by Jane De Suza
And then Mom burst in through the door. She never knocks, though the sign on my door says: KNOCK OR BE PREPARED TO DYE VIOLETLY. Mom had no fear of violet death, I guess.
‘Where’s the . . . wow, what IS THAT?’
‘It’s a project I made and I’m giving it to Anna Conda.’
‘What IS it?’
‘Uh . . .’ I tried hard to think of something.
The alien let out a sob.
‘It sounds like a choking tap,’ said Mom.
‘It IS! It’s a home fountain!’
The alien tried to hop about but trussed up as it was, it just fell over.
‘It’s a dancing fountain,’ I said desperately. Then BigaByte leapt at the gift-wrapped alien, and in panic, I rolled it out of the door and down the stairs. ‘I’m late, so see you later.’
‘Be home by seven,’ said Mom, who always says some random time that pops into her head. Seven! Huh!
Struggling to pull the gift-wrapped but fiercely protesting alien along, I finally just balanced it on BigaByte’s back. Then I had a fiercely protesting dog AND a fiercely protesting alien.
It’s a miracle I made it to Anna Conda’s party at all!
15. Choose the biggest crowd to perform in front of
The party was in full swing by the time we got there. Thanks to all the delays caused by aliens unwilling to cooperate, fathers and mothers who doubted the decent intentions of their innocent children, and the very slow progress of a fat alien on a fatter dog, and so on.
There was this club of which Anna Conda’s nose-inthe-air parents were members, and the party was being thrown on its ‘Eden Lawns’ (posh name for a patch of grass, I thought). There were long-stemmed flowers in a flower bed on one side, all perfect, like they were in uniform. And there were a lot of kids playing in a bouncy castle in the middle, with a trampoline. On the other side, there were some tables with the food laid out—for now, all under big silver lids, like upside-down flying saucers. One table had a humongous cake on it, with a castle made out of icing. I had to hold BigaByte’s collar because he began to drool as soon as he saw it. ‘No, good dog, I’ll give you all the gift-wrapping paper to eat later, I promise.’ Behind the food tables were tall swaying trees. It looked totally out of a Disney movie. There was just one thing missing.
Where was Anna Conda?
Just then, a big boom made us all jump (not the kids on the bouncy castle who were jumping already, but me and the alien especially). A big brass band began to play. A lot of drummers started up a real racket, banging away on their drums, and a trumpeter began to screech . . . and then, when everyone was standing to attention, from behind the tall trees, down a little path, a princess appeared. With a long tail. It was Anna Conda, the beautiful, the kind, the clever, the rich, making a grand appearance.
And just like that I got another brilliant idea. (Of course, all my ideas are brilliant). I would make an equally grand appearance to impress her. I would come flying in like Tarzan of the Apes. (What—you haven’t watched that movie either? What have you been doing if you haven’t been watching action videos?) You know how Tarzan swings from tree vines and branches and stuff, and then just flies in wherever to appear totally cool? Easy Peasy Deep-Freezy!
So I pulled my gift-wrapped alien up the trunk of a spreading tree (much tougher than it sounds). It almost rolled out of my grip a coupla times, and its wrapping was coming out in pieces. But I pulled it up the tree like the leopards pull dead deer up in National Geographic’s Wildest Videos (Tell me you’ve seen that at least!) Like the leopard, I was all muscle and grit and determination to win the girl leopard, or girl snake . . . whatever (stop pointing out mistakes!).
Then, all I had to do was swing in on a branch that was hanging low, so I tied the alien to my back with some of his gift-wrapping string, and as the drum beats grew louder, and the trumpeter began to play a very off-key version of ‘Happy Birthday’, I swung out on the branch—and away we flew!
To wow the crowd!
To make a grand entrance!
To delight Anna Conda!
To make a big impression . . .
Right on the cake! Splat!
That’s right—into the castle cake icing! And the silly alien went rolling off and began to howl again!
