“But we were ready for retirement anyway,” the Animator said with a shrug.
“The money that has rolled in over the years from that imbecile’s enterprises has completely replenished my family fortune,” Lord Pincushion said. “It was Meteor Boy that made it all possible.”
There, he had gone and done it. He had brought up the subject that was gnawing at me, but that he wouldn’t (or couldn’t?) tell me about. I was once again completely frustrated. Without thinking, I shoved my hand in my pocket and felt the chunk of rock I had grabbed from my bedstand that morning.
“Maybe you can help explain what this is?” I asked as I retrieved the rock from my pocket.
“Good heavens!” Lord Pincushion’s eyes went wide with surprise. “A piece of prodigium! My boy, do you know how rare this object is? It may be the only sample left in existence.”
“There was a much larger piece,” I corrected him. “Meteor Boy and his friends prevented the theft of an entire meteorite of prodigium from the science museum.”
“Only temporarily,” the Animator shook his head sadly. “Professor Brain-Drain eventually got his hands on that meteorite.”
“Indeed,” agreed Lord Pincushion. “He was in the process of using it for some foul purpose when Meteor Boy intervened.”
“What kind of purpose?” I asked.
“No one knows.” The Animator shrugged. “He had converted the enormous water tower in Telomere Park into a device of some kind, but we were never able to determine its purpose. The prodigium appeared to play a key part in its operation, however.”
“What happened to the meteorite?” I asked, already sensing the answer.
“Meteor Boy snatched it, preventing Brain-Drain’s nefarious plot,” Lord Pincushion said as his head bowed solemnly. “It vanished along with him.”
The two elderly gentlemen stood silently for a moment. Finally, I turned to reach for the door. Lord Pincushion put his hand on my shoulder.
“There’s an easier way,” he said, leading me to a large wooden panel in the foyer, where he pushed a hidden switch. The panel slid open to reveal an elevator.
“We never use the stairs. But they’re great for keeping away unwanted visitors,” the Animator informed me as I stepped into the car and then turned back to look at these two great heroes.
“There are strange forces at work,” Lord Pincushion added soberly.
“In case you hadn’t already figured that out from the twenty-five-year-old letter that mentions you,” the Animator said with a mischievous smile and a twinkle in his eyes.
“Exactly,” Lord Pincushion said as he shot his former teammate an annoyed look. “There are events taking shape, and your involvement in them is not merely coincidence. You’re an intelligent boy, and I know what a rarity that is. Think things through. Your instincts will serve you well.”
“Thank you,” I said, despite my monumental confusion. I gave the legendary heroes a halfhearted smile as I pushed the ground floor button in the elevator and the doors slid closed. There were other buttons I could have chosen, and I was more than a little curious about what other floors I might find here in Needlepoint Hill, but for now it was time for me to get home.
When I got there, I walked in to find my mom and dad in the kitchen. There was frosting splattered everywhere, including all over them, and they were both laughing.
“Oh!” my mother said when she saw me. “I was just icing your father’s cakes,” she rushed to explain. She then turned and poured a liquid glaze over a nearby ring cake and froze it in place with a single quick stare. “See?” she nodded, as if for additional proof. Dad, meanwhile, started wiping up the frosting.
One minute Mom’s furious at him, the next everything seems fine. I’ll never understand parents. It’s just nice to see that Mom had gotten over being mad.
“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked. He finally seemed himself again.
“I’m fine,” he nodded. “In fact I’m better than fine. I know I’ve been a little crazy lately. I just want you both to understand how important it is for the New New Crusaders to make a splash next week.”
“Are you certain you’ll get the attention you’re looking for just by baking all this stuff?” I asked skeptically, glancing at the hundreds of pies and cakes around the house.
“What do you mean?” my father asked.
“I mean that you guys are looking for attention, but you’re just baking regular stuff. I know you’re making hundreds, but they’re still just normal pies and cakes.”
“What else can we do?” he asked as he absentmindedly picked up a cupcake.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but it needs to be something big.”
“Hmm,” my father pondered. “Something big.”
I know my dad well enough to know that he’s a literal thinker, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that “big” is exactly what he came up with.
“I’ve got it,” he announced proudly. “We won’t keep making hundreds of ordinary pies and cakes. We’ll just make one. The biggest cake that anyone’s ever seen!”
I saw him getting that crazy look in his eyes again, and my mom saw it, too. I knew I had to find a way to shift this idiotic idea out of our home.
“I’ve got the perfect solution,” I said.
“What is it, OB?” my dad asked.
“Stench’s dad just got an enormous aboveground swimming pool in his junkyard. It must be twenty feet across. You could use it to make your enormous cake!”
“That’s it!” he cried as the cupcake in his hand instantly burnt to a charcoal lump.
My mother still looked horrified. I hurried on to the part of my idea that would save their marriage.
“But you’ll have to make the cake over there. The pool is too big to fit anywhere here.”
“That’s no problem.” My father waved his red-hot hand dismissively. “Windbag will love this idea. He won’t mind us shifting operations over to his place.”
