I’d expected something like this. In comics and films it’s a common problem. When matter and antimatter touch it usually causes the end of the universe or something equally dire.
There was the snap of a shutter as Lara took the shot and inspected the photograph. “Nice.”
Stellar reached for a canapé from Serge’s tray. “Merely brushing against one another will trigger the collapse of stars and lead to the end of everything as we— Oops!”
He tripped over his cape and fell towards me. Instinctively I flung out my arms. Next thing I knew we were in an embrace, arms wrapped round each other, identical noses pressed together.
“Aaah!” yelled Serge, dropping his tray with a clang. “It is the end of the world. Then with my final breath I must confess my true feelings.” He turned to Lara, dragging a hand across his sweating brow. “Lara Lee, aka Dark Flutter, I have something I must tell you. Before the stars go out for the last time, let me declare that I lo—”
A snigger burst from Stellar’s lips. Serge’s declaration came to a crashing halt, much like an intergalactic cruise liner hitting a space-berg.
“Sorry,” mouthed Stellar. “Couldn’t resist.”
I pushed him off me. “That wasn’t funny. You don’t joke about apocalyptic singularities.”
Zack was trying to pretend he disapproved, but he couldn’t keep a straight face.
“It is not the end of the world?” said a small French voice. Serge was sinking fast. And there definitely wasn’t room on this life-raft.
Stellar straightened his cape. “Not today, mon ami.”
In the embarrassed silence that followed, the only sound was Serge’s namesake crooning from the speaker.
Serge bent to collect the spilled canapés and Lara helped him clear up the mess. I couldn’t help notice that they studiously avoided each other’s gaze.
“I think it’s time I told you why I’m here,” said Stellar, striding into the centre of the room. “I need your help,” he declared.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” I said, pleased at last to be able to demonstrate my usefulness. “We are S.C.A.R.F., the Superhero Covert Alliance Reaction Force. And we’re in the business of—”
“No, not your help,” said Stellar, cutting across me. He fixed Zack with a long look. “Just yours.” Stellar planted his feet shoulder-width apart and put his hands on his hips. “My world is in peril. Only by combining our superpowered forces can we hope to overcome the evil might of Gorgon the World-Eater.” He extended a gloved hand towards Zack. “Come with me, Star Lad; help me save my world.”
Zack pulled at an ear. “Um, yes, of course. Absolutely. But I don’t suppose it can wait? It’s just that I’ve got exams. They’re only mocks, but…”
I cast a disbelieving glance at my brother. What kind of way was that for a superhero to behave? When Batman sees the Bat Signal he doesn’t say, oh hang on a minute I’m just finishing this jigsaw.
“It can wait,” said Stellar.
“It can?!” I blurted.
“Oh yeah,” said Stellar with a wave. “You can’t rush into confronting a thirty-storey tall megademon with superpowers. We need time to plan. And according to my latest intelligence report, Gorgon is massing his forces in his hidden base. He won’t be ready to strike my world until…” He sent Zack a questioning look, as if my brother would know.
“Saturday?” suggested Zack.
Stellar nodded firmly. “Yeah. Saturday first thing.”
“You’ll miss Dad’s comic-shop opening,” I said.
Zack shrugged. “Then I’ll have to miss it. Nothing is more important than saving the world.”
“Except your mocks,” I muttered. Zack was taking maths, physics and chemistry early. Did someone say super-show-off?
“If you did want to stay for the opening,” said Stellar, “we could probably leave right after and still be back in time to defeat Gorgon the World-Eater.”
He made it sound as if they were trying to make a swimming lesson, not confront a world-eating monster.
“Only if you’re sure,” said Zack.
Stellar nodded again. “The more time we have together strategising the better, right?”
The two superheroes grinned at each other. Decision made, the two of them immediately began devising their plan.
“I think better when I fly,” said Stellar. “Shall we?”
With that they bounded out of the tree house, leaving the rest of us standing around with little to say and a lot of uneaten canapés. Typical. Stellar looked like me, sounded like me, but was as annoying as my big brother.
