Captain Nobody (15 page)

Ferocious tilted his sleek little black-and-white head to one side and gazed into my eyes. Maybe he was just reacting to my mask, but for a second I thought that he might actually be hearing me. So I gulped, and because I couldn't think of anybody else I could say it to, I told Ferocious, “I want my brother back.”

He made a chuckling sound, and then he went back to rolling around in his shredded newspaper. Right then, I felt totally lame for confiding my deepest wish to an animal. Even if he is a mascot.

By the end of the day, Cecil and JJ had figured out that I wasn't exactly overjoyed about how they had volunteered me as a ferret babysitter, so they offered to keep me company on the way home.

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” Cecil said as we left the school grounds.

I didn't answer. Ferocious's cage banged against my thigh with every step.

“Hey, think of it this way,” he suggested. “Until your brother gets home, Ferocious can fill in for him. They're both Fillmore Ferrets, after all.”

“So, what're you saying?” I snapped. “I don't get my brother back, but I get a fuzzy ferret instead?”

Cecil backed away. “Okay. Sorry I said anything.”

“Look, I'm having a really bad week, okay?” I started to say. “So maybe you can understand why I'm not thrilled to be dragging Ferocious the Fillmore Ferret home . . .”

“Okay, Captain Nobody,” Cecil tried to calm me.

“And I don't want to have to feed him dinner or clean up his poop . . .”

“Well, maybe one of us could take him,” JJ suggested.

“Let me finish!” I snarled. “And I don't want to pretend like he's a replacement for my brother, because he's not.”

“Of course he's not!” JJ agreed.

“My bad,” Cecil shook his head. “How about I cut out my tongue?”

I knew he was trying to be funny, but I was in no mood to laugh. Especially not when I looked up and saw Ricky Ratner and a half-dozen seventh-graders blocking our path.

Cecil and I froze. JJ reached into her shoulder bag and dug out the walkie-talkie.

“Should I call for help?” she whispered.

“Who you gonna call?” Cecil said out of the side of his mouth. “Captain Nobody's standing right here.”

“Oh, right,” she whimpered.

“I gave you an order!” Ricky Ratner barked as he and his posse approached. “You were supposed to tell your brother's classmates at Fillmore to stop hasslin' my cousin Reggie.”

“Are they still doing stuff?” I asked.

“Don't act all innocent,” Ricky scowled. “They're
torturing
him. People're callin' forty times a night and wakin' up the family. They order Chinese takeout and give Reggie's address. And last night, y'know what they did to the Charger?”

Everybody knows the Merrimac Charger. He's this huge bronze guy on horseback who towers over the front lawn of Merrimac High School.

“They painted ‘Blame Reggie' all over it,” Ricky yelled. “
‘Blame Reggie!'
Your brother's friends did that!”

“But his
brother
didn't,” Cecil shouted back, “cuz he's lying in a hospital!”

“Thanks to
your
cousin,” JJ added.

“Nobody can prove that!” Ricky roared, bearing down on me. “You show me
one
eyewitness who saw my cousin even come close to your . . .
yaaaaaaah
!”

Ricky recoiled at the sight of Ferocious, who—hearing all the noise—had suddenly reared up in his cage.

“What is
that
?” Ricky demanded. “Looks like a big, long rat.”

His pals clustered around the cage as I pulled it to my chest.

“It's not a rat,” JJ sniffed. “It's a ferret—a member of the weasel family.”

“And this one's famous,” Cecil boasted. “If you've ever been to a Fillmore football game—”

“I only cheer for cousin Reggie's school,” Ricky snarled.

“Well, this one's name is Ferocious—”

I shot Cecil a warning look, but it was too late.

“‘Ferocious'?” Ricky's eyebrows arched. “As in the Ferocious Ferrets of Fillmore?”

He waited for one of us to nod, but no one did.

“He's their mascot, right? Like the Charger of Merrimac?”

Cecil and I exchanged worried looks, and JJ tried to change the subject by exclaiming, “Ferocious is on a goodwill tour! I'm sure he'll be visiting the seventh grade any day now.”

“Unless something unfortunate happens to him,” Ricky taunted, looking around at his buddies. He gave a nod of his head, and suddenly everybody was trying to yank the cage out of my arms.

“Let go!” I yelled. “Stop it!”

JJ and Cecil tried to pull them off. “You don't want to mess with Captain Nobody,” Cecil shouted, and JJ added, “This guy stopped a robbery yesterday! Don't you guys watch the news?”

But none of my attackers seemed impressed. They continued to scratch and claw at the cage, as poor Ferocious bounced back and forth from his water dish to his running wheel.

Suddenly, in the mad scramble, the cage door flew open and Ferocious shot up into the air. He landed on a patch of lawn, rolled over a few times and sat up, stunned by his newfound freedom.

Ferocious stared at us; we stared at him. And then, in a blink, Ferocious took off down the block like his tail was on fire.

Cecil, JJ and I screamed, “No, wait!” and raced after him. Behind us, Ricky and his buddies fell all over themselves with laughter.

As I ran, I dropped Ferocious's cage and threw off my backpack. JJ and Cecil tossed theirs aside, as well. We tore after my furry friend as he scampered across three front yards and then darted through a vegetable garden and under a thorny hedge. We tried to keep up, huffing and puffing and yelling, “Come back, Ferocious! Come back!”

We chased him down a dead-end street, where I thought we might have a chance of cornering him, but he ran down an embankment and through a wall of tall trees. We all tumbled down after him, and I fought my way through the trees to find myself at—
the highway!

