Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows

by Ryan Calejo

  Dropping to my knees, I flung open another cabinet, pushed aside what looked like a pair of big black cauldrons (yeah, Mrs. Wilson has weird taste in stuff), reached in a little deeper, and yes! I found one of her old oven mitts sandwiched between a pair of dusty dolls she’d stored under the sink for some reason. It was a ratty-looking thing with a faded picture of Minnie Mouse on the front, but it also happened to be the perfect size. I’d just slipped it on when a large shadow fell over me. At first I didn’t bother turning around. I was pretty sure there was no way Mrs. Wilson could’ve come down those creaky old stairs without me hearing; I figured the shadow must’ve been cast by a bird landing on the windowsill or something. But then someone cleared their throat behind me, and I jumped to my feet so quickly that I nearly split my head on the edge of the counter.

  Mrs. Wilson was standing at the foot of the stairs, arms crossed over the front of her silky nightgown. Her sharp green eyes held a mixture of curiosity and something else . . . concern, maybe. “Is that my oven mitt you’re wearing?” she asked, raising a brow.

  For a moment I just stood there, staring at her blankly, wondering how in the world she’d managed to sneak up on me like that. The only thing I could come up with was that I’d been so distracted searching through the drawers that I simply hadn’t noticed the sound of her footsteps. Had to be it. That, or Mrs. Wilson was a part-time ninja.

  When I finally opened my mouth (intending to lie to her, of course), nothing came out, so I decided honesty would probably be the best policy.

  “I, uh—yes . . . this is your oven mitt I’m wearing,” I admitted.

  “Would you like to explain why?”

  I nodded, then said the only thing I could think of that made even a lick of sense. “Research purposes.”

  “Research purposes?” She shook her head, looking confused, and I couldn’t really blame her. “Are you studying home economics in school?”

  “Yes! Exactly!” Thank you, Mrs. Wilson!

  “Oh, that’s wonderful! I had no idea.”

  Me neither. Surprise! “Uh-huh. Been waiting for a spot to open for a while now, and wouldn’t you know it, one finally did. So, yeah . . .” All I could feel was the pounding of my heart and the hammering of my pulse in my neck; it made it almost impossible to think.

  “In that case, you can use my better one.” Crossing to the pantry, she opened a drawer and brought out another oven mitt. “Here.” She held it out to me. This one was crisp and white, practically brand-new. “Give me that raggedy old thing and you can take this one to school. It’s a bit more masculine,” she added in a quiet voice.

  “Oh, no, no, no. This one’s fine. Really.” I stepped out from behind the counter, patting my Minnie Mouse claw cover with a big, stupid (and completely fake) grin on my face. “And I’m a newbie in the kitchen, anyway. . . . I wouldn’t want to mess that one up. It’s so . . . nice and clean and all.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Charlie?”

  “Yes?” I squeaked.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Uh, absolutely.” I stood up straighter, squared my shoulders. Good posture shows good spirits! as my first grade teacher used to tell the class. “W-why do you ask?”

  She pointed—but did not look—down at my legs. “Well, because you’re not wearing any pants, dear. . . .”

  • • •

  “Looking good,” Alvin said when I walked into fourth period social studies later that day. “I see you’ve gone from ski-resort casual to Top Chef chic.”

  Sighing, I dropped into the desk behind him. “Don’t you have anything better to do than worry about what I’m wearing?”

  He thought about that for a sec. “Not really . . .”

  Sam was sitting to my right, and I could feel his gaze burning a hole in the side of my face. “¿Qué quieres, Sam?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering if my grandpa’s tobacco smoke was making me hallucinate again, or if you were actually wearing an oven mitt to school. You’re not crying out for help, are you, Charlie?”

  “Nah, he’s just given up all hope of ever being popular.” Alvin twisted around to face us. “I saw an episode about it on Ellen once. I think it was called ‘When Preteens Give Up.’ ”

  “I haven’t given up,” I grumbled, quietly slipping the mitt under my desk. “I’m just . . . trying to find myself. I mean, isn’t that what middle school is all about? Trying new things?”