“Stellar is clever, non?” It was the Monday after the welcome party and Serge and I were back at school. He seemed to have forgiven Stellar for embarrassing him in front of Lara, and had slipped in to his default state of fanboy excitement. “Put yourself in his shoes for un moment.”
I frowned at my best friend. Really?
“Ah, desolé.” He reached into a pocket for a packet of Fruit Pastilles. “But imagine: you are Stellar, pitched against the evil that is Gorgon the World-Eater, a deadly foe with eyes and ears everywhere.” He paused. “I do not mean to suggest that the deadly foe’s body is covered with eyes and ears in some sort of terrifying mutation, only that he has a highly efficient intelligence network.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“So, how do you outwit such an all-seeing enemy? From where do you recruit an ally? A completely different universe. Such brilliant strategic thinking, do you not agree?”
I did agree, but that didn’t mean I had to say so aloud. Stellar’s brilliance wasn’t something I had any wish to celebrate.
“It is just the sort of superior plan that you would come up with.”
I smiled at the unexpected compliment. It was weird being best friends with someone who won’t stop gushing about your trans-dimensional superhero double, so it was good to hear he hadn’t forgotten that Stellar and I were different people. Even if we were also the same person. This quantum entanglement stuff made my head hurt.
“But did you really buy that business about Gorgon the World-Eater?” For a terrifying global threat, Stellar had been remarkably relaxed about the timescale. And there was something about the stupid name. It teased a distant memory that I couldn’t pin down. “What kind of name is that anyway? I bet he doesn’t actually eat worlds.”
Serge thought for a moment. “It is possible that he calls himself Gorgon the World-Eater not for any concurrence with a particular set of superpowers, but simply because it is a chilling name. There are many similar examples. Doctor Doom, for instance, whom you never see interrupt his evil plans in order to spend a morning writing prescriptions at the local GP surgery. Fruit Pastille?” Serge offered me the packet and I took one.
“Stellar’s so full of himself,” I said, chewing the sweet. “Now, if I had superpowers…” I caught Serge’s eye and felt myself run out of steam. We both knew the end of that sentence had already been filled in, and it was temporarily sleeping in my tree house. Stellar was camped there, safely out of sight. I’d lent him a spare house key so he could nip in and use the toilet, figuring if he happened to bump into Mum or Dad they’d think he was me.
The school buzzer sounded and we plodded off to our next classes. Phoebe Warren strolled past stroking a guinea pig, followed by Edouard Galliard carrying a stick insect in a glass case. It was Pets In School week, and the whole place was one squeaking, barking, mewing, clicking petting zoo. I didn’t currently have a pet. My last one had been a gerbil when I was six years old. He’d had a tan and white coat and distinctive black marks over his eyes like a superhero mask. I’d named him Wayne and spent all my birthday money on him, filling his cage with a gerbil wheel, a climbing frame, his own special tunnel habitat and even a pet-powered car. I was training him to be the gerbil equivalent of Batman. I also wanted him to live forever and have laser eyes. I missed Wayne.
Serge and I paused outside the stairwell that led to the science
corridor. “Are you coming over to the shop later?” I asked him.
The shop in question was Crystal Comics, formerly owned by supervillain turned saviour of Earth, Christopher Talbot. He had sacrificed himself in defence of the planet, and left me his shop. At least, he’d meant to. In reality, what he’d left were three months’ unpaid rent and a stockroom full of comics that technically the bank owned. My dad had dealt with Barclays and was now in the process of fixing up the shop for its grand reopening this weekend. Every spare minute I had I was helping out.
“Of course,” said Serge. “Where else would I be?”
“I thought you might prefer hanging out with Stellar.”
“It is true I plan to check in on him at lunchtime.” He patted his bulging schoolbag. “I have a beef bourguignon and a very nice bottle of grape juice.”
We agreed to meet up after school, and then I went to my English class and Serge headed off for an hour of physics teaching that now seemed doubtful at best, its basic principles having been blown out of the water by the existence of the occupant of my tree house.
