Billy Hooten (8 page)

“Nope, can't do anything about that, but it is late,” she said. “Dad and I are going to bed. Lights out in ten minutes, kiddo.”

“Sure, Mom,” Billy said as he made a move toward his bed.

His mother blew him a kiss and closed the door.

Billy waited a moment to be sure his parents had really gone to bed, then went to work.

He laid the costume out on his bed, giving it a thorough once-over. The arms and legs definitely needed to be shortened, and something had to be done with all that excess material in the butt.

He went to the computer on his desk and got on the Internet, finding what he needed on a site called Belle of the Ball after clicking on the article, “Making the Perfect Party Dress with Eloise.” All he had to do was somehow adapt the instructions to fit a superhero costume instead of a party dress. Simple.

Yeah, right.

Printing out the instructions, Billy laid the pieces of paper on the floor in front of him and went to work. Sewing was harder than long division and nuclear physics combined, and he was tempted to throw up his hands and quit at least fifty-six times, but he kept going, nearly certain now that this was a test, all part of becoming Owlboy.

A test that he wasn't about to fail.

Billy continued to tape, cut, stitch and hem until, just before sunup, bleary-eyed and barely able to hold the needle, he completed the alterations. He was so tired that he couldn't even be excited. Instead, he simply wrapped himself in the finished costume, lay down on the floor of his room, and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Billy entered homeroom dressed in his Owlboy costume.

He wasn't quite sure why he was dressed that way, but it felt right. Crossing the room to get to his desk before attendance was taken, he glanced at the clock on the wall, checking to see how late he was.

The black hands on the clock were spinning around as if time was passing by at an incredible speed.

“I think there's something wrong with the clock,” he said, turning to look at Mrs. Buchanan, his homeroom teacher, who had for some reason turned into a chimpanzee wearing a pink cashmere sweater, lipstick, pearls and a blond wig.

“Don't look at me,” the chimp said, still sounding an awful lot like his homeroom teacher. “I just work here.”

And then the entire classroom started to laugh, and Billy turned from the somewhat attractive monkey—as far as monkeys go, anyway—to see what the joke was.

They were all laughing and pointing at him.

At the costume.

Billy adjusted the goggles on his face and stood tall, puffing out his measly chest.

“Is something funny?” he asked, attempting to sound authoritative.

“You're funny,” Danny Ashwell said, suddenly producing an enormous sandwich from inside his desk and starting to devour it.

Billy was confused by his friend's words, but the others would soon help explain them.

“Who do you think you are, Billy?” Reggie asked, his braces glistening wetly in the fluorescent light of the classroom. “I hope that just because a goblin told you you were Owlboy, and you fixed some old costume, you don't think you're some kind of hero.”

Billy was shocked, and maybe a little hurt, by his friend's words.

“But I went to Monstros … and stopped a robbery,” he started to explain. “And … and I was the last one standing in a game of dodgeball against Killer Kulkowski and …”

Kathy B was the next to speak. She stood up from her desk, cleared her throat and looked as if she were about to deliver one of the Shakespeare sonnets she had memorized.

“You are not a hero, Billy Hooten,” she said with
precise pronunciation and power in her voice. “You're just a dork in a costume.”

Billy was crushed. Even Kathy B didn't believe in him!

He looked to Dwight, who gave him a thumbs-down, and Billy felt the costume begin to change on his body. The sleeves grew longer, the legs of the suit spilled over the tops of his boots, and he could also feel that there was an awful lot of room in the butt.

“But I fixed this,” he said aloud, struggling to roll the sleeves back so they didn't cover his gloves. “I worked all night so it would fit me right.”

They were all laughing at him again, and he didn't know whether to go to his seat and just suck it up or leave the room—leave school and just go home for the day to rethink this whole hero business.

Suddenly, the room began to shake.

Billy stumbled to the right, grabbing hold of Mrs. Buchanan's desk so he didn't fall. The room became eerily silent, and everyone looked up to the ceiling— except for Danny, who was still eating his really big sandwich.

“What's going on?” Billy asked.

“Don't ask me,” said the chimpanzee, adjusting the blond wig on its head before going back to its crossword puzzle. “I just work here.”

And with the monkey's last words, the roof of the school was torn away with a sound like the worst thunderstorm Billy had ever heard, only ten times louder, exposing the class to the dark, open sky—and something else.

Something horrible.

It was a monster, a giant two-headed beast, shaggy and green, that held the roof of the school in one of its enormous paws while glaring with its four bloodshot eyes down into the school, admiring the kids of Billy's homeroom as if they were a freshly opened box of chocolates.

