The Super Freak

by Brian Falkner

  Don’t overdo it Dad, I thought to myself, but said nothing out loud.

  Dad – the Hunchback Robber – raced out into the street and, in an unusually arty bit of film work for this kind of show, slowly dissolved into nothing as he ran down the main street of Orewa.

  ‘And, as usual,’ Sergeant Wilkinson droned, ‘the Hunchback Robber just vanished into thin air.’

  Ben and I applauded Dad’s performance, while April just went back to her chatter. My mind was busy, though. Something about the way they had made the robber disappear. As if he was some kind of super-criminal. He wasn’t a super-criminal though, he was just a thug. Now if it had been me … with my special power … hmmm.

  ‘That lightning is getting closer,’ Ben said as there was another flash. ‘Do you want to come up to the power pylon on Manuka Ridge?’

  I stared at him, and April paused and looked at him curiously.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re not going out anywhere,’ April said shortly, and went back to her conversation.

  Ben said, ‘It’s the highest thing around for miles. It attracts lightning like a magnet. It’s pretty spectacular.’

  ‘You’re not going out anywhere in this storm,’ April said again, playing Mother and scarcely breaking into her phone call to do so.

  Up till that point, the idea of going out into a raging storm to watch lightning had been the last thing I wanted to do. But once my annoying sister had outlawed it … well, that changed everything.

  ‘You’re not the boss of me,’ I said angrily.

  ‘I am while Mum and Dad are out.’

  She somehow seemed to be able to carry on two conversations at once.

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  Ben shrugged, and shook his head silently. It’s not worth it, he was saying.

  I narrowed my eyes and stared at April. She was blabbering on about some friend of hers at school. It wasn’t fair. She could do whatever she wanted and I always had to do what other people told me to do.

  I pictured her brain sitting inside her head. Actually, to be truthful, I pictured it as about the size of a plum, which was probably a little unfair. I’m sure it was at least the size of a grapefruit.

  I waited for a gap in her conversation, until she was getting ready to speak. Then I painted in vivid flashes across her (plum-sized) brain.

  Let’s get married. Let’s get married. Let’s get married.

  ‘Let’s get married,’ April said suddenly into the phone. Just as suddenly she turned bright red and nearly dropped the phone. I could just about hear the shocked silence at the other end of the line.

  ‘Um. I don’t mean.’ It was hilarious; I’d never seen her so flustered. ‘I’m not sure why I said it … No really. I didn’t … I mean … well …’

  I left her trying to wriggle out of that and motioned to Ben. She didn’t even notice us as we left.

  NINE

  THE LIGHTNING TOWER

  Ben had a really cool torch. One of those long black ones like security guards carry. His was made by Smith & Wesson, who I thought made guns. It looked a bit like a gun. It was heavy as anything and I wondered why he carried it around in his backpack, but didn’t ask.

  I grabbed Dad’s yellow torch from the garage. The torch was clipped to a pegboard with all of his tools. Every tool had a place, neatly outlined in black ink so you would know where to put it back once you had used it. I flashed the torch on quickly to make sure it worked (it did, barely), then unlocked the back garage door.

  Gumbo whined at me, wanting to come, but just then another searing flash of lightning lit up the windows of the garage, and I swear he went white as a ghost and disappeared back into the house whimpering.

  ‘Chicken!’ I called after him, not feeling so brave myself.

  The wind whipped the door out of my hand as I went to close it behind us and slammed it shut, almost taking my fingers off in the process. The whole house seemed to shake with the impact. Then there was another brilliant flash of light followed a few seconds later by a huge peal of thunder, and this time the house really did shake. I could see the image of the streetlights in the garage windows dissolve into a million fractured pieces, like a reflection in a pool of water after you have tossed in a pebble.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go out in this?’ I asked Ben, but he was busy looking at his watch, huddled into his rain coat as if trying to hide from the weather. His coat was really cool, with fluoro strips, like those the cops wear.

