My Brother is a Superhero

by David Solomons

  Just then Mum called across the kitchen. “What are you two plotting, hmm?”

  “Nothing,” we said at the same time.

  Of course we couldn’t tell her what had happened to Zack. Second rule of being a superhero is that you have to keep it a secret. If the villains find out your real identity then they lure you into a trap by kidnapping your loved ones. It’s pretty basic stuff, and easily avoidable if you take simple precautions.

  Mum and Dad gave each other these really lame smiles and then Dad said, “Boys, it’s really nice to see you two getting along.”

  It was true. Not that it was nice, but that Zack and I hadn’t been getting along for some time. We used to be best friends when we were younger, but these days we mostly communicated by yelling, slamming doors and giving each other dead arms. In fact, we’d probably talked more since last night than we had in the past three months. I caught him looking at me with this sad expression, like he missed the old days.

  “What are you looking at, turnip-head?” I said. Oh come on, I had to do something. The situation was in real danger of turning mushy.

  Thankfully, Zack responded by punching me in the arm. It didn’t break or fly off, which meant that super-strength wasn’t one of his six powers. Interesting. I picked a point on his chest, drew back my fist and threw a punch of my own. From this range I couldn’t miss. And I didn’t.

  I bounced.

  When my fist got within a few inches of his body, I felt it hit something springy and invisible.

  “A force field! You’ve got a flipping force field!” I whispered in amazement.

  Before I could say anything else, Dad pulled us apart, gave us a lecture on appropriate behaviour and sent us out of the kitchen to cool down.

  Fifteen minutes later dinner was ready. All through the meal I watched Zack like a teacher in an exam room, waiting for him to push his cauliflower across his plate with his mind or flick a pea off his force field. Or … what else? Zebedee the Doolally had given him six powers that he needed for his mission. Telekinesis and a force field were two; what were the other four? And what about the mission? All we knew was that “NEMESIS IS COMING”.

  After dinner, when I was supposed to be doing my homework on the computer, I decided to poke around on the Internet and see what I could find out about Nemesis. There was a lot of information. I sifted through pages and pages of the stuff before reaching my conclusion.

  In Greek mythology, Nemesis was, and I quote, “a remorseless spirit of divine retribution.” I didn’t understand all of it, but this Nemesis guy sounded pretty bad to me. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt: Nemesis had to be the name of a supervillain, and Zack had been given powers to defeat him.

  I was about to navigate away from the page when I noticed something. I had read the entry too quickly. He wasn’t a “he” at all. Nemesis was a girl! Well, that made perfect sense to me.

  Star Lad’s arch-enemy was a girl.

  4

  HIMAD ORK

  It was still light when Zack and I snuck out to the tree house to discuss my findings. I was carrying a Bag for Life that bulged mysteriously. (I’m drawing attention to this because it’s going to be important shortly.) Zack scampered up the rope ladder and I huffed and puffed behind him. When I reached the top I sat in the doorway to catch my breath.

  The sky was the colour of streaky bacon. A breeze blew across the rooftops of the neighbouring houses and rustled the leaves of the oak tree in our garden. We have a tiny garden, just a scrap of lawn, a border with some pink and blue flowers that come out in summer, a shed and a huge oak tree. Dad says in the olden days our street was part of a giant forest full of English oaks. The tree in our garden is the only one left.

  Dad built the tree house for us the previous summer. And when I say Dad built it, what I mean is that Grandpa built it and Dad stood around in a tool-belt with a lot of expensive gadgets making unhelpful suggestions. He’s keen on DIY, my dad, but the only thing he’s ever successfully nailed to a wall is his thumb.

  I joined Zack inside and told him everything I’d discovered about Nemesis. He listened carefully, nodding at my deductions like I was Sherlock Holmes. Ordinarily, my big brother would never listen to anything I had to say, but I’m an expert on superheroes (the ones in comics, anyway) and he paid attention to every word. It was nice to be the smarter brother, for a change.

