Serge examined them with a critical eye. “I had hoped to achieve a Fortress of Solitude structure in the presentation of my macarons but in the end settled for these simple but elegant pyramids.”
Dad made some approving response but I couldn’t tell what he was saying since his mouth was crammed with macaron. “Right, I’ll be back in five,” he said when he’d gulped down the last morsel. “Got to change into my costume.”
There was a ping from the lift in the middle of the shop. The doors slid apart and out walked Zack and Mum. She wore a costume I didn’t recognise. Green tights, thigh boots, a green top with a wooden dagger tucked at her hip, and a hat shaped like a paper boat.
“If you’re meant to be Green Arrow, where’s your bow?” I asked.
“I’m Peter Pan!” she said brightly and then for some reason slapped her thigh.
I should’ve guessed. Back in the days when Dad turned nursery rhymes into space opera, Mum preferred to stick to the classics. Her favourite was Peter Pan. Though it always made her cry.
This was embarrassing for her. “Uh, sorry, but Peter Pan’s not a superhero,” I said.
“Uh, sorry,” she mimicked me, “but he can fly, he’s immortal and he has the power to travel between worlds.” She turned to Dad. “I could do with some help downstairs. One of the rabbits won’t wear her helmet. Come on, follow me.”
Dad clutched a hand dramatically to his chest. “But, Peter, what if I fall?”
“What if you fly?” She spun on her heel and stuck out a finger. “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”
From what I could remember, those were the directions to Neverland, not the basement. Nevertheless, with that the two of them skipped off happily together.
“Apart from the occasional uncooperative bunny,” said Zack when they’d gone, “it all seems to be coming together remarkably well.” He shot me a look. “Where’s your costume? Surely you of all people aren’t going to miss an opportunity to dress up as some obscure superhero.”
I’d forgotten how annoying Zack could be.
“These macaroon things are yummy, Serge,” he said, chewing on one.
“Merci, Zack.” He lowered his voice. “And may I, in my capacity as co-founder and chief logo designer of S.C.A.R.F., enquire as to whether you are fully prepared for your forthcoming cross-dimensional mission?”
“Yup, all set—” I began, before realising the question wasn’t addressed to me.
Zack tutted. “You’re not coming along on this one, remember?”
Oops. “Oh yeah, must’ve slipped my non-superpowered mind.”
“Are you feeling quite all right, mon ami? You seem to be particularly jumpy today.”
“Me – jumpy? Skittish? Jittery? I think not, Serge. I’ve never felt more mentally stable in my entire life.” I could feel their puzzled expressions boring into me. To my relief, just then Lara arrived. I hurried off to open the door.
“What have you come as?” I asked as she swept in to the shop. Her costume consisted of normal, boring clothes, a spiral-bound notebook and what looked suspiciously like a fine-point Uni-ball pen.
“Lois Lane, obviously,” she said. “I couldn’t exactly show up as Dark Flutter, could I?”
We joined Serge and Zack in the S.C.A.R.F. huddle.
“Hi, Serge,” said Lara.
“Ah, bonjour, Lara. Or should I say … Lois?”
Really? He got that from a notebook?
“Will you be accompanying Star Lad on the mission to Stellar’s universe?” Serge asked.
“That’s the plan,” said Lara. “Mum thinks I’m staying at her house and Dad thinks I’m at his. I reckon I’ve got three days until either of them notices I’ve gone. And this way I’ll be able to keep a close eye on Stellar.” She turned to me. “Did you dig up any dirt on him?”
She was asking me about Stellar? “Uh, no, not a superpowered sausage,” I said, trying to sound disappointed, but inside I was grinning from ear to ear. I had fooled the lot of them. Regrettably I was forced to keep my brilliance to myself.
“Me neither,” said Lara. “Is it possible we were wrong about him? After all, he is you, and you’re not evil.”
“Of course Stellar’s not evil,” I objected. “He’s amazing.” The others stared at me. Perhaps I’d overdone the compliment thing. “Amazing at being a pain,” I added in an attempt to cover up my slip.
