by Lucas Flint
I waved off Frank’s question. “I’ll do it sometime. I just need money and a car first.”
“Where are you going to get money and a car?” said Frank. “Do you have a job or something?”
“I’ll figure it out,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Is it really any of your business anyway, whether I ask out Greta or not?”
Frank shrugged. “Not really, but I’m getting kind of tired of you always looking at her or talking about her and never actually approaching her. You should be more like your older brother.”
“James is different,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “He’s a lot taller and stronger and better-looking than me, so of course he has an easier time asking girls out.”
“So what?” said Frank. “Just take a leaf from his book and be all confident and stuff. Girls like confidence.”
“And how would you know?” I said. “You’ve never had a girlfriend, either.”
“Yeah, but at least I’m not always talking about the girls I like and never doing anything about it,” said Frank. “Unlike a certain somebody I know, of course.”
I was about to respond in kind when I glanced across the park and saw someone standing among the bushes and trees on the other side. It was a tall man who was quite clearly looking at us, although the shade cast by the tree branches made it difficult to make out his features or identify him. The best I could make out was that he wore a wide-brimmed hat and a dark overcoat, which had the effect of blocking out his features and yet making him stand out like a sore thumb among the trees, too. I looked around, but didn’t see anyone else in the park nearby who that man could have been with.
“Uh, Frank?” I said, looking at my friend again. I gestured in the direction of the trees and bushes. “Do you see someone standing in the trees and bushes over there staring at us?”
Frank looked in the direction in which I gestured, but then shook his head and said, “No. I just see trees and stuff.”
I whipped my head back in that direction. The mysterious man was no longer standing there; in fact, it looked like no one had been standing there at all. I didn’t understand how a man like that could just up and vanish in the span of a couple of seconds.
“But I saw someone,” I said. “He was staring right at us.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just a tree?” said Frank. “Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you or something.”
I shook my head. “No, I definitely saw someone. Maybe he’s hiding behind a tree or something.”
“Those trees don’t look wide enough for someone to hide behind unless the guy was really skinny or something,” said Frank. “It probably wasn’t anything.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was,” I said. I readjusted my glasses and looked back toward the trees, but again saw nothing. “I saw someone there. Who, I don’t know, but they were there.”
“Then why don’t you call the police?” said Frank. “Let them know there’s some creepy guy in the park staring at teenagers.” He suddenly looked down at his hot dog as if he had just had a grim realization. “Now that I think about it, I think I want to go home.”
“I don’t want to call the police only for it to turn out to be nothing,” I said. “If I see the guy again, then maybe I will call the police.”
“Okay,” said Frank. He took a bite out of his hot dog. “Good idea. My uncle’s a police officer and he doesn’t like it whenever people call him for false alarms, so that’s probably the best idea.”
I nodded, but I still looked over at the trees. They were still devoid of people, but I still felt like someone was watching us. “I want to go over there and check.”
“Why?” said Frank. “What if that guy turns out to be trouble?”
“It’s the only way to know for sure,” I said as I hopped off the bench. “Besides, I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself.”
That was true. I did feel pretty safe ever since gaining better control over my eye beams. I figured that if the guy watching us was some kind of threat, I could handle him easily, especially if he was just an ordinary human being and not a supervillain or something.
I handed Frank my half-eaten hot dog and said, “Hold my hot dog. If anything happens, call the police.”
Frank looked pretty doubtful, but he nonetheless took my hot dog in his other hand and watched me as I made my way across the park to the trees and bushes on the other side. As I approached the trees and bushes, my nerves started to rise. I tried to keep my cool, but it was more difficult than you’d imagine. I had no idea who this guy was or whether he was friendly or not. For all I knew, he could have been a dangerous madman on the run from the law or something like that. Of course, he might not even exist at all, but I had to check anyway just to be sure. I did ready my eye beams, however, just in case he tried to attack me.
I paused on the edge of the trees and listened, but did not hear anything except for the chirping of a few birds in the trees and a squirrel chattering somewhere in the branches above me. I heard nothing that sounded like a human, but maybe the tall guy was standing still and holding his breath. Only one way to find out.
Bracing myself for what was on the other side, I stepped into the trees. Nothing happened; I wasn’t attacked, nor did anyone come out of the woodwork to see me. I did, however, discover a pair of footprints in the dirt. They were really big, too, which told me that the guy who stood there must have had very large feet. It was kind of exciting to see them, actually, because it confirmed that I really had seen someone after all. But where did he go? I looked around, but saw nothing. Nor were there any footsteps leading anywhere; it was like he had vanished into thin air. I can’t say that that left me with any real sense of relief.
I took a few more steps in, but again did not see him. I stopped and rotated on the spot, carefully looking at my surroundings to make sure that he wasn’t hiding there until I saw something stuck to one of the trees a few feet away from me. It was a plain white note, pinned to the tree with a red push pin, but I couldn’t read it because it was pinned backwards. I looked to the left and to the right again, wondering if the note was for me or for someone else, but no one stepped out of the woodwork, so I walked over to the note, tore it off the tree and turned it over. It was a short note, written in a sprawling handwriting I’d never seen before, but that only served to enhance its creepiness, because the note was addressed to me. It read:
ALEX—I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. IF YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR SECRET LEAKED TO THE WORLD, VISIT ME IN GOLDEN CITY PARK TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT. COME BY YOURSELF. AND IF YOU TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS OR DO NOT COME, YOUR FAMILY WILL SUFFER.
