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- Herausgeber: Nosy Crow
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: My Brother is a Superhero
- Sprache: Englisch
Luke is a comic-mad eleven-year old who shares a treehouse with his geeky older brother, Zack. Luke' s only mistake is to go for a wee right at the wrong time. While he's gone, an alien gives his undeserving, never-read-a-comic-in-his-life brother superpowers and then tells him to save the universe. Luke is massively annoyed about this, but when Zack is kidnapped by his arch-nemesis, Luke and his friends have only five days to find him and save the world... Books don't come much funnier than these! Packed with heart and soul, this series is perfect for fans of David Baddiel and David Walliams. My Brother Is a Superhero was the winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2016. Look out for: My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord My Evil Twin is a Supervillain My Arch-Enemy is a Brain in a Jar My Cousin is a Time-Traveller
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Seitenzahl: 294
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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Contents
1
THE (NOT) CHOSEN ONE
My brother is a superhero, and I could have been one too, except that I needed to go for a wee.
My name is Luke Parker, I’m eleven years old and I live in a mild-mannered part of London with my mum, dad and big brother, Zack. He wasn’t always a superhero, but with a name like Zack you’ve got to wonder if my parents had a hunch that one day he’d end up wearing a mask and cape and saving orphans from burning buildings. I mean, come on! It’s not a name, it’s a sound effect. It’s what you get in a comic when a superhero punches a supervillain. Pow! Blam! Zack!
It seems to me that in life you are faced with clear-cut moments when things could go one way or another. Vanilla or chocolate. Smooth or crunchy. Drop the water bomb on Dad’s head, or hold fire. It’s up to you which choice to make and sometimes all it takes to change the way your whole life turns out are four little words.
“I need a wee.”
It was the fateful evening. Zack and I had been in our tree house for about an hour and I was bursting. I was reading an old issue of Teen Titans by torchlight and Zack was doing his maths homework. He’s always been a bit of a swot. Before he became Star Lad, at school he was star boy.
“Then go,” he said, solving another quadratic equation with a flick of his pencil. “I’m not stopping you.”
The truth was I didn’t want to go down the rope ladder in the dark. It had been hard enough climbing up it in the first place. It’s not that I’m unfit or anything, but put it like this: you won’t ever see me on an Olympic podium. I suffer from hay fever and have funny-shaped feet that mean I have to wear these things in my shoes called “orthotics”. When Mum first told me I needed them I was excited. I thought they sounded like supersoldier-power armour, but when they finally arrived they turned out to be bendy foot-shaped supports and not a cybernetic exoskeleton suit. That was a disappointing Thursday.
I hung my head out of the tree house door. “Maybe I could just wee from here?”
“Out! Get out of here, you disgusting child!”
Zack is only three years older than me, but when I’ve done something to annoy him he calls me a child. Of all the things I can’t stand about my big brother, being called a child is number forty-seven. Not that I have a list.
OK. I do have a list.
Even before he became a superhero the list was up to number sixty-three. Now it’s almost at a hundred. He is very irritating.
I climbed down the rope ladder and went into the house.
I did a wee.
When I returned to the tree house a few minutes later, Zack was sitting there silently in the dark. I knew something was up because he’d stopped doing his homework. I grabbed my torch and levelled the beam in his face. He didn’t even blink.
“Zack, are you all right?”
He nodded.
“Are you sure? You look … different.”
He nodded again, very slowly, like he was working out some complicated thought in his head and then said in a croaky voice, “I think … something amazing just happened to me. Luke, I’ve changed.”
Now this didn’t come as a great surprise. About six months before, Dad had taken me aside for what he called a man-to-man chat. We sat in his shed – I think that’s because it’s the most manly room we have – and Dad explained that from now on I might notice some changes in my big brother.
“Zack’s embarking on a great journey,” said Dad.
“Brilliant! When’s he leaving? Can I have his room?”
“Not that kind of journey,” said Dad with a weary sigh. “He’s going through something called puberty,” he went on. “His voice will be different, for instance.”
“Ooh, will he sound like a Dalek?”
“No, not like a Dalek.”
“Pity.”
“He will become hairier.”
“Ooh, like a werewolf?!”
“No, not like a werewolf.”