  Alvin’s face screwed up. “That’s college, man. Middle school is about surviving long enough to get to high school.”

  Sam said, “I thought high school was about surviving long enough to get to college.”

  Alvin put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us, buddy.” Then he turned to me, eyes bright. “So, you ready for tonight?”

  “What’s tonight?” I asked, and he gave me a look like, Are you kidding me?

  “Dude, it’s Thursday. Last week we all agreed that we were going to sleep over at my house today so we could get up early tomorrow before school and be the first ones at the mall to register for auditions. Which are Saturday.” He frowned. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

  Actually, I did forget. Because I was busy morphing into a scum-sucking crustacean! “No, I didn’t forget. . . . I just—I can’t make it.”

  “What?” Sam shrieked. “You’re messing with us, right?”

  “Sam, relax. I’m sure they’ll let you register without me.”

  “No, they won’t!” he practically shouted in my face. “The FAQ page clearly states that all the members of the band must be present for registration. ¿No sabes leer, o qué?”

  “Of course I know how to read—”

  “I must be having a nightmare. . . .” Alvin faced forward, rubbing his temples. “That has to be it, because there’s no way this is happening right now. Not with auditions less than two days away!”

  A few heads turned in our direction; people were starting to stare. Perfecto. Just what I needed.

  “Guys, listen, I’ll be there, okay? I can’t sleep over because I got something else I got to do. But I’ll be at the mall. Now, can both of you please just chill?” And stop drawing attention to me!

  “All right, everyone, settle down,” Mrs. Grant said, walking into the room. “Get out a sheet of paper and a pencil. We’re having a pop quiz.” When about half the class moaned at that, she quickly added, “No worries. It’s not going to be graded.” As she set her handbag down, her gaze went to the back of the room, and she let out a low sigh. Then I saw why: Behind me, in her usual back-row seat, Alice Coulter was waving a meaty paw over her head. “The answer is no, Ms. Coulter. No, you may not go to the bathroom. No, you may not check something in your locker really quick. No, you may not go see a nurse. And no, you may not, under any circumstances, take a nap during my class.”

  “But Mrs. Grant, I just wanted to let you know that Charlie’s in violation of the school dress code,” Alice said, and I felt my insides shrivel like bacon in a frying pan. “I mean, unless he’s trying out to be our new lunch lady!”

  Most of the class laughed at that. Alice and one of her dingbat friends smacked hands.

  I hate middle school.

  “Quiet!” Mrs. Grant snapped. Then she looked at me and frowned. “As much as it pains me to say this, Charlie, she has a point. The dress code doesn’t permit any”—her eyes went to my oven mitt—“accessories. . . . Please take it off so we can get started.”

  “I, uh, bruised my hand really bad,” I said, thinking quick. “I’m using the mitt for a little extra protection. . . .”

  “Well, if Charlie can wear that nasty old oven mitt, then I can wear my ball cap,” Alice said, pulling it out of her stinky gym bag.

  Mrs. Grant sighed. “Put that away, Alice. . . . You know the rules.”

  “But that’s so not fair!”

  “I said put it away,” Mrs. Grant told her sternly. Then to me: “Charlie, I understand you hurt your hand, bu
t please take the mitt off so we can begin. . . .”

  I hesitated. My heart was pounding so hard I figured the rest of the class could probably hear it. Oh man, oh man, oh man! What do I do?

  “Charlie?” Mrs. Grant said.

  I stared at her helplessly. “Yeah?”

  “Take off the mitt.”

  “Dude, just take it off,” Alvin hissed at me. He had twisted back around in his seat and was staring at me with a look that said, Bro, have you lost your freakin’ marbles?

  “What are you waiting for?” Sam asked, kicking my foot under the desk.

  Mrs. Grant was still watching me. Crossing her arms now the way teachers do when they want to let you know that you’re getting on their last nerve. “Charlie?”

  From behind me came the soft wet snap of someone popping bubble gum. Closer and to my left, I heard someone say my name again—Sam, probably—but the sound seemed far away now, buried beneath the weight of a couple dozen or so curious eyes.

