Captain Nobody (2 page)

Dad hadn't touched his food either, so I ate my breakfast, rereading the sports pages and waiting for Chris.

Ever since I'd started making breakfast for my family last year, Chris and I developed a little routine for whenever he'd oversleep. I would open his bedroom door and shout, “Hit the showers!” just the way I'd heard his coaches order over the years. Chris would usually mumble something and lob a pillow in my direction, but after a minute or two, he'd swing his legs out of bed.

The week before the Big Game, though, my parents stopped me from going upstairs. “Let him sleep,” they'd say. “He's having a hard week.”

After Fillmore beat Roosevelt Prep last Saturday night, Chris's team had only one day off before they doubled up their workouts in preparation for the Big Game. Then after practice, Chris had to run around town doing interviews on the local TV and radio stations. And when he got home every night after the rest of us had finished eating, he took his dinner up to his bedroom and did his homework until late.

For almost all of last week, I didn't see him before I went to sleep. Finally, last night I caught him in the bathroom, where he was brushing his teeth.

“I bet you're really tired, huh, Chris?” I asked excitedly.

“Down to the bone,” he sighed, before he rinsed and spit.

“I heard you on the radio.”

“Oh, yeah?” He wiped his chin.

“You were awesome!”

“Thanks.”

And then he was gone.

He wasn't being rude. He was just tired. I totally understand. But that's how it's been with us for a while now.

Dad interrupted his first phone call to jump on a second one and then another. He
still
hadn't touched his food. From time to time he'd motion for me to fetch him a pencil or to pour him more coffee. Mom wandered in and out,
still
talking to Mrs. Hennessey and peeking at the faxes that had started to curl out of the machine on her corner desk.

I stood at the stove, drumming my fingers in frustration. Pretty soon I'd have to leave for school, and I
still
hadn't shown Mom or Dad the newspaper article about Chris, and nobody had eaten my breakfast.

I looked down at what was left. The sausages were cooling in their grease. The eggs were getting watery. And I was getting . . . steamed.

I hardly ever get steamed.

Now, I realize there's really not a lot I can do to help my family as they whiz through their busy days. And maybe I don't build buildings or win ball games.
But if I make breakfast, the least they can do is eat it!

Since Mom and Dad were still on the phone, I focused all my frustration on Chris
.
Ignoring their instruction to “let your brother sleep,” I dropped my spatula, stormed upstairs and threw open his bedroom door.

“Hit the showers!” I barked.

As usual, Chris mumbled, “I'mupI'mup,” and tossed a pillow my way. But it wasn't enough to wake him. When he started to snore again, I hit the roof.

“HIT THE SHOWERS!”
I bellowed, louder than I'd ever bellowed before.

Startled, Chris jerked his head up and looked around through half-closed eyes. “Stop yelling,” he growled sleepily, and, with all the strength of a star quarterback, he threw another pillow at me. The force of his throw, however, made him roll forward, and in an avalanche of sheets and blankets, he tumbled out of bed.
THUD!
—he hit the floor hard.

Then my big brother—who's always getting tackled by monster football players and never complains—whimpered one high-pitched, teensy word.

“Ow.”

I couldn't help myself. I started to laugh.

“Not funny, bro,” Chris grunted, which only made me laugh harder. Which only upset Chris more.

He struggled to his feet, and wearing only a pair of gym shorts, he chased me down the stairs, through the kitchen and out into the backyard.

That's where I turned the garden hose on him.

When the freezing water hit his bare skin, Chris's eyes finally flew open. He waved his arms in frantic surrender and shrieked, “I'm up! I'm up!”

Still holding their phones, Mom and Dad came dashing out of the house, mouths open in astonishment.

“Now,” I said quietly, “who wants breakfast?”

When I got to school that morning, the playground at Appleton Elementary was packed with kids running around, punching each other, and shrieking as usual. I took a deep breath and squeezed my way through the crowds. Whenever I saw one of my classmates, I waved and quietly said, “How's it going?” like I do every morning.

And like they do every morning, they looked right through me.

I plopped down on a large boulder at the far end of the school yard, sharpened a pencil and began to draw in my Secret Superhero Sketchbook.

