Sidekicked (14 page)

“What? What is it?” Nikki asks, alarmed.

I hand the tube over to her and she takes a sniff. Even she can smell it—that's how bad it is.

“Oh. Oh, god. What is
that
?” She hands it back.

I look at the label on the back. The words
MACINTOSH APPLE
are crossed out. In its place is written
Eric's Fart
.

I look back through the simulator window at the rest of H.E.R.O. standing triumphantly over their imaginary foes. Shizuka Shi turns and waves to me.

“I am
so
going to get him back for that.”

I make it through all forty vials, only missing two. I couldn't identify cauliflower or arsenic. The first doesn't bother me—I can't imagine any villain who would try to kill a superhero with a head of cauliflower, unless the superhero was a toddler and the villain was his mother. Arsenic, on the other hand, seems like something I should be able to identify. I think about how in demand I could have been, like, four hundred years ago, when everyone went around poisoning everyone else. I could have been the royal sniffer, sitting beside the king, shoving my snout into his pot roast and pomegranates. But most bad guys don't bother poisoning anyone anymore, now that it's so much easier to shoot them. Though the worst kind just find someone else to do their work for them.

At the end of H.E.R.O., Eric, Gavin, and Jenna emerge from the training chamber, laughing and clapping each other on the back. I see Gavin throw his arm around Jenna and whisper in her ear, and even though it's probably none of my business, I listen anyway.

“You rocked today,” he says.

That's actually what he says. I resist the urge to vomit in my mouth. I wonder if that will be his catchphrase, the one they print on fan T-shirts when he becomes a famous Super ten years from now. “Hi. I'm Stonewall, your friendly neighborhood Super, and I totally rock!”

I wonder what mine would be.

“I'm the Sensationalist, and I smell better than you!” Maybe I have a future as a deodorant pitchman.

Mr. Masters calls out a few reminders as everyone heads back to the stairs. This Wednesday is small blade disarmament training and we only have three days left to decide if we need our costumes altered—turns out some of us are already outgrowing our spandex. Then he reminds us all to be especially careful, that the Suits are still at large, that evil never sleeps, and to always follow the Code. He adds a “good work today,” but I don't think he's talking to me. I head to the stairs, hoping to catch up with Jenna, to offer to walk her to her next class, when Mr. Masters intercepts me.

“Number forty?” he pries.

“What?” I try to crane my neck to look over his shoulder and see if Jenna is waiting for me, but the man is just too blasted tall.

“Number forty. What was it?”

Mr. Masters always saves the hardest scent for last. It's the only one he ever asks me about, and he never puts the answer on the back. “Sodium chloride,” I venture. “My guess is one crystal dissolved in about two ounces of water.”

“The Sensationalist does it again,” he says, smiling.

Yeah. Goody, I think to myself. Somewhere out there a teenage shoplifter is having nightmares about a mother of three with a heavy shopping bag and a wicked left hook, and I'm in here smelling salt.

“And you,” I say, “had doughnuts for breakfast. Jelly filled.” There's a spot of jelly on his collar. It doesn't always take a superhero

Mr. Masters drops his smile. “Listen, Drew,” he says. “We need to talk.”

I step to the side and watch Jenna disappear, listening to her footsteps on the stairs. I know her walk. I could pick out the sound of her step in a crowd of hundreds. I could find her anywhere.

“I'm concerned,” Mr. Masters says, stooping a bit to make eye contact.

This snaps me back. When adults tell you they are concerned about you, what they usually mean is that they think you are up to no good and are about to have you tested, or increase your medication, or transfer you to military school. The lines on Mr. Masters's face all crease downward.

“About me?” I ask.

“About the Titan,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. I unconsciously glance sideways at the giant stone tablet hanging on the wall.

“I know in the past I've told you to be patient. To see if he won't come around. But things are more serious now. The Dealer. The Suits.”

“That was a long time ago,” I say. A lot can change in six years. Mr. Masters should appreciate that. He can change a lot in sixty seconds.

“But some things aren't easily forgotten,” Mr. Masters presses. He takes a moment to just stare at me. I take the time to count the hairs that just barely poke out of his nostrils. I'm not sure what he wants from me. Why he keeps holding me back.

Mr. Masters's hand lights on my shoulder again, holding me.”I'm afraid the Titan might be in danger,” he says. “If you have
any
idea where he is, or if he has tried to contact you at all recently . . .”