The note was unsigned and, because I didn’t recognize the handwriting, I didn’t know who could have possibly written it.
But I could guess about the secret it mentioned: My secret identity as Beams. Somehow, the letter writer knew who I was and he planned to reveal it to the world if I didn’t meet him. If he did, I would lose my sidekick license for sure.
Maybe this was just a practical joke. Maybe the letter writer was just trolling me or referring to some other secret I had (God knows my job isn’t the only secret I have). But that was unlikely. Threatening to make someone’s family ‘suffer’ if they don’t meet your demands is not my idea of a joke. That meant that this letter was serious and I wouldn’t be able to simply ignore it.
Then I heard crunching leaves behind me and instinctively whirled around. I almost unleashed my laser blasts, thinking that it was the letter writer coming up behind me to attack me, but then I saw that it was just Frank. He carried our hot dogs in his hands and wore a worried and startled expression on his face.
“Whoa, Alex, watch out,” said Frank, holding up the hot dogs like shields. “It’s just me. I came in because you left my line of sight and I wanted to make sure you didn’t get snatched by some creeper or something.”
I relaxed, letting my eyeballs cool down, but I hid the letter behind my back and let it fall to the ground behind me where Frank couldn’t s
ee it. I didn’t want Frank to see it because I didn’t want him to get worried about me, nor did I want him to suspect that I was a sidekick. “Oh, it’s nothing, Frank. Turns out my eyes were just playing tricks on me after all. Let’s go back to the bench, finish our hot dogs, and then find something else to do. We’ve got all day, so let’s not waste it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mom would probably have a heart attack if she knew that I was sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to go meet some strange man in Golden City Park. Dad would probably call me an idiot and James would probably shake his head and tell me that he had sneaked out of the house loads of time to go meet girls when he was younger and he never got caught. Of course, joke’s on James, because tonight, I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing or where I was going.
I didn’t sneak out of the house very much, mostly because I never really had anywhere I wanted to go. As you might have been able to guess, that was James’ shtick. He used to sneak out of the house all the time when he was my age and, much to my surprise, he had taught me a few of the tricks he used to do it without Mom or Dad ever being aware. I never understood why he choose to teach me that particular skill out of all of the skills he knew (I would have preferred to learn how he got all the girls), but as I biked through the dark streets of Golden City, alone and silent, I was thankful that James had chosen to share that bit of brotherly wisdom with me, even if he would never know how I used it.
I had spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if I should go to this meeting or not. It seemed like the kind of stupid thing that Dad was always telling me not to do, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the threat was real and that it would be even stupider not to go. I kind of wish I’d brought my Beams costume along, but it was currently hanging in the closet of my room back in the Elastic Cave, so I just had to go in a hoodie and jeans for this particular adventure. At least I could use my eye beams; hopefully that would be enough to get me out of any hairy situation I might find myself in tonight.
As I rode, I half-hoped that someone—a police officer, a random bystander, anyone—would stop me and demand to know what a kid my age was doing out so late at night. But Golden City’s streets were extremely quiet tonight; that was pretty unusual, given that night time was usually when criminals were most active in the city. Maybe it was because it was so cold; it wasn’t freezing, but it was cold enough that I had to put on my gloves so that my hands wouldn’t get frozen to my bike’s handle bar.
As a result, I made it to Golden City Park in record time. The park was incredibly silent as I rode my bike down the bike paths; aside from my own breathing and the sounds of my bike chain and wheels, it was totally silent. I had no idea where, exactly, I was supposed to meet the letter writer, nor how I would identify him once I saw him. While Golden City Park was by no means gigantic, it was not a small little park, either, and you could easily get lost if you didn’t stick to the main paths or know your way around this place. Especially at night; even though there were street lamps placed along the main paths, they didn’t do much to illuminate the areas beyond the paths, dark areas where potential assailants could be hiding just out of sight.
Indeed, I almost turned around to leave before I spotted someone sitting on a bench up ahead underneath one of the street lamps. The bench was set in front of the bronze statue of Harold Golden, the founder of Golden City, which depicted him riding a horse. The man sitting on the bench, however, was not looking at the statue. He had his head down, making it impossible to see his face, but I didn’t need to in order to know that that was the guy I’d seen earlier in the day, the guy who had watched me and Frank talking and eating. The wide-brimmed hat and the overcoat were distinctive enough that I couldn’t have mistaken him for anyone else.
Not certain what to expect, I nonetheless prepared a small laser blast as I rode up to him. I gradually slowed down the closer I got to him, until I came to a stop a dozen feet away; if this guy was going to try to kidnap or harm me, I wanted to make him work for it.
The guy didn’t raise his head to look at me when I stopped, but I did see his head incline toward me, as if he was trying to listen to me better.
“Uh, hello?” I said to the guy. “Are you the guy who left that note on that tree for me earlier today?”
