Captain Nobody (18 page)

In the boys' bathroom, I pulled the Captain Nobody costume from my backpack. A thrill ran up my spine as I slipped it on, tied up the silver sneakers and tugged the mask down over my nose. It felt like being reunited with a long-lost friend.

“Oh, yeah,” I exhaled.

I tiptoed down a back stairway and exited into the faculty parking lot, where JJ and Cecil had pulled up on their bikes. When they saw me, their mouths flew open.

“Shhhh!” I warned, holding a finger to my lips.

“He's back!” Cecil whispered excitedly.

“You're gonna get in trouble for cutting,” I reminded them. “You're sure you want to do this?”

“Are you kidding?” JJ gasped. “This is what sidekicks do!”

I climbed onto Cecil's crossbar and we all sped off, using the police helicopter in the distance as a guide for our journey across town. Once we got close to the Appleton water tower, we drove around the mob of people and all the emergency vehicles and news vans gathering in front.

Since the wobbly old tower had been condemned about five years ago, a wire fence had been erected around the entire block, and weeds and vines had grown up so high on all sides that you could lose a basketball team in there. Over time, trespassers had cut a few patches of fence here and there and peeled them open, so once we got to the back of the tower and dropped the bikes behind some bushes, we found a flap that we could all squeeze through. Inside the fence, we squatted in the weeds and surveyed the situation.

Cecil nudged us and indicated the ladder that ran up a leg of the water tower to the roof. The rusting brackets that held the ladder onto the rickety tower were pulling away. Discolored screws stuck out of the rotting wood, and, in a few places, the rungs of the ladder were snapped in two. Even worse, the first solid rung was about six feet off the ground.

“I can't reach the first rung!” I whispered frantically.

“I'll give you a boost,” JJ offered. “I'm the tallest.”

“But what about the rungs above it?” I pointed out. “They look about as sturdy as celery.”

“Then it's a good thing you don't weigh anything,” Cecil said.

“Let's not stand around yakking,” JJ hissed. “We've got company.”

She jerked her head toward a policeman who was wrapping the fence with yellow plastic tape that said POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS. In about ten seconds he would get close enough to see us through the weeds.

“Get ready to rock and roll, Captain,” Cecil whispered. He grabbed two sticks from the ground and skittered back through the fence, where he stood up and let loose a drum riff along the chain link, finishing with a vocal cymbal crash. “
Ksssh!”

The startled cop looked up. “Hey!” he yelled. “What're you doing?”

“Me? I'm a parade!” Cecil crowed, just before he sprinted off.

The cop blinked in confusion
—
“Huh?”—before he dashed after Cecil, shouting, “Come back here!” and trailing a long plastic ribbon behind himself.

“Let's go!” JJ grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the foot of the ladder. She folded her fingers into a stirrup and held them down for me to put my foot into.

“Remind me,” I pleaded with a dry throat, “why am I doing this?”

“Because there's a human life at stake,” she explained calmly, “and that makes this a job for Captain Nobody.”

I gulped. Holding on to JJ's shoulders, I stepped into her hands, and she boosted me up to the lowest unbroken rung. She pushed from below as I pulled myself up. I reached for the next rung. And the next. And the next.

As I feared, a few of the rotting rungs were broken, and even the unbroken ones creaked when I grabbed them. Nevertheless, they held my weight as I climbed up. Luckily, from behind my mask all I could see was the ladder. I couldn't see the sky soaring above. Or the earth dropping away below.

The sounds from the ground—the sirens and horns and shouts from the crowd—gradually faded and were replaced with the drone of the helicopter circling the tower. Just before I reached the edge of the roof, it swooped past, and a wallop of wind slammed me against the ladder. I wrapped my arms around the uprights and held on tight until the hurricane had passed.

Unfortunately, when I hugged the ladder, my mask hooked on a jutting nail. So when I reached up to hoist myself onto the roof, I felt a tug, and my mask was ripped from my face.

“Oh,
no
!” I cried, turning my head to watch the fabric flutter down . . .

. . . down . . .

. . . down.

I shouldn't have done that. Because way down below the still-falling mask I could see JJ. Who looked about as big as the period at the end of this sentence.

I gagged and gripped the ladder. Not only was I about a bazillion miles above earth, but, without my mask, I wasn't Captain Nobody anymore! What was
Newt Newman
going to do now?

I considered a retreat, a slow descent down the rotting ladder. My teeth chattered in fear at the thought.

I considered not moving. The police would eventually see my predicament—wouldn't they?—and send a helicopter, throw me a rope and lower me to safety.

But then I considered Reggie Ratner, all alone and desperate. So I pulled myself over the edge of the roof and lay there, panting.

After the first wave of cold, white terror passed through my body, I carefully raised my head and looked around. Below me, Appleton stretched out in every direction. The trees and buildings and streets looked like they belonged in the candy village that goes on exhibit every Christmas at the Three Rivers Mall.

Wow,
I thought,
this is kind of awesome,
but in the next second I remembered where I was. I shuddered and dug my fingernails into the shingles.

The water tower's circular roof was shaped like a stubby, upside-down ice-cream cone, so that, from the edges, it rose to a point where an old weather vane still creaked in the wind.

I had just pulled myself to my knees when the police helicopter swooped in for a closer look and its down-draft flattened me against the shingles.

How am I supposed to move now?
I shrieked inside my skull.

And then I remembered Sticky Ricky.

Sticky Ricky was a crimefighter I once created whose body was covered with hundreds of tiny suction cups that enabled him to slither up steel walls and towers of glass.

“I can slither,” I said aloud.

Fighting the wind from the helicopter, I very slowly inched up the rooftop on my belly until I saw Reggie Ratner on the opposite edge. I'd never seen Reggie out of his football uniform, but there was no mistaking the guy. His neck and arms were as thick as Chris had always joked about. He was sitting with one knee pulled up to his chest and the hood of a sweatshirt flipped over his head as he watched the crowd on the ground below.