  “One more thing,” I added. “I know how to activate your powers.”

  “You do?” He sounded impressed.

  I nodded. “Yup, you just have to say your secret phrase.”

  Zack’s eyes widened. “And you know my secret phrase?”

  “I entered several factors into the computer – your name, known powers, shoe size – and this is what I’ve come up with. You ready?”

  He nodded quickly. “Just tell me already!”

  I cleared my throat. “Your secret activation phrase is…” I paused, like a reality-show judge deciding who to put through to the next round. “Himad Ork.”

  Zack stood with his legs shoulder width apart and planted his hands on his hips, before uttering the words. “Himad Ork!” He held his breath and waited. When after a few seconds nothing happened, he shook his head disappointedly. “I don’t feel any different. Are you sure it’s the right phrase?”

  I stroked my chin. “Hmm. Maybe you’re not saying it with enough feeling. Try it again, but this time, really mean it and say it over and over.”

  “OK. More feeling. Over and over. Got it.” Zack assumed the same pose. “Himad Ork … Himad Ork …” As he repeated the phrase, it became clear what he was actually saying. “I’m a dork … I’m a dork … I’m a—”

  I couldn’t hold a snigger in any longer.

  Zack’s mouth froze in the shape of an “O” as he realised I’d tricked him. He glowered at me and said, “If you’re going to act like a child, then I’m leaving.” He marched out and put a foot on the top rung of the rope ladder.

  “No, don’t go. I promise I won’t do anything childish again. From now on it’s serious scientific investigation.”

  “You promise?”

  I put a hand on my heart. “Promise.”

  He moved back inside and I waved at him to stop. “Now, stand there,” I said, reaching into my Bag for Life. “And don’t move.”

  “Why d’you want me to stand—Hey!”

  He ducked as a tomato whistled over his head, landing with a splat against the wall behind him.

  “What d’you think you’re doing?”

  I detected a note of irritation in his voice, but ignored it, dug once more in my bag and this time drew out a clipboard.

  And a rock.

  Zack had a force field and we had to know how powerful it was. Clearly the easiest way to find out was to throw things at him. The bag concealed my battery of test objects.

  “How can I put this?” I weighed the rock in my hand, tossed it up and down in my palm a few times, and threw it hard at him.

  He ducked once more and the rock thudded against the wall. I let out a huff of frustration. “How am I meant to test your force field if you keep ducking?” I made a note on the clipboard. Tomato and rock – inconclusive.

  Zack started to get the picture. “I see. OK, that makes sense. I guess.” He nodded towards my bag. “What else have you got in there?”

  I’d been saving the best for last. With a grin I reached in with both hands and lifted out a lump-hammer. It was one of Dad’s – he has about seven of them in his shed, all polished and lined up in a rack in order of size. This one was the biggest – I call it Thor’s hammer. It had a hickory handle and a three-kilogram steel head. Big lump.

  “No way,” Zack protested, flapping his hands in a frankly unheroic manner. “You’re not throwing that thing at me.”

  “Of course I’m not going to throw it, idiot.”

  Zack relaxed.

  “It’s much too heavy to throw,” I smiled thinly. “So I’m going to swing it at you.”

 
Before he could object I drew the hammer back behind me and then with all my strength swung it in a long arc at my brother. Zack’s protective field deflected the fat steel head like someone flicking a piece of fluff off their sleeve. The hammer rebounded, jarring my hands with a shuddering vibration so violent that I lost my grip. It flew narrowly over my head, straight out of the open door and tumbled from sight. From somewhere in the undergrowth below there was a thud followed by a strangled “miaow”.

  “Did you hear that?” said Zack.

  “Yes,” I winced. “I think it was Mrs Wilson’s cat.”

  “No, not that,” said Zack, closing his eyes tightly. “That.”

  I strained to listen, but all I could hear was the wind in the oak tree. “I don’t hear anything,” I began and then realised what that must mean. “You have super-hearing.”

