Archvillain (3 page)

“But there’s one more seat!” someone complained.

“I’m saving that one,” Kyle told him, and glanced over to the end of the lunch line, where Mairi had just paid for her lunch. Kyle had brown-bagged it. (He made his own lunches, so they were tasty. He hadn’t let his mother near his lunch bag since fourth grade. It was just a matter of survival.)

Lunch was, as usual, terrific. No one spoke as Kyle held forth on all sorts of topics, including — to the amusement of everyone — his rough calculation of
the Great Nemesis’s makeup poundage. The table roared with such laughter that Kyle worried it might be
too
much. Kids from other tables looked over with sad envy. Even Mr. Hathaway looked like he wished he could be in on the fun.

After lunch, Kyle headed outside with everyone else for recess. It was a cool autumn day and the sun was a solid, bright disc. Sides were chosen for basketball, with Kyle deciding not to play. He had never been good at sports, probably because he’d never really put his mind to it. While other kids had kicked soccer balls or swung bats or dribbled or whatever else athletes did, Kyle had been in his room, planning his next awesome prank. He didn’t have anything against sports — he just couldn’t be bothered.

“Are you sure you don’t want to play?” Mairi asked. “You can be on my team.”

“Nah, go have fun,” he told her. “I’m still not a hundred percent.”

Mairi’s mouth turned down in a worried frown. “Did you come back too soon?” she asked in a very motherly tone of voice that almost made Kyle burst out laughing.

“I’m good. I’ll watch.”

He stood off to one side and tuned out the game as it went on. He had more important things to think about. Like that web account, which claimed that there had been another kid in the field the night of the plasma
storm. Why couldn’t Kyle remember that? He started to wonder if maybe he should swallow his pride and find this “Mike” kid.

But no. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let anyone know he’d been in the field that night. The only reason he’d been there at all was because the Bouring High School Hawks were going to be playing a visiting team on the middle school field the next day. The high school field was being resodded, so they were going to use Bouring Middle’s. There was a large water tower just north of the field, and Kyle thought it would be a great prank to rig the tower to douse both teams just before halftime. (If he managed to soak the crowd, too, that would just be a bonus.)

Bouring, after all, took its football team far too seriously. Therefore, he had to show them how silly that was. Drenching the team and turning the football field into a mud-wrestling pit would do the trick.

So, no, telling anyone where he’d been was
not —

“Heads up!” someone shouted, just as the basketball careened through the air and smacked Kyle in the face.

“I’m so sorry! So sorry! So sorry!” a kid yelled, running toward Kyle, his arms pumping.

Kyle blinked and bent over to pick up the ball. He hadn’t felt anything when the ball slammed into him. And it had slammed
hard.
He’d had no time to react at all.

He tossed the ball to the kid headed his way.

Mairi came running over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t it hurt? It looked like it hurt.”

Hurt? Oh, right. Getting hit in the face with a ball was supposed to hurt.

“A little,” he lied. “Ow. It sort of mostly bounced off my forehead.”

Mairi gave him that motherly look, but then someone shouted for her from the basketball court, so she jogged back, leaving Kyle to wonder why — suddenly — he couldn’t be hurt.

At home that night, Kyle dawdled over his dinner. For once, it wasn’t because he was trying to avoid eating. He was too occupied thinking about what had happened that day. Had he somehow become immune to pain? Had the plasma storm done more than simply boost his intellect into the stratosphere? Had it also changed him physically?

“You’re quiet tonight, sport!” Dad said.

“Just thinking.”

“About what, honey?” Mom asked.

Kyle sighed. His parents had rarely been helpful in the past, but he figured maybe he owed it to them to give them one more shot.

“Well,” he said, “I sort of feel like I’m going through some changes….”

His parents shot worried looks at each other.

“Uh, I see,” Dad said, clearing his throat. “You know, we’ve talked about some of this in the past, but I
guess … You know, at your age, your body is going to go through changes and you’re going to get feelings —”

“Not that, Dad!” Oh, man! Kyle did
not
want to have
that
talk!