The helicopter veered away, but even though I was no longer pinned down, I stayed on my stomach, wiggling down the slope of the roof until I was just behind Reggie. I guess I should have coughed or something to warn him that I was there, because when I gently called, “Reggie?” he shrieked, “Nyahhh!” and practically tumbled off the roof. He twisted around and glared at me.

“Hi,” I said and gave a little wave.

“What d'you think you're . . . ?” he sputtered. “How did you even . . .
Who are you
?”

“I'm Newt Newman?” I said. “Chris Newman's younger brother?”

“You're joking!” Reggie snorted. “I didn't even know Chris
had
a younger brother.”

“That's okay,” I sighed. “Nobody does.”

“Hmm. Weird,” Reggie said. “How is Chris?”

“He's still . . . out.”

“Man,” Reggie shook his head sadly, “that sucks.”

And y'know what? In that moment, I liked him. Because of his long rivalry with Chris, I guess I had always imagined that Reggie Ratner was some knuckle-dragging, heartless jerk. Instead, he seemed sincerely bummed out about my brother.

“But what're you doing here?” he asked. “And what're you wearing?”

“Can we talk about the clothes later?” I said, edging a little closer. “Right now, I . . . I have to talk to you about something important.”

“Are you nuts?” Reggie cried. “What could be so important that you'd—”

“I know you didn't knock out my brother!”

Reggie stared at me.

“I was there, outside the end zone fence,” I explained. “I saw everything. Chris was hit by Darryl Peeps's helmet. You weren't anywhere close.”

“Thank you!” Reggie shouted. “That's what I've been trying to tell people all week! Especially your brother's teammates. But they came after me anyway.” He looked away and sighed. “It's been bad.”

“I know,” I said. “I go to the same school as your cousin Ricky . . .”

“Oh, yeah?” Reggie brightened. “You're friends with Ricky?”

“We've, uh . . . met,” I said. “He told me what you've been going through, and I'm really sorry about all that.”

Reggie squinted in confusion. “Wait . . . You climbed up here to apologize?”

“Not exactly,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “I came because I'm the only person who knows the truth, so I'm the only person who can change your mind.”

“Change my mind? About what?”

It was right then that I noticed something weird. Sticking out of the pockets of Reggie's hoodie were a couple of cans of spray paint with orange and green caps. Orange and green? Merrimac's school colors?

I blurted, “You're not up here to jump, are you?”

Reggie blinked. “What?”

“You came up to spray ‘Go Merrimac!' or something like that on the water tank, didn't you?”

“Why else would I be here?”

“People on the ground are saying that you got so depressed from being hassled all week that you climbed up here to . . .” I joined my hands and made a diving motion. “And I thought I could talk you out of it.”

“They think I'm up here to kill myself?”

I nodded.

“Oh, please!” Reggie scoffed.

Suddenly a voice crackled through a bullhorn way down below us.

Reggie whirled toward me, his eyes bugging. “They think I'm up here to kill myself!”

“In a nutshell.”

“Oh, no! What a mess!” He ran his fingers through his hair. “What a big, stinking pile of mess.” He looked me in the face. “Newton? Can I tell you what really happened?”

I nodded.

“Ever since the Big Game,” he began, “people have been coming down on me from all sides. All those jerks from Fillmore. People on the street. Even my classmates! The world hates me, my reputation is shot, my stomach's in knots 24/7. So finally I made a decision. I had to do something I'd be remembered for besides knocking out Chris Newman . . .
which I didn't even do
!”

“I know, I know.”

“So, I got up here early this morning, with my paint and my rope.” He held up a coil of rope I hadn't seen before. “And I was all set to lower myself over the edge, and then
this
happened!” He pulled back a corner of his jacket to reveal that his left foot was stuck through a hole in the shingles.

“Wow,” I said, studying the opening. “You stomped a hole in the roof.”

“I was just walking,” he insisted, “but this roof . . . this whole tower . . . it's rotted clear through. I wish somebody had told me.”

“Maybe that's why it's condemned?” I suggested.

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “It probably doesn't help that I weigh two-eighty. Plus I had seven bagels for breakfast.”

I wriggled closer and peered through the hole his foot had made.

“Looks like your shoe's stuck between two beams.”

“It's more than stuck . . . it's, like, wedged,” he sighed. “And when I brace myself and try pulling it out, I only end up breaking off more of these shingles. When the cops first came, I thought they'd send a guy up. Or maybe the fire department would raise a ladder. But, nah, they know this place is falling apart. I mean, who's gonna be stupid enough to climb up here?”

I almost raised my hand, but that's when Sergeant Schmalz belched through his bullhorn, “IT'S NOT WORTH IT, SON!” and we both flinched.

“I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THE CITIZENS OF APPLETON ARE WILLING TO FORGIVE WHAT YOU DID TO CHRIS NEWMAN . . .” But then his voice was drowned out by a horrendous roar as the police helicopter was now joined by three more choppers from local TV stations. They crisscrossed the sky, making my cape flap wildly around my head.

Reggie shouted above the roar, “Can you help me?”

“I-I don't see how I could,” I stuttered.

“But you're my only hope!” he pleaded.

I thought long and hard before I said, “I maybe have one idea.”

“What? What? I'll try anything!”

“Untie your shoe and pull your foot out of it.”

“Don't you think I tried that already?” Reggie hollered. “Yeesh!”

I squinted into the hole. “But your shoe is still tied.”

“Well, that's only because I . . . I triple-knotted the shoelace,” he stammered, embarrassed. “And with these fingers”—he held up hands the size of skillets—“I can't untie it.”