by Barry Lyga
Mairi considered. “Well, it was quiet, I’ll tell you that. No remote-controlled mice. No purple water in the drinking fountains. No random burping noises from the computers.”
“No one ever proved I did any of that stuff.”
“Oh, I know,” Mairi said airily. “So I guess it’s just a coincidence that nothing like that happened while you were out sick?”
Kyle shrugged, which was really the only safe response. He didn’t want to lie to Mairi. She was the only person who ever really understood him in the entire town of Bouring. She was the only one who never wanted anything from him.
Sure, he was popular … but that popularity came with a price. “Hey, Kyle,” a kid would say, “can you pull a cool prank on my mom?” Or, “Can you help me get back at my big sister?” But Mairi never asked anything of Kyle. She just liked hanging out with him.
“Hey, remember the time you rewired the loudspeakers so that the principal sounded like Dora the Explorer?” Mairi asked.
That had been a classic from third grade. “That was a long time ago. I’ve matured since then.”
“Sure you have.”
Having someone as your friend for as long as you can remember is great — but the downside is that they know everything about you. Mairi had actually been present the day Kyle decided to embark on a life of prankstering. It was back in first grade, when a group of middle school actors visited the elementary school to perform their own version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Kyle had been captivated by the story of an arrogant, self-important monarch who was so impervious to common sense that he walked around naked, convinced he was wearing fine clothes.
As he watched the play, Mairi had leaned over to him and whispered, “It’s just like real life!”
Even that young, they’d both already recognized that many adults took themselves too seriously and needed to be taken down a peg or two. Or ten. The teacher who always said “supposably” instead of “supposedly.” The principal who walked the halls with his shirttail sticking out of his fly. The lunch monitor who couldn’t tell the difference between a stalk of asparagus … and a green bean. They were surrounded by clueless people.
Mairi thought it was funny, but even in the first grade, Kyle — already a genius — knew that it was deadly serious. And a problem. Even though it would be more than a year before he actually wrote it down, the Prankster Manifesto was born that day.
Now that he once again sat on the bus with Mairi, the world made at least a little sense. He tried to stay casual, but he couldn’t help it — he was happy to see her. Even though Mairi didn’t always appreciate Kyle’s pranks (the ones she knew about, that is), she also never hassled him about them.
“Are you still doing the Astronomy Club thing?”
The Bouring Astronomy Club was holding its monthly stargazing event in a couple of weeks. Mairi and Kyle had always gone to them together and he didn’t see why that would change now. “Of course.”
“It’s your turn to bring the snacks.”
“I know. I’m not an idiot.” That was more true than ever now.
Mairi punched Kyle in the shoulder. “No one said you were an idiot, you idiot.”
Kyle grinned back at her, but inside, he was suddenly cold and worried. Mairi was pretty tough; she had a decent punch.
But when she’d punched him just now … he hadn’t felt a thing.
By the time they got to school, Kyle was still thinking about that punch. Had Mairi pulled her punch, worried about hurting him since he’d been sick? That made sense.
At school, he’d barely gotten off the bus when his Great Nemesis swooped into view.
“Hello, Kyle!” his Great Nemesis burbled.
“Hello, Great Nemesis.” Kyle gritted his teeth.
“Oh, Kyle! Are you still calling me that?”
Melissa Masterton. Bouring Middle School’s guidance counselor. She had been Bouring Elementary School’s guidance counselor and then transferred to the middle school at the same time Kyle started. He was convinced she was stalking him. Isn’t that what a Great Nemesis would do?
Ms. Master ton was always trying to help Kyle. This was particularly annoying because Kyle didn’t need any help. Ms. Masterton called what she did “channeling your energies.” As if Kyle were a raging river that needed a dam.
She also didn’t seem to understand that Kyle really, genuinely did not like her. She thought he was kidding about the “Great Nemesis” stuff.
“You’ve been out of school for a week,” she went on. “I want to make sure you don’t need any help getting back on your feet.”
He glared at Ms. Masterton, who beamed down at him like a deranged grandmother. Her eyes had blue eyeliner all around them and her face was thick with pasty makeup. Kyle wondered how many pounds of makeup she went through in a year. It had to be a lot.
“I’m on my feet just fine,” he told her. “Standing up and everything.”
“A long illness can be difficult, especially for someone as bright and competitive as you are,” she babbled. “You might be afraid that you’ll never catch up.”
Ha! Kyle had done his missing work and more. He started calculating her makeup poundage, just to make the time pass.
“So I just want you to know that I talked to your teachers and they’re all willing to give you as much time as you need to get acclimated.” She paused. “Acclimate is a word that means —”
Become accustomed to a new climate or new conditions, Kyle thought, still calculating. In lipstick alone, she probably used twenty pounds a year. Eyeliner weighed less, but she probably used more of it, so figure another twenty pounds there.
“And I just know you’ll do great!” Ms. Masterton went on, and then did the most horrible thing a Great Nemesis could do: She leaned down and hugged Kyle, right there in broad daylight!
“Now go on inside and don’t be afraid to come to my office if you need to!”
Kyle broke away from her, grateful that no one had seen that little display.
Fifty pounds, he settled on. Fifty pounds, ten ounces, to be exact. That’s how much makeup Ms. Masterton went through in a year.
That’s a kindergartner’s weight in makeup!
CHAPTER
FOUR
Once he got inside the school, Kyle realized the cold, hard truth: He was in middle school. He had an intellect the size of a moon and he was trapped in the sixth grade. The boredom would crush him like an egg and leave a gross, gooey mess. In truth, “bored” was too small and too normal a word to describe what he felt. School had never been much of a challenge for him, but now he was so smart that his old smartness looked like stupidity, and that made his boredom come alive like a giant wearing steel-toed boots, crushing everything in its path.
He occupied his mind with other things instead. Like: How had his intelligence been boosted? Did things besides his brain get changed by the radiation? Did that explain his deadly trash-can-kicking prowess? And his sudden ability to ignore a punch from Mairi MacTaggert?
Then he remembered something from the article about the “stars falling down” — there had been someone else in the field that night. Another kid Kyle’s age.
That was strange because Kyle had no memory of anyone else being there, but BouringRecord.com said there had been. Maybe he could go find this kid and compare notes….
The idea of needing help from someone else didn’t sit well with Kyle. Not at all.
Lunchtime helped Kyle forget his troubles. Kids fought over the opportunity to sit at his table. Kyle tried his best to keep the peace, but he had to admit that it was kind of cool to have everyone want to be that close to him.
“All right!” he said finally, when he judged that Mr. Hathaway, the lunch monitor, was going to intervene. “That’s enough, you guys. You, you, and you” — he pointed — “can sit here. The rest of you will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“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.
CHAPTER
FIVE
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 expl
oded 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.
