The Nameless Hero (2 page)

And as for Dad—well, lately he’d been devoting all his time to Elliot.

“No, Elliot!” Dad called out from the kitchen. “Put the refrigerator down!”

This was followed by a cl
ump
and a howl of pain from my dad.

“YAARGH!” he screamed. “Not on my TOE!”

“Soooorry, Mr. Dummy-neck.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Just try to be patient. And let your dad know I’ll be skipping breakfast this morning. Have to get to campus early to grade finals.”

As soon as Mom swept out of the dining room, Dad hobbled into it. “I’ve got to find a bandage for my toe,” he said. “Looks like you’ll have to eat without me.”

As he limped out the door, I glanced down at the burned mush waiting for me on my plate.

“Yum,” I muttered.

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

I opened the book and 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 hiding your identity. People still called me Joshua, but only a few people—my parents, Milton, Sophie—knew that 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 for a second in the air, 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 into 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’d 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 did 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. 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 my knowing about it? And what did it mean?

Chosen for
what
?

As the bus pulled up, I gripped the note a little more tightly 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.

On my way to school, I made up my mind. The note must’ve been a prank. And I had an idea who was behind it.

Joey Birch and Brick Gristol.

The two of them had been picking on me since my first day at Sheepsdale Middle School. They’d probably snuck the note into my backpack the day before when I wasn’t looking. No telling what it was supposed to mean, but if Joey and Brick were involved, I was sure they had something unpleasant in mind.

A few minutes before first period, I caught up with them in the hallway. Joey had red hair and a permanent scowl on his face. It was easy to spot Brick standing next to him, since he was about a head taller than anyone else in our grade. Brick was shaped like a refrigerator (except uglier), with a mouthful of crooked teeth and a buzz cut. At the
moment, he was holding a fifth grader upside down by the ankles.

I stepped toward them. Joey, Brick, and the upside-down fifth grader all looked my way. “I know about the note,” I said.

“Listen, Dorkface,” Joey said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Besides, me and Brick are kind of in the middle of something right now.”

He nodded at the upside-down fifth grader in Brick’s grip. The fifth grader waved at me.

For a split second, I wondered if he was telling the truth. But if it wasn’t them, then how had the note ended up in my backpack? It’s not like it could have just
appeared
there.

“There’s no point lying,” I said. “I know it was you.”

Joey turned to where Brick was standing. “You know anything about a note?”

Brick and the fifth grader both shook their heads.

Joey looked back to me. “See? We don’t know what you’re talking about. Now why don’t you get out of here before we
make
you?”

Joey’s sneer deepened. He took a step in my direction.

A feeling came over me—at once familiar and completely strange. See, my parents aren’t the only ones in the family who have superpowers. Earlier in the school year, I’d learned that I was Gyfted, which is another way of saying that freaky things sometimes happen to me. And I’m not just talking about puberty. I have the power of spontaneous combustion. Basically, it means that I can make things blow up. Spontaneously.

My Gyft kicks in whenever I concentrate really hard or get too stressed out about something. My fingertips start to tingle, and a rush of adrenaline shoots through my body. Blood surges through my veins, and my heart pounds so hard that it feels like it might burst out of my chest any second. These are the warning signs that something’s about to spontaneously combust.

And I was feeling all of them right then.

But before I had a chance to test out my power on Joey and Brick, another voice cut into the group.

“Hi, guys.”

Sophie was standing beside us. I guess you could say Sophie was one of my best friends from school. She was also Captain Justice’s daughter. As soon as Joey saw her, worry flashed across his features. Brick took a step back, trembling so much that the fifth grader in his hands began to shake.

Sophie was a slight, wispy girl with blue-gray eyes and blond hair that hung to her shoulders. You might think it’s a little odd that a girl like this could cause such a reaction from the school’s two biggest bullies. But Sophie was also born with a Gyft. And if you’d ever seen her power in action, you’d know she can cause some serious damage. Earlier in the school year, Joey and Brick had experienced this firsthand. Ever since, they’d done their best to avoid her.

Sophie took a step forward, and Brick released his grip on the fifth grader. The kid fell to the ground, then scrambled away.

“C’mon, Brick.” Joey’s voice cracked. “We don’t have time to mess around with a couple of—of freaks.” His eyes swept over both of us. His expression was a mixture of disgust and fear.

Sophie may look small, but she packs a BIG punch
.

Brick was already backing away. Joey followed him. Without another word, they turned and vanished into the crowd.

“What was that all about?” Sophie asked once they were out of sight.

“I was asking them about this prank they tried to pull on me.” I told her about what I’d found in my backpack. As soon as I mentioned the note, Sophie’s expression changed.

“You found one too?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. It was exactly the same size as the one I’d found a little while before. And the words printed on it were also the same.

I could’ve believed that Joey and Brick would sneak it into my backpack. But they were way too intimidated by Sophie to try to play a trick on her. It couldn’t be them. So then, if they didn’t do it … who did?

The final class for the day—and the entire school year—was American history with Ms. McGirt. Instead of meeting in her classroom as usual, we’d all gathered in the library for her lesson on library orientation.

I guess Ms. McGirt was unaware that the last class on
the last day of school was the absolute
worst
time to teach us about navigating the library. Most kids were more interested in watching the clock above her shoulder, the seconds ticking away toward summer. Not that Ms. McGirt noticed. Truth is, she didn’t notice much of anything.

She was standing in front of a tall shelf of books, blinking dazedly in our general direction. Her eyes were magnified behind a thick pair of glasses. Her white hair was pulled into a tight bun.

A student in front of me called out a question, but Ms. McGirt ignored it—probably because she didn’t hear it. (She was mostly deaf.) Instead, she turned to her right and began lecturing a stack of encyclopedias on how to use the online catalog system. (She was pretty blind too.)

I was seated at a table with Sophie and Milton. Joey and Brick were a few tables away. Behind them was the desk where the librarian usually stood. But she must’ve been out for the day, because another woman was standing in her place.

The substitute librarian was a sickly-looking woman with a horribly hunched back and grim features. Dark bags hung under her eyes. Her skin was gray. The only part of her face that seemed to have any color was her mouth. Her lips were smeared with bright red lipstick.

She was slouched behind the long desk, scanning books, one after the other. The machine let out a
beep
every time a new book was scanned. I gasped as a clump of gray hair fell loose from her head and landed on top of a pile of books
in front of her. Without seeming to notice, she grabbed the tangle of hair and swiped it across the scanner.

Beep
.

She went on scanning like nothing had happened. And as if that weren’t gross enough already, when she looked up from her work, her dark eyes landed on me. She licked her red lips with an expression in her eyes that looked almost …

Hungry.

I glanced down at my desk, trying to shake off the disturbing thought. My mind must’ve been playing tricks on me. That was all. Just a bad case of ESF (Extreme School Fatigue). And the cure would come at the end of this class. Summer was just around the corner. I just had to make it till then.

And yet every time I caught sight of the substitute librarian, a chill ran down my spine. I tried to concentrate on Ms. McGirt’s lesson. But it’s hard enough to pay attention to Ms. McGirt on a normal day. It was basically impossible with a creepy substitute librarian staring me down like she wanted to make me her afternoon snack.

“For the rest of the class, you are free to explore the library,” Ms. McGirt said to the encyclopedias in front of her.