Heck Superhero

by Martine Leavitt

  I am indebted to Wizard: the Comic Magazine, which enlarged my understanding of the multiverse of comic art. Heck and I would also like to thank Stephen Roxburgh and all the secret superheroes at Vermont College.

  Copyright © 2016, 2004 by Martine Leavitt

  Cover illustrations copyright © by iStock.com

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@highlights.com.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Designed by Helen Robinson

  First e-book edition, 2016

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Leavitt, Martine

  Heck superhero / by Martine Leavitt.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Abandoned by his mother, thirteen-year-old Heck tries to survive on his own as his mind bounces between the superhero character he imagines himself to be and the harsh reality of his life.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-886910-94-2 (hc) • 978-1-62979-109-8 (pb) 978-1-62979-293-4 (e-book)

  [1. Abandoned children–Fiction. 2. Cartoons and comics–Fiction. 3. Emotional problems–Fiction. 4. Art–Fiction. 5. Canada–Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7. L4656He 2003

  [Fic]-dc212002192863

  Boyds Mills Press, Inc.

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  P1.1

  This book is dedicated to the super seventh, Dallas Dean

  “The loved one herself becomes for him a melody, a fixed idea which keeps coming back to him and which he hears everywhere.”

  —from the program notes for Hector Berlioz’s

  Fantastic Symphony

  Contents

  Monday, May 2

  Tuesday, May 3

  Wednesday, May 4

  Thursday, May 5

  Friday, May 6

  MONDAY, MAY 2

  Question: How do you rescue a mom from hypertime?

  Answer: You have to be a superhero.

  Heck wasn’t a superhero, or if he was, he was definitely in his flat stage, his no-curves-no-life-dead-on-the-page stage. Of course, all superheroes started out that way. It said so in his How to Draw Superheroes book. Before the costume and the muscles, before the piping and the overlines, there was a stick man, flat on the page, lifeless. Right now, Heck felt like a stick man, so flat he wondered how he managed not to slip through the slats of the mall bench he was sitting on. A toothache could do that to you. A toothache, and missing breakfast and lunch, and not knowing where your mom stayed last night.

  He remembered where the Pepper Bar was, where his mom worked. As soon as it was time for school to be out, he’d go there. He’d talk to her. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he’d say, “everything’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Heck pulled out the twenty-dollar bill and smoothed it over his knee. He had been almost surprised this morning, waking up in Mr. Hill’s car, to find it still in his pocket.

  Stolen. From his best friend, Spence. You couldn’t get any flatter than that. He’d never stolen anything before. You couldn’t be a thief and a superhero at the same time.

  Why had he taken it? It must have been his mom’s voice when she called him at Spence’s yesterday. “They’ve locked us out, Heck. Ask if you can stay there for a day or two, will you, while I get some things straightened out?” she’d said.

  Heck hadn’t said anything. Not “No.” Not “You ask them.” Not “Okay, sure.” Just nothing. Everything he wanted to say was in a word bubble over his head, but she couldn’t read bubble over the phone.

  “Thanks, Heck,” she’d said to his silence. “Thanks, baby. I’ll call you soon, okay? You’re my hero.” She hung up.

  “What?” Spence had asked, looking hard at him.

  “Nothing …” They’d received envelopes from Mr. Grenhold, the landlord, but his mom just put them in a bill pile and ignored them. Heck knew it was notices. He just didn’t want to know.

  Spence’s mom had stopped peeling potatoes—she was always peeling something—and looked sharply at Heck. The bubble over his head popped and he felt letters fall on him like rain.

  “Nothing,” Heck had repeated.

  “Okay, let’s get back to the game,” Spence had said.

  “What is it, Heck?” Mrs. Carter had asked.

  Here we go, he’d thought.

  “You know you can always talk to us.”

  Heck’s mom wanted him to stay there, but she wouldn’t want them to know her business.

  “Everything’s okay,” Heck had said, even though he had this heavy feeling in his stomach like his heart just fell into it and his left ventricle was being slowly digested.

  Mrs. Carter had looked at him a long moment. Heck had pasted a smile on his face and she’d started peeling again.

  He and Spence had gone back to playing video games, but Heck didn’t do very well.

  “Guess I’m finally getting better than you,” Spence said gleefully. “You’re not letting me win, are you? This isn’t one of your crazy Good Deeds or something, is it? Because if it is …”

  “No,” Heck said. As casually as he could he said, “Do you think your parents would let me sleep over again tonight?”

  “No, my parents consider Sunday a school night,” Spence said. With a tap of the button his video-game character dealt the final blow. Spence cheered. “Yes! For once I’m going to beat you!”

  That night Spence’s dad had dropped Heck off in front of the apartment as usual. For just a moment, before he got out of the car, Heck thought of telling, but he couldn’t. What if it wasn’t only a couple of days? His mom had this thing with time—she and it didn’t get along.

  He had recognized that tone in her voice, the one that said, “I’m in hypertime and I don’t know when I’ll be back.” Her friend Dierdre called it depression.