Anna Conda broke into tears, and everyone rushed to the alien, who strangely had not only rolled out of its gift-wrapping paper, but also out of its big red-and-white-spotted body! Inside was a little boy, five-year-old Bobby, who lived down the road from me, the nephew of the big biscuit factory’s owner.
Everyone gasped. Then giggled. Then laughed. Then grew really angry. And everyone, EVERY SINGLE ONE turned to me.
I had icing all over my face but I still managed to say, ‘I thought he was an alien!’
‘I wath noth an alien. I wath a muthwoom,’ lisped a wailing Bobby, ‘in my thchool fanthy dweth.’
A mushroom! At his school fancy dress? How was I to know!
The moment was thankfully hijacked by a loud roar, and everyone turned to watch two men in aprons chasing a very fat creature around the food tables. BigaByte was gobbling down as much food as he could on the run!
While everyone was busy chasing BigaByte or fussing over the silly lisping alien mushroom, I took off home.
16. Don’t get kicked out of your own story
I was back on the Most Hated List. Not fair! I took ages to get off it, and then one day, all because of a snotty kid who was dressed up as a red-spotted fungus (and they call me weird!) I was back to being the Bad Guy.
Anna Conda, of course, didn’t talk to me at all. She turned her gorgeous nose up in the air and slithered past me in the school corridor, hanging on to TRex, who bared his pointed teeth at me and winked. Slime Joos kept ‘accidentally’ zapping slime balls at the back of my head. He pretended he was experimenting to see how far his slime could fly.
Masterror had me standing in a corner for almost a whole morning, trying to transmorgize or transmorgate or something or the other, which is NOT FAIR because no fresher kid can do that yet. He told me I should focus really hard on turning into a rat, which he said shouldn’t be too tough for me, because I was pretty much there already.
And then to make matters much worse, Double-Headmistress came over with our progress cards. She read out our names and then handed each one over.
Head 1: ‘Lizzie Lizard, your self-control has increased tremendously. You’ve not zapped the Fly all of last term, and he is very grateful to you. He sends his best from Antarctica, where, right now, he is teaching the penguins to change colour.’
Head 2: ‘Vamp Iyer, I am proud to tell you . . .’
Head 1: ‘I haven’t finished with Lizzie Lizard.’
Head 2: ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon. You weren’t even talking ABOUT Lizzie Lizard, you were talking about the Fly . . . and that’s all you can talk about . . . you’re so smitten by him.’
Head 1: ‘Not in front of the children.’
Head 2: ‘Why? Is smitten too big a word for them?’
Head 1: ‘Yes, but bitten is just right, which is what your head really needs—biting off.’
There was a slight moment when I thought it all might turn out right for me, and they might just forget about me, because Head 1 and Head 2 were snarling at each other, but then they settled down . . . and finally got to me. Sigh.
Head 1: ‘And I will allow you, Head 2, to give the progress report on SuperZero.’
Head 2: ‘No.’
Head 1: ‘Sorry? I told you to . . .’
Head 2: ‘No, I mean there is NO progress at all.’
I mumbled while I took the progress card and walked back towards my corner. Masterror stepped in and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘I hope you realize by now, young SuperZero, that you are just not cut out of superhero material.’ (Ya, what is superhero material? That tight spandex stuff? Who CARES!). He wasn’t done. ‘I am recommending to your parents that you be pulled out of Superhero School. I hereby suspend you from class,
with immediate effect, until you prove you have indeed some superpowers that we can build on. It was so not very nice knowing you—tra la!’
The class gasped.
An empty chair suddenly shouted, ‘It’s not fair! You’ve got to give him a chance! He made paper planes fly! You shoulda seen him that day!’ It was my buddy Blank, of course, who appeared soon after on the chair.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Masterror, mustering as much sarcasm as he could. ‘Paper plane flying is SUCH a critical superhero talent. How would we save the world without paper planes?’ He looked around the class, expecting the usual round of laughter in response, but everyone was quiet.
Maybe, just maybe, I did have friends out there.
I didn’t want to make this nightmare last even longer than it should. I had my pride after all. And so I just turned around and walked right out.
