Joshua Dread (23 page)

The Nameless Hero

Coming Fall 2013

W
hen I got to the bus stop, I unzipped my backpack and pulled out the Sheepsdale Middle School yearbook. I’d received it yesterday, just like everyone else in school.

Opening the book, I flipped through until I found my picture. I was the skinny kid in the lower right-hand part of the page who looked like he’d just been stumped by a tough math question. My disheveled brown hair blended perfectly with a shadow in the background, making it look like I had a huge lopsided Afro.

Otherwise, it was a great picture.

There was a name printed beneath the photo, but it wasn’t my name. At least, not my real name. Part of being the child of two notorious supervillains is that you’ve got to hide your identity. People still called me Joshua, but only a few people—my parents, Milton, Sophie—knew my actual last name was Dread.

It can be tough to live with a false identity, to switch your names the way other people switch shoes. But just like everything else in life, after a while, you get used to it. Soon you mostly forget that you were ever anyone else.

I closed the yearbook with a sharp crack and shoved it inside my backpack. As I did, a slip of paper fell out. It fluttered in the air for a second, then landed next to my foot. I bent down to pick it up.

The paper was small, about the size of a postcard. One side was blank. I was about to toss it in the trash can when I noticed what was printed on the other side:

I stared at the words, my mind spinning to make sense of them.
The chosen?
What was that supposed to mean?

I nearly dropped the slip of paper when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hey, Joshua.”

I spun around and saw Milton. Tall and thin, with
sandy blond hair that never seemed to stay in place, Milton had been my closest friend ever since I moved in down the street from him nearly three years earlier. Even after learning that my parents were the Dread Duo, he still treated me the same as he had before. Well, pretty much the same. Every once in a while, he asked to borrow my dad’s plasma gun.

“I’ve got big plans for our first week of summer,” Milton said. “On Monday, we can go to AwesomeWorld. You know, that new amusement park outside town? They have a ride there that’s so extreme, if you don’t puke you get your money back!”

“That sounds … great,” I said, hardly listening. My thoughts were still coiled around the slip of paper in my hand.
You are the chosen
. How could it have gotten into my backpack without me knowing? And what did it mean?

Chosen for
what
?

As the bus pulled up, I gripped the note a little tighter in my fist. All of a sudden, I had a feeling that my plans for a relaxing, stress-free summer had just gone up in flames.