This puberty lark didn’t seem up to much. There was other stuff, to do with privacy and girls, but to be honest, after the let-down about the Dalek and the werewolf I stopped taking it in.
So, when Zack told me in the tree house that something had changed, I knew exactly what to say. I pursed my lips and gave a serious nod like I’d seen the doctor do when he told me I had glandular fever. “I’m afraid that you have caught puberty.”
He ignored me and stared at his hands, turning them over and over. “I think I have superpowers.”
2
ZORBON
Zack had gone completely bonkers – too much homework will do terrible things to a boy’s mind. But then I grew suspicious. He knew how much I liked comic books and was constantly poking fun at me for what he called my childish obsession. I smelled an ambush.
“Superpowers?” I folded my arms and sneered. “What, so now you can fly and shoot lightning from your fingertips?”
A curious expression spread across his face. “I wonder,” he mused, sticking out one hand, flaring his fingers at me like some cheesy magician. Lightning did not shoot from his fingertips. But I was too stunned to notice since something equally remarkable was happening.
My torch flew out of my grip, spun through the air and landed in Zack’s outstretched palm with a slap. His fingers closed around it and he grinned.
Im-poss-ible!
But Zack had done it. He had made the torch move just by thinking about it and doing a lame hand gesture. Somehow it was true. My brother had an actual superpower!
Telekinesis, to give it its official title. Lots of superheroes have this ability in comics, but this was the first time I’d seen it in real life. I hated to admit it, but it was cool. Supercool. Not that I was going to tell Zack that.
“No lightning bolts then,” I said, pretending to be disappointed.
“What?!” He looked at me like I was stupid. “Did you see that? Did you see what I did?”
I couldn’t keep up the pretence – I was impressed. But my awe quickly gave way to something else. I was as green as the Hulk; more jealous even than last Christmas when Zack was given an iPhone, and I got shoes.
“It’s not fair! How come you get superpowers? You don’t even read comics.” I ranted for a few more minutes – when I get going I have been known to turn purple – and then, finally exhausted, I flopped down on the floor and felt my face crumple into a sulk. Although I was seething with envy I had to know. “How did it happen?”
Zack stared past me, his eyes fixed on some hazy spot on the wall, and began to describe the incredible – and incredibly recent – events.
“Just after you left I heard this distant rumbling noise and so I looked out of the tree house. There were lights in the sky and I thought it might be a meteor shower. And then I realised it was heading this way – fast. The sky was filled with hundreds of glowing white lines. But just as they were about to hit, they came to an almighty sudden stop. Then I saw that it was no meteor shower…”
He paused and drew a long breath before saying in a whisper, “It was a trans-dimensional spacecraft.”
I gasped. Up until then the most exciting story Zack had ever told me involved a bad haircut and a chihuahua. And I’m not convinced he was telling the truth about the chihuahua.
“It was a large blue oval hanging in thin air, right outside there.” He extended a trembling finger and pointed. “As I watched, a door in the side of the craft slid open with a sound like ‘bloop-whoosh’ and a luminous figure emerged on a beam of light. He wore a shiny purple suit, a cape with a high gold collar and gold boots. On his chest were three gold stars that pulsed like heartbeats. He had a dome-shaped head, which was completely bald, and a wispy beard that he stroked when he spoke. He gave me a three-fingered salute and introduced himself as Zorbon the Decider, an inter-dimensional traveller and representative of the High Council of Frodax Wonthreen Rrr’n’fargh. Everything he said sounded like he was talking in capitals. Zorbon explained that he came from another universe that exists in parallel to ours. It’s almost exactly the same as our universe, he said, except there the colours green and red are reversed, and sponge cake tastes different.” Zack looked thoughtful. “Not entirely different, just a bit different.”
I could tell by his daydreamy look that Zack found this boring fact particularly fascinating and there was a significant danger that he’d carry on talking about sponge cake. “Never mind about the stupid cake! Get to the superpowers!”
Zack shook himself out of his trance. “Oh yeah. Well, Zorbon said that I’d been chosen by the High Council for a mission of utmost importance to both our universes. A mission so vital that were I to fail, the consequences would be cataclysmic for trillions of beings.”
“Two universes? You have to save two universes?” Typical. My brother couldn’t be happy saving just one. He was such an overachiever. “But why you?” I wailed.