At home, I was just so fed up of it all that I put the progress card on the dining table, where Dad read it first and then handed it to Mom. ‘He’s out.’ He didn’t say much more. I thought he’d be dancing on the rooftops in glee, but he looked a little crestfallen. Strange. Mom put an arm around him and they both looked sadly at me. I wished they’d just yell at me and get it over with, y’know. Like, c’mon guys, smack my ear or ground me, or make me clean the car all week. Don’t give me the sad puppy look.
Progress Card:
Name of child : SuperZero
Year : Fresher
Marks out of 100
Super Sight : 0
Morphing : 0
Flying : 0
(You’re getting the picture here?)
Comments:
Effort: SuperZero makes no effort towards learning anything or practising anything else, and seems to spend all his time plotting how to undo everything the other students have done.
Initiative: SuperZero showed initiative in trying to burn down a crowd of people, and in flooding a building.
Highlights of the year: SuperZero kidnapped a small child, scalded a senior student, spoiled a biogas experiment, tried to chain-snatch from an old woman and ruined a fellow student’s cake and party.
Next course of action: Please keep SuperZero at home, and please shift home as far away from the school.
17. Discover the truth. In a smelly sack
Have you ever felt like this—when you hate something, when it’s gone, you miss it and really want it badly? That’s the way I felt about my superpowers. I’d just never believed I was super somehow. I hadn’t thought of myself as a hero at all. It was just so much easier to just be a regular dude, a smart-ass, a wimpy no-good boy next door, a kid who was trouble. But now I wanted so gigantically badly to get my superpowers. And I had no clue how to!
I walked over to the back garden to find Gra. He’s the only one who’d understand, even if he couldn’t hear half of what I said. But Gra wasn’t around, not in his turnip or carrot patch. Not even at the side around the house, where he sometimes went to sleep in the sun. Not on the roof, repairing the dish antenna (he kept turning it around so that he could ‘talk to Mars’). I guessed he’d be in his garden shed then.
I opened the door of the shed—it was almost falling apart. I don’t know why they didn’t just break it down and build a fancy whatchamacallit—pergola? Mom’s always saying pergola in front of her fancy friends, who wear high-heeled shoes and make holes in Gra’s vegetable patches. She likes the way pergola sounds. She also says ‘zucchini’ and ‘terranium’ and ‘hors d’oeuvres’ and words like that when her fancy friends come.
Anyway, Gra was not in the shed. Phoooo! What did he keep here? It smelled like rotten, dead bodies. (If you watch police videos, you’d know what that was like—well, you can’t smell the videos, you’d just know!) So of course, I had to go poking around. If you suspected your grandfather was a secret mass murderer who kept dead bodies in his pergola, you’d have to find them, right?
Most of the smell I guess was coming from the sacks he kept manure in—ugh! I opened up a few and almost puked. In the corner, behind stacks of sacks, I found a rusty wheelbarrow, and when I managed to pull it out, I saw a small door in the floor.
I was totally excited now! I yanked at the door knob, and the stupid thing, of course, came off in my hand. So I took one of Gra’s rakes and levered up the door after much huffing and puffing, and discovered a dark (and very smelly) hole in there. A secret tunnel?
‘Grrrrr!’ I almost fell into the secret hole—I was so surprised. I whipped around to see if my mass-murderer grandfather had come to axe me. But it was only BigaByte’s stomach growling. I felt a bit safer.
It was too dark to see inside the hole, so I lay down on the floorboards, and pushed my hand in—it touched something rough. I screamed again. A dead body?
After I’d swallowed my scream, I pulled at it. The thing came up easily, with a whole cloud of dust. I began to cough and sneeze, staring at the sack in my hand.
Another smelly sack? Why all this hidden, secret mass-murderer pretend stuff for another smelly sack?
I opened the string that held the sack together, and I saw something purple in there—clothes.
No way! After all this . . . the hidden treasure was a bunch of old clothes? C’mon Gra, that’s not fair. I could understand if it were Mom. I mean, she’s just the kind of loony who would keep clothes for years and years (she thinks someday she will fit back into them), but Gra!