  ‘Three seconds,’ he said. ‘That means it’s just a few kilometres away, and still getting closer. We’ll have to hurry.’

  He trotted off into the storm, the light from his flashlight cutting a laser beam through the rain, and called back over his shoulder, ‘You can’t photograph a lightning strike on a fine day!’

  We were at the top of the hill when lightning flashed again, and from here we could just see the tip of the pylon jutting above the dark trees, silhouetted against the brilliant, but momentary, blaze of light.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Ben called, metres in front of me, but easily visible in his bright coat. I grabbed the tip of my hood and pulled it low over my face. Even so, the pelting rain found its way inside and ran down the sides of my neck.

  Ben seemed to relish it all, turning his face into the rain and cackling like an old witch. I just kept thinking that water must have somehow found its way into his circuits, and his system was going haywire.

  It wasn’t until we reached the bus shelter on the corner of Ridge Road that I saw what Ben was up to.

  It was a bus shelter with glass walls and an opening which faced the massive structure of the pylon. The weather was blowing against the back of the shelter, so it was a huge relief to step into some relative warmth and dryness.

  Across the road, in the middle of a cleared field, the power pylon impassively faced the weather, impervious to its effects. It was huge. One of the mighty soldiers carrying the high voltage wires across the countryside and down to the Glenfield substation. It started at a four-cornered base and, a little like the Eiffel tower, narrowed as it stretched towards the sky. Near the top, three hefty arms reached out from either side, gripping tightly to the lines with huge ridged insulators.

  The wires were almost invisible against the dark sky, except where they passed close to streetlights. There, the sheen of the lights on the wires made rhythmical dancing patterns against the blackness of the sky.

  It gave me an odd feeling, watching the pylon. It was strong, masterful, brimming with energy and power, yet, at the same time, strangely powerless. It had no say in its own destiny. It had no free will. It just stood there and did its job, facing the elements.

  ‘How do you know the lightning’s going to strike the pylon tonight?’ I asked, shouting over the booming of the rain against the glass wall behind us.

  ‘I don’t,’ Ben replied. ‘But it’s the highest thing for miles around, and the lightning’s really close. So it’s good odds.’

  ‘Have you done this before?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘Five times,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never got a photo yet.’

  Lightning flashed again and the thunder followed almost immediately.

  ‘Got to hurry,’ Ben said. ‘It’s right on top of us!’ He pulled a tiny metal shape out of his backpack and unfolded it into a full-sized tripod. He had all the toys, that boy. His parents must have been loaded. I didn’t even have an ordinary camera.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, as he screwed his camera on to the top of the device.

  ‘Why not what?’

  ‘Why didn’t you get the photo?’

  ‘Four times the lightning didn’t strike the tower, and the other time it did but I missed the shot.’

  I shone my torch on his face and he grinned at me. ‘Sixth time lucky!’

  ‘But how do you know when to take the photo?’

  ‘I don’t. I just set the camera on a low aperture and leave the sh
utter open for half a minute at a time.’

  As he spoke, he lined the camera up at the pylon, making a few adjustments, and pressed the shutter button.

  I stared at the camera in silence for a long moment, until it finally clicked off. Ben immediately pressed the button again and, even as he did so, there was a searing flash of light that seemed to be all around us, turning night into day and, at the same moment, an enormous explosion of thunder rattled the glass panels of the bus shelter so violently I was afraid they would shatter.

  I thought the world had erupted. I thought I had been caught in the middle of an explosion. I thought I was dead.

  Ben, on the other hand, was just about jumping out of his skin. ‘I think I got it! I think I got it!’

  ‘Can’t you check?’ I said in a kind of daze, my ears still ringing from the explosion.

  He shook his head, and I realised that he had already pressed the shutter again. ‘I’m taking another in case it happens again.’

  ‘But I thought lightning never strikes in the same place twice.’