“Yum,” the two heads said in unison, tossing away the roof of the school. Both heads licked their lips eagerly.

This is my chance,
Billy thought, feeling the power of heroism flow through his body. This was his opportunity to prove to his friends that he could do the job— that he was indeed a hero.

And suddenly the costume didn't feel quite so big anymore.

The dual-headed beast reached down into the classroom with a giant green hand for Danny Ashwell, who really didn't seem to notice that he was in danger. It was all about the sandwich with Danny.

“Wait!” Billy screamed in his most heroic voice.

And the monster did wait, pausing before plucking Danny from his chair.

“Don't you dare touch that child!”

The two horrible faces of the giant creature began to smile, and Billy felt something that could've been a large rock—or maybe even a dodgeball—form in the pit of his stomach.

He knew the monsters—their faces. They looked exactly like Randy Kulkowski and Mitchell Spivey.

“And who are you supposed to be?” asked the beastly Randy. Right on cue, the one that looked like Mitchell began to laugh that horrible cackling laugh.

It was bad enough to hear the normal-sized Mitchell doing it, but a giant Mitchell? It was enough to make Billy want to jam pencils into his ears. Really hard.

“I'm … I'm …”

Billy didn't know if he
wanted
to say it… if he
could
say it.

“What's the matter?” the Kulkowski beast asked. “Owl got your tongue?”

Again Mitchell laughed. Billy had pretty much had enough.

“I'm
Owlboy,”
he proclaimed, and found that it really didn't feel all that bad rolling off his tongue. He'd almost started to believe that he could pull this off, when it all went horribly wrong.

Isn't it always the way?

The Randy-Mitchell twins produced two enormous pieces of bread and reached for Billy. All he could think was
Where the heck did they find bread that big?

He tried to bat the huge, badly-in-need-of-a-manicure hand away, but the monster was too fast. Monstrous fingers wrapped around him in a powerful grip, yanking him from in front of Mrs. Buchanan's desk. His last sight before being hauled up into the air was the chimp sitting there, filing its nails.

“Don't look at me,” it said yet again, completely un-fazed by what was going on in the classroom. “I just work here.”

Billy found himself dropped onto the squishy surface that was one of the giant slices of bread.

“You ain't Owlboy,” the Randy beast said before placing the other slab of bread on top of him.

Billy struggled beneath the top slice.

“Nope, you ain't Owlboy at all.”

Billy managed to partially squirm his way out from between the twin slices, peeking over the top of the bread as it was on its way to the monster's open mouth.

“You're lunch,” the Randy monster said.

Just before taking a really big bite of his Billy Hooten sandwich.

Billy woke up on the floor of his room, the rough material of the Owlboy costume wrapped around his head, muffling his girlish scream.

“Oh, jeez,” he said, pulling the costume from his face, his eyes darting around the room, searching for any sign of the Randy-Mitchell beast. He felt the top of his head, just to be sure that it hadn't been eaten.

“Billy!” he heard his mother call from the bottom of the stairs. “Time to get up, pal. Let's shake a leg!”

“Okay, Mom!” he replied, trying to keep from freaking out.

He got up from the floor, a little shocked to see that he was still wearing his clothes from yesterday, and then remembered how he had spent the entire previous night and how hard he had worked. He snatched up the costume from the floor, holding it by the shoulders at arm's length.

Memories from the freaky dream flooded his mind: his closest friends telling him that he could never be a hero, never be Owlboy, and then the fact that he had become the meat in a giant sandwich. At that moment, Billy wasn't feeling very confident and was tempted to fold up the suit, put it back inside the box and throw it way in the back of his closet where it couldn't be seen.

But then he remembered the crazy grocery store in Monstros City and how good he had felt when the shopkeeper had thanked him.

“Billy!” his mother called again from downstairs. “Are you ready, kid?”

He smiled.

Yes,
he was ready.

CHAPTER 7

T
he next couple of days were torture. Billy couldn't wait for school to be over.

He had big plans for Friday night—
monster-sized plans.

He could barely hold in his excitement. Whenever one of his pals asked him what he was doing for the weekend, it was all he could do not to start babbling about putting on his costume, heading to Monstros City and becoming Owlboy—for real.

So he just smiled uneasily and told them …

“Nothing special.”

Billy had no idea what the weekend had in store for him. He knew that he was going to Monstros on Friday night, and hoped that if he didn't screw up too badly,
he'd be allowed to go back on Saturday and maybe even Sunday, too. But he would have to see.

The last bell on Friday was like the firing of a starter's pistol. Billy was gone in a flash, gathering up from his locker all the stuff he would need for school-work over the weekend and heading home with only one thing on his mind.

