by Barry Lyga
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.
CHAPTER
SIX
Even though he could fly now, Kyle wanted to keep it to himself, so he took the school bus the next morning as usual. But when he got on, no one even noticed him. Everyone was talking about what had happened last night.
BouringRecord.com had a big story on what had happened last night, including a name for the kid Kyle had seen: “Mighty Mike.”
Yes, they actually called him that.
The article was filled with all kinds of praise for Mighty Mike’s late-night heroics. No mention, Kyle noticed, of that initial mistake. No mention that he almost made the situation even worse with his “Mighty Breath.”
According to BouringRecord.com (which now had an entire subsite at MightyMike.BouringRecord.com), Mighty Mike was, in fact, “the boy from the field,” the one mentioned in the newspaper articles about the plasma storm. Following the “meteor shower,” firefighters called to the scene discovered a twelve-year-old boy wandering the football field. At first he couldn’t speak, but after being taken to the hospital, he began talking — hesitantly at first, then later with more authority, though his vocabulary was a bit mangled. He had almost total amnesia — he couldn’t remember how he had gotten to the field, what he was doing there, or even his own name. A social worker gave him the name “Mike.” Sheriff Monroe had arranged for Mike to be taken in by a local foster couple — the Matthewses — until his amnesia could be resolved and his family located.
In the week since Mike had been found, doctors had secretly examined him and declared him to be a healthy child, though some of their tests were thrown off by the presence of strange electromagnetic energy in his body. The doctors now revealed that they had discovered that the boy had a range of amazing, unearthly superpowers. Speculation immediately began that the meteor shower had somehow charged Mike’s body with interstellar energies. Kyle knew that was possible — he was living proof.
Mairi got on the bus, sat next to Kyle, and, like everyone else, chattered about Mighty Mike.
The government was routinely examining Mike. Kyle shivered when he thought of that. He was glad he had kept his powers and his superbrain a secret. He didn’t trust anyone but himself with his body or his secrets. And sure — right now the government was being polite and asking Mike if they could examine him and run tests on him … but who knew how long that would last? What if Mike said “no” one time? Kyle was willing to bet they wouldn’t just let him fly off into the sunset. Oh, no. They would make him submit to more tests.
Kyle knew how that worked. He had once been “asked” by an irate teacher if he “would mind joining me out in the hallway.” Kyle had thought about it and said, “No, I’d rather not,” much to the tittering of his classmates.
But the “request” hadn’t been optional and he’d gotten in trouble for refusing. That’s how these authority figures worked.
Well, that was all well and good for Mighty Mike, but Kyle Camden was no one’s guinea pig.
He’d seen pictures of Mighty Mike on the web this morning — he had apparently come back and posed for photos with the firefighters last night. Kyle thought that one of the captions should have read, “Mighty Mike, the kid who almost started a forest fire, poses with clueless firefighters who should know better.” The bus hit a pothole and bounced so hard that Mairi was flung into Kyle, who didn’t even feel it.
“Are you okay?” Mairi asked.
“Fine, Mom,” Kyle snapped. He’d meant to joke, but he was still concentrating on Mighty Mike and it just came out snarky. “Sorry.”
Mairi gazed at him for a moment, then settled back into the seat and changed the topic. “They say he’s really strong. And nothing can hurt him. Isn’t that incredible?”
Kyle thought of his time in the coal mine. “It sure is.”
Mairi kept talking, but Kyle once again ignored her. Why couldn’t he remember this “Mighty Mike” from the night of the plasma storm? What the heck was that kid doing out on the football field anyway?
Kyle clenched a fist in frustration, then slowly let it go slack. He had a lot of power in his fists now — he had to be careful. If Mighty Mike had proven anything last night, it was that being careless with superpowers could be disastrous. For the rest of the day, he decided, Kyle was goi
ng to apply his superintellect to figuring out the mystery of Mighty Mike.
“… greatest news ever?” Mairi was saying.
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
Mairi rolled her eyes. “I said it’s so cool that Mighty Mike is going to school with us. Isn’t that the greatest news ever? ”
Kyle stared at her. What?
