“G’mornin’, sunshine,” she said hoarsely. Just then, the toaster popped up two pieces of bread, and Mom flinched.
“Now, who put those in there?” she wondered.
“It wasn’t me,” I mumbled. I kissed her on the cheek and set the ferret cage on the butcher block.
“My stars!” Mom exclaimed, peering in. “Is that Ferocious?”
“Sure is.”
“Did you two have a sleepover?”
“It’s a long story,” I groaned. “But he’s going back today.”
She looked me up and down.
“It’s good to see your face again.” She smiled.
When she turned away to butter her toast, I took a deep breath and said gently, “I read what that doctor thinks. About Chris having six days before we’d have to worry.”
Mom stopped buttering and slowly set down her knife.
“And today’s the sixth day?”
She nodded.
“Are you worried?”
Mom squeezed her lips like she was wrestling with the words in her mouth, and then she said, “We’re . . . hopeful.”
For a long moment it was so quiet I could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock. Then I surprised us both by announcing:
“I’m coming to see him after school.”
When I ran up to my bedroom to grab my backpack, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I had forgotten how small and skinny I look in everyday clothes. I know I vowed never to wear that costume again, but even so, I opened my dresser drawer and ran my hand over Captain Nobody’s clothes. Just touching them made me feel less upset about Chris. More powerful somehow.
And that’s why I stuffed them into my backpack before I dashed out of the house.
In the school yard, a bunch of kids crowded around to peer through the bars of the ferret cage. Basher poked at Ferocious with a twig.
“Hey, c’mon, Basher,” I said, “don’t hurt him.”
Basher sneered, “And who’s gonna stop me?”
It was a valid question. Without the security of the Captain Nobody mask, I suddenly felt very vulnerable. I didn’t have to answer, though, because JJ and Cecil joined me at that moment, and Basher scoffed and wandered back into the school yard crowd.
Cecil frowned as he regarded my street clothes.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not gonna lie,” he shrugged. “I miss Captain Nobody.”
I looked to JJ. “Do you?”
She crinkled her nose. “When I was five, y’know? I woke up one morning and announced that my name was now Princess Zarzuela and that, because I was of royal birth, I would never brush my hair again, and I would only eat white foods. For one whole week, I ate rice and milk and bread with the crusts cut off, and my hair got so wiry and tangled that I started to pick up radio signals. The morning after that happened, I announced that I was JJ again. So . . . you don’t have to explain to me.”
I nodded, grateful for the support.
“You know what?” Cecil asked, looking between me and JJ. “You guys are two cups of crazy.”
I thought that my new appearance—or rather, my old appearance—might trigger more comments from my classmates, but they didn’t seem to notice one way or the other. They just ignored me the way they always had. Even after I returned the ferret cage to Mrs. Young and she presented me with a scroll naming me a “Friend of Ferocious,” they were unimpressed.
“Well, whoop-de-doo,” Basher teased as I passed him on my way back to my desk.
“I want Ferocious next,” a voice called out, and that was the cue for everyone to wag their hands and chime in: “No! It’s my turn!” “I want him!” “Me me me me me!”
I returned to my desk and looked up to find Ferocious still watching me through his bars. You’re just going to leave me? he seemed to be saying. After all we’ve been through?
He had a point. In the single day I’d had custody of him, we had faced death together, and I had told him my two biggest secrets—how badly I missed Chris, and how Darryl Peeps was the one who had hit my brother. Those were secrets I hadn’t even shared with JJ and Cecil. And they were supposed to be my friends.
Geez. At this moment, my best friend is a ferret. And although I was surrounded by a room full of people, I’d never felt so alone.
On the way to lunch, I passed Principal Toomey, who was deep in conversation with Mr. Brockman, our guidance counselor.
“Hey, Mr. Toomey, Mr. Brockman,” I waved.
They nodded quickly and continued walking. “And what’s that student’s name?” I heard Mr. Toomey grumble as they passed.
“Beats me,” Mr. Brockman replied.
