My Brother is a Superhero

by David Solomons

  “Thank you. Oh, thank you, Zack,” she said, and then she laughed with relief. It was less bwa-ha-ha and more tinkle-tinkle. No self-respecting supervillain would laugh like that. So Cara wasn’t Nemesis. “You’re my hero,” she beamed.

  A grin split my brother’s face and kept on going, right round his ears and back again.

  Cara cradled the precious phone. “But how on earth did you manage to reach it?”

  He waggled his fingers and then said smoothly, “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kiss you.” He flushed. “Kill you. I meant I’d have to kill you. Not the other thing. Definitely kill you. Kill, kill, kill. Yup. That’s the one.”

  Cara and Lara exchanged another of those suspicious sidelong looks. And at that moment I realised that Zack hadn’t suspected Cara of being Nemesis at all. It was much worse than that. He fancied her.

  “C’mon, Lara,” said Cara. “Mum’ll be wondering where we are.”

  Zack watched Cara leave. I reckoned either he was studying the back of her head so he could make another drawing, or he was hoping that she’d turn round and smile at him again.

  But she didn’t.

  “Well, not a total waste of time,” I shrugged. “At least now we know you don’t have heat vision.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off her. “And how do we know that?”

  “The way you’re looking at Cara, if you had heat vision you’d have melted her.”

  Zack looked crushed and even though he was my brother I felt sorry for him. It was an old story, one I’d read a hundred times. Whether you’re from planet Krypton, or you use your billionaire fortune to fight crime in Gotham City, being a superhero messes up your love life.

  6

  CAPELESS

  It was Monday night the following week and Zack and I were talking in my bedroom. I don’t normally let him – or anyone – into my room. Pinned to the door are various Keep Out signs making clear the bloodcurdling fate that awaits trespassers. However, this was a special occasion.

  “I’m not wearing that thing.” Zack sniffed at the swishy rectangle of material I held out.

  “But it’s a cape.” I was annoyed. I’d spent the whole weekend working on it, instead of doing my homework. “Every superhero needs a cape.” I knew that wasn’t strictly true, but my brother was the world’s first real superhero – people would be upset if he didn’t have a cape.

  He folded his arms. “It’s not a cape, it’s one of the curtains from the downstairs loo.”

  I was hoping he hadn’t noticed. “Yes, OK, perhaps it does look a bit curtain-y.” I held it up and smoothed the material, showing him the pattern. “But see, it’s got stars. How perfect is that for Star Lad? It’s like it was meant to be. As if aeons ago the Guild of Cosmic Cape Makers knew that one day it would come to pass that a star-themed superhero would need the appropriate cape and so they disguised it as an ordinary curtain and hid it in plain sight in the downstairs lavatory of a boring suburban house, waiting for the day…”

  Zack gawped. “You’re bonkers, you do know that, right?”

  “Please wear it. Do you know how long I spent sewing in the Velcro fastener?”

  He threw open a window, leaned on the sill and looked back at me over his shoulder. “If you think I’m going out there in a costume made from a curtain, you’re even crazier than I thought. Next thing you’ll have me in a pair of Mum’s tights.”

  My hand went to my pocket and I made a mental note – don’t bring out the tights. “But you have to wear some sort of costume,” I said. “People expect it.”

  “Do they? Just because superheroes in comics wear stupid outfits, doesn’t mean I have to. That’s your problem, you think everything’s a comic. But this is real life, Luke. Time you got your head out of the fantasy world and looked around you. You need to grow up.”

  I crossed to the open window in silence and gazed out at Moore Street bathed in the orange glow of the streetlamps. I looked up at my brother. “How about a mask?”

  Zack groaned and threw up his hands. He began to pace back and forth, grumbling about curtain fabric and ridiculous superhero rules. My room isn’t very big, and most of it is taken up by my inflatable solar system, which hangs from the ceiling. Casually, he stuck out a hand and used his telekinetic power to shove it aside, then he stopped and clicked his fingers. “OK, I know what I’m going to wear. Wait here.”