  Zack frowned. “Sort of. Although, it’s more like a radar in my head. When I close my eyes I see this glowing green circle that sweeps round and round, and wherever there’s a person or an object of interest they light up and then I can see and hear them. It’s not high-definition, all I can make out is a blurry outline.” He blanched. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s in distress.”

  I cringed. “Maybe Mrs Wilson just found her cat.”

  A peculiar expression came over Zack and his cheeks flushed as red as the tomato sliding gently down the wall. “It’s not Mrs Wilson,” he said, his voice going up and down like a roller coaster.

  “Then who is it?” I asked, but Zack didn’t hang around to reply.

  In a flash he was out of the door, taking the rope ladder three rungs at a time. I scrabbled after him as fast as my flat feet would allow. He bounded down the path that ran along the side our house, out towards Moore Street. I expected to find him fighting off a giant robot with laser-beam eyes or a slimy alien horde, but when I got there a minute later Zack was nowhere to be seen. And instead of robots or aliens, there was something much more fearsome.

  5

  LARA AND CARA

  It was a girl. And not just any girl. Her name was Cara Lee. Her family had moved in last year two doors down from us and she was in Zack’s year at school. She sat in front of him in maths class. I knew that because I’d seen the drawings he’d made of her in the margins of his Fun With Equations! textbook. The drawings were all of the back of her head.

  In person – from the front – she had big brown eyes, long, dark hair and she was tall. About three inches taller than Zack. A single stud earring shone from the tip of her left ear. Earrings weren’t allowed at school but Cara didn’t even care. That made her a rebel. Though not like a Star Wars Rebel, which would have been even cooler.

  Right then she was kneeling at the edge of the pavement, talking to a drain.

  “Oh, please,” she pleaded. “Don’t be lost.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t talking to the drain. Perhaps there was someone down there, trapped beneath the cover. She did have a younger sister called Lara who could have been hit by a shrink-ray and then slipped through the grate.

  On the first day of school I’d borrowed a Uni-ball Gelstick Pen with a 0.4mm tip from Lara and hadn’t quite got round to returning it. Every time I bumped into her – in the street, in the corridor between lessons – she’d ask me about it. She was annoying. Not enough to start making a list of her annoying points, but it was close.

  Just then I saw Lara appear at the end of their driveway, which meant that she hadn’t been zapped by a shrink-ray and swept into the drains, unfortunately. Spotting her older sister, she marched over. Lara resembled Cara, except for her hair, which was cut short to reveal ears that made her look a bit like an elf or a Vulcan.

  From where I stood I could make out what they were saying without the aid of super hearing.

  “Mum sent me to get you,” said Lara. “It’s time to come in.”

  “I can’t come in,” wailed Cara. “Oh, I’m in so much trouble.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Cara turned unhappily to the drain. “I dropped my phone. It’s down there. I can see it, but I can’t reach it.”

  Before I knew what was happening, a hand had grabbed my collar and hauled me behind Number 126’s garden wall. I let out a cry as my feet went from under me.

  “Shh!” Zack hissed. “You’ll attract her attention.”

  I found myself down on the ground next to my brother. He had ducked out of sight, and was peering intently at Cara over the wall.

  I didn’t understand what was going on. “Why are you hiding from her?”

  “That’s Cara Lee,” he said breathlessly, as if that explained everything.

  And then it hit me – the reason for Zack’s odd behaviour. He thought she was Nemesis! I lifted my head above the wall to observe her. Could she be a supervillain? “She has the eyes,” I decided.

  “I know,” cooed Zack. “So … sparkly.”

  I was thinking more “evil”, but whatever. So, was our neighbour Zack’s arch-enemy? There was only one way to find out. “Come on,” I said, rising to my feet and motioning at him to follow.

  “Where are you going? Get down before she sees you!”

  “It’s OK. I know exactly what you’re thinking about Cara.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. And I have a plan. But we have to get close to her.”

  “Close? I can’t get close to her. What if she … y’know?”

