“Well, sure, when you put it like that…”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Luke, but what do you have that he could possibly want?”
“Loads of stuff.”
“Such as?”
I racked my brains. From comic collections to mid-level exam results, the truth was that Stellar and I possessed all the same things. The only exception being the small matter of superpowers.
“And how does the gerbille-’ole in the library fit into his dastardly mission?” asked Serge.
Yeah, there was that. “OK, OK, so maybe I don’t know how all the pieces of the jigsaw fit together yet. But I will. And when I do, don’t blame me if it’s a jigsaw of horror.”
“Unless at that point you have already been replaced,” added Serge.
“Well, yes. But barring that.”
Lara’s bus pulled up and we went our separate ways: she to her dad’s place, Serge to his house for “Soufflé Night”. I went home and a short time later I was in our kitchen with Mum, laying the table for dinner. Dad hadn’t yet returned from the comic shop. As the launch day approached he was putting in increasingly long hours. He used to work with Mum at the insurance company, but they’d let him go or, as Lara put it, “made him recumbent”. Which was surprisingly accurate for her, as he’d spent a large amount of time lying on the sofa. Those days were over. He bustled about the shop like a general, directing the builders, offering unwelcome advice to Sidney, Layla and Jared, the art school students painting the Star Lad superhero mural, and juggling bunnies for the Dark Flutter petting zoo. It was nice to see him so happy. In fact, I hadn’t seen him this energised since I accidentally rewired the plug on his laptop.
There was the click of the front door and a few seconds later Dad strolled into the kitchen, holding up two red capes side by side.
“Right, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going as Superman. I just haven’t decided whether it’ll be Earth-Two Superman, or Red Son Superman.”
He had decided to reopen the shop with a cosplay promotion; anyone who came on the day dressed as a superhero or supervillain would receive a discount off their first purchase and a limited-edition, numbered shard of the Nemesis asteroid that had almost wiped out Earth. (Dad had found a pile of rocks in the back room, which I figured Christopher Talbot had left behind after using them in his many superpower experiments.)
“What about you?” he asked Mum. “Any thoughts on Wonder Woman?”
She pulled a face. “They haven’t yet built the control tights to get me into that outfit.”
From the hallway came the sound of the front door again. A breathless Zack blew into the kitchen. He wasn’t alone. Next to him stood Cara. Recently I’d observed her at close quarters, conducting her own one-girl insurgency aboard an alien mothership, disrupting the invaders’ plans and generally bringing down large dollops of havoc on their heads. She was impressive – no wonder Zack was obsessed with her.
He fizzed like a lit firework. “We were supposed to be studying at Cara’s house, but her mum double-booked her book club so we’ve come here instead. For the peace and quiet. And can Cara stay for dinner?”
Cara cast a puzzled look at Zack. “I thought we were just doing physics?”
“Of course, of course, but shall we not study better after our repast?” Zack said in this weird voice.
Mum and Dad exchanged looks.
“You’re very welcome to stay, Cara,” said Mum. “Tonight’s repast is not quite cordon bleu, I’m afraid, just pizza and salad.”
Zack put his fingers to his lips and made a kissing noise. “Ahh, the classic dish of the Neapolitans. Bellissima.”
“I thought it was from Iceland,” I said.
Zack scuttled over to the table and slid out a chair. “Permit me.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Cara, lowering herself into the seat.
“If I’d had a girl, I’d have called her Cara,” said Mum, offering her some pizza. “Such a beautiful name.”
Cara’s polite thank you was interrupted by Zack.
“You know, it’s also the name of a ravishingly beautiful island in the Inner Hebrides. And cara mia is Italian for ‘my love’. There. More Italian.” He gave this little laugh. “I may break out into an aria.”
He had completely lost it. I would’ve said Cara was looking at him like he was an alien from another planet, but I’d seen her expression in that situation and it was different.
“Kara’s also Supergirl’s name,” I chipped in, “except hers starts with a ‘K’, not a ‘C’.”
“I don’t know much about superheroes, kid,” she said. She always called me kid.