  He slouched out of the room and returned five minutes later sporting a black hooded sweatshirt over a pair of black jeans and a pair of grotty old grey trainers.

  “So, what d’you think?” he asked, flipping the hood up so that it covered his face.

  “That people’ll think you’re going to mug them, not save them.” I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. “It’s not fair,” I grouched. “If I was Star Lad, I’d do it properly. I’d wear the cape.”

  Zack wasn’t listening. He adjusted his hood, pulling the cords sharply to cinch it together like a Venus flytrap closing around its lunch.

  “At least take this,” I said, handing him a metal pin decorated with a cluster of gold stars like the ones on his chest, arranged to form the letters “S” and “L” for Star Lad. The stars were from an old Christmas decoration and I’d glued them to one of Mum’s brooches. She had loads – she wouldn’t miss one.

  Zack poked his head out from his hood and examined it closely. “It’s a brooch,” he said, unimpressed.

  “No,” I corrected him. “It’s a ‘sigil’. That’s what superheroes call a logo.” I could see that he was considering accepting it. “You need something to identify yourself as Star Lad. Come on, Zack, it’s cool.”

  “It’s quite cool,” he conceded, pinning it to his chest. He turned to admire his reflection in a small mirror that was part of my alien-invasion-busting laser-destructor diorama. I was building a scale-model high-orbit energy weapon. Just for fun. It was non-functioning, unfortunately. Zack licked a finger and smoothed his eyebrows.

  “So, what now?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got the powers, I’ve got the costume. You’re the expert – what happens now?”

  He really was clueless. There was only one possible path for a newbie superhero to take.

  “Now,” I said with a little smile. “You fight crime.”

  He frowned. “How? I mean, I know there’s crime out there.” He waved vaguely out of the window. “But where exactly?”

  For flip’s sake, did I have to draw him a diagram? “Use the radar thingy in your head.”

  “Oh, yeah…” Zack shut his eyes and then said, “Wow!”

  “What happened?”

  “It just lit up like a Christmas tree. Hang on, some of the incidents are brighter than others. I’m zooming in on the brightest.”

  “What can you see?”

  “It’s the bakery on Bank Street.”

  Stolen buns. OK, it wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “No, wait,” said Zack. “It’s the bank on Baker Street.”

  I rubbed my hands together excitedly. “A bank heist! Now we’re talking.” I marched to the door and pulled my coat down off the hook. “Come on,” I said, “what are we waiting for?”

  Zack stood in the centre of my room, shifting from foot to foot. “It’s ten miles away. How do I get there?”

  Some superheroes could fly. Some could run incredibly fast. Others were able to teleport from place to place in the blink of an eye.

  “We could take the bus?” I suggested.

  “The bus takes forever,” he said, kicking his heels. “The robbers will have finished before I even get there.”

  “We could bike it?”

  “Nah, my bike’s got a slow puncture.” I could hear the enthusiasm leak out of him like air from his deflating tyre. “And anyway,” he added, “Mum’s never going to let either of us out on a school night.”

  It was true. I sat down heavily on my bed and rested my head in my hands. The villains of the world were sa
fe from the wrath of Star Lad, unless they committed their crimes between the hours of 3.45pm and 5.30pm on weekdays. Quite near to our house.

  But on weekends and bank holidays they were in trouble. Oh yeah. Big trouble!

  Unless, that is, they were up early.

  Zack had Speech & Drama first thing Saturday mornings and on Sundays Dad insisted that we help him in the shed on a DIY project. Currently, we were helping him make a plate rack for the kitchen.

  “If we tell Mum and Dad about my superpowers,” Zack said thoughtfully, “then maybe they’d give me a lift?”

  “You want Mum and Dad to drop you off at the scene of the crime?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” I said. “I mean, think about it. Do they wait in the car while you stop the bank robbers? Does Mum go off and do a bit of shopping? What if Dad can’t find a parking spot? He’d have to drive round and round until you’re finished, and he hates that.”