Ten feet in front of me, Ferocious had screeched to a halt on the shoulder of the road. I stopped, my pulse pounding. JJ and Cecil ran up alongside me, panting. We looked to each other in horrified silence as cars whizzed by, inches from Ferocious's twitching nose.

“Omigosh!” JJ gasped. “What're we gonna do?”

“Maybe we could lure him back this way,” Cecil suggested in a low voice. “Does anybody have any raw meat?”

JJ and I looked at him, bewildered.

“Okay. Dumb question,” he admitted. “But we shouldn't
all
go after him. That's only gonna freak him out.”

“You know what this is, don't you?” JJ asked with great seriousness. “This is a job for Captain Nobody.”

I almost gagged. “What?”

“She's right!” Cecil agreed. “After all, you're the one who got to take Ferocious home for the night.”

“Only because you volunteered me!” I hissed.

“And look at him,” JJ said. “It's like he's expecting you.”

She was right. Sort of. Ferocious had been looking back at the three of us, but now he seemed to zero in on me. He tilted his head the way he had when I told him that I was Chris Newman's brother. In that moment, I felt very responsible for him.

Cecil clapped me on the back. “If anybody can do it, Captain Nobody can.”

I took a deep breath. Locking eyes with Ferocious, I carefully inched my way across the narrow patch of gravel, fallen leaves and tree limbs that separated us. Ferocious watched me coming with a curious stare.
This just might work,
I thought as I drew near.

Just then, a passing motorist, who probably thought I was tiptoeing onto the asphalt, gave a warning toot on his horn.

I flinched, and Ferocious bolted.
Right out into traffic!

Behind me, JJ and Cecil screamed. In front of me, four lanes of snorting cars seemed to chase Ferocious down the blacktop. My heart jumped to my throat, and I watched in horror as he dodged and bobbed, almost like my brother racing from the Merrimac football team on the night of the Big Game!

But unlike that night, I now had a chance to make a difference.

My inner other suddenly seemed to grab hold of the steering wheel in my brain. With my cape flying and my silver sneakers flashing, I dashed onto the blacktop. Frantically I waved my arms and screamed, “Stop! Stop!”

Traffic weaved around me, honking and screeching. Ferocious sped ahead until he reached the concrete barrier in the middle of the freeway, where he made a split-second hairpin turn, zipped between my legs and ran almost all the way back to where we began. I whirled and went after him.

Back and forth we sprinted as trucks and vans and cars whizzed dangerously close.
This is insane!
I thought as I ran for my life.
Is this what it's like for Chris in a football game?

From the roadside, JJ was screaming, “Watch out! Watch out!!” while Cecil kept hooting, “Way to go, Captain Nobody!”

Once cars passed by me, they sped off down the highway. But as more drivers began to pump their brakes, the traffic coming at me and Ferocious began to slow down, and it backed up until, finally, all four lanes of traffic came to a stop. Ferocious and I had the freeway to ourselves.

He zigged and I zagged as the angry drivers leaned on their horns. The noise only made Ferocious more jumpy, and I kept tripping over myself as I darted back and forth, trying to catch up to him.

Just then a huge shadow passed over us.

Two massive wings suddenly blocked out the sun. At first I thought a humongous hawk had spotted Ferocious dashing around on the freeway and was swooping in to gobble him down for supper. But then I heard an engine sputtering.

I looked up and wilted in horror. A small airplane, coughing smoke from its engine, was headed straight for us, flying so low that its tires were practically rolling across the roofs of the stopped cars!

Without thinking, I dropped to the pavement and watched the belly of the plane as it passed overhead. I guess the angry drivers saw it, too, because their honking stopped. In the eerie quiet that followed, we could all hear the high-pitched squeal as the plane's tires hit the wide-open freeway up ahead. Its engine continued to belch black clouds of smoke as it taxied. Finally, way down the road, it came to a stop.

You could have heard a pin drop.

I looked behind me. Through their windshields, I saw the faces of all those drivers who, only moments before, had been cursing me and shaking their fists. Now they stared back with their mouths hanging open.

Then I looked down and saw the most amazing sight of all.

At my ankle sat Ferocious, also gazing in stunned fascination at the plane in the distance. I didn't hesitate. I reached down, scooped him up, and dashed for the roadside. As I blew by Cecil and JJ, I screamed, “I'll get you for this!”

We all wanted to stay and watch what happened next, but as a chorus of police sirens screamed closer and closer, Ferocious started scratching and nibbling at my hands. And once JJ reminded us how we'd thrown our backpacks and stuff all over the neighborhood, we reluctantly left.

First we ran back to find Ferocious's cage and put him in it. Then we all went back to my house, where we collapsed in the living room, still trembling from our terrifying adventure.

After a long, glassy-eyed silence, Cecil picked up the remote and turned on the TV, just as the five o'clock news was starting. Across the top of the screen, a red banner scrolled the words “Breaking News! Airplane Tragedy Averted!”

“What?”
we all shouted in unison.

The newsman behind his desk was in the middle of announcing: “. . . and police are now saying that the freeway will be tied up for at least three more hours. For more on this amazing story, we take you to Mary Myron out on the Westside Highway. Mary?”

The picture switched to a shot of the newswoman—the same one who had reported from Sullivan's Jewelry Store the day before—standing in front of the plane that had almost lopped off my head. We all listened openmouthed as Mary Myron described the incident.

“A small passenger plane developed crippling engine trouble in the skies over Appleton this afternoon,” she said. “As the pilot desperately searched for an unpopulated place to land, he spotted a stretch of freeway unexpectedly—some might even say, miraculously—cleared of cars.”

“I couldn't believe my eyes!” the plane's pilot said, almost in tears. “It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, the way the lanes just opened up.”