Zack stared thoughtfully out of the door. “Apparently this tree house is the junction between the two universes.”
This was incredible. Mind-blowing. Our tree house, a portal between two worlds. On the other hand… “So?”
Zack shrugged. “I guess I was the first person Zorbon met when he came through.”
I was speechless. My mouth moved but no words came out, just a sound like air escaping from a balloon. That’s not how you choose a saviour of mankind. There has to be at least a prophecy written in an ancient book. This was like giving the Sword of Ultimate Power to a goldfish.
“To ensure my success,” Zack continued, “Zorbon said he was authorised to bestow upon me six gifts – powers, if you like – to aid me in my cause. Then he raised his palms, said something in this really weird alien language –”
What, as opposed to a really normal alien language? I thought but didn’t say anything.
“–There was this flash of red light – or maybe that should be green light,” Zack went on. “I felt a surge of energy through my whole body. Every atom of my being was on fire. When it finally stopped, Zorbon bowed and said, ‘IT IS DONE.’ I asked him what was done? What powers had he bestowed? What was my mission? ‘I MUST NOT SAY, FOR IF I DO I RISK ALTERING THAT WHICH IS TO BE. AND AS ANYONE WHO UNDERSTANDS THESE KINDS OF SITUATIONS WILL TELL YOU, THAT WOULD BE A VERY BAD THING. ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR. IN TIME,’ he said. Then he gave me this enigmatic smile and left. But just before the door of his craft slid shut he said there was one thing he could tell me. This really scary look came over him and he said, ‘NEMESIS IS COMING.’ And then he was gone. Bloop-whoosh!”
I stood there with my mouth wide open. So much to make sense of. So many questions. However, one thought pushed its way to the front of the queue. “But I was only gone five minutes!” The most important five minutes in the history of the world and I’d missed them because I needed a wee. “I bet if I’d been here, Zardoz the Decoder would have chosen me,” I grumped.
“His name was Zorbon the Decider. And you weren’t here.” Zack shrugged. “Should have held it in, shouldn’t you?”
It was so unfair! I was way beyond acting like a normal, sensible person. “Get him back. Tell Bourbon the Diskdriver he made a mistake and he has to come back and give me superpowers too.”
“Zorbon the Decider,” corrected Zack once more. “And he decided I was the one. Not you.”
“I don’t believe you. We can’t know for sure unless you call him.”
“Call him? Oh yeah, because he left his phone number. Uh, what’s the code for the parallel universe again?”
I detected a note of sarcasm in the question. Zack was teasing me, which was a rash thing to do given that at that very moment I was more furious than I’d ever been in my entire life.
“What are you doing now?” he asked.
I stalked round the tree house, tapping the walls every few feet. Wasn’t it obvious? “Searching for the portal to the other universe.” I pressed one ear to the back wall. “I think I can hear it.”
“Luke.”
“Shh!” I hissed. I could definitely make out a sound. “Yes. Something’s coming through. Sounds like scratching. Could be inter-dimensional mice.”
“Uh, Luke…”
I spun round. The scratching sound was coming from Zack. He clawed at his chest through his shirt. As usual, he was wearing his school shirt because, he said, it put him in the right frame of mind for homework. (I know. And I have to live with him.) Something weird was going on underneath. I screwed up my face and pointed. “What’s that?”
A soft glow pulsed beneath the material like a night-light. He popped the buttons, gripped each half of his shirt and pulled it apart to reveal his bare chest beneath. I swear I could hear trumpets.
Despite what Dad had said, there was no hair, but there was something else. Inked across his chest were three glowing stars.
“Zorbon had stars just like these,” said Zack. “I wonder what they mean.” He ran a finger over them.
“I’ll tell you exactly what they mean. They mean you’ve got a tattoo.” I shook my head. “Mum’s going to kill you.”
Zack ignored me. He straightened, drawing himself up to his full five feet and three inches, and a calm, thoughtful expression came over him. “I know what the stars mean,” he breathed. “I. Am. Starman!”
I raised a finger of objection.
“What?” he snapped.
“Uh, sorry, but there’s already a Starman. You’ll probably get sued.”
Zack gave a huff of irritation. “Fine. Whatever.” He drew himself up again. “I. Am. Star Boy!”