But Kyle’s dad took his parenting business very seriously. “I know it’s embarrassing to talk about, but I think you need to hear it. So, when you start to get older, chemicals in your body …”

Kyle put his head down on the table and tried to block out his father’s voice as Dad told him things he already knew and didn’t want to hear about again. Especially from his father. At the dinner table. With his mother sitting right there.

Eventually, his dad had mercy and wrapped up the speech, allowing Kyle to escape to his bedroom, confident that his parents were, indeed, totally useless in this case.

“I could learn more talking to you, Lefty,” he told the rabbit. Lefty had no opinion on the subject but clearly wanted something sweet to eat. Kyle gave him a yogurt drop and flopped on his bed to think.

When scientists had theories, they tested them. That’s what Kyle needed to do.

He imagined stabbing himself with knives and dropping heavy weights on his feet, but that seemed pretty radical. What if he was only invulnerable to basketballs and girls?

He had to try
something
!

After darkness fell, long after he was supposed to be asleep, Kyle crept silently out of bed and opened his bedroom window. His room looked out on the backyard and a dense growth of woods — no one would see him.

“You keep your mouth shut about this, Lefty,” Kyle said. Lefty yawned, showing big white teeth.

When he’d been younger, Kyle had jumped out of his bedroom window. It wasn’t that far to the ground, so he’d never been in any real danger, but it
had
hurt when he landed. It hurt enough that he’d cried out and his parents had come running. He’d been grounded for two weeks after that little stunt.

So he knew he could survive the jump. The only question was: Would it hurt?

He bit his lip, gazing down at the ground.

Then, before he could change his mind, Kyle launched himself out the window.

And didn’t fall.

Kyle hung suspended in the air just outside his window, floating in the dark. He was so shocked that for a moment, he thought he’d landed on his head and was hallucinating.

But no. He could fly.

He. Could.
Fly!

With a thought, he angled his body, arching upward, gliding through the air like a fish in water. It was as though he’d been doing it his whole life.

The air rushed over him! The night sky beckoned!

He twisted in the air and flew higher, over the house, moving quickly. He was wearing dark clothes, so he didn’t think anyone would notice him, if anyone happened to glance in this direction at this time of night.

Kyle flew to the outskirts of town, to an abandoned coal mine. (Decades ago, the town’s motto had been “Bouring: We’re Cool for Coal!”) When the mine came into view, he dived down, cruising low over the treetops, then alighting just in front of the old mine entrance.

There were walls and fences to keep people out. Those people couldn’t fly.

Kyle spent the better part of two hours in and around the mine, testing himself. He tried flying as fast as he could in a circle, but he got dizzy. Still, he was pretty sure he could break the sound barrier if he needed to — that would make a massive sonic boom, though, and he didn’t want to attract that kind of attention.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and punched a mine wall, feeling no pain. Dirt and rock exploded around his fist. He opened his eyes. He’d gouged a huge hole in the wall with just his bare hand.

He kept punching and chopping until he’d carved a gigantic chunk of rock out of the wall. He lifted it and held it above his head.

It had to weigh a ton at least … and he was holding it up with no problem at all.

He tried it one-handed. He tried it one-handed, balancing on one foot.

He made another boulder and tried juggling them, which didn’t work too well, but that was because he wasn’t coordinated enough, not because he wasn’t strong enough.

I’m pretty amazing!
Kyle thought.

It wasn’t ego — it was just true.

He flew home at treetop level, figuring that even though it was autumn, the remaining leaves on the branches would conceal him from anyone looking casually at the night sky.

Suddenly, the quiet of a Bouring night exploded with sirens!

Kyle whipped around, half expecting police searchlights to pick him out of the air. His heart hammered. He had been so careful! How could they have caught him so quickly?

He froze high up in the uppermost branches of a giant cherry tree that still had most of its foliage, waiting for
the searchlights and a police bullhorn to call him out of the air. What should he do? Keep hiding? Try to fly away at top speed before they could identify him?