Lara and Serge nodded a bit too readily for my liking.
“I agree,” said Zack. “I’ve spent more time with him than any of you lot and, just between us, he’s always trying to suck up. He’s … what’s the word?”
“Creepy?” suggested Lara.
“Unctuous?” said Serge.
“Misunderstood?” I offered.
Ouch. Pretending to be someone else meant that people could be unnecessarily harsh about you when they thought you weren’t around.
“You will be careful, won’t you?” said Serge.
This time I didn’t make the mistake of answering, as I could see he was addressing Lara. She still believed that she was coming on the mission.
“Don’t worry,” she said to Serge. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m like a boomerang.”
“Or perhaps a Batarang?” suggested Serge.
Lara looked confused. “What’s a Batarang?”
I expected Serge to react the way any normal person would when faced with such a response: that is, roll his eyes, throw his arms up and say, “How could you not know about Batman’s classic throwing weapon?” To my astonishment, Serge didn’t do any of that. Instead he said it was unimportant (unimportant?!), and then Lara noticed the macaroons on the counter.
“Are these yours?” she said, casting an eye over the colourful display.
“Oui, although I must confess that my maman helped me to achieve the sophisticated, glossy finish.”
She plucked a red one between a finger and thumb. “Beautiful, and so light – like little coloured clouds. Do you think you could teach me how to make them?”
Serge raised an eyebrow. “I should be delighted.” He took a step towards her and in a low voice said, “The trick is to bake them until they are set, but not browned.”
“Yes,” said Lara, gazing into his eyes.
He moved closer. “The crunch on the outside conceals a yielding, squashy inside.”
“Yes,” she repeated in a weird breathy voice.
I knew they were talking about macaroons, but I had the oddest feeling that there was another conversation going on between the words. Not that I had the first idea what it might be about.
The two of them stood quite still, watching one another in silence, apparently lost in their own little world.
“So,” murmured Serge at last, “your kitchen or mine?”
I didn’t hear Lara’s answer because at that moment I was distracted by a dull throbbing in the spot directly between my eyes. It was my Stellar Scanner, a radar in my head that alerted me to important activity happening nearby. I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to visualise what had set it off.
Other Luke marched along the High Street, heading for the comic shop.
By the time I arrived at the shop a queue had formed on the pavement outside. Not a queue like you’d get for a new Star Wars film – I could count this lot on the fingers of Luke Skywalker’s one real hand. Josh Khan was among them, wearing a rubbish homemade costume consisting of a dorsal fin and a pair of stubby wings. I breezed past before he saw me and, ignoring shouts of outrage from the others, strode through the front door.
I found Zack, Serge and Lara clustered around the cash register, preparing for the imminent opening. Zack was emptying packets of coins into the till while Serge sorted through a display of comics filled entirely with variant covers. Before I could demand where Stellar was, Lara spoke up.
“Did you find them?” she said.
“Find what?”
“You said that you felt a pain in the neck creepi
ng up on you, so you went looking for headache pills.”
So Stellar must have detected my arrival and hotfooted it out of sight. He couldn’t have gone far. “That wasn’t me, it was Stellar.” I stuck my head round the nearest display case. “Which way did he go?”
“It can’t have been him. Lara and I are meeting up with him later,” said Zack. “He’s waiting for us at IKEA.”
That threw me. “Your rendezvous point is IKEA? Y’know what, that doesn’t matter right now. He isn’t there. He’s here and he looks exactly like me.”
“Of course he does,” said Zack with a sigh. “We’ve established that.”
Gah! “He’s pretending to be me!”
“Luke, we’ve been through this,” said Lara.
“Yeah, why on earth would he do that?” said Zack.
“Because I found a homemade Top Trump card that proves he’s up to no good and he imprisoned me in the tree house with a force field that I managed to deactivate this morning with a pair of quantum cats and an interdimensional toilet.”