“But you actually met Star Lad,” said Dad. “That day with the bus was quite something.”
Dad didn’t know about our adventures aboard the sue-dunham mothership. He was referring to the first time Cara met Star Lad, which was ages ago when he had caught her falling from a runaway bus. Saving the passengers was the first superheroic thing my brother ever did. The moment had been captured forever – there was a poster and everything.
“Y’know what’s funny?” she said. “When he was holding me so close like that, I tried to sneak a look under his hoodie. I thought he seemed familiar.” Her eyes flicked on to Zack’s. “Have you heard the rumour?”
Uh-oh.
“What rumour?” said Mum.
“They’re saying that Star Lad is a boy at our school. And not just any boy.” Cara pointed a triangle of pizza at Zack.
There was a pause, and then Mum and Dad burst out laughing.
I could see Zack’s mouth do this crazy movement. A momentary pout followed by a swift upturn as he fixed a grin to his face and joined in with the incredulous laughter.
“Zack? Zack is Star Lad?” Crumbs of pizza base spilled from Dad’s mouth. “Luke, can you imagine? Your brother. A superhero.”
“Yes, so funny,” I mumbled, avoiding Zack’s gaze. In a way it was a shame we couldn’t let Dad in on his eldest son’s secret. If anyone would appreciate being the father of a superhero, it was him. The problem was he’d be too appreciative. I had no doubt he’d immediately get a mug with Star Dad on it, and then show up at the next school parents’ evening in a T-shirt with “Yes, My Son is Star Lad” printed on the front in big flashing letters.
Dad ruffled Zack’s hair. “Oh, if only, son. D’you know how much it would be worth to have Star Lad at the comic-shop launch?”
Zack’s fake grin fell from his face. “How much?”
He and I had already discussed the possibility of Star Lad making an appearance. I’d suggested we attach coloured smoke canisters to his ankles, like the Red Arrows, and he fly over the shop a few times. But Zack had rejected the idea.
“Think it through, Luke,” he’d said. “Why would Star Lad show up to a random comic shop launch? It wouldn’t take an evil genius to figure out there’s a connection. Next thing you know, I’d be outed.”
As much as Star Lad’s presence would have boosted sales, I knew he was right.
There was one good thing about my parents’ amused reaction to the suggestion that Zack was Star Lad: if Cara had suspected it to be true, then they had put her off the scent. From then on dinner passed in a succession of mooning glances and forced laughs, as Zack seemed to find everything that Cara said or did either downright charming or side-splittingly funny. He kept refilling her water glass and throwing back his head with a hysterical giggle. It was weird. As far as I could tell, all the girl did was eat more pepperoni pizza than her fair share, and half the salad. Zack’s behaviour was extra irritating since I had important information to pass on, but he was too distracted to pay attention.
Dinner finally came to an end. Cara settled herself in the living room for her physics tutoring session while I cornered Zack over a sink full of dirty dishes. We used to have a dishwasher, but it didn’t survive Dad’s attempts at making an automated plate-rack. Zack washed and I dried.
“Isn’t Cara amazing?” he gushed.
Amazing at eating pizza, yes. As much as I admired Cara I wasn’t in the mood to hear about her right now, so before he could start talking about her again I said, “I don’t think Stellar is telling us everything.”
Zack gave an offhand shrug. “A supervillain threatens his world and he needs my help. What else is there to tell?”
“Uh, a few more details might be nice, y’know, before you swan off with a complete stranger to another universe.”
“He’s hardly a stranger though, is he?”
“How many times do I have to say it – he’s not me. I mean, maybe we were the same person for the first eleven years of our lives, but not since he became all superpowered.”
Zack rinsed a knife and tossed it on the draining board. “You’re just jealous.”
“Of course I’m jealous! But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Let’s look at the facts. There isn’t a single example in comics or films where a twin shows up who isn’t evil.”
Zack creased his brow. “You know that’s not strictly speaking a fact, right?”
I counted off on my fingers. “He’s evil. He has superpowers. Therefore he must be a supervillain. I don’t know what you’re finding so hard about this.”