This kid was going to be at Bouring Middle? At Kyle’s school?
Well, in that case, Kyle had to figure out what Mighty Mike’s deal was. There was something off about him. Something worrisome that Kyle couldn’t quite identify. So, while suffering through another boring day of school, Kyle focused all of his attention on Mighty Mike and the plasma storm.
Something danced just beyond the limits of his memory…. He could remember being in the field, getting ready to set up his prank. And then … and then a bright light from overhead … At first he’d thought a police helicopter had found him, but then he realized that was stupid — the Bouring police didn’t have a helicopter. What would they need it for?
He looked up and a curtain of multicolored light assailed his eyes, flashing downward …
And …
And …
Just then, the classroom door opened, breaking Kyle’s concentration. There stood the Great Nemesis. Kyle cringed. Was she going to make him go to the guidance office and talk about his feelings? Kyle’s feelings pretty much went from boredom to annoyance and back again — there wasn’t a lot to talk about.
But no. That wasn’t why she was here. Next to the Great Nemesis was … him.
“Hi, everyone, I’d like to introduce you to Mike Matthews!” Ms. Masterton said.
The class went silent. Everyone stared.
“Hello,” Mike said. It was the first time Kyle heard him speak. There was something familiar about the voice, but Kyle couldn’t place it. “I’m glad to be here,” Mike went on.
“It’s Mighty Mike!” someone blurted out, as if it wasn’t obvious, as if the kid hadn’t been standing there for ten and a half seconds already. (Ever since his intelligence had been boosted, Kyle had found himself keeping time for things.)
The whole class started babbling.
Kyle didn’t think the kid looked so “mighty” right now, dressed in a gray shirt and a pair of blue jeans that were so new they looked like someone had ironed them. He pointedly ignored Mighty Mike, turning instead to designing the world’s greatest thumbtack delivery system. Yes, you could just stick a thumbtack in the wall, but why bother doing that if Kyle could make it easier? Not to mention more challenging and interesting somehow …
By the time Miss Moore and the Great Nemesis had the class calmed down, Kyle had already worked out the basic design of his thumbtack cannon. It would use a protractor as an aiming device, graphite from a lead pencil as fuel, and it would fire thumbtacks with incredible accuracy to pin things to walls. He sketched it out on the back of his notebook and turned to show it to Mairi.
But she wasn’t paying attention because Mike was sitting right next to her!
Kyle didn’t like the idea of his best friend being exposed to Mighty Mike. Something about the kid rankled. He was a no-good show-off, but there was something else, a notion that lurked on the edge of his conscious mind. Mighty Mike made Kyle uneasy. He felt it in his gut, and while his gut wasn’t as smart as his brain, he still trusted it.
He moped his way through class and then went to lunch, where even Mairi’s happy chatter couldn’t perk him up.
“You still feel a little bit sick?” she asked, concerned. She was the only person who could look at him with those sad eyes and not make him angry. He just couldn’t get mad at Mairi. “I had the flu last year, remember? And even when they said I was better and sent me back to school, I still felt a little bit sick.”
I’m not sick, he wanted to say. It’s just that my DNA has been rewritten by alien energies and now I’m so incredibly smart that in the time it took you to say what you just said, I designed a time machine in my head.
But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t tell anyone about his powers. Not even Mairi.
So he said, “Yeah, I feel a little off, I guess.”
“Some fresh air will help you,” Mairi said wisely. “Let’s go outside.”
They went out to the playground, where Kyle was surprised to find that the fresh air did help, a little bit. He took in a deep breath and stretched, aware of how much more powerful his body was now. He still looked the same, but he knew that he could uproot the basketball hoop and swing it like a wiffle ball bat if he wanted to.
How did that work, anyway? How could he be so strong without his muscles changing at all? Did his body emit a focused antigravity field? Or did he somehow disrupt the weak nuclear force on a highly selective level, allowing him to —
“Look,” Mairi said.
Kyle blinked. A part of his superbrain still worked on the problem of his strength, but now his attention was elsewhere. Across the playground, a throng of kids had gathered. At least half the kids from the lunchroom were there, with more streaming over by the second!