He swivelled his eyes towards me, just to make sure. I gave a little shake of my head.
He threw up his hands in frustration. “There’s a Star Boy too?”
“I’ve told you a million times, you should read more comics.” I tapped my cheek thoughtfully. “How about Star Lad?”
“Star Lad?”
Zack mulled it over. He rolled the name around his mouth a few times, trying it on for size. He said it in his own voice and then in a deep voice and then he paused. “Star Lad or Starlad?”
I wasn’t really listening. It had just occurred to me what the design on his chest reminded me of. It looked just like the stars you get on ready meals telling you how long you can freeze them. Based on the pattern on his chest, Zack should be thoroughly defrosted before use.
He planted his hands on his hips. “I. Am. Star Lad!” Then angled his head thoughtfully. “Or perhaps Starlad. I. Haven’t. Yet. Decided.”
And that’s how it happened. My brother is superpowered and I …
… I am powerless.
3
STAR LAD
The fate of two universes lay in my brother’s hands. In my hands was a cauliflower.
It was the day after Zack became Star Lad – he’d rejected Starlad, figuring if at some point he needed an insignia to put on a shirt, “S” was already taken. We were in the kitchen helping with dinner.
“Zack, darling, peel the potatoes.” Mum handed him a large bag.
I caught his eye and grinned. Even superheroes have to peel potatoes.
“Of course,” he beamed. “It’d be my pleasure.”
He gave me a sly look and shuffled off to a corner of the kitchen. He was up to something. I crept up behind him. His eyes were narrowed at the potatoes, one hand extended towards them. The potato skins were falling off in perfect, unbroken spirals. They were peeling themselves. I was shocked. “You can’t do that,” I hissed.
“Why not?”
“First rule of being a superhero: you can’t go round using your powers for vegetable preparation.”
He screwed up his face. “I doubt that’s the first rule. Or any rule.”
“No, well, maybe not, but with great power comes great responsibility. Gordon the Dishwasher—”
“Zorbon the Decider,” Zack sighed.
For some reason I had a mental block about the name. I think it was because I was massively miffed about what he’d done and couldn’t bring myself to remember his stupid alien extra-dimensional name.
“Yes, Whatsisname the Whatever. He didn’t give you telekinetic abilities so you could help in the kitchen.”
Zack looked sheepish. “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. Trust me, you don’t want to abuse your powers. It’s a slippery slope from superhero to supervillain. Sure, it starts innocently enough peeling potatoes with telekinesis, but the next thing you know you’re holed up in a secret volcano base with an army of evil minions and plans for world domination.”
Just then Mum called across the kitchen. “What are you two plotting, hmm?”
“Nothing,” we said at the same time.
Of course we couldn’t tell her what had happened to Zack. Second rule of being a superhero is that you have to keep it a secret. If the villains find out your real identity then they lure you into a trap by kidnapping your loved ones. It’s pretty basic stuff, and easily avoidable if you take simple precautions.
Mum and Dad gave each other these really lame smiles and then Dad said, “Boys, it’s really nice to see you two getting along.”
It was true. Not that it was nice, but that Zack and I hadn’t been getting along for some time. We used to be best friends when we were younger, but these days we mostly communicated by yelling, slamming doors and giving each other dead arms. In fact, we’d probably talked more since last night than we had in the past three months. I caught him looking at me with this sad expression, like he missed the old days.
“What are you looking at, turnip-head?” I said. Oh come on, I had to do something. The situation was in real danger of turning mushy.
Thankfully, Zack responded by punching me in the arm. It didn’t break or fly off, which meant that super-strength wasn’t one of his six powers. Interesting. I picked a point on his chest, drew back my fist and threw a punch of my own. From this range I couldn’t miss. And I didn’t.
I bounced.
When my fist got within a few inches of his body, I felt it hit something springy and invisible.
“A force field! You’ve got a flipping force field!” I whispered in amazement.
Before I could say anything else, Dad pulled us apart, gave us a lecture on appropriate behaviour and sent us out of the kitchen to cool down.
Fifteen minutes later dinner was ready. All through the meal I watched Zack like a teacher in an exam room, waiting for him to push his cauliflower across his plate with his mind or flick a pea off his force field. Or … what else? Zebedee the Doolally had given him six powers that he needed for his mission. Telekinesis and a force field were two; what were the other four? And what about the mission? All we knew was that “NEMESIS IS COMING”.
