Sidekicked (18 page)

“I don't know,” I say.

“Good or bad?”

“I don't
know
, Jenna. It's neither. You're just a convenience store clerk, not an undercover FBI agent. You sold some guy a pack of gum. He said he was going to blow something up, so you did what you thought was right. You called the police. That's what I would have done.”

“Even though the consequences turned out bad.”

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was still right at the time.”

“Even though I later found out that it wasn't.”

“Yeah . . . but that's not your fault. You didn't know.”

“So then it works the other way, too.”

“What works the other way?”

“If I hadn't called the police. And I didn't stop the guy from blowing up the terrorist.”

“I don't know. I mean, in retrospect . . .”

“The consequences were good,” she says.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“So that makes it right, right?”

“Um . . . right?” I offer skeptically.

“Right. Because all those innocent lives were saved. Even though what I did, by not calling the police, was wrong. Right?”

She is looking at me. And the way she is looking at me . . . it's as if she can't take a breath until I answer.

“Jenna,” I say, shaking my head, “what on earth are you talking about?”

She turns around and looks out over the tennis courts and the track and the school and the city and into the clouds that have just formed a thin veil between us and the sun, and I wonder just what it is she sees that I don't see.

“I don't know,” she says.

And that's when I do it. I reach out and put a hand on top of hers. It could just be the bravest thing I've ever done in my life. She doesn't turn around, but she doesn't pull her hand away either.

“Don't, some days, you wish you could be . . . you know . . . normal?”

And I want to say no. Because she's not normal. She's remarkable. And I don't want her to change. And if say yes, then she won't know just how remarkable she is anymore. She turns to look at me again.

“Every day,” I tell her.

I look at Jenna, and I can see that she is about ready to say something and then stops herself. And there is something about the look she gives me, her head a little tilted as if we've just met at a reunion and she's trying to place me from a picture in our high school yearbook. She twists her hand to hold mine. Then she takes a deep breath and leans in close to whisper something.

And kisses me instead.

It lasts for two seconds. Slightly longer, if you count the half second of hovering afterward, where our lips aren't touching but I can still feel the kinetic energy between them and still feel the moist air of her breath. It's so sudden that I don't have time to pull my senses together to capture it all. But I can hear her heartbeat—I can feel it through the pulse in her bottom lip, and I can just feel the tips of her bangs softly on my forehead. I can taste the remnants of the strawberry yogurt she ate on the bus that morning. And I see things, beautiful things, from behind the closed curtains of my eyes.

And then it's gone.

I blink twice.

I glance down at Eric and Mike to see if they noticed, but they aren't even looking our way.

“What was that for?” I ask, not sure I want an answer, wishing, perhaps, that it was only an impulse. That there didn't have to be a reason.

“I needed to know,” she says.

And then she stands up and starts back toward the school, leaving me even more confused than before.

For the next three hours, I don't know where I am. I am vaguely aware of my body walking down halls, into classrooms, squeezing behind desks. I acknowledge that at some point I will have to take control of said body again. But for now it is on autopilot.

She needed to know, she said.

Know what? How she felt about me? That she was a good person? What I had for breakfast?

When she gets up, I try to follow her, but she just smiles and shakes her head.

“I'll call you after practice,” she says—the kind of thing she would have said to the other Drew. Pre-kiss Drew. The Drew who was perfectly content suppressing any nonplatonic feelings he might have possibly had for his best friend and fellow sidekick to avoid the risk of losing her completely. Not this Drew. Not Drew, A.K.

Which means I suddenly don't know who I am, either.

So I sit there until Mike shakes me with his good hand, still alive despite his training, and I follow him back to earth. Nikki is waiting for us by the door.

“You okay?” she asks. Somehow she knows. Girls always know.

“I don't know,” I say. “I think so.”

Nikki squeezes in and unlocks the door. I don't know how Jenna managed to get back in, though I don't think anything she does will surprise me from here on out.