“Show us how you fly!” someone called out, and the chant was picked up by the others.
It was Mighty Mike. Of course. Standing in the middle of the crowd, smiling, but shaking his head.
“Let me feel your muscles!” someone else said, and a bunch of girls pushed forward to do just that.
For the first time in his life, Kyle didn’t know what to say.
Around Mike, the kids were reaching out to touch him. Mike managed to avoid it without pushing anyone and without looking annoyed. Even from across the playground, Kyle could hear Mighty Mike’s voice, loud and clear and strong, but also somehow humble and gentle:
“I’m sorry — I can’t show you my powers. I promised the school I wouldn’t use my powers here. They think it’s too distracting, and I agree.”
Kyle wanted to gag. What a teacher’s pet! A superpowered teacher’s pet, sure, but that was just worse.
“Don’t you want to go meet him?” Mairi asked, her eyes shining. She tugged Kyle’s arm, pulling him toward Mike.
A million potential insults — all of them good — raced through Kyle’s superintelligent noggin. He ached to let loose with them, but he couldn’t. This was Mairi, his best friend in the world. No matter what sort of trouble he’d gotten into in the past, she always stood beside him. Sure, she would always chide him, but she never stopped being his friend. She never told him he was a bad kid.
So he just shrugged instead and shook his head, trying to look disinterested, while inside he was dying a tiny bit.
Mairi ran off to join the crowd meeting the new kid.
Even with his supercharged brain, it took Kyle a moment. It took seeing Mairi join the line of kids flowing from the lunchroom, making a beeline straight for Mighty Mike, desperate to see and touch their new hero.
In that moment, Kyle realized he was standing alone on the playground. Utterly alone.
Every single kid had gathered around Mighty Mike.
Kyle was no longer the most popular kid at Bouring Middle School.
As if the shock of that realization jogged something loose from his memory, Kyle gasped with recollection.
He remembered.
He remembered more about the night of the plasma storm.
And he remembered something about “Mighty Mike.”
from the top secret journal of Kyle Camden (deciphered):
It’s a good thing I write this journal in a symmetric poly alphabetic cipher so that no one else can read it. Because I have to get something off my chest and I can’t risk telling it to anyone.
“Mighty Mike.” So helpful, right? Working with the doctors and the government. Putting out fires.
It’s a nice act.
But no one knows. No one knows what I know.
What he really is. How dangerous he could be.
At school, I watched the kids who once worshipped me surround Mighty Mike like he was the God
of Ice Cream, and I couldn’t believe it.
But would they like that do-gooder punk so much if they knew the truth? If they knew what I know?
That night, I watched the plasma storm from the football field. (“The stars fell down,” in the submoronic locution of the local press.) I stood in awe of the curtain of plasma. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. It glimmered and glowed and shimmered like the aurora borealis, endless sheets of energy streaming down from space.
Everyone thinks that Mike is a kid who stumbled into the field and was bathed in the energy of the storm. Ha! Shows what they know.
I was the kid bathed in the energy of the storm. It was like being pelted with thousands upon thousands of hot needles, needles that disintegrated the instant they touched your skin.
Mike didn’t bathe in the plasma like I did. No.
Mike came from the plasma!
I was there. I saw it. It’s the last thing I remember coherently before I blacked out. When I woke up, I was alone and I managed to stumble home.
I saw the energy storm coalesce and congeal in the air, the way you can tell a window is open because a curtain billows. You can’t see the breeze and you can’t even see the open window, but the motion of the curtain tells you everything you need to know.
Mike materialized from the energy. The energy made him. It created him that night.
Everyone thinks he’s a normal kid with superpowers and amnesia.
Ha! His memories aren’t missing. He never had memories to begin with!
So, tell me: Would everyone still worship “Mighty Mike,” would they adore him and cheer his name if they knew the truth …
… that “Mighty Mike” is an alien from outer space?
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Kyle woke up in the middle of the night. The house was still, except for Lefty, who was digging in his litter box as if he could find buried treasure. Kyle loved his rabbit, but he had to admit — there wasn’t room for a lot of brainpower inside that tiny skull.