English wasn’t on much more solid ground. We were reading this poem written by Mr Freeze, or Frost, or some name like that. It’s about a man in a wood who I think is lost. The poem doesn’t tell you how he got lost in the first place – was he marooned on a far-flung planet while being chased by a tribe of alien hunters? Was he a highly trained spy with amnesia? It’s a bit vague on those points. Anyway, he comes across two paths and has to choose one. Our teacher, Mr Bonnick, asked the class if we thought the man had chosen the wrong path. I said if it were a videogame it wouldn’t matter, since there’d be a save-point and if you did choose the wrong path you could go back and try again.
I learned that in this respect poetry is not like a videogame.
My mind drifted back to Stellar and I raised my hand again. I added that if you were part of a quantum field so that you were effectively two people then you could choose both paths at the same time. Mr Bonnick hadn’t thought of that.
I wondered how Stellar was getting on in the tree house. I’d left him a stack of comics, but he’d read them all before. He said they had exactly the same comics in his universe, except there Superman is an aardvark. Then wouldn’t he be Superaardvark, I’d said, and Stellar had grinned. He was pulling my leg. Again. In quantum physics it seems you can pull your own leg.
When the lesson finished I sprinted to the door with the rest of the class. From behind me I heard a voice.
“Hey, Luke. Mate.”
I turned to see the figure of Joshpal Khan, weaving through the crowd. Josh used to torment me at every opportunity, but since discovering I was best friends with his idol, Dark Flutter, he’d changed his tune. I think he was hoping I’d introduce him to his superhero crush.
“You going to lunch, cuz?” he asked, eyes wide.
That was another thing. One of Josh’s cousins had recently married one of mine, which to my horror meant that we had become distantly related. “Uhh…” I hesitated. I was due to meet Lara in the cafeteria – she wanted to discuss some important S.C.A.R.F. business. The last thing I needed was Josh tagging along.
“Great,” said Josh. “I’ll come with you.”
Clamping a hand on my shoulder, he propelled me from the classroom and along the corridor. He was like some kind of bodyguard, pushing people out of my way, barking orders to make space. When we reached the cafeteria I’m pretty sure he would have tasted my food if I’d asked him. The meatloaf did look dodgy.
“What’s he doing here?” Lara whispered as Josh banged his tray down beside us and pulled up a chair. I could only offer an apologetic shrug. Our S.C.A.R.F. meeting would have to wait.
Josh scraped his chair closer to mine. “So, Luke-a-saurus,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice. “Seen much of You-know-who lately?”
“You mean Dark Flutter?”
“Shh,” he hissed, gesturing over his shoulder. “Don’t want everyone to know.”
Lara pretended to fiddle with her phone. Naturally, Josh had no idea that she was Dark Flutter. If he’d thought about it he might recall never seeing them both in the same room at the same time, which is often a giveaway in these situations, but Josh wasn’t the most observant of people. One thing had become obvious: I wasn’t getting shot of him over lunch.
“She called you Commander,” he whispered. “Said you were leader of something called … M.I.T.T.E.N.S?”
“S.C.A.R.F.” I corrected him. Josh had walked in on us at the golf club as we prepared for our last do-or-die mission to save the earth. He’d seen too much, which made him a security risk. If we were another kind of organisation, say like SPECTRE, we’d get rid of him by inviting him to our undersea headquarters then pulling a lever and dropping him into a tank full of ravenous piranha fish. But we didn’t have undersea headquarters or a tank full of piranhas. And when I’d asked the man at the local tropical fish shop if he had anything that would devour a medium-sized eleven-year-old in under a minute he just gave me this funny look and tried to sell me a guppy.
“Yeah, yeah, that was it – S.C.A.R.F,” Josh enthused. “Hey, did you see that UFO a coupla nights ago?”
“Uh, no. Must’ve missed that one.”
“How could you, man! Bright as a comet. Looked like it was coming down outside town. Isn’t that the sort of thing your S.C.A.R.F. thingy should be investigating?”
“Possibly,” I said.