His journey back to Monstros City. And this time, he would be ready.

If Billy had thought the last few days of school were bad, that night at home was at least fifty times worse.

Friday nights were always special at the Hooten house. His father would pick up takeout from the Chinese Dragon and a movie from the Video Vault downtown. Billy usually loved Friday nights: gorging himself on spicy General Tso's Chicken and heaping piles of the house specialty fried rice, followed by a movie, usually something filled with lots of violence and explosions, because his dad loved movies like that. But tonight, he couldn't wait for the leftovers to be put away and the movie started so that he could get his own special night underway.

“Think you're gonna like this one, Bill,” his dad said, eyeing the DVD package. The movie was something
with that big dude with the weird accent, and Billy was certain they had seen it at least four times over the last year, but his dad loved the movie and would pretend he didn't remember seeing it.

Which in a way was probably sort of true.

Friday movie night wasn't much different than any other night at the Hooten household, in that once the movie was put inside the player, it wasn't too long before his parents were watching a different kind of movie—the one playing on the inside of their eyelids.

But for some reason, tonight was different.

Billy sat stiffly on the loveseat, waiting for his parents to doze off, but they didn't. His father sat attentively in his recliner, a big stupid grin on his face as he watched the muscle-bound dude wipe out a hundred bad guys without ever reloading his gun. Billy's mom was curled up in the corner of the couch wrapped in her favorite comforter, busily working on a crossword puzzle.

This is insane,
Billy thought, unable to ever recall a time when his parents hadn't been asleep fifteen minutes into the movie.
Tonight of all nights.

He was very close to losing it when he saw the first signs that things were about to take a turn for the better.

Gazing down into her puzzle book, his mom was the first to go. Billy watched as her head began to dip, the
grip on her pen going limp. It wasn't long before she was out like a light.

His dad was fighting it; like the action hero in his movie, he was doing battle with the nefarious villain sleep, which was attempting to pull him down into its clutches.

Billy sat tensed at the edge of the loveseat, waiting for his dad to give in. He was almost tempted to start singing a lullaby to help him along, when at last his father's eyes closed, and within seconds he was snoring.

Springing up from his seat, Billy did a little dance of excitement, making his way from the room and bounding up the stairs to get ready.

Tonight was the night.

Slowly, Billy dressed.

First it was the jumpsuit. He put it on carefully, not wanting to pop any of the new stitches.
Not bad,
he thought, moving around a bit. He craned his neck, trying to get a good look at his butt.

Not bad at all.
Eloise would be proud.

The boots and gloves were next. The ones that the costume came with weren't even close to being his size, so he'd had to improvise, taking a pair of old winter boots from his closet and painting them a dark
green. The gloves had proved to be a little more of a problem. He hoped his mom didn't need them to weed the garden anytime soon, but doubted that she would have remembered where she'd left the heavy green gloves anyway.

The leather helmet and goggles were last, and his hands were shaking a little as he put the helmet over his head and then slipped the goggles on over his glasses.

It was the moment of truth, and Billy felt himself start to break out in a sweat that had more to do with nerves than being hot. He approached his closet door and, counting to ten, swung it open to see his reflection.

He was stunned at first, but slowly—gradually— he became used to the idea.
Will you look at that?
he thought as a smile crept across his face.
Owlboy's in the house.

Hands on his hips, Billy struck a heroic pose and was shocked at how cool he looked.

“Oh, Owlboy, how will the citizens of Monstros City ever repay you?” he said in a high-pitched voice.

“No need to thank me, my good lady … squid thing … person,” he responded in his best superhero voice, not a hundred percent sure of how to address them. That was something he'd have to ask Archebold.

Billy looked at himself from every angle and was still impressed by what he saw.

“You are one handsome devil, Billy Hooten,” he said to his reflection. “How'd you get to be so darn good-lookin’?”

Finally able to pull himself away from the mirror, Billy made sure he had everything he needed. Before he was finally ready to leave the house, he had gone back multiple times to the box that Archebold had sent him.

Billy left his room, closing the door to give the impression that he had gone to bed, just in case his mom checked on him later. Creeping down the stairs, avoiding the noisy step, he peeked into the family room to be sure that his parents were still asleep and where they were supposed to be. His mom had curled herself into the corner of the couch and had wrapped herself even more tightly into the cocoon she'd made from the comforter. His father's head was leaned back now in the recliner, his mouth agape, making a noise that was part enraged water buffalo and part clogged bathtub drain.

Excellent,
Billy thought, ready to sneak from the house, when the unthinkable happened.

His father lifted his head, smacked his lips and blearily looked around the room.