Zack’s features formed an expression with which I had become all too familiar, namely weary disbelief. Thankfully I could see the other two members of S.C.A.R.F. absorb this new information with the seriousness it deserved. I explained all about the fictional supervillain called Gordon the World-Eater.
“So you see, Gordon is just a carrot,” I said at last.
“A carrot?” said Zack.
“Yeah, y’know – a temptation.”
Zack looked puzzled. “But I don’t like carrots.”
“No one likes carrots. That’s not the point.”
My brother had roundly dismissed my explanation, but I held out hope that my S.C.A.R.F. colleagues would believe me.
“Serge?”
“You have not one shred of evidence and you come here with a story that relies upon unlikely cats and fantastical sanitary ware.” He paused. “I believe you one hundred per cent.”
“Me too,” said Lara. “Though I’d put it about seventy-five per cent.”
Zack gave her a pained look.
I knew I could count on them! Just then Mum and Dad returned from the basement, forcing me to draw a temporary halt to my Stellar hunt. I couldn’t exactly ask them if they’d seen someone who looked exactly like me strolling around the shop in search of Calpol. Mum was holding a rabbit wearing an orange mask and a cape with a carrot sigil. Her own costume puzzled me. “If you’re meant to be Green Arrow,” I said, “where’s your bow?”
She gave me this funny look. “I told you already, I’m Peter Pan.”
It took me a second to understand her choice, but then I got it. I clicked my fingers. “He can fly, he lives forever and he can travel across dimensions. Brilliant!”
Mum ignored me and stroked the rabbit. “Commander Cottontail won’t play nicely with the rest of the Green Lettuce Corps.”
It twitched its pink nose and made a low, sighing noise.
“His mask is pinching his ears,” Lara explained, before quickly adding, “Uh, I mean it looks a bit tight, don’t you think?” She fiddled with the elastic and avoided Mum’s curious gaze.
Zack looked Dad up and down. “And who are you meant to be?”
Serge and I exchanged disbelieving looks – how did Zack even manage to get out of bed in the morning with such a dismal knowledge of superheroes? It was obvious who Dad had come as. Instead of some variant of Superman, in the end he had plumped for Superman’s dad, Jor-El. He’d copied the costume worn by the character in the ancient film that came out in 1978, which consisted of the brightest white tunic and trousers in the known universe. He wore a wig of equally dazzling white hair, with a curl that hung down in the centre of his forehead. To complete the look he’d strapped a plastic baby into a harness on his chest.
“I’ll give you a clue,” said Dad. He cradled the doll and began talking to it in a voice that sounded like his cheeks were filled with cotton-wool balls. “They can be a great people, Kal-El. They only lack the light to show them. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you … my only son.”
Zack shook his head. “No idea,” he said, and wandered off.
Serge clapped appreciatively. “Bravo, Monsieur Parker. Superbe. I felt I was right there with you on the doomed Krypton.”
“Thanks, Serge. That moment when the planet is disintegrating about him and Jor-El has to send his baby boy off in the spaceship so that he’ll survive.” He put on the voice again. “Goodbye, my son.” Dad sniffed. “Gets me every time.” He flicked at his white curl and marched to the door. “Now, that’s what I call a queue.”
The handful of customers who’d been waiting when I arrived had swelled. There were now so many that they’d spilled into the street. Dad flipped over the sign from “CLOSED TIME LOOP” to “HAILING FREQUENCY OPEN”.
“Brace for impact,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
The queue didn’t move.
When after a few seconds still no one had entered the shop, Dad peered out at the stationary customers. “What are they waiting for?”
It was then I noticed that they were all looking up. I craned my neck to see what had gripped their attention and glimpsed a shape flitting between the buildings. A snatch of a cape confirmed my suspicion.
“Stellar,” I muttered under my breath, and went outside for a better look. The others followed me on to the street.
I caught sight of him immediately, circling low over the comic shop, cape rippling just so, shoes shining like paint on a really expensive German car. I swear even his teeth sparkled in the sunlight. It seemed as if every shop on the High Street had emptied of people, and all of them were massing outside Parker & Sons, goggling at the aerobatic display my superhero double had decided to put on.