I could practically hear my mother’s sigh of relief. She mouthed “thank you” in my direction. I returned a wink and a smile and then turned to head upstairs to my room. On the way I helped myself to a bunch of cupcakes. Amid all this chaos, I doubted either of them would pay attention to my entirely non-nutritious dinner.
The things I had learned today had my brain going a mile a minute—although that possibly could have been the sugar. But no amount of pastry-induced hyperactivity could distract me from the inescapable conclusion I had come to. Meteor Boy was alive and well.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Suspicion
The facts spoke for themselves. First of all, Meteor Boy’s parents had never come forward to report him missing. Second, Meteor Boy had left a message about me—a recent message. Finally, my gut instinct said Meteor Boy was alive. Okay, so maybe that’s not a fact, but in a way it was the strongest evidence. And Lord Pincushion had told me to trust my instincts.
When I came down into the kitchen on Monday morning for breakfast, I found Windbag and Uncle Fluster sitting at the table along with Mom and Dad. The room was already developing a chill.
“Those two attacks were just a coincidence,” my father insisted as he slapped Fluster on the back, leaving a handprint where he evaporated a layer of frost. “But if it makes you feel better, you can hang out with the New New Crusaders today. We can use an extra hand with the project we have planned.”
As he said this, he gave Windbag a conspiratorial wink. Stench’s dad chuckled, clearly having heard and liked my dad’s giant-cake idea.
“I guess then I could also replace the cone on top of my truck.” Fluster shrugged. “Do you have any more?”
“You bet,” said Windbag. “I have one more, and you’re welcome to have it.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said aloud, and they all turned and noticed me for the first time. “I think those hippies will be after Uncle Fluster again.”
This sent another wave of panic through my uncle. My
dad looked thoughtful.
“Is that so?” he mused. “In that case, the New New Crusaders are going to have to be there waiting for them.”
“But these guys are really dangerous,” I insisted.
“No need to worry,” said my father. “We haven’t lost a fight yet.”
“You’ve only had one fight so far,” I felt compelled to point out.
“Exactly!” he said proudly. “A perfect record. We’ll use Fluster to lure these criminals to their defeat.”
As I left the house, I told myself that the NNC should have no problem handling the Commune for Justice. At least that’s what I wanted to believe.
At school Miss Marble wasted no time getting us into pairs to work on the science fair.
“By the end of today, I expect all of you to not only know exactly what your projects are but how you’re going to have them ready by Thursday,” she said sternly. “Now get to work.”
Reluctantly, I pulled my desk up alongside Melonhead’s. He rolled his eyes in annoyance.
“So what have you come up with since yesterday?” I asked.
“My time mathine ith perfect jutht ath it ith,” he insisted indignantly.
“Only if everybody else’s projects spontaneously combust,” I responded.
For the next two hours we continued to argue back and forth about the project, accomplishing nothing. Finally, as lunch approached, I got him to admit that his potato was not really a time machine.
“Okay, tho it’th a clock,” he sputtered. “You tell me how we tranthform it into a time mathine if you’re tho thmart.”
“Well . . . ,” I pondered the problem. An idea began to form. “Let’s think about it this way,” I said. “Remember how yesterday I talked about how time moves forward at an unchanging rate and there’s nothing we can do to stop it?”
Melonhead listened to me intently, his head nodding in agreement—at least to the extent that the neckless wonder was able to nod.
“Maybe that’s just how it appears to us.” Melonhead stared at me blankly. “Maybe time behaves differently in different places.”
“That’th impothible,” he spluttered.
“Is it?” I asked. “There are other forces that appear to be constant but really aren’t.”
“Like what?”
“How about gravity?” I said.
“The thing that maketh you fall down?”
“Exactly. Think about it for a second,” I said. “Like time, gravity appears to be an unchanging force. But gravity can change as you move away from its source. If you travel into space, our planet’s gravitational force no longer has as powerful a hold on you. Don’t get me wrong. Gravity is still a force. But it shows that it isn’t a constant force. In some places it’s weaker and other places it’s stronger. For instance, near a spinning black hole, gravity is so strong that it can alter the direction of light.”
“Tho what doeth that mean?” Melonhead responded, totally confused.
“Maybe a strong enough gravitational force can also alter the direction of time.”
“Tho all we have to do ith fikth my potato clock tho it can increath the forth of gravity,” he proposed confidently.
“I doubt your potato is technologically advanced enough for that,” I answered cheerfully. “But, like a black hole, if we could somehow get an object to spin fast enough—say at near the speed of light—we possibly could increase gravity enough to also affect the movement of time.”
“How about thomething like thith?” Melonhead said, reaching into his lunch bag and pulling out a tall, cylindrical package.
“What’s that?” I asked, genuinely curious as I noticed a picture of the Amazing Indestructo on the can.
“They’re potato chipth,” Melonhead informed me. “I found thith at Indethtructo Induthtrieth.”
“But how could potato chips fit in a tall can like this?”
“They’re all identical,” he insisted. “They’re thtacked.”
“No two potato chips are alike. That’s impossible.”
“No it’th not. Here, look.”