“Hey, did you know that if I hit you in just the right spot I can collapse your windpipe?” Mike says. “I mean,
I
can't, but Eric could.”

“That's great,” I tell him. I'm still finding it a little difficult to breathe anyway.

In the halls between periods I look for Jenna, but I can't find her anywhere. I sit in class and listen for her laugh down the hall. For the sound of her footsteps. For a glimpse of her through the window in the door. For once I can't see or hear anything else.

The final bell rings, and I head to my locker to drop off some books and grab my jacket, looking for her, listening for her. It takes two tries to get the combination right. I'm obviously not thinking clearly. Normally I can hear the clicks of each pin when the number hits. I swing open the door and out of the corner of my eye notice something taped to the inside of it.

It's the Jack of Clubs.

T
he world stops spinning, only for a moment, and then speeds up again. I pull the card free, not thinking that it might be rigged somehow, not thinking that the act of pulling it off the door could cause the whole school to blow up or something.

But I'm just being stupid. Nothing happens. It's just a playing card. A man with a sword stuck through his head. Smiling at me. Suddenly, all around me, the school erupts in sound. I've lost my concentration and let control of my senses slip. Everything is rush and roar, and I feel like I'm submerged beneath a waterfall.

Okay, Drew. Calm down. Remember your training. What do you do when a psychotic villain leaves his calling card in your locker? Panic? Do you panic? Is that what you do?

Yes, I answer myself. Panic first. No avoiding it. Might as well get it out of the way. I stand there, my hands shaking, the Jack of Clubs bouncing up and down.

Now. Take a deep breath. Try to slow it down. Concentrate. You need to tell somebody. He could be here right now. The whole school could be in danger. Get help.

I look around for anyone. Jenna, Eric, even Gavin, that's how desperate I am.

Nobody. Everybody. Bodies everywhere. I don't recognize any of them. Why is everyone so loud all of a sudden?

Calm down. Get control.

I head to the corner. Jenna's locker is down the hall on the left, but she's not there.

Where is she?

I can usually find her anywhere, but there's no trace of her. The crowd is shoving, pulling, yelling. I need help.

Mr. Masters.

I quickly head up to his room, remembering that he teaches earth science last period, but he's not there. I'm still holding the stupid card in my hand. I'm listening for a familiar voice, but it's the end of the school day and the noise is deafening. I can't concentrate enough to sift through them all. All the conversations bleed together into a chaotic buzz. I'm sweating. My mouth is dry. I feel like I might pass out.

Then I hear a voice I recognize.

It's my former English teacher, Ms. Norris. Three doors down.

“Andrew? Is everything all right?”

I catch my breath. “Ms. Norris, you haven't seen Mr. Masters around, have you? I really need to talk to him about this . . . project I'm doing.”

“I'm sorry, but I think Mr. Masters left early this afternoon.”

“
What?
What the heck for?” I look around frantically.

Ms. Norris gives me a very strange look. “I'm sure I don't know, though he is an adult . . . with a life . . . so he does leave this school sometimes,” she says a little defensively. “Is there something I can help you with?”

I look back at her. She's a nice enough lady and she knows a lot about poetry, but rhyming couplets are no defense against supervillains. I shake my head.

“You can always try and get his home number from the front office,” she calls after me, but I am already headed back down the stairs.

All right. Forget Mr. Masters. I need to find Jenna. If I find Jenna, she can contact the Fox. As I run down the stairs, I pull out my phone. Speed dial two.

It goes straight to voice mail.

“Hi, you've reached Jenna Jaden. I'm really sorry I missed you, but I'll buzz you back later.”

“Seriously?” I hang up.

Crowds of students bustle past me, shoving me aside with their shoulders and backpacks, oblivious. I scan the crowd, looking for Jenna's pink-and-yellow backpack with the tie-dyed peace sign on it. Nothing.

Everyone's headed out to the buses.

Who can I call?