I pulled out the purple smelly thing—phew, it really stank! And I almost fell backwards. To my shock, it was a spandex suit, a bigger version of the one I was wearing. What? Why? There was a cape too! Along with a pair of smelly boots . . . and smelly gloves. And then right at the bottom, there was a brown cardboard file that had almost turned into dust.
I pulled out the file and sifted through some ancient newspaper clippings.
‘The Grazor foils the Kangaroo Kidnappers!’
‘The Grazor saves the city from the Spying Saucers!’
‘The Grazor stops the Great Train Robbery!’
I had to squint to make out the images of the purple spandex man, rippling with muscles, the sun slanting off his shiny black hair as he raised his hand in triumph.
The Grazor! It was true then—those stories the kids in Superhero School told in whispers—of the greatest superhero in this part of the world who just disappeared one day.
Why was his suit in here? Had Gra murdered him and dumped him here, under his turnip patch?
A shadow filled the door, along with a cough. I screamed (for the tenth time that day) and turned around. ‘Don’t kill me please, I’m underage!’ I begged of the mass murderer who had silently appeared at the door.
Dad coughed gently again. ‘Hmm, so you’ve found it. I was afraid you would one day. I guess it’s time you and I had that little talk.’
18. Dig up some roots. Turnips, preferably
Dad’s talked to me lots of times before. Like about bike engines and basketball games and guy stuff, y’know. Not about where I came from and all that . . . yucky stuff. It’s bad enough I have to live with my family, I don’t want to know their secrets!
‘Don’t tell me . . . YOU were the Grazor?’ I stared at my father. I couldn’t imagine him swinging out of trees—I mean, he sprained his shoulder when he tried to lift his tennis racquet too high!
‘No!’
‘Then . . . you killed the Grazor?’
‘No!’
‘Omigosh! Mom killed the Grazor! That makes complete sense. She’s always walking around with that kitchen knife. Omigosh, my mom is the Grazor-murderer, wait till I tell . . .’
‘No. Will you listen to me for a second?’
‘No, I won’t. Dad, why didn’t I know about all this?’
Dad sat down on a sack and looked down at his toes.
He said, ‘Because I didn’t want you to ever know. I didn’t want you to be a superhero. It’s no life!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I am a superhero’s son.’
; ‘Cool! Your mom was a superhero?’
‘No! (And they accuse me of always saying No to everything.) No, my dad was a superhero.’
‘But your dad is Gra! Omigosh, you were adopted?’
‘No! Gra was the Grazor.’
I gaped at him. I had to be sure he wasn’t joking. Dad is always joking about really serious things, like when I had to go get my milk tooth pulled out, and he said they had this technique where they’d staple up my mouth, and then pull it out through my nose. He sounded so serious, I cried for two days. Mom was mad at Dad, because she was the one who had to take me to the dentist, and I made it really difficult for her, even trying to jump out of the car window on the way there.
‘You’re joking, right? Gra can’t hurt a fly.’
‘Well, actually, Gra’s best superhero friend was the Fly.’
That got me. The Fly! No wonder he was so nice to me. Did he know who I was? Did he see the spark in me? Or did he see the resemblance? Did I have Gra’s bent nose or bushy eyebrows?
‘Dad, why didn’t you want me to join Superhero School then? You must have known I had something super in me? Right, Dad?’
Dad looked down at his sandals. He squiggled his toe. Finally, he said, ‘Look at my toe.’
‘Dad, get serious!’
‘No, really. Look at my toe! Is that the toe of a superhero? It looks like an overripe potato.’
‘DAD!’ I screamed. ‘I don’t want to talk about potatoes right now.’
‘Okay, okay. Don’t fly off your broomstick . . . oh, that’s witches and wizards, not superheroes—got them mixed up.’
I glared at him. ‘Fow-cus, Dad!’ I sounded like Masterror.
‘Yup. Look, I did not inherit the super genes. That’s all. I don’t know if I was adopted. I don’t know if YOU are adopted . . .’
