She looked up. “Tucker? Is the dance over already?” She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “I didn’t expect you for another hour. Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I leaned over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. “Great actually.”
“Hey!” Beech bounced on the edge of his chair. “You home! We watch TV? We read eight-two-oh?
“Beech. Listen.” I straightened up. “You want to see how Beanboy ends?”
He nodded.
“Okay. Then here’s the deal. I’m going to my room, and I’m shutting the door, and I’m finishing the comic book. And you’re staying out here. Okay? You can’t come in. You can’t bang on the door. You can’t sit in the hallway and sing the Batman song till I can’t stand it anymore and let you in. You can’t bug me in any way till I’m finished. Got it?”
“Got it.” He swiped his hands like an umpire calling a runner safe. “No. Bug. Anybody.”
I looked at him.
“Don’t worry, Tuck. He won’t have time to bug anybody.” Mom slid a corn dog onto a plate, drew a face on it with ketchup, and handed it to him. “The Beech-man and I have some cartoons to watch, don’t we, Beech?”
Beech gazed up at Mom like she was a superhero.
And then her purse started to ring.
Dun. Dun. Dun. Dun duh-dun, duh-dun, duh-dun.
I froze. Beech froze. Mom froze.
We stared at her purse, hanging by the door.
Beech slumped back in his chair. “No bad news. No big bad news.”
Mom groaned and reached for her phone.
“Don’t answer it,” I said.
She looked at me. “I have to.”
“No, you don’t. I’m serious. Say you didn’t hear it. Say your phone was off. Say anything. Just don’t answer.”
“Tuck. You know I can’t do that.” She rummaged in her purse. “What if it’s important?”
“It’s always important. No matter what happens down at that bank, they always think it’s important. Why do they always think they’re more important than anything else?”
“Tucker.” She closed her eyes. “They need me.”
“I know,” I said. “But we need you more.”
Mom looked at me. She looked at Beech. She looked at the cell phone, quivering in her hand.
And she held the button down to shut it off.
“You’re right.” She tossed the phone back in her purse. “And you know what? I need you guys, too.”
I left Mom and Beech and their happy-face corn dogs, while I holed up in the Batcave.
I fired up my computer.
My fingers started typing before I could talk them out of it.
To: BigBeanInBoston
From: SuperTuck
Re: Birthday Money—Really
Dad,
I like the four baseball bats I already have, and I appreciate everything you did to get them for me, but I don’t need another one. For my birthday this year, I wasn’t kidding. I really do want money. I do. Not Mom. Me. And if I end up giving my money to Mom for some reason, it’s not because she asked me to. It’s because I want to. Because the MacBeans are a family, and that’s what families do. They stick together.
I hope that doesn’t make you mad.
Love,
Tucker
I hit SEND.
Then I squared a clean crisp sheet of Bristol board on my desk and started to draw.
Thirty-Five
I read through Beanboy maybe twenty times.
Either I’d turned him into one of the world’s great sidekicks.
Or I’d completely blown any chance to win the contest.
Because here’s the thing. I’d just changed H2O’s entire official story. He’d been battling evil, protecting the planet, reflecting on the problems of his existence as a freakish, water-logged being through seventy years of comic books.
And I’d just added stuff that hadn’t ever been there before.
Me, Tucker MacBean. Who had no business adding anything.
But all the clues were there: The thunderstorm. The fears. Mud. Bugs. Lightning. Even the names: Mary Ann Goodnight. Godfrey Mann. Which were practically the same, only backwards. It all added up. It was almost like the folks who created H2O had planted all this stuff, like bread crumbs in the forest, just waiting for somebody to follow them and figure it out. H2O couldn’t. He was too close. It was like his blind spot. He couldn’t see that his loyal friend could also be . . . his enemy.
But now, because of a sparkly red dress and a glass of fruit punch, Beanboy could.
I stopped.
Beanboy could.
When H2O couldn’t, Beanboy could.
I studied my comic book.
Maybe that was the answer.
I’d been searching and drawing and searching some more, for days and weeks, till I’d just about given up. But now, maybe, I’d found it.
All sidekicks needed a few basic traits: Loyalty—check. Courage—no question. Dedication—definitely.
But your contest-winning sidekicks?
They covered the chink.
Superheroes are superheroes for a reason: They’re super. Ask Beech. But no matter how super they are, superheroes aren’t invincible. A decent superhero always has a chink in the armor: Superman and kryptonite, Batman and his dark broody spells, Spidey and all that enormous guilt.
H2O and his blind spot.
That’s why they need sidekicks. Because your major sidekicks, the great ones, cover the chink. They recognize the kryptonite, the dark spells, the blind spot, then muster all their loyalty, courage, and dedication, recklessly putting themselves in danger, to cover it.
I examined my comic book pages. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe that was Beanboy’s heroic heart. Beanboy covered H2O’s blind spot. He saw what H2O, through seventy years of comic books, had been too close to see.
It was risky. It could really cheese off the folks at Dark Overlord. It could cost me the contest.
