Captain Nobody

by Dean Pitchford

  Just as everything was about ready, Dad bolted through the kitchen. “Hey! I bet you’re hungry, huh?” I called out.

  “Oh, hey, kiddo,” Dad said as he grabbed his car keys. “I told your mom I’d eat with her at the hospital. Then she’ll be back later this afternoon.” The beeper on his belt buzzed. “Oh, great,” he said, and raced out.

  I chased him through the laundry room and out to the driveway.

  “Wait, Dad! What’s happening with Chris?”

  “Well, his blood tests are back. They’re all good,” Dad explained, climbing into his car. “His heart scan’s good. Breathing’s good. Everything’s good.” He started the car and backed down the driveway, calling out, “Now all we can do is wait.”

  I went out to pick up the Sunday Appleton Sentinel off the porch. On the front page, above an amazing photo of Chris flying through the air on his way to that winning touchdown, was the headline: “Newman’s Bittersweet Victory.” The article was about my brother’s first day in the hospital, but it was the second paragraph that made me catch my breath.

  “Chris Newman,” it read, “the only child of Patrick and Mary Newman of Appleton . . .”

  The only child?

  I turned the paper over and left it on the washing machine.

  As I ate breakfast, I listened to Cecil’s CD of drum solos. It was very energetic. It even got me tapping my foot, although I’m sure I was nowhere near the beat.

  All that noise and energy lifted my spirits, and I began to think that maybe . . . maybe I could still save Halloween. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe any old costume would be better than no costume at all.

  I dug through bins and boxes in the garage again until I found my old cowboy outfit. But it was worse than I remembered: the pants were torn and way too short. The hat was crushed, and the shirt was stained red, purple and green where I had wiped off my sticky candy hands on past Halloween nights. I had to face the fact that this cowboy had come to the end of his trail.

  I went back into the kitchen and shut off the drum CD. I knew what I had to do. When JJ and Cecil arrived at six o’clock, I would greet them at the door, admire their costumes, and wish them well with their trick-or-treating.

  Because I didn’t really feel like Halloweening this year.

  The torrent of phone calls had slowed to a trickle. That afternoon I did my homework, spent a little time on my latest fantasy character—a crimefighter named Storm Dwayne who could launch tornadoes with a blast from his eyes—and dozed off listening to JJ’s Harry Potter CD.

  By the time I woke up, evening shadows were slanting through the blinds in my room. I stretched and wandered down the hall. When I passed Chris’s room, I was surprised to see that Mom was home. I hadn’t heard her come in. I was going to say hello, but the way she was acting made me stop at the doorway.

  She was folding a basket of Chris’s clean laundry, but she handled every piece of clothing so slowly that it almost looked like she was moving underwater. She carefully smoothed the wrinkles from one sweatshirt, then hugged it as if my brother was still in it.

  Finally, so that I wouldn’t scare her, I softly said, “Mom?”

  She turned and smiled when she saw me. “Hey, honey.” She swiped at the corners of her eyes, but I still saw a tear or two.

  “You okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she nodded. “I just miss your brother, that’s all.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I know.”

  After a long silence, I asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

  Mom picked up the laundry basket, and as she passed me at the door, she patted my cheek. “No. Not a thing.”

  Not a thing.

  I know she probably didn’t mean anything by it, but she was right. There wasn’t anything I could do. After all, what had I done all weekend? I hadn’t cooked a meal that anybody had eaten. I hadn’t made a Halloween costume. I hadn’t visited Chris and, even in my dreams, I stood by like a mailbox while my brother got slammed over and over.

  I just felt so useless.

  Okay, so maybe I am just ten. And not very tall and not very strong. But still, wasn’t there something that I could do to make things better? Something to make it so Mom wouldn’t feel like crying or . . .

  Wait! That was it! I could cheer up Mom. And I knew just how to do it!

