Sidekicked (11 page)

“All the more reason for the Dealer to make his comeback now,” Nikki says. “Now that nobody who stopped him the first time is around to try again.”

Or almost nobody, I think to myself.

Gavin shrugs. “Whatever. Forget those guys.
Our
Supers are just as good as them. Screw that, they're even better. Hotshot would toast those guys in seconds flat, and especially with the Fox—”

Of course. Justicia's knight in tight white armor. Jenna says nothing. Gavin's about to launch into another spiel, probably about how he could take the Dealer down himself with one hand tied behind his back, when Eric stomps his foot and points emphatically to the window of the office on the other side of the room. Mr. Masters is pacing back and forth, gesturing frantically, talking on the phone. He looks like he's about to pop. We all just sit and watch him for a moment.

“Wish I was a fly on
that
wall,” Nikki says.

“Maybe it has something to do with us,” Gavin adds.

Jenna leans next to me. She looks concerned. “You could . . . you know.” She tilts her head behind her, toward the room.

“What? Seriously? On Mr. Masters?”

Eric sits up a little straighter, having read our lips. Nikki pauses in midbubble. Gavin looks at me, then at Jenna, then back at me.

We all huddle a little closer together. “Aren't you the least bit curious?” Jenna asks. “I mean, with everything that's just happened, Gavin's right. It
could
be about us.”

“Could be about
you
, you mean,” I say, reminding her of her new upgrade in status.

“He looks really worried,” Nikki says. Eric nods.

Jenna is staring at me.

“Yeah . . . I don't think when Mr. Masters told us to keep our eyes and ears open, he meant we should spy on
him
.”

But I already know I will.

In part because Jenna asked me to.

In part because, for once, my powers would come in handy.

In part because of the look that Gavin is giving me.

But mostly because I want to hear what he is saying as much as anyone. I look over my shoulder at Mr. Masters's office. “All these rooms are soundproof,” I say. “Believe me. I've tried to listen in on what you guys are doing, and I can't.”

“That's from inside
your
room,” Jenna says. “This is different.”

She offers up one of her pouty smiles.

“Forget it, Jenna. He already said he can't do it. Leave him alone,” Gavin says.

That clinches it.

“Okay, fine, everybody shut up.”

Nikki locks her mouth shut with an invisible key and swallows it. Eric sits on his hands.

I close my eyes to block everything out.

I hear Gavin snort, and I give him one open eyeful. I guess it looks evil enough, because he doesn't make another sound. I take one last glance at Mr. Masters.

Eyes shut again, I let in all the sounds around me.

A hundred voices talking all at once.

The loud ones are teachers, but there are many more softer voices trying to drown the loud ones out, or at least ignore them, whispered voices creating an acoustic fog, a kind of white noise. I hear shouting from the gymnasium and the sound of balls being dribbled. I hear a volcano erupting and an announcer discussing the properties of lava.
“The molten rock reaches temperatures up to twenty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit and can travel great distances before cooling.”
I hear the squeak of shoes and the hum of the air conditioner, and the sound of chalk scraped across a board, and the click of keys from the computer lab.

And I start to slowly filter it all out. Everything. The lawn mower outside on the school grounds. Ms. Kyle finally snapping and telling everyone to sit down and zip it. At least a half dozen
“oh . . . my . . . god”
squealed almost simultaneously.

I push it all out.

And I open my eyes and stare at Mr. Masters through the soundproof glass. Still pacing. Still shouting. I concentrate on the door, on the window, on the slightest crack or hole I can find. And I feel like my eyeballs are going to pop.

But I can hear his voice. Muffled at first, then louder.

I hear the word
“Dealer”
and the word
“impossible.”

I hear
“. . . told me he was dead.”

I catch something that sounds like
“only one who knows for sure”
and something else that sounds like
“can't find him”
and
“we really don't know who it is.”

He says,
“. . . possible that all of our identities have been compromised.”

And then he says something that makes my heart stop.

“I think they're watching me.”

Then he quickly hangs up the phone, turns to the window, and looks at us.

At me.

I quickly look over at Jenna, away from Mr. Masters, my heart racing. There is a look of concern on her face. She is pointing at me.

“Your nose is bleeding,” she says.

I touch my hand to my nose and smear a streak of red across it, then chance one last look at Mr. Masters.

He's still standing in the window. Watching
me
.

Jenna hands me a tissue from her bag, then turns and stares right back at Mr. Masters, who eventually looks away.

I
met Jenna Jaden a little over a year ago.

We just ran into each other. Or she ran into me, is more like it.

At the time, I wasn't a part of the Highview Environmental Reclamation Organization. I had just started middle school, of all things, and my biggest concern was suddenly having no recess for the rest of my life. Not that I loved recess. Just that it usually smelled better outside school than inside it. Imagine being able to hear
and
smell it every time a kid loses his lunch in the trash can, and you'll know what I mean.

And of course there was all the other junk that came with the move to middle school: having to learn how to operate a locker; having more than one teacher to suck up to each year; organized sports teams, which gave guys who like to pick on guys like me even more occasions to bond and slap each other on the butt; having to get up early to catch the bus; having to stay up late finishing homework; girls whispering and pointing even more than usual; guys who like to pick on guys like me picking on me even more than usual to impress girls who whisper and point . . . that sort of thing.