After dinner, when I was supposed to be doing my homework on the computer, I decided to poke around on the Internet and see what I could find out about Nemesis. There was a lot of information. I sifted through pages and pages of the stuff before reaching my conclusion.
In Greek mythology, Nemesis was, and I quote, “a remorseless spirit of divine retribution.” I didn’t understand all of it, but this Nemesis guy sounded pretty bad to me. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt: Nemesis had to be the name of a supervillain, and Zack had been given powers to defeat him.
I was about to navigate away from the page when I noticed something. I had read the entry too quickly. He wasn’t a “he” at all. Nemesis was a girl! Well, that made perfect sense to me.
Star Lad’s arch-enemy was a girl.
4
HIMAD ORK
It was still light when Zack and I snuck out to the tree house to discuss my findings. I was carrying a Bag for Life that bulged mysteriously. (I’m drawing attention to this because it’s going to be important shortly.) Zack scampered up the rope ladder and I huffed and puffed behind him. When I reached the top I sat in the doorway to catch my breath.
The sky was the colour of streaky bacon. A breeze blew across the rooftops of the neighbouring houses and rustled the leaves of the oak tree in our garden. We have a tiny garden, just a scrap of lawn, a border with some pink and blue flowers that come out in summer, a shed and a huge oak tree. Dad says in the olden days our street was part of a giant forest full of English oaks. The tree in our garden is the only one left.
Dad built the tree house for us the previous summer. And when I say Dad built it, what I mean is that Grandpa built it and Dad stood around in a tool-belt with a lot of expensive gadgets making unhelpful suggestions. He’s keen on DIY, my dad, but the only thing he’s ever successfully nailed to a wall is his thumb.
I joined Zack inside and told him everything I’d discovered about Nemesis. He listened carefully, nodding at my deductions like I was Sherlock Holmes. Ordinarily, my big brother would never listen to anything I had to say, but I’m an expert on superheroes (the ones in comics, anyway) and he paid attention to every word. It was nice to be the smarter brother, for a change.
“One more thing,” I added. “I know how to activate your powers.”
“You do?” He sounded impressed.
I nodded. “Yup, you just have to say your secret phrase.”
Zack’s eyes widened. “And you know my secret phrase?”
“I entered several factors into the computer – your name, known powers, shoe size – and this is what I’ve come up with. You ready?”
He nodded quickly. “Just tell me already!”
I cleared my throat. “Your secret activation phrase is…” I paused, like a reality-show judge deciding who to put through to the next round. “Himad Ork.”
Zack stood with his legs shoulder width apart and planted his hands on his hips, before uttering the words. “Himad Ork!” He held his breath and waited. When after a few seconds nothing happened, he shook his head disappointedly. “I don’t feel any different. Are you sure it’s the right phrase?”
I stroked my chin. “Hmm. Maybe you’re not saying it with enough feeling. Try it again, but this time, really mean it and say it over and over.”
“OK. More feeling. Over and over. Got it.” Zack assumed the same pose. “Himad Ork … Himad Ork …” As he repeated the phrase, it became clear what he was actually saying. “I’m a dork … I’m a dork … I’m a—”
I couldn’t hold a snigger in any longer.
Zack’s mouth froze in the shape of an “O” as he realised I’d tricked him. He glowered at me and said, “If you’re going to act like a child, then I’m leaving.” He marched out and put a foot on the top rung of the rope ladder.
“No, don’t go. I promise I won’t do anything childish again. From now on it’s serious scientific investigation.”
“You promise?”
I put a hand on my heart. “Promise.”
He moved back inside and I waved at him to stop. “Now, stand there,” I said, reaching into my Bag for Life. “And don’t move.”
“Why d’you want me to stand—Hey!”
He ducked as a tomato whistled over his head, landing with a splat against the wall behind him.
“What d’you think you’re doing?”
I detected a note of irritation in his voice, but ignored it, dug once more in my bag and this time drew out a clipboard.
And a rock.
Zack had a force field and we had to know how powerful it was. Clearly the easiest way to find out was to throw things at him. The bag concealed my battery of test objects.