Melonhead opened the can and shook out a few of the chips.They didn’t really look like potato chips, but they were identical. Hesitantly I reached for one and took a small bite. It didn’t taste awful, but it certainly wasn’t a potato chip. It was like some strange alternate-reality version of a potato chip. I looked again at the label on the can.
“‘The Amazing Indestructo’s Amazing Pseudo-Chips: Each One as Perfect as Him!’” I read aloud. “But I’ve never seen these for sale anywhere.”
“I think it’th thomething new that he hathn’t put on thale yet.”
Just then the bell for lunch rang and Melonhead grabbed back his can, emptied the remaining chips into his hand, and shoved the can back at me.
“Tho here you go,” he said. “I’ve done my part by finding thith thylinder. Now you need to figure out how to make it thpin at the thpeed of light.”
“That will be tricky,” I replied.
“Well, it really doethn’t matter,” Melonhead said. “Printhipal Doppelganger thaid we were guaranteed to win jutht by attempting a time mathine.”
“What?!” I said, thinking I had misheard him.
“That’th what he thaid when he took me out of clath the other day,” Melonhead informed me. “After all, he wath the one who thuggethted the thubject in the firtht plathe.”
With that he got up and went to lunch. I stared blankly at the potato chip can and then stuffed it into my book bag. All my thoughts had shifted to Principal Doppelganger. Why had he given Melonhead the idea for our project? I needed to meet up with my teammates. I had an awful lot to tell them.
“Doppelganger picked your science fair project?” Tadpole asked in disbelief as we walked to the cafeteria.
“That’s really strange,” Plasma Girl said.
“I’ve got other news, too,” I informed them.
I began by relating my strange visit to Pinprick Manor. The early history of the League of Goodness fascinated them, but it was the letter that really got their attention.
“A letter from Meteor Boy, and it was addressed to you?” Halogen Boy asked with wide-eyed amazement.
“Not to me,” I corrected him. “It was addressed to Lord Pincushion. But according to him, Meteor Boy mentioned me by name in the letter.”
“But how could that be possible?” Plasma Girl asked for probably the third time in less than a minute.
“It isn’t possible.” Tadpole snorted dismissively. “Someone’s messing with you.”
“It’s improbable, not impossible,” I corrected him. “And I don’t think Lord Pincushion or the Animator would have any reason to lie.”
“Maybe the Bee Lady is behind this,” Stench interjected. “She could have put that letter in the Collide-a-scope.”
“Don’t you dare say anything bad about the Bee Lady,” Plasma Girl responded angrily.
“I agree, she didn’t do it,” I cut in quickly to head off an argument, “which leads me to the unmistakable conclusion that Meteor Boy himself left that message where he knew I would find it.”
“But he vanished twenty-five years ago,” Stench protested. “He had no way of knowing you were even going to exist now!”
“That’s true,” I agreed, “if he planted the message twenty-five years ago. But not if he just planted it recently!”
“But he’s dead,” Hal pointed out, saying what all of us believed but had never said aloud. “And has been for twenty-five years.”
“Is he?” I posed the question I had already answered for myself the night before.
“Is who dead?” a voice suddenly asked from behind me.
We all looked up to find Principal Doppelganger hovering over us. I stared at him for a moment without answering, searching his blank face for an answer to some unknown question still stuck in the back of my mind.
“Professor Brain-Drain,” I finally answered. “We were talking about his destruction last week i
n the flames of Mount Reliable. We were wondering if he really is dead.”
“Of course,” Principal Doppelganger replied. “Who else would you have been talking about?”
With that, he turned, whipping his cape around, and strolled away, leaving us all standing there with our mouths hanging open.
“He’s up to something,” Hal said, voicing a thought we all shared.
“I agree,” I said. “I just wish I knew what.”
The five of us turned in the opposite direction and headed for the cafeteria. On the way there, who should we see coming from the opposite direction, but Coach Inflato. I stopped in my tracks and turned to watch him as he passed by us.
“Wait for me,” I said. “I need to talk to the coach.”
My teammates watched in surprise as I sprinted after Coach Inflato. By the time I caught up to him, he had gone into the gymnasium and was headed for the door of his office.
“Coach!” I hollered as I ran to catch up to him. “I have a question I’m hoping you can answer.”
He turned and regarded me with annoyance.
“I knew you’d eventually come and ask me this,” he said.
He did? Why did everyone seem to be a step ahead of me lately? I came to a stop but didn’t know what to say.
“There’s no point, kid,” he continued. “You don’t have a power and so there’s no way you’re ever going to be a decent athlete.”
“What—?!” I started to say, caught completely off guard.
“Deal with it, kid,” he continued. “Not everyone has athletic ability. Only a few of us are gifted enough to be spectacular athletes.”
I knew he meant himself and it made me furious.
“I’m not a bad athlete,” I exploded. “And I didn’t even come to ask you about that, and never would, because I think you’re a lousy athlete.”
He looked stunned that a student would speak to him like that. I was pretty stunned, too. But before he could reprimand me, I blurted out the question I had come to ask.
The Return of Meteor Boy? Page 11