But if Beanboy had taught me anything, it was that you had to do what you thought was right.
And making Beanboy smart enough to figure out Godfrey Mann’s secret in time to save H2O seemed . . . right.
Otherwise, he was just a guy with an embarrassing gas problem.
I slid my comic book into the big brown envelope. Started to seal it shut.
Then stopped. I slid the entry form out and gave it a good long look.
And made one small change.
I slid the entry form back into the envelope with my comic book and licked the flap.
Thirty-Six
And then . . . I began stalking my own mailbox.
Every day I ran home from school, banged it open, and shuffled through the mail, searching for an envelope from Dark Overlord.
Every day I clomped upstairs clutching a handful of envelopes, none of them from Dark Overlord.
The weird thing was, my mom had taken up mail stalking, too. She’d pop in after work, shuffle through the mail, kiss our heads, and dash back out so she wouldn’t be late for class.
If I’d gone through with my Desperate Midnight Scheme, she might have found a scholarship with her name on it.
But she wouldn’t have kept it.
That’s the one thing I hadn’t factored into my equation. Because even if it was wrong for the right reason, even if the reason was so right that the whole thing was only one-sixteenth wrong, my mother would never go for it. She would never take the scholarship. Because my mom was my mom, and she didn’t do math with right and wrong.
So no matter how great Beanboy turned out, I couldn’t get her a scholarship.
But maybe, possibly, I could get me a scholarship. Just like I told her that day on the phone. It wouldn’t help her quit her cruddy job, it wouldn’t bring her home at night, but it might keep her from worrying so much. It might smooth out that little knot of skin between her eyebrows.
Some things had changed. And some things hadn’t.
My dad still lived in
Boston.
I got a quick e-mail back from him. Which I kind of wanted to open. And kind of didn’t.
I was glad I did.
To: SuperTuck
From: Big Bean in Boston
Re: Birthday Money - Really
Tucker,
Families do need to stick together. I would never be mad about that. If you want money for your birthday, that’s what I’ll send. You can do with it whatever you want.
Dad
Also, even though they were starting to look a little crispy with winter coming on, the spiky orange flowers were still planted in our tire swing.
But I hadn’t noticed any more pieces of the MacBean family flying off. Pieces I had to try to catch and put back on.
Sam still babysat Beecher. For two reasons. No, three. Actually, four:
1. I really liked Art Club.
2. I didn’t want to quit just because I’d gotten Beanboy finished, especially not after Mrs. Frazee was so nice about letting me join late and use real Bristol board and a non-repro blue pencil.
3. Sam really liked babysitting Beech. (I know. Explain that.)
4. Beech screeched and dug his fingernails into my arm every time he thought she wasn’t coming back.
Sam didn’t pierce me with her Zawicki glare as much, I noticed. She actually talked to me sometimes before snapping her babysitting money from my hand and thumping out the door.
And don’t tell anybody this, but once in a while, if her grandpa didn’t need her home right away to help with chores, she sort of . . . stayed. And watched cartoons with us. Me and Beech and Sam. She said they didn’t get the cartoon channel at their house.
She also said, “Wow. Dillon would love this.”
About fifty times.
I don’t know if that was a hint or something, but I had to act like I didn’t hear it. About fifty times. Because no way was I watching cartoons with Dillon Zawicki.
I mean, things had changed, but not that much.
At school, Noah and I still sat at our same lunch table. Sam and Dillon still sat at their table under the EXIT sign. The whole lunch experience was pretty much the same, because, as Noah said, once middle school lunchroom seating patterns are established, they’re hard to break.
The Kaleys still shot me down with loser dweeb looks. They shot Sam, too, but they were careful never to do it in front of Emma.
It’s not like Emma and Sam were suddenly best friends or anything. But once in a while, if they passed each other in the hall, or if they happened to walk into FACS at the same time, Emma might lift her chin in a casual way and say, “Hey.”
At first Sam didn’t know how to take it. She’d jerk her head back. Narrow her eyes. Like Emma had slapped her or something. But then I guess she figured out it wasn’t a trick. So she started raising her chin in a casual way, too. Not every time. But sometimes.
You really can’t underestimate the power of a “hey” from Emma Quinn. It’s almost a superpower. Emma’s “hey” not only got Sam to lift her chin a little, it pretty much lifted the chin of our whole school. Once Emma started saying “hey” to Sam, other people, here and there, said “hey” to her, too. Not the Kaleys, of course. Or Noah. He was way too nervous. But other people.
And once Sam got used to it (well, as used to it as Sam Zawicki was ever going to get), she started glaring less. She never said “hey” back. But her stomp got a lot softer, which saved a bunch on floor tile. And she must’ve found a bottle of conditioner somewhere, because her hair didn’t stick up quite so much anymore. Sometimes she even braided it, which looked pretty normal.
Once Earhart Middle got used to a kinder, gentler Sam Zawicki, people stopped shrinking away when they saw her. Started walking past her like she was just any other random kid who wasn’t planning to hurt them. The whole place seemed less tense.