  But Heck had learned by reading comics that hypertime was a bridge to coexisting realities. It was how Superman could be dead in one comic book issue and alive in the next. Both were true, each in its own time and existence. It meant he could have a mom who was the best mom a kid could dream up and the kind of mom that Social Services had a file on. When he’d heard her voice last night, he knew. She was feeling like she couldn’t deal with this microverse full of evil landlords who changed locks and evicted her from her apartment.

  Last time she went into hypertime was when he got sent home with a note from the teacher saying he didn’t have a proper coat and would she please do something about it. His mom went into the living room, sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and didn’t do anything for a week. It was all Heck could do to get her to drink tea and eat crackers and cheese.

  Heck Superhero, lost and abandoned in the world of mortals, without his supersuit and the tokens of his strength …

  Heck sat up straight and looked around the mall. No one was looking at him, but he could almost hear Mr. Bandras’s voice: “Daydreaming again, Heck? There’s a time and a place for that, and this isn’t it.”

  Heck had to admit that now was not a good time to be daydreaming. Not when they’d lost their apartment and when his portfolio with all his semester artwork was locked in it and when bacteria were mining their way down through his molars and into his jawbone. He had to stay in this microverse and take care of his mom. Flat or not, he had to get to his mom soon. He had to get her out of hypertime, keep her from thinking crazy stuff like that he was better off without her or something. He had to talk to her before she floated like a dry leaf right out of this dimension.

  He had to think, make a plan, a good plan, a smart plan—a superplan …

  There was always the Good Deed.

  Of
course, there was that bad deed still in his pocket to worry about.

  A delicious smell from the mall’s food court drifted right up his nostrils. He was hungry.

  He’d been hungry before, but not this hungry. He felt turned inside out, like his stomach was on the outside of him and his human face on the inside. Being this hungry put his stomach in charge of his brain and his hands and his feet. If you weren’t a superhero, being this hungry could make you spend the money you stole from your best friend …

  Heck felt the twenty in his pocket. He looked around. None of the people walking by seemed to be able to tell that he was harboring stolen goods. He thought about phoning Spence. He’d say, “Hey, guess what I accidentally found in my pocket? Are you missing a twenty? Isn’t that strange? How could that have happened? I’ll be right over.” Would that be a Good Deed? No, it would just be canceling out a bad deed, putting it in the category of “doing the right thing after having done the wrong thing.”

  An announcement came over the mall intercom: “There is a lost child, wearing a navy wool coat and black shoes …” Heck wondered if there was a citywide intercom that could announce, “Attention, flat superhero looking for small apartment that requires no references …”

  He was about to take out the twenty again when a woman walked by. She was old and white-haired, just the sort of lady you’d want to do a Good Deed for if you were a superhero. He smiled and said, “Good afternoon.”

  She smiled back and threw something in the trash can near him. Something that hit the trash with a soft, sandwichy heaviness.

  Heck waited until she was far enough away, and then he looked in.

  Egg salad. A whole half, not even bitten into. Heck pulled it out and bit in.

  Egg salad. Surely the egg salad sandwich was the most delicious food ever invented by man. It was a marvel, a wonder, the egg salad sandwich, and no technological advance could match this pinnacle of achievement. Heck’s brain genuflected before the genius of whoever invented bread. Strange that they had never learned that in Social Studies. There should be at least one class devoted to the mastermind who invented bread. What about the person who first whipped up a batch of mayonnaise? Why wasn’t there a statue of her somewhere?

  The Good Deed. It was still working for him. A simple smile and a good afternoon to a little old lady, and—egg salad! But now that he had a little egg salad in his system, one thing was clear: no Good Deed was good enough to help him find his mom until he’d fixed the bad one. He had to give back the twenty and confess to Spence.

  His skin was goose-bumpy with pleasure as he ate the last bite.

  Now he could think.

  Spence would be home from school by now, and wondering why Heck hadn’t been there today.

  He couldn’t go to school. He didn’t have his books. They were locked up in the apartment. He didn’t have paper or a pen or a lunch or a shower or deodorant or a toothbrush, essential items for school attendance. Especially he didn’t have his artist’s portfolio with his semester artwork in it, which had to be turned in on Friday. He could imagine the look on Mr. Bandras’s face when he told him his dog ate ten pounds’ worth of paper and paint.

  Mr. Bandras would know. “You don’t have a dog,” he would say. He would see. He would ask. It was better to let the school think he was under quarantine for scarlet fever or something. Besides, it wasn’t bad having a day off school, especially when they didn’t even teach you about the invention of the egg salad sandwich. He bet Mrs. Bandras could make a mean egg salad sandwich.

  He pulled the change out of his pocket. His mom always made sure he had enough to call her from a pay phone—in an emergency, she said. He walked around the phone a few times. Even though they were molecularly joined, it was hard sometimes to predict what Spence would do. Heck still remembered the day he and Spence became molecularly joined through a super mind meld. Spence didn’t call it that. He said, “It’s freaky how we get each other.”

  Heck picked up the receiver and hung it up again.

  The egg salad had settled into the holes of his back teeth and was bubbling itself into frothing, burning acid. He was sure if he had superhearing he’d be able to hear the enamel fizzing as it was being eaten away. He had to keep his mouth closed. The conditioned air of the mall felt as cold as ice water on his teeth. The exposed roots began to squeal in little high-pitched voices, louder even than the mall music.