  Prickly sweat broke out on my forehead and on the back of my neck. My pulse was beating like war drums in my ears. It was quickly becoming the only thing I could hear.

  Keep it together, dude. . . . Just keep it together.

  Feeling like I was on the witness stand for a trial that would decide the rest of my life, I opened my mouth to say something, but my tongue felt like it had been glued in place. For a moment, I just sat there, imagining how the class would react if I actually took off the mitt, if I actually showed everyone my claw. I imagined their slack-jawed faces. Imagined the awful silence that would sweep through the room, louder than any nuclear bomb. Imagined the pandemonium that would no doubt follow. The screams and shouts of surprise. The kids scrambling out of their desks, scrambling away from me. The pointing, the gasps. The only thing I didn’t imagine was how Alvin and Sam would react, and that was because I honestly didn’t know how they would react. Deep down inside, I wanted to believe that they wouldn’t totally panic, that they wouldn’t run away from me like all the other kids. But something even deeper down was telling me that there was no way they could accept me. And how could they? How could they accept a freak?

  “I . . . can’t,” I finally managed.

  Mrs. Grant looked confused. Confused and disappointed. Which sort of sucked because she was one of my favorite teachers. “Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave my classroom.”

  “But Mrs.—”

  “Charlie, it’s your choice. Get rid of the mitt or you’re off to detention.”

  Not really much of a choice, I thought. Defeated, I dropped my head. “Yes, ma’am . . .”

  As I gathered my things and started slowly out of the room, I heard Alice shout, “Hope you win lunch lady of the month, Charlie!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  One thing was for sure: I couldn’t go to study hall. Even if the hall monitor in charge didn’t ask me to take off the mitt, Alice was still in every single one of my upcoming classes (thank you very much, scheduling people), and knowing her, she would definitely bring up the whole dress-code thing to those teachers too. Thing was, I couldn’t go straight home, either. It was still before noon, which meant that Mrs. Wilson hadn’t left for her daily trip to the local flea market. She had all these boxes and boxes of little kids’ toys that she was always trying to get rid of down there; I guess she’d been expecting child services to pair her with a younger kid when she’d gotten me. At least that’s what it seemed like. Anyway, if I came home now, she’d have a bunch of questions I wasn’t in any mood to try to talk my way around. So I decided my best move—now that I’d shown up for homeroom and wouldn’t be marked absent for the day—would be to get out of here. Take a nice little stroll up to Miracle Mile and just hang out for a while. The shopping strip wasn’t too far from school, a mile, maybe a mile and a half. Plus, it was on the way home. So that’s exactly what I did.

  The tail end of the morning rush was just beginning to wind down by the time I got there; there were only a handful of moms pushing strollers and a few groups of older guys playing dominoes beneath the row of pastel-colored umbrellas on the sidewalk in front of one of the trendy cafés.

  I walked slowly along the glittering storefronts, taking my time, hoping no one would notice an unaccompanied minor strolling aimlessly around. Fortunately, no one did. Probably because there weren’t that many people to notice in the first place. It seemed like my biggest problem was going to be killing time, and I was thinking about heading over to the local bookstore (my plan was to hide out toward the back somewhere, maybe find myself a comfy beanbag chair and flip through some of the new releases) when I came around the corner and something in the display window of O’Hara’s Pawn stopped me in my tracks. It was a bike, old and thin-framed, with two seats and two pairs of handlebars. The sign on the window read: POPULAR 1930s TWO-SEATER!

  It was a tandem bike. Like the one Violet had mentioned wanting as a kid.

  And just like that I had a great idea.

  • • •

  It was almost seven o’clock when I made it to Violet’s house later that night, and the moon was a huge silver disk in the sky. After hiding her surprise behind the tall leafy palm that stood at the edge of her neighbor’s yard, I sprinted up the porch steps, hoping she wouldn’t be too upset with me for being a little late. Even if she was, though, I figured I had the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. Man, I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face!

  I had just raised my fist to knock when a voice said, “Hey.”

