The Society of Super Secret Heroes (4 page)

He whipped out a can of soda from behind him. So did Bud. Before Finch could move, they popped the tabs and began spraying him and his friends.

The kids who had gathered to watch backed up a little. Some gasped. Some laughed.

“Hey, stop!” Finch threw an arm over his face. With the other he reached out blindly for Thorn. Elliott and Raj both tried to grab the can from Bud, but Bud aimed for their eyes.

“Have a drink, Towelman! You must be thirsty from chasing those bad guys.” Thorn pulled Finch's arm from his face. “Come on—open your mouth!”

Kev was short, but he was solid as a bulldog—and just as feisty. He tried to charge Thorn, but Thorn turned the rest of his can on him. When they were out of soda, Bud and Thorn threw the cans on the ground. Snorting and stomping like wild horses, they ran away. The crowd of onlookers began to disband, too.

Finch rubbed the soda from his eyes. He gazed down at his dripping shirt. He looked at his spattered friends. He couldn't believe they'd let themselves get sucked into this.

 

“What happened to you dudes?” Mr. Burns exclaimed as he walked into the room. The guys were trying to dry themselves with paper towels they'd gotten from the bathroom dispenser.

“Spilled something on myself,” Finch mumbled without looking up. His Justice League T-shirt—the one showing Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the Green Hornet, and others—was covered with dark blotches.

“Soda can exploded,” Rajiv added.

“An accident,” Kevin mumbled.

“It was volcanic cola,” Elliott muttered.

Mr. Burns shook his head. “First days can be tough. In the teachers' room at lunch today, someone accidentally called me Slip instead of Slope. Everyone laughed. It reminded me of this kid that always called me Slippy or Sloppy when I was your age. I never thought it was funny.”

The guys darted looks at one another. They tried not to laugh. Fin could feel his ears getting red. Raj and Kev were shaking. Finally, Elliott erupted into giggles.

“Sorry, Mr. Burns,” he croaked.

Mr. Burns shrugged. “Okay, so maybe it was funny.” He grinned at the guys. “Why don't you come over to the Critter Corner? I'll introduce you to my friends.”

The boys followed him to the tanks on the windowsill.

“This is Lima Bean,” Mr. Burns said, pointing to a dark green turtle, “and these guys are the class goldfish. They haven't got names yet.” He picked up a shaker and sprinkled some flakes onto the surface of the water.

“The way they vacuum up the chow, you should call one Hoover,” Elliott suggested as the fishes' perfectly round mouths sucked in the food.

“Yeah, and the other one could be Eureka,” Kev said. “That's the kind of vacuum we have.”

Mr. Burns laughed. “Okay, Hoover and Eureka it is.”

Finch's glance wandered over to the third tank. Two shells were lying on the sandy bottom. Suddenly he realized that two beady black eyes were peeking at him from the brown-and-white spotted shell. They weren't eyes in a face, either. They were eyes on the ends of stalks!

He looked at the other shell, a larger, yellowish-tan one, more closely. Sure enough, another pair of eyes on stems was watching him. A claw edged out and sort of waved.

“Weird,” Finch whispered.

“Those are hermit crabs,” Mr. Burns told him. “I named them after my brothers. The smaller one is Anthony, and the larger one is Phillip.” Suddenly the teacher got a big grin on his face. “Say, how would you guys like to be the class zookeepers?”

Mimi opened the door with a ferret draped over each shoulder. “Mom's not home yet. She's meeting with a client, but she said she'll be back early in case we need to go out for school supplies.”

Finch held his backpack in front of his chest, hoping she wouldn't notice his messed-up shirt. “I already have everything I need,” he said, heading for his room.

“Hey, want a snack?”

Finch kept on going. “Why? You think it will make up for your sneaky little trick?”

“What are you talking about?” Mimi scrunched up her face.

“You're a crummy actress,” Finch answered. He walked into his room and shut the door. He peeled off his stained shirt, threw it on the floor, and pulled on another one. From deep in his backpack, he hauled out his cape and dumped it into the trash can next to his desk. “Sorry, but you've got to go,” he murmured.

He swung his bag onto the artificial arm his dad had attached to the wall as a hook. Mr. Mundy was a prosthetist—he made artificial arms and legs that were practically bionic. Finch loved to hang out with him in his lab, but his dad hadn't asked him to visit even once this summer. He'd been too busy.

There was a knock on the door to his room. “Fin? I made pizza bagels.”

“You're trying to buy me off,” Finch accused.

“Why would I want to do that?” Mimi sounded innocent. It only made Finch angrier.

“You know why!”

“Okay, then forget it.”

Finch heard his sister stomp off. But the irresistible aroma of smoking cheese wafted under his door. In another moment he appeared in the kitchen. “Where's Kelly?” he asked as he slid into a chair at the table.

“Who?”

“Doh! Kelly—your best friend.” He grabbed a pizza bagel off a plate and took a big bite.

Mimi just shrugged. “How come you're so grouchy? Is your new teacher really mean and nasty?”

“Busted! I've got this new guy, Mr. Burns. He does yoga, plays the bugle, and reads to us. Today we started
The Indian in the Cupboard
about this boy who has a plastic Indian that comes alive.”

“I read that when I was a kid,” Mimi said.

“Correction—you're still a kid,” Finch pointed out. “Anyway, Mr. Burns set up these learning centers around the room. One of them is the Critter Corner. And guess what—I'm a class zookeeper.”

Mimi cast him a sideways glance. “You mean for real animals?”

“Doh! No, animal crackers! Of course they're real. There's a turtle, two goldfish, and two hermit crabs.”

