrel. Was he at school? I listened carefully. No one was screaming. That meant he wasn’t running in the halls.
Could he be somewhere else? Where had I seen him? I saw him once at the recess door, once in the ki
ndergarten hall, and twice coming out of the hole in the gym roof. Maybe he liked the gym. And the gym was just around the corner from music. I slipped away, as the other kids went inside.
Outside the gym, I saw little purple dots. This had to be a clue. I went through the door.
The big room was too quiet, and the hole in the roof wasn’t pretty. No one had come in here since the tree fell. On the basketball court, I saw more purple dots. They looked like tiny feet, small enough to belong to a guinea pig—or a squirrel.
The tracks led to a heavy red curtain at the back of the gym. It was the stage. Mrs. Lane took us there sometimes for big art projects, when we needed room to spread out. Last week, my class made a teepee on the stage with a huge piece of brown paper and lots of paint. That was before the hole in the roof made the gym a dark and spooky place.
Tap! Tap! I could hear my feet echo on the floor. Tap! Tap! Wait a minute! My sneakers didn’t sound like that. Somebody else was in the gym! I was being followed.
“Freddie!” Mrs. Connor turned on the light. “What are you doing here?”
Sometimes superheroes have to race to a rescue and sometimes they have to stay put. I faced Mrs. Connor.
“Looking for the purple squirrel,” I said.
The principal frowned. “We already talked about this, Freddie. I told you I would take care of that pest.”
I knew it! Mrs. Connor hated the squirrel, and it was up to me to save him.
Could I distract her? I pressed the top button of my wristband and dashed behind the stage curtain.
I expected to find a purple squirrel, not a purple mess. There were tiny purple footprints everywhere—up, down, and all around. They led to the far corner of the stage where I found a squirrel’s nest and a chewed plastic bottle in a puddle of purple paint. The squirrel was like my guinea pig who chomped on everything he could. Claude the Second would make a mess like this if he didn’t have to live in a cage.
“Don’t get too close, Freddie!” Mrs. Connor called. She was behind me again, but I wasn’t worried anymore. I’d figured it out.
Mrs. Connor didn’t paint the squirrel. He painted himself.
“Do you think it’s gone?” Mrs. Connor whispered.
We heard a rustle and turned around to see the purple squirrel. He raised his purple paws like he was begging.
“EEEEEEE!”
Mrs. Connor threw her arms in the air and ran off the stage. Her face looked like she’d just seen a werewolf.
That’s when I figured out something else. Mrs. Connor didn’t hate squirrels. She was afraid of them.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Connor. I know what to do.”
First, I shut the gym doors.
Now the squirrel had only one way out—through the big hole in the roof. “BOO!” I stamped my foot. He climbed up to the ceiling and disappeared.
Mrs. Connor walked up to me. Her face looked better, like someone looking at a puppy, not a werewolf.
“Thanks, Freddie,” she said. “You’re a hero.”
I smiled. That was exactly what I wanted to be.
ZAPATO POWER: FREDDIE RAMOS TAKES OFF
One day Freddie Ramos comes home from school and finds a strange box just for him. What’s inside? ZAPATO POWER—shoes that change Freddie’s life by giving him super speed!
ZAPATO POWER: FREDDIE RAMOS SPRINGS INTO ACTION
Freddie Ramos is back, now with even more ZAPATO POWER! Can he figure out how to use his zapatos in time to save a friend?
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Illustrations © 2011 by Miguel Benitez
Copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline Jules
978-1-4804-6200-7
Published by Albert Whitman & Company
250 South Northwest Highway, Suite 320
Park Ridge, Illinois 60068
www.albertwhitman.com
Distributed in 2013 by Open Road Distribution
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Freddie Ramos Zooms to the Rescue Page 2