“Fair enough,” Zack said, much to my surprise. “In the past I’ve dismissed you, only to find out at the last minute – sometimes quite literally – that you were right all along.” He handed me a dripping dinner plate. “So, what’s the deal with Stellar? Let me guess. Some kind of outrageous interdimensional bank heist? No, wait. It’s something involving a highly unstable alien substance and a chain of undersea volcanoes? Or is it the classic take-over-the-world-with-bees scenario? So, what’ve you got?”
Bees? What had he been reading? What I had wasn’t any of that stuff. It was more of a hunch. “He took on a laser-gerbil in the school library, which I think he summoned through a hole in the fabric of space.”
“What a supervillain!” Zack made a mocking face. “A genuine Les Luthor.”
Did my brother really think the criminal mastermind who plagued Superman was some bloke called Les? Sometimes I despaired. “What about the gerbil-hole? You have to admit that’s suspicious.”
“All right, tell you what,” Zack said, scraping cheese from the last plate. “Stellar and I are planning to leave Saturday, right after the launch of Dad’s comic shop. You’ve got until then to bring me some actual dirt.” He lowered his washing-up brush. “I should go. Cara is waiting for me.” With that, he hurried out of the kitchen, humming one of Billy Dark’s lesser-known and therefore cooler songs.
My mission was clear: before Dad drew the winner of the cosplay competition on Saturday afternoon, I had to produce a smoking gun. Well, not literally. There was no time to lose. I decided to confront Stellar right away.
I found Stellar in my room, sprawled on my bed reading an issue of The Amazing Spider-Girl, his cape fanned out behind him, rising and falling as if held up on currents of air. He looked up from behind the comic with a grin.
“Hey, Luke!”
I gawped at him. “Are you mad? What are you doing in here?” I heard my parents stroll past the door. “What if they see us together?”
“Sorry.” He lowered his voice. “Hope you don’t mind, but I fancied hanging out in my bedroom again. With all my old childhood things.”
I was outraged at his cheek. “Old childhood things? Too grown up for all this stuff, are you? Got rid of everything in your world then?”
“Uh … no. Course not. It’s just … spending a week in a tree house changes you. Also, it was kind of cold out there.”
This wasn’t how I’d hoped our encounter would go. He had wound me up again and now I was the one on the defensive. I attempted to get things back on track.
“I never said thanks for saving my life in the library. If it hadn’t been for you I would’ve been zapped by a lasergerbil. That would’ve made some epitaph.”
“No problem. Did you happen to mention to Zack what I did?”
I nodded. Stellar seemed pleased to hear that Zack knew of his exploits.
“It’s funny seeing him as a superhero,” he said. “Back in my universe he left the tree house before Zorbon arrived. If he had stayed put, everything would have turned out differently.”
“It did,” I reminded him bitterly.
Strangely, Stellar didn’t look as smug or triumphant as I expected. In fact, he seemed kind of sad. Not Spider-Man-watching-Green-Goblin-toss-his-girlfriend-from-a-bridge sad, but definitely gloomy. A second later, Stellar seemed to pull himself together and gave a short laugh.
“While we’re on the subject, who calls himself Star Lad? What kind of a name is that?”
Uh, the kind I came up with.
“That whole -lad, -man, -boy thing is so last century. Right, Luke?”
“Right,” I agreed. Star Lad was kind of old-fashioned. On the other hand, Stellar was cutting-edge superhero nomenclature. Why hadn’t I thought of it? I had to admit that he was good at being a superhero. Not that I should’ve been surprised. He was, after all, me. Given the unique situation, I had to ask the question that had obsessed me since I cracked open my first comic.
“What does it feel like to have powers?” I asked. “Zack’s tried to explain, but we’re talking about someone who thinks Superman’s weakness is Samsonite.”
I could see him contemplate his answer. “It’s great,” he said at last.