His brain churned the options and then something occurred to him: The sirens weren’t getting closer to him — they were moving
away.

Kyle drifted out from the tree cover. In the distance, a staccato line of spinning red and blue lights wended its way down Shuster Street.

Kyle’s curiosity got the better of him. He kicked in a burst of speed and glided toward the excitement.

As he got closer, he realized what was happening: Fire trucks were headed toward a row of town houses in a new development just on the edge of town. Kyle swooped low, skirting a retaining wall, then darting into a copse of trees for cover. He hovered there, watching the commotion.

Ahead of him, the town houses were ablaze. People waved frantically for help from open windows on the upper floors. A crowd had gathered outside, murmuring and pointing, clad in pajamas and ratty old bathrobes.

Kyle froze again. This time it wasn’t that he was afraid of the sirens. He just didn’t know what to do. Could his powers help? Or would he just get in the way?

It was one thing to be impervious to pain, but was he also fireproof? Could he still burn up? What about smoke inhalation?

As he was wondering, the fire engines screeched to a halt, and helmeted and jacketed firefighters spilled out. A sudden cry went up from the crowd. One voice carried over the others: “Look! Look up!”

Kyle thought he’d been spotted at first — he almost dived down. But he realized that no one was looking in his direction. They were all looking to the north, pointing.

As Kyle watched, a boy roughly his own size and age flew in from that direction. For a moment, Kyle’s breath caught in his chest and refused to budge. Was this what
he
looked like when he flew? So majestic? So sleek and perfect?

The boy came in lower. The crowd gasped.

As Kyle watched, frozen with amazement at another flying kid, the newcomer hovered in the air over the crowd, maybe twenty yards from the fire, and inhaled deeply. What was he planning on —?

No, you idiot!
Kyle thought fiercely, realizing what the kid was up to.
Don’t blow on it! Unless you blow out every last flame, you’ll just scatter burning embers and spread the fire!

The kid blew furiously. The flames danced and died all along the upper floor, but — sure enough — white-hot sparks jittered along the roofline and reignited there.

To Kyle’s horror, he saw that some embers had been blown into the woods behind the houses. If the trees
went up in flames, the house fire would look like a campfire by comparison. He flew as quickly as he could around the back of the houses. Sure enough, a small stand of bushes was smoldering, threatening to catch fire and torch the woods.

Kyle swooped down and stomped on the flames before they could grow any larger. Whew! That was close!

Now he had to get out front and stop that flying idiot from causing any more trouble.

By the time he got back into a position to see the front of the houses, though, Kyle noticed that the kid had moved, too, darting to the nearest fire engine. The firefighters were having trouble extending the ladder, which meant they couldn’t get a good angle on the flames.

The kid grabbed a hose from two firefighters who were struggling with it. He soared up into the air, floating right over the town houses, and let loose with a torrent of water.

The crowd cheered again.

On the ground, the firefighters kept a steady stream of water on the first floor, while the kid handled the fire from above. Within minutes, it was safe for firefighters to charge inside to rescue people.

The kid finished dousing the roof and top floor, then dropped the hose and sped in through an open window.

Soon, he was ferrying kids out three at a time, carrying one under each arm and letting a third ride on his back.

Kyle watched in astonishment. The kid was a klutz! He’d made the fire
worse
before making it better.

Of course, once he got his act together, he didn’t do so bad, Kyle supposed. True, what should have been a raging inferno that would have taken hours to put out had been contained and extinguished in ten minutes.

In fact, once everyone was safely evacuated, the standing ovation for the kid lasted longer than the fire. Kyle watched from his hiding place as the kid hovered over the crowd, absorbing the applause. Then he merely bowed and soared off, cheers and clapping still ringing in the night air.

Kyle frowned. Hadn’t anyone noticed how the kid had screwed up at first?

As the crowd dispersed and ambulances arrived, Kyle suddenly realized how late it was. Fortunately, everyone was too distracted to notice him flying home.