  Ben laughed. ‘Lightning strikes at the tallest object. It’ll hit the tower again unless it has already moved too far away.’

  There was another flash of light and a roaring freight train of thunder, but this came from further down the valley and seemed a bit less like the end of the world.

  Ben nodded. ‘It’s passed by. Let’s have a look then.’

  He wound the camera off the tripod, breathless with excitement, and pressed a couple of buttons on the back.

  The pylon flashed up on the little screen, soaring into the night sky, a towering pattern of black rods, silhouetted in the light of the jagged streak of heaven that speared it from above. It was awesome, breathtaking. The lightning bolt itself was a multi-fingered river of light, jagged and deadly, frozen in a split second of time on Ben’s camera.

  What a contrast! The pylon: powerful, yet powerless. The lightning bolt: sleek and deadly, free to roam the sky, obeying no rules, striking where and when it pleased.

  ‘Wow,’ I said slowly, comprehending for the first time what the struggle up the steep road in the storm had been all about. ‘Wow!’

  Ben was beaming in the light of my torch. ‘We got it, we got it!’

  It occurred to me that he had included me in his excitement. I had done nothing, and yet I was still part of the success. I guess that’s what friends are all about.

  I turned and stared down over the hillside. The lightning flashed another time, still nearby, and the brilliance of it illuminated all the dark recesses of my mind, giving me a sudden clarity, throwing thoughts into stark relief.

  At that moment I knew, beyond doubt, what to do with my strange and unique power.

  TEN

  THE DREAM

  Spending school holidays with a friend was infinitely more fun than spending them alone. I had known that, once upon a time but, somehow, I had forgotten it.

  I had planned to read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy during the break, but got less than halfway through. Instead, Ben and I spent the whole time playing, exploring, riding bikes, and trying to think of ways to outwit Blocker and save my life.

  We would text each other to work out where to meet up.

  Of course, Ben’s cellphone was much more flash than mine. His was a really cool new one, with changeable face-plates, polyphonic ringtones and a built in camera.

  Mine was a three-times hand-me-down. It had been Dad’s originally, then Mum’s, then April’s, and only then, the next time Dad upgraded his phone, did I get it. It was old and clunky; I wasn’t allowed to make calls on it unless it was an emergency. But it was OK for text.

  Those holidays were the best of my life, despite the threat of Blocker hanging over my head.

  The Sunday night before term began, I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating.

  It took me a moment to realise where I was. The dream had seemed so real.

  I had dreamed I was an electron, whizzing along one of those high-voltage powerlines. Completely powerless to do anything but follow the path of the wire. Unable to stop, go back, or change course. It was a path I couldn’t predict, didn’t understand, and had no control over.

  Then the dream changed and, instead of a wire, it was a travelator, the one at the Glenfield Mall, except it was bright red. I was on it, and waiting for me at the other end was Blocker, grinning evilly as the travelator carried me slowly, but unavoidably, towards him.

  I looked back, and Erica McDonald was standing there, aloof, icy. Gradually getting smaller and smaller.

  Then the travelator suddenly turned into a giant pavlova with raspberries, and I woke up.

  I don’t know why dreams do that.

  ELEVEN

  FIRST CRIME

  Life is a bit like a book, if you ask me.

  The first page is when you are born and the last page is when you die. In between are a whole bunch of chapters: some good and some bad; some funny and some sad.

  The way I coped when things weren’t going well was by saying to myself, ‘Don’t worry, the next chapter will be better.’ And somehow it always was.

  But this particular chapter in my life was turning out to be one of the worst. In fact, it was a nightmare. First week back at school and everywhere I turned I seemed to run into Blocker or one of his mates: in the corridors; outside the school gate in the morning; even just harmlessly walking across the top field. There they were, Blocker or Phil Domane or Emilio, the other empty-headed thug that he hung out with. They didn’t touch me. They just smirked, or sneered evilly at me.