“How can I put this?” I weighed the rock in my hand, tossed it up and down in my palm a few times, and threw it hard at him.
He ducked once more and the rock thudded against the wall. I let out a huff of frustration. “How am I meant to test your force field if you keep ducking?” I made a note on the clipboard. Tomato and rock – inconclusive.
Zack started to get the picture. “I see. OK, that makes sense. I guess.” He nodded towards my bag. “What else have you got in there?”
I’d been saving the best for last. With a grin I reached in with both hands and lifted out a lump-hammer. It was one of Dad’s – he has about seven of them in his shed, all polished and lined up in a rack in order of size. This one was the biggest – I call it Thor’s hammer. It had a hickory handle and a three-kilogram steel head. Big lump.
“No way,” Zack protested, flapping his hands in a frankly unheroic manner. “You’re not throwing that thing at me.”
“Of course I’m not going to throw it, idiot.”
Zack relaxed.
“It’s much too heavy to throw,” I smiled thinly. “So I’m going to swing it at you.”
Before he could object I drew the hammer back behind me and then with all my strength swung it in a long arc at my brother. Zack’s protective field deflected the fat steel head like someone flicking a piece of fluff off their sleeve. The hammer rebounded, jarring my hands with a shuddering vibration so violent that I lost my grip. It flew narrowly over my head, straight out of the open door and tumbled from sight. From somewhere in the undergrowth below there was a thud followed by a strangled “miaow”.
“Did you hear that?” said Zack.
“Yes,” I winced. “I think it was Mrs Wilson’s cat.”
“No, not that,” said Zack, closing his eyes tightly. “That.”
I strained to listen, but all I could hear was the wind in the oak tree. “I don’t hear anything,” I began and then realised what that must mean. “You have super-hearing.”
Zack frowned. “Sort of. Although, it’s more like a radar in my head. When I close my eyes I see this glowing green circle that sweeps round and round, and wherever there’s a person or an object of interest they light up and then I can see and hear them. It’s not high-definition, all I can make out is a blurry outline.” He blanched. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“Someone’s in distress.”
I cringed. “Maybe Mrs Wilson just found her cat.”
A peculiar expression came over Zack and his cheeks flushed as red as the tomato sliding gently down the wall. “It’s not Mrs Wilson,” he said, his voice going up and down like a roller coaster.
“Then who is it?” I asked, but Zack didn’t hang around to reply.
In a flash he was out of the door, taking the rope ladder three rungs at a time. I scrabbled after him as fast as my flat feet would allow. He bounded down the path that ran along the side our house, out towards Moore Street. I expected to find him fighting off a giant robot with laser-beam eyes or a slimy alien horde, but when I got there a minute later Zack was nowhere to be seen. And instead of robots or aliens, there was something much more fearsome.
5
LARA AND CARA
It was a girl. And not just any girl. Her name was Cara Lee. Her family had moved in last year two doors down from us and she was in Zack’s year at school. She sat in front of him in maths class. I knew that because I’d seen the drawings he’d made of her in the margins of his Fun With Equations! textbook. The drawings were all of the back of her head.
In person – from the front – she had big brown eyes, long, dark hair and she was tall. About three inches taller than Zack. A single stud earring shone from the tip of her left ear. Earrings weren’t allowed at school but Cara didn’t even care. That made her a rebel. Though not like a Star Wars Rebel, which would have been even cooler.
Right then she was kneeling at the edge of the pavement, talking to a drain.
“Oh, please,” she pleaded. “Don’t be lost.”
Perhaps she wasn’t talking to the drain. Perhaps there was someone down there, trapped beneath the cover. She did have a younger sister called Lara who could have been hit by a shrink-ray and then slipped through the grate.
On the first day of school I’d borrowed a Uni-ball Gelstick Pen with a 0.4mm tip from Lara and hadn’t quite got round to returning it. Every time I bumped into her – in the street, in the corridor between lessons – she’d ask me about it. She was annoying. Not enough to start making a list of her annoying points, but it was close.
Just then I saw Lara appear at the end of their driveway, which meant that she hadn’t been zapped by a shrink-ray and swept into the drains, unfortunately. Spotting her older sister, she marched over. Lara resembled Cara, except for her hair, which was cut short to reveal ears that made her look a bit like an elf or a Vulcan.