  Just then, Mum called up from downstairs, bringing our chat to an end. Barely five minutes ago I was about to embark on a thrilling adventure with my superhero brother. Now, instead of having the time of my life foiling a bank heist, it was bath time.

  7

  THE LEGEND BEGINS

  It was 2.47pm the following Saturday when Zack finally did something properly heroic. I know it was exactly 2.47 because we’d just been to Crystal Comics and were waiting at the bus stop right outside it on the High Street. For the first time ever I’d persuaded Zack to come with me to the comic store, telling him if he wanted to understand how to be a superhero, then who better to teach him than Spiderman and Batman? Afterwards, clutching a bundle of new comics, we waited for the 227 bus. It was due at 2.47. And it was on time.

  “That’s unusual,” I remarked.

  “It’s not that unusual,” said Zack, who took more buses than me. “The 227 is actually quite punctual.”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said, pointing. “Look.”

  The bus hurtled down the road, swerving wildly from side to side, its horn blaring like a frightened animal. It bounced off the kerb, sending people on the pavement fleeing in terror, then tore past a line of cars waiting at the lights, snapping their side-mirrors like a giant pulling wings off a fly. As it plunged towards us I saw the driver wrestling with the wheel, his face white with fear.

  In a flash I guessed what had happened. “The brakes have failed…”

  The door to the comic book store flew open and a gaggle of boys poured out to see what all the commotion was about.

  The bus clipped a parked car and went up on two wheels. A hubcap shot off like a Sidewinder missile, flying over the head of a policeman and crashing through the window of the hardware store. The bus was half on its side, its metal bodywork screeching against the road, leaving a trail of sparks behind it like a lit fuse to a bomb.

  “Zack,” I whispered. “You have to do something.”

  He flipped up his hood and strode purposefully out into the middle of the road, directly into the path of the oncoming bus.

  A few of the boys from the comic book store started to point.

  “Look at that idiot!”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s going to get himself killed!”

  The last speaker, a red-haired boy with freckles, whipped out his mobile phone, tapped the video-camera icon, and began to record.

  Zack planted his feet and stretched out both arms. He was going to use his telekinetic power to stop the runaway vehicle. I’d seen him use it to move a torch and peel a potato, but they were nothing compared to a double-decker bus. I almost couldn’t look. He lowered his head, concentrating fiercely, summoning his superpower.

  The bus kept on coming. The noise of tearing metalwork was dreadful. And then, just as it seemed about to flatten Zack something incredible happened.

  The nose of the bus rose up, quickly followed by the rest. Zack stood there, arms extended like a weightlifter, the enormous double-decker hovering above his head.

  The High Street on a Saturday afternoon is a noisy place, but at that moment it fell utterly silent, save for the creaking of the suspended bus and the squeak of its spinning wheels.

  The pavements were filled with gawping pedestrians. Drivers stopped their cars to stare in slack-jawed amazement.

  Zack lowered the bus gently to the ground. The excitement was too much for the old vehicle. There was a groaning of joints and its suspension sagged. The hydraulic doors opened with a sigh like a dying breath, and the passengers emerged on unsteady legs, dazed but otherwise perfectly unharmed.

  The comic-store boys were the first to find their tongues. Like me, they’d been waiting and dreaming their whole lives for something like this to happen.

  They started to cheer madly.

  The rest of the street joined in, applauding and whooping.

  I stood on the edge of the cheering boys, not that any of them paid me the slightest attention. They were almost laughing with excitement.

  “Did you see that?”

  “That was incredible!”

  “Who is he?”

  I covered my mouth and coughed, “Star Lad.”

  “I think he’s called Star Lad,” said one.

  “Star Lad? Cool,” said one more.

  “Shame he doesn’t have a cape,” said another. I gritted my teeth.

  “D’you think he’d sign my comic?” the red-haired boy with freckles wondered aloud.