Right about then the sirens began. A single wail started in the distance, but it was quickly joined by many more. The racket grew deafening as police cars and ambulances and fire trucks zoomed past our school and howled down Broad Street.
JJ and Cecil rushed past in a tidal wave of students racing out to watch the emergency vehicles go by.
“What’s happening?” I shouted.
“Probably something awful,” Cecil said excitedly.
I spotted a lot of teachers hurrying into the faculty lounge, so I peered in the doorway and found them all crowded around the TV. Mrs. Marcus, the school nurse, exclaimed, “Oh, will you look at that poor, tortured boy!” just as, from the television, I heard, “The victim is identified as Reggie Ratner.”
Reggie Ratner? I thought. A victim? Of what?
I climbed on a chair at the back of the lounge to get a look at the TV over the teachers’ heads.
“I’m standing at the base of the Appleton water tower, the tallest structure in town,” the reporter Mary Myron was explaining as, all around her, emergency vehicles screeched up, sirens wailing and lights flashing. “Sometime early this morning, Merrimac High School senior and celebrated football player Reggie Ratner climbed onto the roof of this tower in what authorities fear is a suicide attempt.”
I practically toppled off the chair. Suicide? Why would Reggie want to do that?
“Why, you might ask,” Mary Myron continued, as if she’d heard the voice in my head. “Why would this young man want to harm himself? This question is on the minds of the many people gathering here right now.”
A camera shot showed a single figure sitting, sad and alone, way up on the conical roof of the tower.
“From our conversations with Reggie’s parents, classmates and teachers,” Mary Myron said, “we’ve learned this much: For the last week, Reggie Ratner has grown increasingly depressed as students and fans of Fillmore High School have repeatedly harassed him and his family.”
That’s what this is about? I wondered. Kids dumped garbage on his lawn, so he’s going to kill himself?
“Apparently, those Fillmore students accuse Reggie, a successful defensive end, of delivering the critical blow that knocked popular Fillmore football star Chris Newman unconscious at last Friday night’s championship game.”
He didn’t! I wanted to shout. It was Darryl Peeps!
I jumped down from the chair and stumbled out into the hallway. My legs were shaky. This was terrible! Somebody had to tell Reggie that it wasn’t his fault. But who could do that?
After all, I was the only person who knew the truth.
20
IN WHICH I CLIMB UP TO THE SKY
As I wandered down the empty hall, my mind was churning. Who could I tell about Darryl Peeps? It would have to be somebody who could get Reggie Ratner’s attention, somebody with enough authority to convince him to give up his dangerous plan and to come down off his tower.
I thought about Dad; he’s good at getting people to listen. But he and Mom were pretty tied up at the moment.
How about Chris’s teammates? Weren’t they the ones who had been torturing Reggie all week? Maybe, I thought, I could race over to Fillmore High School, burst into the football players’ classrooms and tell them exactly what I had remembered about the Big Tackle. Then they would rush to the water towe
r and shout apologies up to Reggie, wouldn’t they?
But what if they didn’t believe me?
Or what if they accused me of betraying my brother by blaming Darryl and siding with Reggie?
Or what if all of that took too much time?
Who else? Mr. Toomey?
No.
Mrs. Young?
No.
Somebody else. Anybody else!!
Then it hit me: There was nobody else. Because nobody else had seen what I had seen, and nobody else was Chris Newman’s younger brother, and nobody else could deliver the news that might make Reggie Ratner reconsider his jump.
After I’d breathlessly told Cecil and JJ what I had to do, Cecil screwed up his face. “Okay, once you get to the water tower,” he wondered, “how’re you going to talk to Reggie?”
I had no answer.
“I bet somebody’ll have a bullhorn,” JJ suggested.
“That’s it!” I said. “I’ll use a bullhorn!”
“So you’re gonna walk up to a policeman,” Cecil said, “and say, ‘Hey, officer, let me use your bullhorn, because I want to tell Reggie Ratner about a dream I had’?”