“Well, how about that,” cooed Dad. “There’s a new player in town.”
“Oh, he’s very impressive, isn’t he?” said Mum, her eyes fixed skyward.
“But you don’t even like superheroes,” I complained.
“Yes, I know, sweetheart, but he is something special.” She waved up at Stellar. “You can just tell.”
Even my own mum was a fan. This was getting beyond a joke.
“More special than Star Lad?” asked Zack. His voice quivered, but Mum didn’t hear him over the noise of the excited crowd.
They whooped and cheered as Stellar reached the climax of his routine. Not content with endlessly circling, he proceeded to perform a total show-off move, executing a supersonic half-loop off the top of a subsonic barrel-roll. Cries of admiration rising to meet him, he touched down on the roof of the comic shop and, with the poise of a tightrope walker, strode to the edge. He positioned himself directly above the sign and raised his arms to the crowd. They fell obediently silent.
“Greetings, citizens of Bromley Two.” He held up two fingers, in case there was any doubt. “I am Stellar.”
The crowd oohed and aahed.
“Good name,” said Dad with a firm nod.
“I come to you from another world, beyond your galaxy, beyond your universe, beyond understanding.” He knelt down on one knee and swept an arm to the far horizon. His performance was turning into an interpretative dance. Slowly he raised his chin. “And I am here with a vital message.”
Stellar paused, and in the silence that followed I could sense the crowd straining to hear his next words. I knew what was coming, of course. This was the moment when he crowed his plans for world domination and revealed himself as the supervillain I’d had him pegged as right from the beginning.
He cleared his throat. “Whenever I’m in a parallel universe, I buy all my comics at Parker & Sons – Your Friendly Neighbourhood Comic Store.”
What? What did he say? I looked at the others for confirmation, sure that I must have misheard. But I hadn’t.
Dad cheered.
The crowd cheered.
I shook my head in disgust. “That’s outrageous. That’s blatant commercialism. That’s—�
��
My further objections were drowned out by the noisy crowd. It seemed that, unlike me, they wholeheartedly approved.
Stellar marched up and down the roof. “And today only,” he shouted above the roar, “every purchase you make at Parker & Sons enters you into a unique prize draw. You could win a superpowered flight of a lifetime, courtesy of me. Minimum spend of ten pounds. Terms and conditions apply.”
I tutted my disapproval. “OK, now he’s just getting carried away.”
“Didn’t you ask me to do much the same thing?” asked Zack.
“No. Well, yes, but that was different,” I stuttered. It was one thing suggesting to Zack that he promote the shop, quite another to watch Stellar hog the limelight.
There was a thunder of feet on the pavement as, spurred by his offer, what seemed like the entire population of Bromley descended on the shop.
“Come on,” cried Dad, leading the charge inside. “It’s overdraft-clobbering time!”
Suddenly I was yanked off my feet. An overly excited Josh Khan grabbed me by the shoulders and stared wide-eyed into my face at a distance close enough to tell precisely which kind of cheese flavoured the cheese and onion crisps he’d just scoffed.
“Did you hear that?” His grip tightened. “I’m going to fly with Dark Flutter.”
“Uh, were you even listening?” I looked him up and down. “And who exactly are you meant to be?”
“I’m Shark Flutter,” he said proudly, explaining that it was a superhero of his own invention. As far as I could gather from his breathless origin story, the character was half Great White, half humming-bird, and Dark Flutter’s best friend. I couldn’t help notice that his cape kept snagging on his fin. I was about to tell him that a shark that big getting airborne with those wings was an aerodynamic impossibility, but he had already gone, haring after the others into the shop. I brushed down my rumpled sleeves.
“It’s time to leave,” announced Zack. “Stellar just contacted me telepathically. He’s moving up our departure.”
“But what about the free flight offer?” I said.
My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain Page 8