  As soon as he suggested the idea, the whole bunch seemed to decide it was a very good one, and they all ran towards my brother waving their latest issues of Justice League and X-Men. I tagged along. Not that I was bothered about getting his autograph, I just wanted to make sure Zack didn’t mess up his first contact with the public. As I drew closer I recognised a face among the last passengers to leave the broken bus. It was Cara Lee. Still stunned from her ordeal, as she stepped off she missed her footing and slipped. With a yell, she tumbled right into Star Lad’s arms.

  “I’ve got you, miss.”

  I don’t think Zack recognised her at first, but as he set her back on her feet they were face to face – or face to hoodie – and he saw with a start who it was he’d rescued.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  He ducked his head and she shot a curious glance at her hooded saviour, and for a moment I was sure that she’d recognised him as her slightly weird neighbour.

  “Have we met before?” she asked.

  “Uh, I … we … um…”

  Thankfully, at that moment Zack was swamped with people clamouring for his attention and Cara was carried away in the crush.

  “Star Lad!” cried one of the comic store boys, brandishing a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man. “You’re … amazing!” he added, rather unimaginatively.

  “Wow! The way you stopped that bus,” said another, mimicking Star Lad’s stance and hand action, adding his own sound effects. “GRRRRAUNCH! You used Gravity Manipulation, right?”

  “No,” said another scornfully, “bet it was Magnetism.”

  “Rubbish,” said the next boy. “It was Wind.”

  The others looked at him questioningly. “Wind?”

  He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Wind … Control. Obviously.”

  “Why are you wearing a brooch?” asked the red-haired boy.

  “It’s not a brooch,” said Star Lad tightly. “It’s a sigil.”

  “Ooooh,” said all of the comic-store boys.

  The policeman whose hair had been parted by the flying hubcap politely but firmly pushed his way through the excited crowd. He wanted a statement from the hero of the hour. A burly fellow with a red face, he took out a pencil and notebook.

  “Name, please.”

  “Za—” began my brother, then saw me making a cut-throat motion. “Star Lad,” he half-screeched, half-growled.

  In the tree house earlier that week we’d discussed how he should talk when he found himself in public as Star Lad. I told him it was im
portant to disguise his voice so that no one could identify him as Zack Parker, and so he tried out a few different voices before settling on a deep, rumbly one. The only problem was puberty. Dad had been right about that – Zack’s voice did change, often in the middle of sentences. It croaked up and down like a frog tied to a firework.

  The constable pulled a face. “Say that again.”

  Under his hoodie I knew Zack was blushing. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Star Lad.”

  The constable scratched a note in his book. “First name, Star. Surname, Lad.”

  Zack started to correct him. “No, I didn’t mean—Never mind.”

  “Would you mind removing your hood, Mr Lad?”

  “No,” said Zack quickly. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” asked the policeman.

  “Uh … um…” he stuttered.

  Uh-oh, I thought. We hadn’t talked about what to do if this happened. Zack was going to blow it – I could tell. In two seconds the world would know his real identity. I couldn’t look.

  “I’m horribly disfigured,” he said at last. “I fell into a vat of chemicals and my face is, y’know, too ugly to be seen in public. Yeah, that’s what happened.”

  Not bad. Not bad at all. I’d never have thought of that so quickly. I did have one criticism, which was that, traditionally, falling into a vat of chemicals created a supervillain, not a hero, but I’d let that pass.

  “Horribly disfigured, you say?” repeated the policeman, squinting and leaning in to steal a glimpse behind Zack’s hood.

  Zack drew sharply on the cords that closed his hood – it came down like a steel shutter. “Yes,” he said flatly. “Hideous.”

  The policeman drew back and coughed, a little embarrassed. He made a show of starting a fresh page in his notebook. “So, Mr Lad, can you explain how you, umm…” He waggled his pencil with the air of a man who knows he’s about to ask something very, very daft, but can’t help himself because rules are rules. “How you … made the bus rise into the air?”