  He punched his jaw. He should have known better than to eat.

  He picked up the receiver again.

  He dialed the number.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where were you today?” Spence asked. Heck never missed school. Being sick put too much stress on his mom.

  “Sick,” Heck said.

  “You’ve been that way for years.”

  Hearing his voice was almost as good as egg salad. “Did you know that you have an egg salad kind of voice?” Heck asked.

  “What?” Spence laughed. A good sign. “So what are you sick with?”

  “Uh … chicken pox,” Heck said.

  “Chicken pox? Doesn’t that keep you from ever having children or something?”

  “No, you can have children, but they’ll peck at their food.”

  “Funny,” Spence said. “What’s up, Heck?” Spence wasn’t buying the sick thing. He was too sharp for that. “Is something going on?”

  No. Nothing. Except that my mom and I have been evicted and I don’t know where she’s staying or who’s taking care of her … “It’s okay. You don’t have to worry,” Heck said.

  “I’m not worried.” Spence said, but his voice was suddenly wary.

  “Don’t worry later.”

  “Okay, that’s it. What’s going on?”

  He should tell. Heck knew he should. But if he told and his mom didn’t call, didn’t come to get him, she might get in trouble. When she was in hypertime, she couldn’t keep track of real time. What if a couple of days stretched into three, or four, or ten? Would Spence’s parents call Social Services? The police? His mom would be arrested or something and he’d end up in a frosty home. That was what he’d called the foster home as a little kid when his mom had gone into hypertime and left him at an emergency daycare for three weeks.

  “Hey, Spence, does your mom ever make you egg salad sandwiches for lunch?”

  “Huh? No. I don’t like egg salad.”

  “See, that is the sort of thing that makes me worry about you, Spence.”

  “You are making no sense today,” Spence said. “What’s with you?”

  “Spence, I need to ask you a hypothetical question. If a friend stole money from you, would you ever be able to forgive him?”

  “You stole money from me?”

  “Listen, I—I’ve got to go, Spence. I’ll call you later.” He hung up.

  —

  Heck’s teeth sang every note of the mall’s pumped-in music, only on a scale so high the notes felt like needles. His left ear was beginning to ache.

  Heck punched his jaw. Flatter than ever. What kind of superhero couldn’t own up to his misdeeds?

  It was almost time to go find his mom at the Pepper Bar. They’d get everything straightened out, and in three months Heck would tell Spence all about it in a way that would make him laugh and this whole thing would be over.

  He punched his jaw again. While he was in the Pepper Bar he’d ask Levi on the sly for an aspirin. He didn’t want to worry his mom about his teeth. That would be the last straw.

  He’d eat, too. He had to feed his mortal alter ego. For sure, being hungry could turn the roundest brain into lasagna noodles.

  Lasagna …

  Almost without thinking about it, Heck stood up and walked to a trash can. He pulled out a pizza box when he thought no one was looking. There were crusts still in it, and some pineapple stuck to the box. Heck sat down with it on the bench.

  “That’s dirty,” someone said.

  Heck turned to see a little girl sta
ring at him. She was wearing a navy coat and shiny black shoes.

  “It’s dirty to eat things out of the garbage,” she said.

  Not dirty, Heck thought. Flat. “I wasn’t going to eat it,” he said. “I was … I was just going to use the box to draw on.” He pulled out his sketching pencil. “See?”

  The little girl looked him in the eye, opened her mouth, and wailed. Her face didn’t scrunch up, and there were no tears in her eyes.

  “What?” Heck asked.

  She stopped wailing. “I’m lost,” she said. She started to wail again, scrunchless and tearless. Shoppers passed by without noticing.

  “Hey. Hey, don’t cry. Here, I’ll draw you, okay?”

  She stopped. Heck took a good look. She had black eyes a color you couldn’t buy and brown skin a color you couldn’t mix. Heck began to sketch, and after a minute he felt her at his side.

  She pointed. “Is that me?”

  “Yes,” Heck said. “You are the Good Deed.”

  The girl watched in silence a little longer. “Who’s that?”

  He smiled. “That’s me, Heck Superhero.”

  She looked at the picture and then at him and back at the picture again. “It doesn’t look like you.”

  “I’m in my flat stage right now,” Heck said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Saving you.”

  “Oh.” In a moment she asked, “From what?”

  “Evil forces.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Heck sketched fast. It made his teeth feel better to draw. It made everything feel better to draw. “See, if I save you, then maybe the curse will be lifted and Heck Superhero will go live with his fellow heroes in the topworld.”

  The little girl sighed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Evil forces have got inside my shoes.”

  “Your feet hurt?”

  She nodded.

  “I hate it when that happens,” Heck said. He handed her the drawing. “What’s your name?”

  “Wanda.”

  “Wanda? Okay, Wanda Woman, let’s go find your mom.”

  It wasn’t long before he saw a security guard with a radio, and beside him a woman with brown skin a color you couldn’t mix. She saw Heck and the girl before the guard did, and came running toward them. The little girl met her halfway, the pizza-box drawing still in her hand.