Captain Nobody (7 page)

“Awesome,” I said, shaking my head in admiration. I turned to Cecil, “And you are . . . ?”

Cecil bowed deeply and made a sound like a trumpet. “Doot-too-doo-DOO! I stand before you tonight as my greatest inspiration, the most excellent musical superfly of the eighteenth century, even though he never wrote a lick for a snare drum or a tom-tom. I am The Wolf—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart!”

“Mozart!” I cried. “Of course!”

“And my mom let me cut up an old pantsuit of hers, so don't get any ideas that I run around in velvet all the time, dig?”

“I actually guessed that he was Mozart the moment he walked down the sidewalk,” JJ gushed.

I was shaking my head in wonder, stunned by my friends' incredible work, when I realized that they were now staring at me.

“Let me guess,” Cecil said. “You're a clothes hamper?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Instead, my eyes began to sting and my lower lip started to tremble as everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours came crashing down on me.

“Dude,” Cecil murmured.

“Newt?” JJ asked, gently touching my arm. “Did something happen with Chris?”

I shook my head a little too vigorously. “No, no, he's still asleep,” I said, trying to sound cheery. “Catching those z's.”

“And you?” Cecil squinted at my outfit. “What's going on here?”

“What? Oh, this?” I tugged at my clothes. “This . . . this was supposed to be a joke. Cuz, see, this stuff's not really mine, but my mom thinks it's hilarious when I put it on, so I . . . I put it on, but before I could show her, she left for the hospital. So ha-ha! Joke's on me!”

I saw Cecil and JJ exchange a look of concern, but I rattled on, speaking faster and faster.

“And there I was, all twisted up in these things and crashing around in my bedroom and rolling down the stairs, and you heard me hit the floor, right? How dumb is that, huh? I mean, how stupid am I to think that I could possibly make any difference . . . and . . . and . . . you know what?” I screeched to a halt. “You guys go ahead without me.”

“What?” Cecil cried.

“Why?” asked JJ.

I squeezed my eyes shut and confessed: “Because I didn't make a costume.”

Before they could respond, I raced ahead. “I
tried
to think of someone to be. I really did! I concentrated on my inner other, and I made lists of heroes and famous people and stuff, but none of them were me, so instead of being somebody this year, I guess I won't be anybody.”

A horrible silence followed my outburst. Finally Cecil tugged at the oversized Windbreaker that was flapping down my back.

“Oh, I don't know,” he said. “Doesn't this kind of look like something Superman would wear?”

“It really does,” JJ agreed. “And those sweatpants . . . they look like the Hulk's. Sort of.”

“I'm
not
gonna be Superman,” I groaned. “And I'm sure not the Hulk. Or any of those guys with superpowers who—”

JJ cut me off. “Who says you've got to be any of them?”

“Or any kind of hero that anybody's ever heard of?” Cecil added.

“But what do I say when they ask who I'm supposed to be?” I worried.

“Tell them that you are your own creation,” JJ said as she circled me, studying the tangle of fabrics. “The first shining creature of a brand-new breed.”

The way the words tumbled out of her mouth made it all sound so important. And possible.

Cecil clapped me on the back. “You got a pair of scissors?”

First, JJ and Cecil put me in a pair of red sweatpants and tucked them into Chris's old silver track shoes, which were striped with lightning bolts. Next, JJ ripped the sleeves off a gray sweatshirt, cut it down the middle, and with Mom's glue gun she attached the gray fabric to the shoulders of the purple baseball jersey I had on, so that it hung down my back like a puffy cape. And finally, Cecil snipped a single short sleeve off one of Chris's old red T-shirts and tugged it down around my forehead like a sweatband.

They stepped back to inspect their work. JJ shook her head. “It's still lacking something,” she said. “There's no
magic
yet.”

“I agree,” Cecil muttered. “He looks . . . un-magical.”

“I look like a gym teacher who got caught in a Laundromat explosion,” I moaned.

Just then, JJ snapped her fingers and shouted, “I've got it!” She yanked the sweatband off my forehead, cut two holes in it and pulled it back down past my forehead and over the bridge of my nose.

“A mask!” Cecil exclaimed. “JJ, that's genius!”

“Can you see out the eyeholes?” JJ asked me.