  On Wednesday at lunchtime my mobile phone beeped with a text message. It was just Mum telling me she would be late home. But I looked up from reading the message to see Blocker and his mates killing themselves laughing in front of me.

  ‘Is that a mobile phone or a brick?’ Blocker guffawed.

  Phil contributed, ‘Does it run on electricity? Or do you have to keep shovelling coal in somewhere?’

  My phone was old and a bit big, but not that big. I shoved it away in my bag and ignored them.

  Before too long I would be laughing at their mobile phones, because I would have the latest, smallest model available. I was going to be rich, rich and powerful. I would be the lightning bolt, not the power pylon.

  I was going to become a villain. And not just any villain. I would become a supervillain, like those in the comic books. Not some lame superhero and not some thug like the Hunchback Robber.

  With my power I could do what I wanted. Get whatever I wanted. A digital camera, a cool tripod thing. Anything.

  A supervillain. That was me. I had the power. I had the desire. I just needed a name. And maybe a costume, although I wasn’t too sure about that part, especially if it involved wearing my undies on the outside of my clothes!

  All supervillains have names. Batman had The Riddler and the Joker to deal with. Superman had Lex Luthor and Austin Powers had Dr Evil. That’s what I needed; a cool evil name so that I could leave little cryptic messages for the police to decipher as I embarked on my life of crime. I kept my mind working on it. It took my thoughts away from other things.

  I had already planned my first crime. Nothing fancy. Just a simple little deed to test out my powers and make sure I could get away with it. Something that, if I was caught, would not land me in jail, or get me expelled from school. That thought terrified me. I had been through so many schools in such a short time; the thought of another shift was unbearable.

  I planned the crime in the school library, sitting at a long wooden table by myself. There wasn’t a lot to plan, but I knew that master criminals planned their crimes carefully. I planned mine with an encyclopaedia of New Zealand wildlife open in front of me so it would look like I was studying. My eyes were on a takahe but my mind was in the school tuck shop.

  The school tuckshop sold pies and chips, soft drinks and ice blocks, sausage rolls and rockets and all kinds of other food that I was generally not allowed except o
n very special occasions because of the numbers.

  What numbers?

  The numbers.

  Next time you pick up a bottle of soft drink or an ice block or some kind of pre-packaged food, turn it over and have a look at the ingredients. You’ll see sugar, lecithin, cocoa, peanuts and all sorts of things that they put into convenience food for kids. And, usually, you’ll see a few numbers. The list will look something like this:

  Contains: Sugar, lecithin, wheat, sesame seed oil, 436, 328, cocoa, peanuts.

  About two years earlier my mum had discovered numbers. Numbers were chemicals, and heaven only knew what effect those chemicals were having on children today. I think she imagined future generations of kids with two heads, who glow in the dark.

  If it was the sort of ingredient that didn’t have a name, only a number, then it wasn’t going in my mouth, according to my mum. Which pretty much put the tuckshop off limits.

  So, this was my first crime. The great tuckshop raid.

  Most of my planning wasn’t about how I was going to commit the crime. It was how I was going to get away with it, and particularly how I was going to act if I got caught out. Like it was all a big mistake. Oh, did I do that? I wasn’t thinking. Didn’t have my head screwed on straight today.

  On Wednesday, the day of the tuckshop raid, I took my packed lunch to school just like every other day but, unlike other days, I casually dropped it in the rubbish bin at the school gate. Yes, I know, millions of starving kids in Africa and all that, but that’s what I did.

  The morning dragged on, but I amused myself in History by making Mr Toppler, a doddery old thing on the edge of perpetual befuddlement, pick up a piece of chalk and put it down again without writing anything on the blackboard.

  I managed to get him to pick up and put down the same piece of chalk over thirteen times before the bell rang for lunchtime.

  Old Mr Toppler was easy. I think I could have made him eat the chalk if I had wanted to.