  I turned to see Violet sitting on the long, built-in bench on the far side of the porch. The moment I laid eyes on her my mind blanked. I forgot where I was, what I was doing here—even how rude it was to stare. She was wearing a long, silky dress the color of a wintry sky, and her hair, which was done up in a French twist, glittered like diamond dust. Her lips were a glossy pink, her lashes dark and impossibly long, and her skin glowed as if backlit by the sun. She looked, in a word, amazing.

  “You’re late,” she said, getting up.

  “And you’re—wow . . .”

  Her cheeks turned tomato red, and she looked down at her dress, smoothing a hand over the shimmering fabric. “Too much, right? I was just telling myself I went totally overboard.”

  “No. Not too much.” I stepped forward—tried to anyway. I wasn’t sure my legs were receiving any commands from my brain at the moment. “You look beautiful. . . .”

  And you can chalk that up as the understatement of the century.

  “I’ve never met a queen before, so I thought, why not dress up, you know?” Her dazzling blue eyes rose to meet mine, and I was stupid enough to look directly into them; I had to catch myself on the banister or I would’ve tumbled backward down the steps. “I see you’re not wearing your jacket,” she said, giving my outfit a once-over. Jeans, Miami Heat T-shirt (Dwyane Wade—who else?), oven mitt. Doubt she was impressed.

  “Yeah, I got other problems now. . . .” I raised my left hand. Er, claw.

  Her eyes went briefly to it. “So?”

  “So . . . ?”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Oh. Yeah, sure.” The instant I slipped off the ratty old mitt, her face lit up like Downtown Miami on the Fourth of July.

  “That’s insane!” She touched one hand lightly to my claw. “That’s gotta be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Somehow, the weirder I got, the cooler she seemed to find me. It made me feel halfway normal. “I have a surprise for you,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “C’mon.” I led her down the steps and past the palm tree where I’d hidden the bike, but she didn’t notice it right away, so I sort of stared in its general direction until she finally got the hint.

  “Oh my gosh, Charlie!” She raced over to the bike and crouched down beside it. “A 1939 Rally’s tandem three-speed! Where in the world did you find this?”

  I grinned, feeling my heart thump against my rib cage. “I have my way
s. . . . You like it?”

  “I love it!”

  Well, that’s a relief, I thought, because I’d had to pawn my mother’s locket to buy it for her. I figured I could work some odd jobs over the summer—cut a few lawns, work weekends at the local car wash—to pay the money back.

  Her fingers glided along the glossy red frame. “Did you know that this is, like, one out of thirty-five that were ever made? Most collectors don’t even know that. They think the tandem three-speed was an extension of Rally’s tandem two-speed line, which would then make it a Twoie 300—you know, a standard production run that they made around 1952. But it wasn’t. It was its own luxury line of bikes subcontracted by the Rally Cycle Company to this tiny parts producer out in Wisconsin.”

  Wow, she seemed to know as much about old bikes as I knew about myths. Pretty impressive. “Huh. I did not know that.”

  “Yeah, and the interesting thing is that that little Wisconsin-based company switched over from making bike parts to cheese curds to try to keep from going bankrupt. Funny thing was, at the time, Rally had no clue. So, after they received the first shipment of parts, all of which were handmade because the company had sold off most of its parts-making machinery to pay off creditors, Rally called them to ask when the rest were coming and found out they weren’t because the company was now a cheese-making outfit. RCC obviously had to cancel the line, and the few bikes that had been assembled with the first batch of parts were sold off to recoup some of the money they’d lost in R and D.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. And maybe the coolest part is that the spokes for the wheels”—she pointed at them—“were molded after tractor parts because that’s what the company made before switching over to bike parts and eventually Wisconsin cheddar.”

  “Man, you sure know your Rally stuff.” Coming from anyone else, the lesson in bicycle history would’ve probably caused me to die of boredom. But for some reason, when she told the story, I just wanted to hear more.

  “It’s what makes this bike such an oddity,” she said with a smile. “And you know how much I like oddities. . . .” She smoothed a lock of hair behind one ear, her smile widening, glowing. “Maybe that’s why I like you so much, Charlie Hernández.”