“That’s not an answer. I want details, insight. Texture. Maybe you’ve forgotten what it used to be like. Being me. I’m stuck like this all the time. I can’t quick-change into a cool costume and go off and save the world. But you can. At three fifteen every weekday I walk home from school. If you wanted, you could fly home … via the Alps! Not me. Everyone tells me what to do, all the time. Mum, Dad, teachers. I have no power. I’m not even allowed to choose my own wallpaper. But you – you can do whatever you like.” I finished my rant slightly breathless.
“You’re right,” he said. “I wouldn’t change it. For the world.”
It was weird. Even though he was talking about the most exciting thing that could possibly happen to a person, he sounded unenthusiastic.
“I’d give anything—” I began.
He cut me off. “No. You wouldn’t.” His mouth turned down. “Having superpowers is awful. A burden I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.”
I studied his unhappy face. He sounded oddly convincing. Maybe really good acting was one of his superpowers. “You’re saying that just to make me feel better, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “Absolutely.”
Gah! I knew it. I knew having superpowers would be the best thing ever. It wasn’t fair! Why did it have to happen to him me, instead of me me?
“I know what you’re thinking.” He put down the comic and got to his feet. We stood there, the before and after frames in a superhero transformation sequence. “Let’s not kid around any more. You believe I’m your Evil Twin. That I’m Carnage to your Spider-Man, Abomination to your Hulk.”
“Killer Moth to my Batman,” I added for good measure.
Stellar nodded his head appreciatively. “Nice one. Mothcave, Mothmobile, not forgetting the Moth-Signal.” He stroked his cape thoughtfully. “Your suspicion is perfectly natural. In your place, I’d be thinking the same. So, we need to establish beyond doubt that I’m a good guy. You should interrogate me.” He grabbed my Human Torch bedside lamp and, shining it into his own face, said, “Ask me anything.”
“Won’t your parents have noticed that you’re missing?”
“They think I’m on a school trip,” said Stellar. “Right now they believe I’m building confidence and self-esteem at a multi-activity residential adventure centre in Devon.”
“The one with the heated pool and the ski slope?” My school in my universe had organised the identical trip. “My parents wouldn’t let me go. They need every penny right now for the new shop.”
“That sucks,” said Stellar. “Our parents can
be real killjoys, right? Have you noticed that every time we ask for something cool for our birthday, they always give us–”
“– shoes,” we said at the same time. I looked at him and we both burst out laughing.
“And it’s not like they’re rocket shoes or anything good like that,” he added.
“Rocket shoes would be cool,” I agreed. Then I stopped myself. This was a serious interrogation. “You say you need Zack to help save your world, but crossing dimensions isn’t like taking the bus to the High Street. How do you plan to travel back with him to your universe?”
“Zorbon the Decider is picking us up,” Stellar answered smartly. “You know Zorbon, right?”
“We haven’t met.” I failed to keep the resentment from my voice. “We keep missing each other.”
“Oh, Zorbon’s great. You’d really like him.” He grinned. “You do.”
So far my interrogation had failed to dent Stellar’s irritatingly cheery armour. It was time for a different approach.
“In the school library, it was you who made Wayne appear, wasn’t it?”
He paused. His expression told me he was weighing up whether or not to tell me the truth.
“It was me, yeah.”
I pounced on his admission. “I knew it! But what I don’t get is why Zorbon would give you a power like that?”
“He didn’t. It turns out that comics were right after all. When two versions of the same person meet it is like matter and antimatter. Except not as dangerous. Seems that when we’re together you and I create a weird magnetic field. I’m north to your south, positive to your negative.”
Evil to my good, I thought to myself.
“We have a magnetic personality,” he beamed and then closed his eyes. His brow furrowed in concentration.
I wrinkled my nose at a familiar smell. “Chips. Stellar, no. Not here!”
It was too late. In the corner of the room the air rippled and formed a new hole, although the outline of this one was definitely not that of a gerbil. It looked like a foot.
Stellar’s eyes blinked open and something shot out of the hole. It flew around the room, bouncing off the ceiling and walls like a pinball. I saw with alarm that it was heading straight at me. There was no time to duck. It loomed large in my vision, and then, mere centimetres away from smacking into my face, it split in two. I felt my hair part as each half flew by one side of my head.
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 4