Billy froze, waiting for the world to come crashing down around his ears.
How can I possibly explain this?
he wondered feverishly.
It would be impossible, even for an out-of-the-box thinker like me.

His father looked directly at him and Billy prepared for the worst.

“Hey, Dad,” he said, wondering if his father would recognize him all decked out in his superhero attire.

“Thirsty,” his dad mumbled, still smacking his lips and looking around the room as if he'd never been there before.

Billy was shocked. His father didn't seem to notice that he was standing there dressed like something out of a comic book.

“Would you like me to get you something … some water, maybe?” Billy asked softly, certain that his dad was still in some kind of weird sleep state.

“Water,” his father replied, struggling to keep his eyes open. “Water'd be good.”

Billy ran from the room, his short cape flowing behind him as he went to the refrigerator and found a bottle of water. He quickly brought it back to his thirsty, semiasleep dad.

“Here ya go,” Billy said, opening the bottle before handing it to him.

Mr. Hooten took the bottle, smacked his lips a few more times and then started to drink. He really
was
thirsty: he drank more than half the bottle before handing it back to Billy.

“That's good stuff,” he said, looking around Billy so that he could see the television.

“Movie's pretty good, too,” he added, his head
dropping back to the chair. Within seconds, he was snoring, mouth open even wider than before.

Billy carefully set the bottle of water down on the table beside his father's chair and carefully—quietly— backed out of the room.

Standing in the kitchen, Billy sighed with relief.
That was close,
he thought, but it did not deter him from what he was about to do. “Nothing can hold me back now,” he whispered, taking a deep breath before reaching for the doorknob.

And stepping out the back door into the night.

The night was cool, the damp, smoky smell of autumn heavy in the air, and Billy stood on his back porch, letting the chilly fall breeze pass over him.

This was it, the moment he'd been waiting for all week. As he leaped down from the steps on his way to hop up and over the wall, he heard a tiny voice call to him.

“Hey, Billy!”

Billy froze midjump, slowly turning in the direction of the little-girl voice. He'd considered attempting to hide in a patch of shadow, but that trick never worked.

She
had seen him.

“Hello, Victoria,” he said, turning to look up at the second-floor window of the house next door.

The five-year-old had opened the window of her bedroom and was looking down at him in the yard.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asked cheerfully.

As much as he hated to even think about such things, the little girl had an extreme crush on him, and often wanted to hang around when he was doing important things—like building a robot. Billy strongly believed it was the five-year-old's bothersome ways that prevented him from achieving his glory.

“Stuff,” he answered, annoyed that she was keeping him from his mission. But he could never be too careful with Victoria Grace McDevitt. All he needed was for her to alert her parents to his being in the backyard and his adventure would end before it even started.

It was easier to play the kindergartner's game.

“What kind of stuff?” She tilted her head like a curious puppy, playing with a lock of her curly blond hair. He could see that she was dressed in her nightgown and guessed that she should have been asleep already.

“Why aren't you asleep?” he asked, hoping to scare her back into bed.

She shrugged.

“Why are you dressed like a superhero?” she asked him.

Billy was startled by the question, looking around the yard just to be sure nobody was around to hear.
“Shhhhh!” he told her, bringing a gloved finger up to his mouth. “It's a secret.”

Victoria's eyes bugged from her round face and she smiled mischievously. “Cool,” she squeaked. “Can I be a superhero, too?”

He was going to need to be careful with this one, he thought, scratching the top of his head as he tried to come up with an answer that didn't get her all riled up. There was nothing more dangerous than a riled-up five-year-old.

“Not right now,” he told her. “But maybe later.”

“When?” she demanded.

“I don't know—some other time when it's not so late.”

“Tomorrow?”

He really needed to get going and was on the verge of losing his patience with the little girl.

“Yeah, tomorrow you can be a superhero, too.”

“Hurray!” Victoria squealed, throwing her tiny arms into the air. “Me and Billy are going to be superheroes tomorrow!” She started to pretend that she was flying around her room, making a racket that was sure to attract the attention of her folks.

“Victoria, knock it off!” he called up to her. “If you want to be a superhero with me, you've got to get plenty of rest.”

She stopped pretending to fly and looked down at him.

“Why?”

“Because if you're too tired, how are you going to beat up the bad guys?”

She thought about that for a minute.

“Good night, Billy!” she suddenly said, closing the window and disappearing into the room.

He stood there for a moment watching the window, wanting to be sure she wasn't going to come back. Once he was certain she'd actually gone to bed, he ran toward the stone wall, desperate to get out of the yard and into the cemetery before something else came up to keep him from his destination.