When I was really small, Chris would sit me in his lap and read to me from his humongous collection of comic books. Even though I was too young to understand the stories, I was hypnotized by the pictures of the super-heroes with their awesome powers. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I spent hours on the floor of Chris's bedroom, carefully tracing the characters in his comics. When I got a little older, I began to invent my own.

My first sketches were pretty crummy, but eventually my scrawls began to take shape. First I created Master Key, a crimefighter whose hands could transform into keys that could open any lock in existence. After that came Paper Boy, who could flatten his body until it was so thin that he could slip under any door. Since then, I've filled dozens of Secret Superhero Sketchbooks, but I've never shown my drawings to anyone.

Except JJ and Cecil, of course.

Juanita Josephina Gonzalez—JJ for short—is the tallest girl in the fourth grade, and with a head full of thick, untamed black hair, she cast a very recognizable shadow over my sketchbook.

“Hey, JJ,” I said without looking up.

“Hey, Newt.” She leaned over my shoulder and studied the picture. “Ooh, I like this one. What's his name?”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Cecil Butterworth shouted, racing across the playground. “Don't tell the story yet!”

Cecil is the only kid in our class who is shorter and skinnier than I am, but what he lacks in size he makes up for in volume. Once he joined us, Cecil clapped his hands and said, “All right, let's have it! Who's today's superfreak?”

“I'm calling this one Guy Wire. He used to be a wimpy librarian, but after he was exposed to radiation from a meteorite, he discovered that he could stretch his arms and fingers and legs into steel wires and do cool things like turn his legs into springs and bounce anywhere he wants to go.”

“Sweet!” laughed Cecil.

“Highly commendable.” JJ nodded.

“Highly
what
?” Cecil raised an eyebrow. “Lady, sometimes I swear you swallowed a dictionary.”

JJ taught herself to read at the age of three with the help of a wooden alphabet puzzle and a really big brain. She hasn't stopped reading ever since.

“‘Commendable' just means deserving of praise,” JJ explained. “Like Newt's drawing.”

“Well, I think it deserves a drumroll.” Cecil pulled two drumsticks out of his backpack and did a quick rat-a-tat on the rock where I was sitting.

Cecil's dream is to be a drummer, but until his parents break down, get earplugs and buy Cecil a drum set of his own, he's determined to practice every chance he gets.

Cecil finished his drum solo with a crash—
bish!
—and then announced, “Okay, listen up! Does anybody remember what this weekend is?”

“Please!” I exclaimed. “It's the weekend of the Big Game.”

He shook his head. “I'm talking about Sunday.”

JJ and I shared a shrug.

“Hello?” Cecil waved his arms about. “Can anybody say ‘Halloween'?”

“Really?” I said. “This Sunday?”

Ever since we met in first grade, JJ, Cecil and I have always trick-or-treated together, but I guess I'd been so wrapped up in my brother's final Big Game that Halloween had slipped my mind.

“Y'know what, guys?” JJ twirled a strand of hair around a finger and squidged up her nose. “I'm bored with Halloween.”

“Bored with Halloween?”
Cecil yelped. “I got two words for you: Free. Candy.”

“Oh, c'mon, we're in fourth grade now,” JJ insisted. “We've outgrown candy.”

“Now you're just talking crazy,” Cecil scoffed.

That made me laugh; Cecil can always make me laugh.

“And besides,” JJ added, “our costumes suck. They always have.”

We all nodded glumly. See, the three of us have always been forced to wear hand-me-downs. Like her four sisters before her, JJ had been a flamenco dancer twice, a Starbucks countergirl once, and last year she was Jennifer Lopez. Cecil always wears the same old Wolverine mask that his brothers had gotten so much use out of. And the first year we all went trick-or-treating together, my mom completely forgot that it was Halloween, so at the last minute I searched through the stacks of plastic storage bins in our garage until I found Chris's old cowboy suit. I've been a cowboy ever since.

“I refuse to be J. Lo again,” JJ moaned.

“My Wolverine mask is falling apart,” Cecil griped.

“And my cowboy pants have split,” I sighed.

After a gloomy moment of silence, Cecil looked up. “Y'know what's wrong with us?”

“I didn't realize there was something wrong,” I said.

“Me neither,” JJ said. “But if there was, what would it be?”

Cecil swept his arms to indicate the hundreds of kids at play. “To everybody in this school, we are invisible.”