I blinked behind the slits and adjusted the band of fabric.

“I guess,” I shrugged.

I swiveled my head around, looking at the ceiling and the floor. But when I turned and saw myself in the front room mirror, I caught my breath.

Because that wasn't me.

Not the Newton Newman who's been staring back at me for ten years. Oh, the clothes were the same as they had been five seconds ago, but the mask had changed everything. The thin strip of fabric that hid my face had turned me into someone I didn't recognize. And—this was even weirder—from inside looking out, I felt protected. Hidden, even.

When JJ cried, “So!” and handed me a candy bag, I took it.

And when Cecil slapped his thigh and declared, “This parade is ready to roll!” I didn't disagree.

“Honey! C'mere! You've got to see these kids!”

The jolly, plump man couldn't stop chuckling as we stood on the front porch of the first house we stopped at.

“Oh, my word!” his wife squealed as she joined her husband. She was tall and skinny and wore a wide black witch's hat. In her hands she carried a bowl of Butterfinger bars, which Cecil couldn't take his eyes off of.

“This one,” said the man, pointing to Cecil, “he says he's Mozart.”

“And I don't doubt it for a second,” his wife laughed.

“And this young lady—”

“Don't tell me . . . Splendida!” cried the wife. “Oh, darling, I've read all the
Crystal Cavern Chronicles
. I'd recognize Splendida anywhere!”

JJ beamed with pride.

Then the husband and wife turned their attention to me. “And who are you supposed to be, little boy?” asked the husband, just the way the neighbor had asked me in my nightmare. The one where I was naked.

I froze.

“Yes,” said the wife, looking me over, “who are you, dear?”

Her husband pointed to a spot in the middle of my forehead.

“Are these initials a clue to your identity?”

“What initials?” JJ asked, twisting her head to read from my fabric face mask. “Oh, my. It does say ‘C.N.'”

Cecil looked, too. “Who's C.N.?”

I stifled a gasp. In all the rush to build me a costume, I guess that none of us had noticed that the sleeve of my brother's old T-shirt—the sleeve that now circled my head—was stenciled with Chris Newman's initials.

C.N.

“My goodness, yes,” said the wife, squinting. “Who
is
C.N.?”

I was tongue-tied. I had never meant to wear Chris's name written across my forehead. And I sure didn't want anybody thinking that I was masquerading
as my brother
on Halloween, not while he was lying in a bed at Appleton General Hospital!

I think that JJ and Cecil sensed my panic, because Cecil suddenly smacked his forehead. “Oh! C.N.! Right . . . okay. Y'see, C.N. stands for . . . uh . . .
Commander
. That's right! Commander . . . uh . . .” I saw him shoot a look to JJ that silently shrieked,
“Help me out here!”

“Nuclear!” JJ exclaimed with a smile. I could tell she was proud to have pulled such a cool sci-fi word out of thin air.

“Commander Nuclear?” the wife asked.

“Really?” her husband said.

“Yeah,” Cecil nodded. “Commander . . .”

“No!” I suddenly snapped.

I surprised everybody—especially myself—when I yelled like that. But I wasn't feeling like myself just then. Behind the mask, I felt like I was somebody . . . oh, I don't know.
New
. Somebody I hadn't met yet.

“You're
not
Commander Nuclear?” Cecil asked, confused.

“Nope.”

JJ seemed desperate to find me another name. “Well, sir,” she stammered, “are you anyone we've ever heard of?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have any powers we should know about?” wondered the wife.

“Nope.”

“Okay, then, who
are
you?” her husband asked.

At that moment something—or
somebody
—came over me. I felt a kind of electric charge race from the top of my head down to my silver lightning-bolt tennis shoes as the answer popped into my brain. I guess I mumbled it so quietly at first that everybody leaned forward and demanded, “What did you say?”

So I pumped up my chest and tossed my cape. I stood with my legs apart and put my fists on my waist. Then with the biggest, bravest smile I had never smiled before, I proudly announced: “You can call me . . . Captain Nobody.”

Once we got back to the sidewalk, JJ and Cecil exploded with laughter.

“‘Captain Nobody?'”

“Where did that come from?”

“You don't like it?” I asked.

“Oh, no, it's
brilliant
!” shouted Cecil. “‘Captain Nobody'—a hero like no other.”