Captain Nobody (13 page)

While I was talking, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan's eyes kept darting between me and the merchandise and their customer. The customer was twitching with irritation, his right hand poking forward in his sweatshirt pocket as if he were holding on to something in there and pointing it at Mr. and Mrs. Sulliv—

Holy moly!
I screamed inside my head.
Has he got a gun?

I looked from the customer's pocket to Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, whose eyes were now huge. My mouth was suddenly bone-dry.

“And what else?” Mrs. Sullivan's question snapped me back to reality.

“Huh?” I blinked.

“What else is wrong with our signs?” Mrs. Sullivan asked. “This is very helpful.”

“Very helpful!” Mr. Sullivan repeated. “Matter of fact, I should be writin' down these suggestions. Now, where's me pen?”

He turned to a desk behind him.

“Stop right there!”
shouted the customer. But it was too late.

Mr. Sullivan's hand slipped under the desktop and pressed a hidden button. A shrill alarm suddenly split the air.

In the next second, everybody exploded into action.

Mrs. Sullivan ducked behind the display case as Mr. Sullivan shouted into a phone, “Hello? POLICE?” The customer—oh, all right—the
thief
swept an arm across the countertop and hugged a pile of jewelry against his chest. He spun around, and
wham!
ran smack dab into me.

We tumbled to the floor as diamonds and watches spilled in every direction. The guy grabbed my collar and barked, “Breathe one word about this, I will hunt you down and I
will
hurt you!” Then he scrambled to his feet and raced out.

I jumped up, trying not to step on all the gems and necklaces underfoot. The alarm was shrieking, Mrs. Sullivan was sobbing, and Mr. Sullivan was ranting into the phone. It wasn't a good time, I realized, to explain about the unnecessary apostrophe in “ear-ring's.”

So I left.

“What's going on?” JJ yelled above the wail of the alarm as I rocketed past her.

“There was a robber in the store!” I called over my shoulder.

JJ yelled after me, “Was that the guy who just ran out?”

I whirled around. “Where'd he go?”

“I don't know,” she shrugged. “The alarm distracted me.”

In the distance, we could hear police sirens. I grabbed JJ's hand and dragged her behind me. “We've got to get out of here!”

“But shouldn't you stay and talk to the police?” she cried.

I reached up and took JJ by the shoulders. “That robber said he would hunt me down and hurt me if I tell anybody
anything
.”

“But you just told me,” JJ said.

I gulped. “Then we're both in danger!” I wailed, pulling her along.

She shook loose of my hand. “But you're a witness,” she insisted. “You have a responsibility!”

“And the bad guy has a gun!” I shouted.

We both ran.

“Captain Nobody!” Mom exclaimed when I finally got home late that afternoon. She kissed my forehead. “You're even more handsome than your picture.”

“Hey, Mom,” I said, hoping that she wouldn't hear how furiously my heart was beating. “How's Chris?”

“Well, his color's coming back,” she said brightly between sorting the mail and stirring a pot of chili on the stove. “He'd been looking sort of gray there for a few days, but today . . . bingo! The doctors are so pleased—all nine of them. He has nine doctors, imagine that. Matter of fact, there's a specialist coming in to see him this afternoon. All the way from Minnesota!”

Something was wrong. The more upset Mom gets, the faster she talks, and she was chittering away like a windup toy.

“What's the specialist coming for?” I just managed to ask before the phone rang. Mom held up a hold-that-thought finger before she answered. She listened for a moment and then covered the mouthpiece.

“It's . . . it's about one of my houses,” she said nervously, though it clearly wasn't. “Have a cookie. Have two,” she called out as she stretched the phone cord down the hall and into her office.

I poured myself a glass of milk and switched on the little TV in the breakfast nook. Across the top of the screen a banner read: “Daring Daylight Heist.” The picture came into focus, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw that our local TV reporter was standing in front of
Sullivan's Jewelry Store
!

“. . . when, without warning, the robber demanded thousands of dollars in jewels and threatened the owners with a gun,” she was saying. “I asked the store's owners to tell us how they reacted at that moment.”

Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan appeared on-screen, standing behind the counter where I last saw them.

“When the man first said he had a gun,” Mrs. Sullivan said in her lilting Irish way, “I'm afraid I just froze in me shoes.”