From where I stood I could make out what they were saying without the aid of super hearing.
“Mum sent me to get you,” said Lara. “It’s time to come in.”
“I can’t come in,” wailed Cara. “Oh, I’m in so much trouble.”
“What’s wrong?”
Cara turned unhappily to the drain. “I dropped my phone. It’s down there. I can see it, but I can’t reach it.”
Before I knew what was happening, a hand had grabbed my collar and hauled me behind Number 126’s garden wall. I let out a cry as my feet went from under me.
“Shh!” Zack hissed. “You’ll attract her attention.”
I found myself down on the ground next to my brother. He had ducked out of sight, and was peering intently at Cara over the wall.
I didn’t understand what was going on. “Why are you hiding from her?”
“That’s Cara Lee,” he said breathlessly, as if that explained everything.
And then it hit me – the reason for Zack’s odd behaviour. He thought she was Nemesis! I lifted my head above the wall to observe her. Could she be a supervillain? “She has the eyes,” I decided.
“I know,” cooed Zack. “So … sparkly.”
I was thinking more “evil”, but whatever. So, was our neighbour Zack’s arch-enemy? There was only one way to find out. “Come on,” I said, rising to my feet and motioning at him to follow.
“Where are you going? Get down before she sees you!”
“It’s OK. I know exactly what you’re thinking about Cara.”
“You do?”
“Of course. And I have a plan. But we have to get close to her.”
“Close? I can’t get close to her. What if she … y’know?”
I understood completely. He was concerned that Cara might pull out a death ray or frazzle him with her fire-breath. “I know,” I said. “But we have to take that risk.”
“OK, but I can’t just walk over there and start talking to her.”
He was right. It would look too suspicious. We needed a reason to start a conversation. “She’s lost her phone down that drain. You could use your telekinetic power to lift it out.”
“You’re right,” he said, eyes bright, adding in a quivering voice, “and maybe she’ll be so grateful that she’ll,” he gulped and then squeaked, “kiss me.”
Yes, I thought, a kiss of death. But I kept that to myself. I didn’t want Zack any more nervous than he already seemed – which was jumpier than a kangaroo in a haunted trampoline factory. “This will be an excellent field test of your superpowers,” I said.
“Right. Powers. Test. Field.”
“Just remember who you are.”
“Zack Parker?”
Oh dear. I took him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously. “You’re Star Lad.”
“Yes. Star Lad. Me. Am.”
We climbed over the wall and I watched with a sinking feeling as Zack made his way awkwardly towards Cara. I sighed and ran to catch him up. Without the benefit of my expertise, he was going to mess this up. However, I wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. “I’m not your sidekick, OK?” I said when I drew level.
Zack nodded. “OK.”
Cara was bent over the metal grate, groaning and gasping as she tried to haul it off, so she didn’t see Zack when he rocked up and squealed, “Hi, Cara.”
“Hi, Lara,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Where’s my Uni-ball Gelstick Pen with the 0.4mm tip?”
As she said it I realised that if Cara was Nemesis, then Lara might be her accomplice and hench-person. I had to tread carefully. Before I could say anything Cara looked up and saw Zack.
“Oh. Hi,” she said. “It’s Jack, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Zack, grinning like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I nudged him hard in the ribs. “Um, I mean no,” he said. “It’s Star––”
„Ich bin wirklich begeistert. Auch die Möglichkeit des zusätzlichen eReaders im Abo finde ich persönlich toll.”
Happy Booktime
„Die Auswahl von Legimi ist großartig.”
Bücherleser
„Der Leser findet seine E-Books/Hörbücher sehr schnell und sie lassen sich, ob mit oder ohne Internetverbindung problemlos öffnen.”
Wurm sucht Buch
„Ich finde das Angebot von Legimi richtig toll.”
TheSarahStory
„Besonders schön finde ich die große Auswahl an möglichen Abo-Modellen und besonders die Abos mit eReader.”
Miss Foxy Reads
„Ich muss sagen, dass ich von dem E-Reader mehr als positiv überrascht bin.”
Wortmalerei
„Das ist wirklich eine großartige Idee und mal was ganz Anderes.”
Mikka liest das Leben...
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