  I understood completely. He was concerned that Cara might pull out a death ray or frazzle him with her fire-breath. “I know,” I said. “But we have to take that risk.”

  “OK, but I can’t just walk over there and start talking to her.”

  He was right. It would look too suspicious. We needed a reason to start a conversation. “She’s lost her phone down that drain. You could use your telekinetic power to lift it out.”

  “You’re right,” he said, eyes bright, adding in a quivering voice, “and maybe she’ll be so grateful that she’ll,” he gulped and then squeaked, “kiss me.”

  Yes, I thought, a kiss of death. But I kept that to myself. I didn’t want Zack any more nervous than he already seemed – which was jumpier than a kangaroo in a haunted trampoline factory. “This will be an excellent field test of your superpowers,” I said.

  “Right. Powers. Test. Field.”

  “Just remember who you are.”

  “Zack Parker?”

  Oh dear. I took him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. “You’re Star Lad.”

  “Yes. Star Lad. Me. Am.”

  We climbed over the wall and I watched with a sinking feeling as Zack made his way awkwardly towards Cara. I sighed and ran to catch him up. Without the benefit of my expertise, he was going to mess this up. However, I wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. “I’m not your sidekick, OK?” I said when I drew level.

  Zack nodded. “OK.”

  Cara was bent over the metal grate, groaning and gasping as she tried to haul it off, so she didn’t see Zack when he rocked up and squealed, “Hi, Cara.”

  “Hi, Lara,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Where’s my Uni-ball Gelstick Pen with the 0.4mm tip?”

  As she said it I realised that if Cara was Nemesis, then Lara might be her accomplice and hench-person. I had to tread carefully. Before I could say anything Cara looked up and saw Zack.

  “Oh. Hi,” she said. “It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Zack, grinning like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I nudged him hard in the ribs. “Um, I mean no,” he said. “It’s Star––”

  I nudged him again, harder. He was about to give away his secret identity – quite possibly to his arch-enemy!

  “Zack. It’s Zack,” he said at last.

  She studied him closely. If she was using an evil mind-reading power on him I couldn’t detect it. “Don’t you sit behind me in maths?”

  Zack’s eyes bulged with pleasure. “Yes. Yes I do. And sometimes I stand behind you
in the lunch queue as well.”

  Cara exchanged a look with her sister. I’m no expert on girls, but I don’t think it was a good look.

  “Can I rescue you?” Zack blurted.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered. “Are you trying to give away your superhero identity?”

  Cara got to her feet. She towered over me and looked down on Zack. Her earring caught the last of the daylight and glittered like a deep space supernova. “You want to rescue me?”

  He tried to smooth over his poor choice of words. “When I say rescue, I don’t mean ‘rescue’, that would be weird and possibly a bit unsettling. What I meant to say was ‘help’. So, Cara, who sits in front of me in maths, can I help you?”

  She shrugged. “I doubt it. I dropped my phone down there, so I don’t think you can help, unless under that fetching school shirt of yours you have really, really long arms.”

  Zack peered down his sleeves as if to check and then said, “You know what, I think I do.” He ushered her out of the way and knelt by the drain cover.

  Now was my chance. My Nemesis test was a simple one. In comics some supervillains hide behind masks and rant about taking over the world, while others speak softly and wear boring business suits. But they all have one thing in common. Their laugh.

  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!

  It stood to reason that if Cara Lee were an insane intergalactic trans-dimensional villain then she would have a laugh just like that. So, all I had to do was make her laugh. This called for my best joke ever. I turned to the two girls. “What do you get,” I began, “if you cross an elephant with a rhino?”

  I could tell from their puzzled expressions that they were thinking about the answer, but then, disaster! Before I could hit them with the devastatingly funny punchline there was a gurgle and a whoosh from behind me.

  “Here you go. One rescued smartphone.” Zack stood up, holding the phone triumphantly. He presented it to an amazed Cara.

  She didn’t even seem to mind that it was coated in something brown and bad-smelling.