  My big brother had grown up so quickly that he never wore out any of his clothes, so over the years I inherited all the jerseys and shorts and sweatshirts and running shoes that Chris couldn’t fit into anymore. I keep them in the bottom drawer of my dresser, because they actually don’t fit me, either. Oh, the size might say “small,” but whenever I put on anything from that drawer, I always get swallowed up in the same clothes that Chris used to fill out so well. One time I went downstairs wearing one of Chris’s hand-me-downs, and Dad peeked down the back of my shirt and called, “Chris? Chris? Is that you in there? Have you seen your little brother?”

  Since then, whenever I’d show up in anything my brother had outgrown, all Dad would have to say was “Remember that time when . . . ?” and Mom would laugh so hard that she’d get hiccups. So when I stood over the drawer filled with Chris’s old clothes, I was thinking I could dress up and cheer up Mom before she left. But I had to move fast.

  I stripped to my underwear and started digging through the drawer. I slipped on a baseball jersey, but I ripped that off before trying on a pair of running shorts. And then another and another. Clothes I was putting on were getting tangled with clothes I was tearing off. I was hopping around on one leg trying to pull a long-sleeved sweatshirt over my head when Mom called from downstairs.

  “Newt, honey? I’m going. There’s pizza in the freezer. Or it might be lasagna.”

  “Mom! Wait till you see this!” I tried to yell, but the sweatshirt muffled my voice.

  Frantic, I lunged for my bedroom door, but my feet got twisted in all the clothes I’d been tossing around, and I stumbled backward, falling onto my bed. As I lay there panting, I heard Mom close the garage door. I stared at the ceiling.

  “Useless,” I groaned.

  I stayed there until the doorbell rang.

  Was it six o’clock already?

  I struggled to my feet and careened into the hallway.

  “In a minute!” I shouted.

  Halfway down the stairs, I tripped over something I was wearing and tumbled the rest of the way into the entryway. The doorbell rang again. I grabbed the door-knob to pull myself up, and yanked open the front door.

  JJ and Cecil took one look at me and gasped. I can’t blame them. I was red-faced and sweaty and twisted up in a tornado of Chris’s old pants and shirts and shorts.

  I took one look at them and gasped, too. Because they looked amazing.

  JJ was dressed from head to foot in a black gown with a thick silver cord sewn along all the edges. She wore long black gloves, and her hair was twirled around wire pipe cleaners so that it stuck out from her head like rays from a black sun. Her lips were shiny with black gloss, her eyelids were painted with streaks of black and white, and from her ears dangled what looked like silver crystals.

  Cecil wore a green velvet jacket crisscrossed with colored ribbons; his green velvet pants were cut short and the bottoms were held in place just below each knee by rubber bands. Long gray socks and green high-top tennis shoes completed the outfit, and he had puffed up his curly black Afro and dusted it with baby talc until it looked like a powdered wig.

  “Whoa! You guys!” I sputtered.

  “Pretty awesome, huh?” Cecil winked.

  JJ smiled as she did a little twirl. “It helps to have four sisters who all know how to sew.”

  “You wanna know who we are?” Cecil asked.

  “Yeah!” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Me first!” JJ clapped her hands excitedly. “I am Splendida, the Queen of the Dungeon of Dreams in my favorite, favorite saga, The Crystal Cavern Chronicles. People think she’s an evil witch just because she dresses all in
black, but that’s only because there are no colors in her world. She’s actually the guardian of all the dreams and hopes in the universe, so she’s a really good witch. And these,” she pointed to her ears, “these are supposed to be the Diamonds of Destiny, but I don’t have any diamond earrings. So I made these out of tinfoil and cellophane.”

  “Awesome,” I said, shaking my head in admiration. I turned to Cecil, “And you are . . . ?”

  Cecil bowed deeply and made a sound like a trumpet. “Doot-too-doo-DOO! I stand before you tonight as my greatest inspiration, the most excellent musical superfly of the eighteenth century, even though he never wrote a lick for a snare drum or a tom-tom. I am The Wolf—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!”

  “Mozart!” I cried. “Of course!”

  “And my mom let me cut up an old pantsuit of hers, so don’t get any ideas that I run around in velvet all the time, dig?”