I ventured into middle school with very few friends in tow. Being able to hear everything that anybody says about you tends to make you selective in who you hang out with, and I was cagey about my power even before I became a member of H.E.R.O.

Most of my friends from Crestwater Elementary split during the summer. My friend Max headed to private school, and my neighbor Josh had to move to North Carolina when his father was reassigned to a new army base. The other kids in my neighborhood—the few who were even my age—were more casual acquaintances than friends, which left me basically alone going into a new school.

Then along came Jenna.

When we first met, I didn't know she had a fifteen-foot vertical leap. That she had lightning-quick reflexes. Or that she could bench press twenty of me stacked one on top of the other. Maybe that's because Jenna couldn't. The Silver Lynx could, and I didn't meet
her
until later.

When I met Jenna, we made an instant connection. It was sixth-grade gym class—unfortunately, not yet being a member of H.E.R.O., I still had to go to
all
of my classes—and we were playing kickball. They let me play catcher, because in kickball almost nobody misses, and nobody really throws the ball to a base, preferring instead to chuck it at the runner, so there really isn't a lot to do if you are the catcher except stand behind home plate and hope that Davy “Biohazard” Hutchinson doesn't let one rip in front of you when he comes up to kick.

Then Jenna stepped up. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that bobbed with each step. Her green eyes peered through her thick glasses, homed in on the ball like a sniper's sights; her freckled arms flexed. She was new to town, and nobody knew very much about her. I think she preferred it that way. Crouching behind her, I stared up at the long curve of her neck and shoulders, trying not to look at her butt, which fit nicely in the tight red-and-blue gym shorts, unlike a lot of girls there. I didn't even realize the ball was coming toward us.

And then she took a shot all the way to the back of the gym, actually hitting the ceiling, nearly busting one of the lights. The ball bounced twice before the outfielder could grab it and toss it in. By then Jenna had already rounded second base.

Of course somebody tried to throw it at her and missed. Instead the ball bounced right to me.

And I actually managed to grab it, just as she was rounding third, me standing directly in her path. And I could hear all the other sixth graders shouting for her to stay on third and for me to throw the ball at her already. And I could hear the slap of her tennis shoes on the hardwood floor. And I could smell
everybody
, because it was near the end of the class and our secretions had mixed together into a miasmatic fog of B.O. that made my stomach do the mambo.

And I could see the look in her ocean eyes. And I could see the wicked and determined smile on her face.

And I knew she wasn't going to stop.

I should have gotten out of her way, but I held the ball out in front of me and closed my eyes and prepared for impact. In three . . . two . . . one.

I felt the red rubber of the ball in my face, in my mouth, up my nose. In fact, that ball was all I saw and smelled, as if it had been a bloodred moon eclipsing the sun of Jenna's face.

I heard the air rushing past as I fell.

I was vaguely aware of everyone in the room, even the sixth-grade gym coach, saying “
Oooh
.” I hit the floor hard, and for a moment, I didn't hear, see, or feel anything.

Then it all came rushing back, and I saw her on top of me. Her glasses slightly askew. Still smiling.

“I guess I'm out,” she said.

I tried to breathe.

She stood and offered me her hand. I let her pull me up, which she did without the slightest strain. There was a hornets' nest buzzing in my ears and I was still having trouble focusing, but I could see a look of worry on her face as she pointed.

“You're bleeding a little,” she said.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “No biggie,” I said, sniffing.

“Sorry about that. You should have thrown it.”

“You would still have been out,” I said.

She shook her head. “You would have missed.” I believed her. Jenna bit her lip and scrunched her nose and smiled, and I forgot the blood, and the sweat, and the hornets.

It was like she knew me already.

A month later I found out that, had she wanted to, Jenna Jaden could have kicked the ball so hard that it exploded. She could have rounded the bases and been sitting back on the bleachers before it even came down. She could have hit me hard enough to send me to the emergency room with a blood clot in my brain.

But that's not Jenna. That's the Silver Lynx.

The Silver Lynx is the only one of us who has seen any real action, unless you count last Tuesday, which I'm trying hard not to think about. Of course the others have trained with their Supers. Cryos and Eric spend every third Saturday in his secret cavern working through combat scenarios. Supposedly Hotshot took Gavin out one Friday night to help foil a suspected robbery of dangerous chemicals at the university science lab, though it turned out to be a gang of student activists looking to free the lab mice. And Mike and the Rocket were almost spotted flying over the Justicia football stadium during halftime last year. But for the most part, Jenna's the only one of us who really knows what it's like to be out there, on the streets, in the shadows. She's the only one whose Super trusts her enough to let her help, who's close to being able to do the whole superhero thing on her own.

The Silver Lynx is a hunter. Fierce. Determined. Nearly unstoppable.

But Jenna's different.

The day she bloodied my nose, Jenna asked if we could be friends.

And she promised she would never hurt me again.

I
t's Saturday. Saturday night, actually. Somewhere out there, a gang of immaculately dressed criminals sharing the same name, and their back-from-the-dead leader, are probably planning to take over the world. Nobody really knows. There have been no grand announcements. No interrupted broadcasts. Though the Dealer's face gets plenty of airtime regardless. The Jacks' escape from prison is the leading news story for the twenty-four hours, and every station dredges up footage of their past crimes. It's all rehashed, especially the climactic final battle between the Suits and the Legion of Justice, showing the smoking remains of the Dealer's headquarters and the Legion in front of it—one of the last pictures taken of all five of them together.