Meet the Gecko (10 page)

And the whole way there, he didn't say one word to me.

Not one.

We parked our bikes at a rack in front of Old Town, and when we were walking over to the hotel, I told him, “They're probably going to recognize you from yesterday, so just let me handle it, okay?”

He nodded. His cheeks were like McIntosh apples, and he was dripping sweat.

He still didn't say a word.

At the hotel, we got stopped by a security guard. I told him, “The Gecko… uh… Chase Morton invited us.”

“Oh, right,” he said sarcastically. He squinted at Bubba, saying, “Didn't I specifically invite you to
not
come back?”

Bubba looked down.

So I said, “He's here with me today. I'm Nolan Byrd. Ask Chase. He'll tell you it's all right.”

“Hmmm,” the guard said.

“Or Henna Blockwell. She knows it's okay.”

He studied me a minute, then got on his walkie-talkie radio. Five minutes later, Henna showed up and let us in. “Hi, Nolan. Chase told me if you showed up to send you upstairs. Apparently he's got some new move to wipe you out in Tekken 3.” She looked at her watch and said, “He's only got about ten minutes before his call time.” Then she noticed that Bubba was following along.

“Uh…Nolan?” she whispered. “Isn't he the boy who ruined the take yesterday?”

I nodded.

“I don't think we can—”

“Please, Miss Blockwell? It's… it's kind of hard to explain, but it's important. And if we've only got ten minutes…” I shrugged. “Please?”

She looked from me to Bubba and back again. Finally she sighed and said, “Well, come along.”

Chase was sitting cross-legged on his bed. His thumbs were flying on his PlayStation controller. “Nolan!” he said when he saw me. “My man!” He tossed me the second controller. “I am gonna wipe you out!”

We entered a battle. I was Yoshimitsu Green. He was Yoshimitsu Red. He had totally mastered backflips. And the deathcopter trick! And samurai cutter! He was even using slap-u-silly!

Whoa!

But I managed to slash and bash and dance all around him. It was close, but I won the round!

“How'd you
do
that?” Chase cried.

“Man,” Bubba mumbled. “You're good.”

“Huh?” Chase said, finally noticing Bubba. “Hey…” He squinted at him. “How'd
you
get in here?”

“I, um, I brought him,” I said.

“You're
friends
with that guy?” Chase asked, his eyebrows flying up.

“Well, um…” I looked at Bubba. “Not exactly.”

“So… ?” Chase was starting to look annoyed.

Maybe even mad.

“I… I brought him because I thought it was… a nice thing to do.” I looked down and said, “It's a long story, and really complicated. Don't be mad, okay?”

“Okaaaaaay,” Chase said, studying me. Then he nodded and stuck out his hand to Bubba. “I'm Chase Morton.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “The Gecko!”

Bubba shook his hand. “I'm…Bub…,” he said, then stopped himself. “I'm… Alvin Bixby.” He started pumping Chase's hand like crazy. “Your number one fan!”

“Well, hey, Alvin. Nice to
officially
meet you.” Then Chase eyed me and asked him, “You think
your friend here will let me whip you in Tekken 3?”

I looked at Bubba.

Bubba looked at me.

And it was weird. He didn't even seem like Bubba.

He seemed more like an oversized toddler.

I held out the controller to him and grinned. “Go easy on him. He's just a superhero.”

Bubba laughed and took my place on the bed. “You gonna be Yoshimitsu again?” he asked Chase.

“You bet! You?”

“Nah,” Bubba said. “I choose True Ogre! He's rad!”

“Hoo-hoo-hoo!” Chase laughed.

And the battle began.

Yoshimitsu clobbered True Ogre. What do you expect when a gargoyle with flame-breath takes on a Manji ninja? But Bubba didn't even seem to care. He said, “You want to go again?”

Chase would have, but Henna came in and made them stop. So Chase made Henna get Bubba a poster that Chase autographed and signed:
To Alvin “Bubba” Bixby, who rocks at Tekken 3
. And since no visitors were being allowed on the set, we had to leave the building, but not before I took a quick picture of Bubba and Chase with my digital camera.

When we were unlocking our bikes, I asked Bubba, “You got e-mail?”

Like I didn't know!

Then I added, “I'll download the picture of you and The Gecko and send it to you.”

He frowned for a minute, then said, “Bixby at BigNet-dot-com.” He pulled his bike from the rack and stared at me. For a guy who had just met The Gecko, he sure wasn't looking too friendly.

He stood there for a minute like he was trying to figure out how to say something, but it never came out. And finally he just swung onto his bike and left. No See ya, no wave. He just took off.

So I took off, too, only I went a different way. And I wondered what Bubba had been trying to say.

Thanks?

Nah, more likely it was
Don't think this makes us friends, Nerd!

Like I would want to be!