Neither Mike nor Nikki have phones. Nikki's is in a perpetual state of confiscation and Mike burned through three before his parents realized that he and personal electronics were a bad combination. I never bothered to get Gavin's number, even though Mr. Masters told me I should. So I quickly send a message to Eric, who can text eighty words per minute and keeps his phone on vibrate in his front pocket.

I type SIT and hit send. It stands for Sidekick In Trouble. It's the SOS of the superhero sidekick universe. Dot dot dot, dot dot, dash.

I hope he gets it.

All right, Drew. You're on your own for the moment. What next?

If I was any other sidekick, of course, I would contact my Super. That's the
first
thing I would have done. I would press the nearly microscopic button embedded under my fingernail, and a little alarm would go off on the ring on my Super's finger, showing my exact location. Then my hero would suddenly slip into his suit and rev up the save-my-butt-mobile and be outside the school in five.

But last time I looked, the Titan wasn't wearing his ring—I doubt he even still has it—and I don't have the phone number for every bar in the city. So there's no chance of him showing up for this one, either.

Think.

I could call the police.

I pull out my phone and start to dial 911. It's the last resort of Supers and sidekicks—to have to rely on the lesser authorities. Kind of like asking your little sister for help opening a jar of pickles. But the school could be in danger. At the very least,
I
could be in danger. And I'm willing to take all the help I can get.

Then I stop before I press the last one. Because it dawns on me.

How could a wanted fugitive like the Jack of Clubs—someone who has been on the news and on the front page of every paper since last Friday—walk into a school, of all places, to stick a playing card in my locker . . . without being noticed?

And
why
would he? This is me we are talking about, after all. How would he even know who I am? Or where my locker is? Even if he somehow did sneak past the front office and slink down the halls unnoticed.

But if not him, then who? Only so many people in school know how to break into a locker. There still isn't an app for it. It's the kind of knowledge a criminal would have.

Or a sidekick. Like two weeks ago, when we spent half an hour learning to pick a dozen different kinds of locks, including the spin combination variety. If you were a sidekick, and you wanted to scare someone in order to get back at them for something they did to you, say, around lunchtime.

All of a sudden, standing there, holding my phone in one hand, about to bring the S.W.A.T. team down on Highview, it occurs to me. I hold up the Jack of Clubs and give it a sniff.

Which one scares you the most?

“You're going to miss your bus if you don't hurry, son.”

I look around to see a janitor motioning to the halls, which are quickly emptying.

He's right, of course. I should go catch my bus—if it hasn't left already.

But all I can do is stand there and think about how I'm going to get back at Gavin McAllister.

On the ride home, I fume. The fact that Jenna didn't bother to call me back ticks me off, even though she is probably at gymnatsics practice by now and can't get to her phone. And it ticks me off that Mr. Masters wasn't there today, of all days, or that Eric didn't bother to respond to my SIT. Even just a text saying, “Sorry, dude. You're SOL.” And I'm still perpetually ticked off that my Super is never anywhere to be found. But mostly I'm mad at Gavin.

And I wonder if maybe he didn't find about what happened on the bleachers at lunch, and if that's what prompted his little prank. I think about telling Mr. Masters. Maybe it will be enough to get Gavin kicked out of the program. Impersonating a known villain? He could have caused mass panic. School lockdown. What a jerk. Not to mention he nearly ruined the best day of my life. I think of Marc Antony getting revenge on Julius Caesar. “The dogs of war shall be set loose,” he said, or something like that. The rest of the bus ride home I think about my dogs and how best to loose them. Maybe I'll get Eric to help me. After all, he still owes me for the apple smell incident.

The bus stops at my block and lets me out. I open the front door using the key under the plastic frog and toss my backpack in the corner. Mom won't be home for another hour, and Dad won't be home for another two. I slip off my shoes, then fall into the couch and grab my phone. I think about calling Jenna again to tell her what Gavin did. I wonder if he wasn't in the halls, watching me, waiting to see the look on my face. Laughing with some of his football buddies as I fled, panicked, down the halls.