“You call that a zoo?”

Finch ignored the comment. “I'm in charge of the hermies.”

“Hermit crabs—ew. They don't even have faces.”

“That's prejudiced!” Finch objected. “You're prejudiced against animals without faces! Besides, they've got these cute little eyes on stems.”

“Do they bite?”

“I don't think so. I'm going to look them up on the Internet.”

“Maybe I'll do it with you.”

There—he'd caught her. Mimi never wanted to hang out with him. “I knew it! I knew you were guilty!” Finch said, spraying food everywhere. “You put my cape in my backpack. You're trying to make me think I'm crazy!”

“You think I put your cape in your backpack? You know what, Fin? You really are crazy.” Mimi got up and walked out of the kitchen.

Finch felt as if he had pizza stuck in his throat. Something was wrong. If Mimi really were guilty, she would be pressing him for all the humiliating details. He closed his eyes and remembered rushing about, tossing notebooks, pencils, a sweatshirt, and other stuff into his bag this morning. Was it possible he'd accidentally shoved the cape in, too?

A little part of him wondered if he should apologize. He sort of wished he could tell Mimi what had happened in the school yard. But he hated to admit she'd been right. She'd warned him about playing superheroes. It was his fault he'd gotten caught.

He left the rest of his pizza on the table and trudged back to his room. But when he got to the doorway, he stopped short. His superhero cape was floating around on the floor in an undulating motion, sort of the way a stingray did underwater. It was bumping into the trash can, the desk chair, and the floor lamp. Before he could squelch it, Fin let out a pizza burp. The cape seemed to hear the sound. It changed directions and began moving toward him.

“Whoa, get away!” Finch grabbed one of his books off the floor and held it like a weapon. But the cape only came toward him faster.

“Hey!”

The cape crashed into his legs. It squeaked. Finch plucked it up in two fingers. Cubby blinked his beady brown eyes up at him.

“Cubby, how many times have I told you to stay out of the garbage?” Finch scolded. He was about to drop the cape into the can again when something stopped him.

Finch whapped his forehead with a palm. “Shut up!” he said aloud. His new, fourth-grade mind was becoming very annoying. He shut the door to his room anyway. One last time, he draped the old green bath towel over his shoulders and tied the strings at the neck. He gazed at himself in the mirror on his closet door. The cape used to look like a blanket on him. Now it was a better fit. It made him look taller and more dignified—like a combination of a superhero and a prince. He turned around to admire the yellow lightning bolts zigzagging across it.

Fin froze.
Dashing
was a word like
repast
—a word he hadn't realized he knew. A cool breeze crept across his back. Suddenly he had the feeling he wasn't alone. Well, why couldn't his cape have magic powers like the ring in
The Lord of the Rings
, or the invisibility cloak in
Harry Potter
? He pictured himself wearing the cape to school and turning Thorn into a hermit crab with the wave of a hand.

He looked in the mirror again. This time all he saw was a skinny kid with sticky-out ears who was too old to be wearing a superhero costume. “Quit being a baby,” he told his mirror self. He untied the strings, dumped the cape back in the garbage, and went to the computer room.

Finch Googled “hermit crabs” and found a site called Fun Facts About Hermit Crabs.

1. Hermit crabs have ten legs like shrimp.

2. Hermit crabs have two pairs of antennae. The longer pair is for feeling. The shorter pair is for smelling and tasting.

3. A hermit crab's large claw is for defense. The small one is for feeding itself.

4. Hermit crabs don't make the shells they live in—they find them.

5. Hermit crabs are most active at night.

6. Hermit crabs may fight over a shell. It is possible for an attacking crab to pull off the defending crab's claw if

“Mimi, Fin, I'm home!”

“Coming in a minute, Mom,” Finch called. He bookmarked the Fun Facts website and dashed into the kitchen.

“Guess what? My teacher, Mr. Burns, picked me to be a class zookeeper.”

“Nice.” Finch's mother stepped out of her high heels and wriggled her toes. “Ooh, what a hard day.”

“Did you sell any insurance policies?” Finch asked.

“Yep,” Elaine Mundy said as she unloaded store-made roast chicken, potato salad, and coleslaw from a grocery bag. She was the most successful insurance saleswoman at the Safe and Sound Insurance Agency. Fin was very proud of her.

“My client Mrs. Fogel was worried about who would take care of her three dachshunds if she were no longer able. Her niece likes the dogs, but Mrs. Fogel didn't think the young woman could afford to look after them. So she bought an insurance policy that would provide her niece with enough money to take care of all three pups if she becomes incapacitated—or dies. Mrs. Fogel is in good shape, but she's quite old.”

“Three dachshunds!” Mimi exclaimed as she shuffled into the room with Rosie attached to her fuzzy pink slipper. “Can we get another ferret?”

“Definitely not!” Mrs. Mundy exclaimed. “Two is the perfect number. Any more and this place will smell like a zoo. In fact, it already does—whose turn is it to clean the ferrets' litter box?”

Finch looked at the ceiling. “I don't smell anything.”

“You never do,” Mimi said, “because you're such a stinker.”

“Fin, I want you to change that litter right after dinner,” his mother said. “If you neglect your responsibilities in school like this, your teacher will take away your zoo job.”

“Yeah, he'll let someone else clean the crab poop instead,” Mimi teased.

“No, he won't! I'm going to take the best care of them ever,” Finch shouted.

“Enough!” Mrs. Mundy commanded without looking away from the salad she was tossing. “Set the table.” She waved a salad spoon in the air. “Why don't you two tell me how your first day of school went?”

Except for the scraping of spoon against bowl, the kitchen was silent.