Or
Don't start thinking you can e-mail me, Geek.

Too late for that. I'd been e-mailing him for months!

As Shredderman!

So I was thinking about how I'd have to use my parents' e-mail system to mail Bubba the picture, but the minute I got home, I forgot all about Bubba. My mom was screaming, “Nolan! Nolan, come here quick!”

I dropped my backpack and charged for the kitchen. “Mom? What's wrong? Mom?”

“In here!” she yelled from the family room.
“Look.”

Her eyes were cranked open.

Her jaw was dropped to the floor.

She was tearing apart her purse trying to find her phone, but she wasn't looking at what she was doing.

She was looking at the TV.

“What's wrong, Mom? What's…” And then I heard a voice from the television say, “… Shredderman.”

Two newscasters were talking about
me
on TV!

“It's everywhere,” the man was saying to the lady next to him. “I got the e-mail this morning, you got it last night. Everyone in the industry seems to have a copy of Joel Bowl vandalizing that hotel”—he shuffled through some papers— “the Historian up in Cedar Valley.”

The lady was nodding. “And I've heard the hotel
and
the production company are planning to press charges.”

“So this might be the Mole's last digging spree?” the man asked.

“I, for one, hope so!” The lady grinned into the camera and said, “Meanwhile, good work, Shred-derman, whoever you are.”

“Yeah,” the man added. “What's that motto of his?”

“Yours in truth and justice!”

“Exactly!” The man turned to the camera and said, “And now to Bill McCloud, who hopefully has some truth and justice to convey to us about the weather ….”

Mom had found her cell phone. She muted the TV while she pressed buttons on her phone with her thumb. “That was news out of Los Angeles!” she whispered to me. Then she said into the phone, “Steven? Steven, you are never
going to believe what was just on Channel Five. …”

Wow. If it had been on Los Angeles TV, where else had it been? I charged down to my room to check my e-mail. While I'd been worried about surviving a day at school, stuff had been happening! People had been talking! Sending my clip around! Cedar Valley and the Historian had been on big-city news!

I booted up.

Dialed up the Internet.

Checked my mail.

Flick
…
flick
…
flick,
e-mails sprang up from the bottom of my in-box!

Flick…flick…flick-flick-flick!

Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

My screen was going crazy! Messages were flying in! Scrolling off the screen faster than I could read who they were from!

I watched them for a whole minute.

Two!

I got out of my chair and backed up.

Whoa! They were
still
flying in!

Finally I clicked on Send and Receive, and there was the blue line, only partway done. And the message said,
Receiving…302 out of 927 messages.

927 messages?

303, 304, 305, 306…The ones column was spinning around like the cents counter at the gas pump!

Who were all these people?

Mom wandered into my room without knocking.

That happens when you leave your door wide open.

She still had her phone attached to her ear. She was making little sounds into it. Fragmented sen-tences. Nuh-uhs and Uh-huhs. Sighs and tisking noises.

Then all of a sudden, she gasped like she'd spotted a Tyrannosaurus rex in my room.

I jumped and looked around.

No T. rex.
Phew.

“He's got nine hundred twenty-seven messages!” she whispered into the phone. “Steven, this is totally out of control!” Her eyes were enormous. “Uh-huh. Okay. All right. I don't know, okay? Uh-huh. All right. Call back when you can.” She flipped the phone closed and sat on the edge of my bed. “Nolan? Your dad won't be home for a while.”

“Uh-huh.” I was scrolling through messages. Dad worked late a lot.

“The
Gazette
's been flooded with calls about Shredderman.”

I looked at her. “Really?”

“And since your father is supposedly spear-heading the investigation into who Shredderman is, he's having to steer people in the wrong direction.”

I grinned at her. “Cool!”

“Cool?”

“Yeah! It's great that Dad can help out like that.”

“But—”

“He's turning out to be a pretty good sidekick, huh?”

“Sidekick? Nolan, he's your father!”

“Who's being a pretty good sidekick!” I was still grinning. My dad as a sidekick. Something about the idea seemed really… cool.

“Mr. Green's your sidekick, remember?” She was looking a little miffed.

“But Mr. Green's in Oregon. And Dad's been real helpful, you know?”

“But—”

“Call him a substitute sidekick, if you want.”

“I don't want to call him
any
kind of sidekick! He's a reporter and he's not supposed to lie or cover up or—” Her cell phone rang, interrupting her. She flipped it open. “Yes?”

I was busy racing through messages. People loved Shredderman!

She listened, then whispered, “CNN? What did you tell them?”

CNN? National news? That got my attention!

“Tonight?” she was saying. “Wow, they work fast. Okay. Yes, I will. No, no, don't worry. I'm keeping him right here.” She was about to hang up, but at the last minute asked, “Hey—what are your thoughts on being called a substitute sidekick?”