The guy nodded. “Yes. I hoped you would find it. Glad to see that you did.”
The guy’s voice was gravelly, like he was speaking through a mouthful of dirt. I also noticed that he gave off a general cold aura, as if he had just been standing inside a freezer for the past few hours and hadn’t had any time to warm up. Of course, he had probably been sitting out here in the cold for a while, although he wasn’t shivering for some reason.
Not knowing what else to say, I said, “Well, then who are you? And why did you threaten to harm my family? What did I ever do to you?”
“Nothing, kid,” said the guy, a slight growl to his gravelly voice. “You and I don’t know each other, never even met, but we’re far more similar than you think.”
“Um, you do know that I’m a sixteen-year-old kid and you’re a creepy guy in an overcoat, right?” I said. “Not seeing the similarities. And you still haven’t told me your name.”
The guy suddenly looked up and removed his hat. I now found myself staring at a face I’d only see in pictures on the Internet, although it was older than the pictures I’d seen, yet strangely youthful as well.
“Fro-Zen?” I said in shock. I would have probably fallen off my bike if it was still in motion.
Fro-Zen smiled, although it was not a very happy smile. “I don’t go by that name anymore. Call me Bend. It’s my honest name.”
I had no idea what he meant by ‘honest’ name, but I also didn’t care to find out. I took a few steps back, my hands holding onto my handle bar. “You’re dangerous. I’m going to call the police.”
I reached for my phone, but Fro-Zen said, “You don’t feel confident that you could blast me to pieces, Beams? I see that Dennis’ training methods have degraded over time. When I was your age, I was ready to fight criminals and supervillains one week after I first started working for him. Perhaps Dennis just doesn’t want you to be too strong for him to control.”
I froze; not literally, of course, but when he used my sidekick name, I was shocked. “How do you know who I am? I haven’t told anyone outside of my family, Rubberman, and Adams.”
“I have my ways,” said Fro-Zen. “What matters is that calling the police would be a very unwise move. It certainly would be … tragic if the police arrived just in time to find a second statue adorning this beautiful park’s paths. It might even cause that old rubber bastard to fall into a depression. You wouldn’t want that, now would you?”
“I should still call the police,” I said, although I didn’t grab my phone; I was still too stunned with fear to move. “Even if you kill me, at least they will be able to find some clues that will help them find you.”
Fro-Zen sighed and sat back in his bench. “I don’t want to kill you, Alex. I don’t even want to harm you. I only want to talk.”
“Just talk?” I said.
“Just talk,” said Fro-Zen. I noticed the air that came from his mouth was cold, like how it looked whenever I breathed when it was cold out. “Once we’re done, you can go back home and get back in bed before your parents realize you’re missing. Trust me, I remember what it was like to be your age; I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble. Well, not that kind of trouble, anyway.”
My mind said that Fro-Zen was just lying to make me lower my guard, but my gut instinct told me that Fro-Zen was telling the truth. I decided to trust my gut, if only because my mind was too paralyzed with fear to do anything else.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“The one thing we have in common,” said Fro-Zen. “The rubber bastard, or, as he likes to call himself, Rubberman.”
“You put him in the hospital,” I said. “You nearly killed him.”
“Thanks for the news report, Captain Obvious,” said Fro-Zen, rolling his eyes. “It’s not like I was there when I did that or anything.”
“You still tried to kill him,” I said. “And you also held those elementary school students hostage four years ago and killed Slinger. You should be in jail.”
Fro-Zen pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and then smoked it before saying, in a more relaxed tone, “Perhaps. But I see you don’t understand why I did all of that.”
“I don’t need to,” I said. “Y-You’re a supervillain, a murderer, and an all around bad guy. You should be in prison.”
Fro-Zen chuckled. “Ah, I remember when I was that naive and dumb. Listen, kid; there’s no such thing as black or white in this world. Only shades of gray, some darker or lighter than others, true, but no one is pure white. Just ask Dennis; he has a few skeletons in his closet, like every bastard in this industry.”
“Why did you fall out with Rubberman?” I said. “None of the articles I read explained why you betrayed him.”
“Betrayed him? I betrayed no one,” said Fro-Zen with a snort. “It was Rubberman—and by extension, every other superhero in this business—who betrayed me and every naive kid who became a sidekick to do the right thing.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How could everyone betray you? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Was I really that naive when I was your age?” said Fro-Zen. He shook his head. “Anyway, you don’t understand what I’m saying. I wasn’t betrayed personally. It was an ideological betrayal. Do you know why I became a sidekick in the first place?”
“Um, no,” I said. I grimaced at the stink of the smoke from his cigarette; I never enjoyed the smell of smoking and Fro-Zen’s cigarette smoke was making me like him even less than I already did. “Was it to get money?”
“Money.” Fro-Zen snorted, as if I had just insulted him. “Money is exactly why I quit working for Rubberman. I don’t want money. I don’t care about money. I don’t even need it. I became a sidekick because I cared about doing the right thing, about fighting supervillains and criminals and making the streets of Golden City—and, really, the country in general—a safer place for everyone. Lots of other sidekicks I met did it for the same reason.”