During an assembly right before Thanksgiving, Mr. Petrucelli said he was proud of the way everyone had been getting along lately.
“And I can pinpoint the exact day things began to change.” He was using Coach Wilder’s sound system. His voice boomed through the gym. “It was the day an honest, brave young woman came into my office and explained an unfortunate mistake with the FACS room milk. Since that day, Earhart Middle has become a happier, friendlier place to learn, and we have this young woman to thank for that. Let’s all give Kaley Crumm a big round of applause.”
Everybody clapped. (Okay. Not everybody.) Kaley C. stood and waved and smiled and acted like she deserved it.
Oh. One other thing changed. My superpower of invisibility? It sputtered and fizzled till it hardly worked at all. I didn’t always stay quiet. I sometimes forgot to stay low. And one day, without thinking about it, I wore a new H2O T-shirt in the magenta color family.
“Dude.” Noah stared at it in horror. “What is that?”
“Relax,” I said, in a soothing voice. “It’s just a shirt.”
Yeah. Me. Tucker MacBean. I said, “It’s just a shirt.”
But through it all, I kept checking the mailbox.
And waiting.
Thirty-Seven
One day when I got home from Art Club, my mom’s car was in the driveway.
And our mailbox was empty.
I ran up the stairs. A sweet warm scent drifted over me. I threw open the door and found my mom in the kitchen, frying up pancakes—with blueberry faces—for Beecher and Sam.
Mom was . . . dancing. And singing into the spatula. Something about sitting on a rainbow.
She turned when she heard the door bang open.
“And here he is now,” she told the spatula.
Beech bobbed on his chair. “Mom get money.” He threw his hands wide. “Big money.”
I looked at him. Then Mom.
“It is pretty big. And it is money.” She flipped one of the pancakes. “Only better.”
She leaned the spatula against the skillet, snatched an envelope from the pile of mail on the counter, and pressed it to her heart.
“You are looking,” she said, “at the proud recipient of a full college scholarship.” She handed me the envelope.
I stared at it. “A full college scholarship? But—”
Beech pointed at me. “You a guppy.” He giggled. “See, Sam? Guppy.”
Sam nodded. “He’s a guppy, all right.”
“And”—Mom scooped a pancake onto a plate and slid it in front of Beech—“I have you to thank for it, Tucker.”
Me?
But—
“No,” I said. “I changed it. I put my name on it.”
Mom gave me a funny look.
Sam popped the lid off the syrup. “Maybe you should quit being a Beanboy long enough to read the letter.” She squirted Beecher’s pancake.
I pulled out the creamy white paper and unfolded it.
Dear Ms. MacBean:
Our committee was moved by your essay about life with your two sons. We were impressed by how you showed that raising a family can be a challenge, but is never a burden.
Never a burden. I read that part again. Never a burden.
With that in mind, we are pleased to award you the Wheaton University Foundation Single Parent Scholarship.
Single Parent Scholarship?
I looked up. “I don’t understand.”
“It money.” Beech licked syrup off his hand. “Big money.”
“It’s what you said on the phone, the day we went to the farmers’ market.” Mom slid a pancake in front of Sam. “You told me not to worry about saving for your college. You said you could get a scholarship. And it clicked in my head—I could get a scholarship. So I did some searching on the university website—”
“So.” I frowned. “That’s what you were looking for? On your laptop?”
She nodded. “It took some digging, but I found this.” She tapped the letter in my hand. “It’ll pay for my school and books, with a little left over. I’ll still have to work, but only part-time. I’ll be home every single night with you guys.” She wrapped
an arm around Beech’s neck and the other around mine and gave us a squeeze. She kissed the top of my head and let us go. “You want a pancake? We’re celebrating.”
“Um. Sure,” I said. “So—”
I looked at the letter. It was great news. Mom wouldn’t be stuck at her cruddy job all the time. She could go to school during the day, be here at night to order our pizza and make sure Beecher brushed his teeth, and actually get a decent night’s sleep once in a while. We’d be able to smell the mango shampoo on her actual hair rather than on a wet towel. It was exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I’d been working for.
Except—
“It’s not about the comic book?” I said.
Sam rolled her eyes.
Mom gave me a weird look. “Comic book? No.” She poured more batter. The skillet sizzled and popped. “Oh, but you know what? I think you did get something from that comic book place. Black Overcoat?”
“Overlord?” I blinked. “Dark Overlord? I got something from Dark Overlord?”
Mom sorted through the mail and pulled out another envelope.
She handed it to me, and I ran my thumb over it, over the Dark Overlord emblem, red and ominous, the ink raised on the paper.
Probably it wasn’t any big deal. Probably it was some kind of form letter. Probably they sent one to everybody who entered their contest, just to tell them they lost.
I slid my finger under the envelope flap. Popped it open. Pulled out the official-looking letter inside. With the official-looking emblem again. And my official name: Tucker MacBean.
The Adventures of Beanboy Page 12