  “I actually guessed that he was Mozart the moment he walked down the sidewalk,” JJ gushed.

  I was shaking my head in wonder, stunned by my friends’ incredible work, when I realized that they were now staring at me.

  “Let me guess,” Cecil said. “You’re a clothes hamper?”

  7

  IN WHICH I HIDE—AND FIND MYSELF

  I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Instead, my eyes began to sting and my lower lip started to tremble as everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours came crashing down on me.

  “Dude,” Cecil murmured.

  “Newt?” JJ asked, gently touching my arm. “Did something happen with Chris?”

  I shook my head a little too vigorously. “No, no, he’s still asleep,” I said, trying to sound cheery. “Catching those z’s.”

  “And you?” Cecil squinted at my outfit. “What’s going on here?”

  “What? Oh, this?” I tugged at my clothes. “This . . . this was supposed to be a joke. Cuz, see, this stuff’s not really mine, but my mom thinks it’s hilarious when I put it on, so I . . . I put it on, but before I could show her, she left for the hospital. So ha-ha! Joke’s on me!”

  I saw Cecil and JJ exchange a look of concern, but I rattled on, speaking faster and faster.

  “And there I was, all twisted up in these things and crashing around in my bedroom and rolling down the stairs, and you heard me hit the floor, right? How dumb is that, huh? I mean, how stupid am I to think that I could possibly make any difference . . . and . . . and . . . you know what?” I screeched to a halt. “You guys go ahead without me.”

  “What?” Cecil cried.

  “Why?” asked JJ.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and confessed: “Because I didn’t make a costume.”

  Before they could respond, I raced ahead. “I tried to think of someone to be. I really did! I concentrated on my inner other, and I made lists of heroes and famous people and stuff, but none of them were me, so instead of being somebody this year, I guess I won’t be anybody.”

  A horrible silence followed my outburst. Finally Cecil tugged at the oversized Windbreaker that was flapping down my back.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Doesn’t this kind of look like something Superman would wear?”

  “It really does,” JJ agreed. “And those sweatpants . . . they look like the Hulk’s. Sort of.”

  “I’m not gonna be Superman,” I groaned. “And I’m sure not the Hulk. Or any of those guys with superpowers who—”

  JJ cut me off. “Who says you’ve got to be any of them?”

  “Or any kind of hero that anybody’s ever heard of?” Cecil added.

  “But what do I say when they ask who I’m supposed to be?” I worried.

  “Tell them that you are your own creation,” JJ said as she circled me, studying the tangle of fabrics. “The first shining creature of a brand-new breed.”

  The way the words tumbled out of her mouth made it all sound so important. And possible.

  Cecil clapped me on the back. “You got a pair of scissors?”

  First, JJ and Cecil put me in a pair of red sweatpants and tucked them into Chris’s old silver track shoes, which were striped with lightning bolts. Next, JJ ripped the sleeves off a gray sweatshirt, cut it down the middle, and with Mom’s glue gun she attached the gray fabric to the shoulders of the purple baseball jersey I had on, so that it hung down my back like a puffy cape. And finally, Cecil snipped a single short sleeve off one of Chris’s old red T-shirts and tugged it down around my forehead like a sweatband.

  They stepped back to inspect their work. JJ shook her head. “It’s still lacking something,” she said. “There’s no magic yet.”

  “I agree,” Cecil muttered. “He looks . . . un-magical.”

  “I look like a gym teacher who got caught in a Laundromat explosion,” I moaned.

  Just then, JJ snapped her fingers and shouted, “I’ve got it!” She yanked the sweatband off my forehead, cut two holes in it and pulled it back down past my forehead and over the bridge of my nose.

  “A mask!” Cecil exclaimed. “JJ, that’s genius!”

  “Can you see out the eyeholes?” JJ asked me.

  I blinked behind the slits and adjusted the band of fabric.

  “I guess,” I shrugged.

  I swiveled my head around, looking at the ceiling and the floor. But when I turned and saw myself in the front room mirror, I caught my breath.

  Because that wasn’t me.