“Oooh, yeah,” I winced. “That probably won’t work.”
“How’s this?” Cecil proposed. “I got a cousin in the Navy who showed me how they flash light signals from ship to ship with mirrors. It is so awesome.”
“Do you know the code?” JJ asked him.
“Well. No.”
“And, even if you did, what are the chances that Reggie would know the code?” she continued.
“Okay, okay, you made your point!” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Seems to me the only way you’re going to get Reggie Ratner’s attention is to sit down and talk to him, man to man.”
“How?” I exploded. “He’s on the roof of the tallest building in town!”
“Which means,” JJ reasoned, “that there must be a ladder that goes all the way to the top.” She noticed my shudder. “Oh, I forgot. You’re scared of heights.”
“Petrified.”
“It’s no big deal,” JJ assured me. “I’m afraid of spiders.”
“Me?” Cecil scrunched up his shoulders in fear. “Plastic garbage bags.”
“Garbage bags?” JJ looked surprised. “Why?”
“They’re . . . slimy,” Cecil winced.
“Is that why you sent me into the Dumpster to get your drum?” I asked.
Cecil shrugged. “Guilty as charged.” He snapped his fingers. “Hey, wait a sec! You had no problem climbing up on that garbage pile. And that was pretty high.”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t me,” I moaned. “That was . . . well, you know . . .” My voice trailed off.
“Yeah,” said Cecil slyly. “We sure do know who that was.”
“And we all know what he’s capable of,” JJ added, stressing every word.
They folded their arms and waited.
“No,” I shook my head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
But they kept staring until I had to accept that they were right. And when I did, my stomach flipped like a pancake.
In the boys’ bathroom, I pulled the Captain Nobody costume from my backpack. A thrill ran up my spine as I slipped it on, tied up the silver sneakers and tugged the mask down over my nose. It felt like being reunited with a long-lost friend.
“Oh, yeah,” I exhaled.
I tiptoed down a back stairway and exited into the faculty parking lot, where JJ and Cecil had pulled up on their bikes. When they saw me, their mouths flew open.
“Shhhh!” I warned, holding a finger to my lips.
“He’s back!” Cecil whispered excitedly.
“You’re gonna get in trouble for cutting,” I reminded them. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Are you kidding?” JJ gasped. “This is what sidekicks do!”
I climbed onto Cecil’s crossbar and we all sped off, using the police helicopter in the distance as a guide for our journey across town. Once we got close to the Appleton water tower, we drove around the mob of people and all the emergency vehicles and news vans gathering in front.
Since the wobbly old tower had been condemned about five years ago, a wire fence had been erected around the entire block, and weeds and vines had grown up so high on all sides that you could lose a basketball team in there. Over time, trespassers had cut a few patches of fence here and there and peeled them open, so once we got to the back of the tower and dropped the bikes behind some bushes, we found a flap that we could all squeeze through. Inside the fence, we squatted in the weeds and surveyed the situation.
Cecil nudged us and indicated the ladder that ran up a leg of the water tower to the roof. The rusting brackets that held the ladder onto the rickety tower were pulling away. Discolored screws stuck out of the rotting wood, and, in a few places, the rungs of the ladder were snapped in two. Even worse, the first solid rung was about six feet off the ground.
“I can’t reach the first rung!” I whispered frantically.
“I’ll give you a boost,” JJ offered. “I’m the tallest.”
“But what about the rungs above it?” I pointed out. “They look about as sturdy as celery.”
“Then it’s a good thing you don’t weigh anything,” Cecil said.
“Let’s not stand around yakking,” JJ hissed. “We’ve got company.”
She jerked her head toward a policeman who was wrapping the fence with yellow plastic tape that said POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS. In about ten seconds he would get close enough to see us through the weeds.
“Get ready to rock and roll, Captain,” Cecil whispered. He grabbed two sticks from the ground and skittered back through the fence, where he stood up and let loose a drum riff along the chain link, finishing with a vocal cymbal crash. “Ksssh!”