“We both did, darlin'.” Mr. Sullivan patted his wife's hand. “We'd probably still be standin' here like two big, dumb rocks if it weren't for the little guy who wandered in.”

I spit milk from my mouth.
“The little guy?”

“Yes, they're calling him ‘the little guy,'” the reporter seemed to answer me. “As you can see from this surveillance video”—they cut to a silent black-and-white video of the robbery—“the Sullivans and their assailant are apparently reacting to the entrance of another person into the store . . .”

On the screen you could see the three of them turning to look at—hey!
Where was I?

“. . . but there are no pictures of the Sullivans' savior.”

“Yeah, the surveillance cameras are aimed so they only pick up normal-sized people,” a gruff policeman was explaining to the reporter. “Otherwise, the display cases block the view of anything, uh . . . subnormal. We suspect that the person the Sullivans saw was a midget.”

“A midget?” I winced.

“It's clear that somebody interrupted this crime in progress,” the reporter was finishing up, “and, quite possibly, saved a couple of lives in the process. Exactly who that was will remain a mystery, although the Sullivans have a theory about their hero.”

“We Irish have our legends about the wee folk who do good deeds,” Mr. Sullivan explained. “Leprechauns, we call them.”

“This one wasn't dressed in green,” Mrs. Sullivan laughed, “but he brought us luck, I'll tell you that.”

“Now I'm a leprechaun,” I groaned, before Mom suddenly appeared behind me. “Phone's for you! It's JJ.”

Flustered, I took the receiver and answered, “What's up?”

“Are you watching the news?” JJ screamed.

I hurried into the living room so Mom wouldn't hear. “I just saw,” I whispered.

“How amazing is
that
?” JJ squealed. “It's your third day as Captain Nobody, and you're already on the five o'clock news!”

“Not if you look closely,” I said.

“Well, okay, they didn't get a shot of you, but we know who saved the day, don't we?”

“Yeah. It was a ‘little guy' who's either a ‘midget' or maybe a ‘leprechaun.' I'm branded for life.”

“Nobody's going to call you that once they learn what you did!”

“JJ, we can't talk about this. To
anyone
,” I stressed.

“Why not?” she whimpered. “This is the most exciting thing that's happened to anyone I know since my sister Theresa got stuck in the elevators at the mall for eleven hours and she had to pee in a cup.”

“Yeah, that was pretty exciting,” I remembered. “But the last thing I want to do right now is to put my family in the middle of another crisis.”

“But what if the robber didn't have a gun?” she persisted. “And what if he didn't threaten to hunt you down and hurt you?”

“But he did.”

“Okay, okay, we won't tell anyone,” she mumbled. Then she perked up. “Except for Cecil! Who gets to tell Cecil?”

Mom and I ate dinner together that night. Even though it was obvious that something was bothering her, she never brought it up. So finally I did.

“Is something going on with Chris?” I asked.

“No,” she answered too quickly. “No. Just the usual.”

She smiled cheerfully, but her eyes were shiny wet. “But tell me about your day, Captain Nobody. Anything happen?”

“Nope,” I lied. “Not a thing.” I stood and began to clear our plates.

She started to rise. “Oh, I can do that.”

I laid a hand on her shoulder and sat her down. “Relax, Mom. I got this.” I carried the dishes into the kitchen. A few minutes later, as I washed them at the sink, I heard Mom sniffling and blowing her nose into a napkin.

I guess we both had our secrets.

Before I went to bed that night, I took off my Captain Nobody costume and folded it carefully. I looked down at the clothes, thinking back to all that had happened in the short time I had been wearing them, and wondering if it was time to stop. After all, if I'd been dressed as Newt today, I would never have listened to JJ and agreed to talk to the Sullivans. So I would never have walked in on a crime in progress, and I wouldn't have to live in fear for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, I probably wouldn't have saved the Sullivans from being robbed.

Or gotten the chance to help Mr. Clay the day before.

So . . . to
be
Captain Nobody or
not
to be. That was my question.

That night I dreamed that Chris was sitting on the edge of my bed, flipping through one of my school-books, just like the time I got the mumps and had to miss school for two weeks. Chris arranged with my teacher to bring my homework home, and night after night he sat with me and explained the multiplication table and how to write a capital
B
in script.