He clapped me on the back, knocking the wind out of me. “Great! So tonight how about we go hunting for little green men from outer space?”
I caught my breath. “Josh, S.C.A.R.F. is a highly secretive and selective organisation. It’s for superheroes only. Sorry.”
It seemed Josh wasn’t used to rejection. His nostrils flared and he crushed his yogurt pot in one hand. “So how come they let you in, eh? What makes you special?”
I’d talked myself into a corner. I couldn’t fly, didn’t have a range of spectacular powers like my brother, and I couldn’t even command a supremely willing squirrel like Lara. Nor was I technically a sidekick, since in comics they have their own powers. No, I wasn’t special in any way. Thankfully at that moment Serge sat down next to me, looking flustered.
“Steve!” bellowed Josh, distracted by Serge’s arrival.
Following a misunderstanding at the start of the school year, Josh thought that Serge’s name was Steve, and no one had corrected him. Until now.
“His name is Serge,” said Lara flatly.
“Nah, don’t be daft,” said Josh, embracing Serge in a friendly neck hold, pressing a knuckled fist into his scalp. “He’s Steve. Steve-y. Steve-in-cible.”
Serge was trying desperately to say something, but Josh’s amiable choke-hold prevented him from getting the words out.
Lara squared up to Josh and fixed him in the eye. “Let him go.”
Instantly, across the dinner hall there was a series of small thuds as, at the sound of Dark Flutter’s voice, various pets released their grip on their owners and hit the floor.
“All right, all right, crazy-eyed-girl.” Josh pushed back his chair and stood up to leave. “Didn’t meant to hurt your boyfriend. See you later, Steve.” He pointed a finger at me, sighting along it like a sniper rifle. “And, Luke cuz, I’m joining your club.”
“I’ll send you a membership form,” I said through a fake smile. There wasn’t a form, and even if there had been I certainly wouldn’t be posting one to him.
Lara moved closer to Serge. “You OK?”
He rubbed his neck. “Oui. But only thanks to you.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes.
“I don’t think Josh would’ve actually strangled you,” I said. “I think that’s just his way of showing he likes you.”
Lara gave a tut of disapproval.
I poured Serge a cup of water and slid it along the table. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were going to see Stellar with your fancy beefburger?”
&nbs
p; “That was indeed my plan, oui. However, I was distracted.”
“By what?”
“Evie Oliver, Bella Coy and the Quinn twins.” Serge took a sip of water. “They were talking in a huddle and I could not help but overhear. A rumour is circulating about the identity of Star Lad. I heard them say that he attends our school.”
“Is that all?” This sort of thing was nothing new. Ever since Star Lad’s appearance on the scene, every school in Bromley had at one time or another spread a rumour that his alter ego was one of their pupils.
“You do not understand,” said Serge, shifting in his chair. “They are saying he is your brother.”
“This is a disaster.” Zack sat at the desk, holding his head in his hands.
It was later that same afternoon and I’d found my brother deep in the peculiarly dark heart of the school library. With its dusty aisles and shadowy corners, it was the sort of library where you wouldn’t be surprised to stumble across a choir of dead-eyed little kids singing about a nameless horror in the junior fiction section.
“I wouldn’t call it a disaster,” I said in my most soothing voice. “It’s a hiccup.” I paused. “A hiccup with potentially catastrophic consequences, I grant you.”
“What are you on about?” Zack looked at me with a puzzled expression. “I’m talking about this.” Set out before him on the desk was a printed document about five centimetres thick. He aimed a miserable flick at the top page. “I have to do a risk assessment for Star Lad.”
“What’s a risk assessment?”
He turned to the first page and read along a row of headings. “What are the hazards? Who might be harmed and how? What action is necessary?” He tipped his head back and gave another groan. “There are like a thousand questions and I can’t get out of it – it’s council policy.”
“But you don’t work for the council.”
“No, but my Star Lad signal is on the roof of the Civic Centre and I need a permit for flying in a built-up area. Oh, and apparently my telepathic powers ought to be registered for Data Protection.”
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 2