  Not the Newton Newman who’s been staring back at me for ten years. Oh, the clothes were the same as they had been five seconds ago, but the mask had changed everything. The thin strip of fabric that hid my face had turned me into someone I didn’t recognize. And—this was even weirder—from inside looking out, I felt protected. Hidden, even.

  When JJ cried, “So!” and handed me a candy bag, I took it.

  And when Cecil slapped his thigh and declared, “This parade is ready to roll!” I didn’t disagree.

  8

  IN WHICH I RAISE MY VOICE

  “Honey! C’mere! You’ve got to see these kids!”

  The jolly, plump man couldn’t stop chuckling as we stood on the front porch of the first house we stopped at.

  “Oh, my word!” his wife squealed as she joined her husband. She was tall and skinny and wore a wide black witch’s hat. In her hands she carried a bowl of Butterfinger bars, which Cecil couldn’t take his eyes off of.

  “This one,” said the man, pointing to Cecil, “he says he’s Mozart.”

  “And I don’t doubt it for a second,” his wife laughed.

  “And this young lady—”

  “Don’t tell me . . . Splendida!” cried the wife. “Oh, darling, I’ve read all the Crystal Cavern Chronicles. I’d recognize Splendida anywhere!”

  JJ beamed with pride.

  Then the husband and wife turned their attention to me. “And who are you supposed to be, little boy?” asked the husband, just the way the neighbor had asked me in my nightmare. The one where I was naked.

  I froze.

  “Yes,” said the wife, looking me over, “who are you, dear?”

  Her husband pointed to a spot in the middle of my forehead.

  “Are these initials a clue to your identity?”

  “What initials?” JJ asked, twisting her head to read from my fabric face mask. “Oh, my. It does say ‘C.N.’”

  Cecil looked, too. “Who’s C.N.?”

  I stifled a gasp. In all the rush to build me a costume, I guess that none of us had noticed that the sleeve of my brother’s old T-shirt—the sleeve that now circled my head—was stenciled with Chris Newman’s initials.

  C.N.

  “My goodness, yes,” said the wife, squinting. “Who is C.N.?”

  I was tongue-tied. I had never meant to wear Chris’s name written across my forehead. And I sure didn’t want anybody thinking that I was masquerading as my brother on Halloween, not while he was lying in a bed at Appleton General Hospital!

  I think that JJ and Cecil sensed my panic, because Cecil s
uddenly smacked his forehead. “Oh! C.N.! Right . . . okay. Y’see, C.N. stands for . . . uh . . . Commander. That’s right! Commander . . . uh . . .” I saw him shoot a look to JJ that silently shrieked, “Help me out here!”

  “Nuclear!” JJ exclaimed with a smile. I could tell she was proud to have pulled such a cool sci-fi word out of thin air.

  “Commander Nuclear?” the wife asked.

  “Really?” her husband said.

  “Yeah,” Cecil nodded. “Commander . . .”

  “No!” I suddenly snapped.

  I surprised everybody—especially myself—when I yelled like that. But I wasn’t feeling like myself just then. Behind the mask, I felt like I was somebody . . . oh, I don’t know. New. Somebody I hadn’t met yet.

  “You’re not Commander Nuclear?” Cecil asked, confused.

  “Nope.”

  JJ seemed desperate to find me another name. “Well, sir,” she stammered, “are you anyone we’ve ever heard of?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have any powers we should know about?” wondered the wife.

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, then, who are you?” her husband asked.

  At that moment something—or somebody—came over me. I felt a kind of electric charge race from the top of my head down to my silver lightning-bolt tennis shoes as the answer popped into my brain. I guess I mumbled it so quietly at first that everybody leaned forward and demanded, “What did you say?”

  So I pumped up my chest and tossed my cape. I stood with my legs apart and put my fists on my waist. Then with the biggest, bravest smile I had never smiled before, I proudly announced: “You can call me . . . Captain Nobody.”

  9

  IN WHICH I PRACTICE MY NEW NAME

  Once we got back to the sidewalk, JJ and Cecil exploded with laughter.