The startled cop looked up. “Hey!” he yelled. “What’re you doing?”
“Me? I’m a parade!” Cecil crowed, just before he sprinted off.
The cop blinked in confusion—“Huh?”—before he dashed after Cecil, shouting, “Come back here!” and trailing a long plastic ribbon behind himself.
“Let’s go!” JJ grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the foot of the ladder. She folded her fingers into a stirrup and held them down for me to put my foot into.
“Remind me,” I pleaded with a dry throat, “why am I doing this?”
“Because there’s a human life at stake,” she explained calmly, “and that makes this a job for Captain Nobody.”
I gulped. Holding on to JJ’s shoulders, I stepped into her hands, and she boosted me up to the lowest unbroken rung. She pushed from below as I pulled myself up. I reached for the next rung. And the next. And the next.
As I feared, a few of the rotting rungs were broken, and even the unbroken ones creaked when I grabbed them. Nevertheless, they held my weight as I climbed up. Luckily, from behind my mask all I could see was the ladder. I couldn’t see the sky soaring above. Or the earth dropping away below.
The sounds from the ground—the sirens and horns and shouts from the crowd—gradually faded and were replaced with the drone of the helicopter circling the tower. Just before I reached the edge of the roof, it swooped past, and a wallop of wind slammed me against the ladder. I wrapped my arms around the uprights and held on tight until the hurricane had passed.
Unfortunately, when I hugged the ladder, my mask hooked on a jutting nail. So when I reached up to hoist myself onto the roof, I felt a tug, and my mask was ripped from my face.
“Oh, no!” I cried, turning my head to watch the fabric flutter down . . .
. . . down . . .
. . . down.
I shouldn’t have done that. Because way down below the still-falling mask I could see JJ. Who looked about as big as the period at the end of this sentence.
I gagged and gripped the ladder. Not only was I about a bazillion miles above earth, but, without my mask, I wasn’t Captain Nobody anymore! What was Newt Newman going to do now?
I considered a retre
at, a slow descent down the rotting ladder. My teeth chattered in fear at the thought.
I considered not moving. The police would eventually see my predicament—wouldn’t they?—and send a helicopter, throw me a rope and lower me to safety.
But then I considered Reggie Ratner, all alone and desperate. So I pulled myself over the edge of the roof and lay there, panting.
After the first wave of cold, white terror passed through my body, I carefully raised my head and looked around. Below me, Appleton stretched out in every direction. The trees and buildings and streets looked like they belonged in the candy village that goes on exhibit every Christmas at the Three Rivers Mall.
Wow, I thought, this is kind of awesome, but in the next second I remembered where I was. I shuddered and dug my fingernails into the shingles.
The water tower’s circular roof was shaped like a stubby, upside-down ice-cream cone, so that, from the edges, it rose to a point where an old weather vane still creaked in the wind.
I had just pulled myself to my knees when the police helicopter swooped in for a closer look and its down-draft flattened me against the shingles.
How am I supposed to move now? I shrieked inside my skull.
And then I remembered Sticky Ricky.
Sticky Ricky was a crimefighter I once created whose body was covered with hundreds of tiny suction cups that enabled him to slither up steel walls and towers of glass.
“I can slither,” I said aloud.
Fighting the wind from the helicopter, I very slowly inched up the rooftop on my belly until I saw Reggie Ratner on the opposite edge. I’d never seen Reggie out of his football uniform, but there was no mistaking the guy. His neck and arms were as thick as Chris had always joked about. He was sitting with one knee pulled up to his chest and the hood of a sweatshirt flipped over his head as he watched the crowd on the ground below.
The helicopter veered away, but even though I was no longer pinned down, I stayed on my stomach, wiggling down the slope of the roof until I was just behind Reggie. I guess I should have coughed or something to warn him that I was there, because when I gently called, “Reggie?” he shrieked, “Nyahhh!” and practically tumbled off the roof. He twisted around and glared at me.
Captain Nobody Page 10