I look into Mr. Masters's burrowing brown eyes, see the little bubbles of sweat forming above his brows. Why is he even asking me this? He knows the Code as well as I do.

And yet part of me feels like I should just tell him. About the shape the Titan is in. I should tell him because Mr. Masters was the one who assigned the Titan to me to begin with—and maybe he is the only one who could convince him to put the outfit back on.

But I can't. I made a promise. I can't tell anyone where he is if he doesn't want me to. If the Titan had wanted Mr. Masters to keep tabs on him, he wouldn't have gone off the grid.

“I don't think I can help you,” I say.

Mr. Masters stands up straight and hovers over me. I can hear him grinding his teeth. He doesn't believe me. He doesn't say anything, but I can see it in his eyes. And I'm pretty sure that he knows something I don't. Maybe a lot of somethings.

And I start to wonder a bit.

Mr. Masters, who runs the H.E.R.O. program. Who is tapped directly into the network. Who knows all our secret identities. Who has access to tons of classified information. Mr. Masters, who once worked for the Department of Homeland Security's Supernormal Activities Department. Mr. Masters's hand grips my shoulder, a little harder than last time, and I look for his other hand, the one that is tucked into his pocket. The one with the watch.

“Are
you
okay?” I ask.

His expression softens; his hand releases me. He musters a smile, though I can tell it is a challenge for him. “Just worried, is all. If you
should
see him, tell him that I'm looking for him. That I he needs to come find me.”

The bell rings again.

“You're late for class. Better hurry,” he says, turning to head back into his office.

I nod again and take off for the stairs, but when I'm at the top, I pause, thinking maybe I've heard my name.

It's not a mistake. I hear Mr. Masters whisper,
“I know you're listening, Drew.”

And then I hear him whisper,
“Be careful who you trust.”

And I feel a chill sweep over me as I slide out from behind the snack machine and into the hall, deciding that from this point on, I will take Mr. Masters's advice.

Maybe starting with Mr. Masters.

B
eing a Super isn't easy. Just think about the stress. To be available at a moment's notice. To drop everything you are doing and squeeze into your tights when nobody's looking, cramming yourself into the backseat of an unlocked car because there aren't any phone booths anymore, trying to pull your jeans off over your spandex and getting them caught around your ankles, pulling your mask clumsily over your head and somehow getting it twisted around one ear. Seeing your signal blaze in the night sky while you are in the middle of your ravioli al forno, taking one last sip of wine as you grab your jet pack and leap out your window, accidentally frying a pigeon on the way. Missing the end of a movie or your favorite show, coming back to find that your coffee is cold or your boyfriend got tired of waiting for you and left, slamming the door so hard on his way out that it knocked pictures off your walls. Canceling Thanksgiving dinner because some whack job in a mole costume decides to sabotage the city's generators to send the world into total darkness so that only
he
can see. It's always something. Your time is not your own, unless you have a magic watch, and even then your life is measured out in minutes.

Add to that the fact you've got lives in your hands. Trains with failed brake systems and jumbo jets full of panicked passengers plummeting into the ocean. Reporters falling off buildings and little kids somersaulting over the Hoover Dam. And that always-nagging thought that maybe
this
time, you aren't going to be able to save them. Maybe
this
time, your laser vision will fail or your vulcan hand cannon will jam or the lace on your boot will come loose and you will trip at the last moment while the reporter does her best pancake impression on the sidewalk before you can catch her. Not to mention the bad guys always giving you the “choice” between chasing after them or rescuing hundreds of OCs who are about to have a building fall on them or the cables on a suspension bridge snap, knowing full well that you will follow the Code, that you aren't going to just sit back and let civilians
die
(though imagine the look on the bad guy's face if you did. “Sure,” you'd say, “six hundred innocent people drowned today, but at least I caught you, you jerk”).

Oh. And then there's the money. Being a Super is expensive. Over half of all Supers are funded through grants from the National Endowment for Superheroes and Crime Fighters. But still, even your average-sized 7,500-square-foot top-secret underground headquarters, modestly outfitted and reasonably priced, runs at least two mill in the burbs, and twice that if you want to be downtown for easy access to crime and shopping. Then there're uniforms, gadgets, weapons, upgrades, computers, jet planes, personalized body armor, nuclear reactors, guided missile systems, global tracking satellites, grappling hooks, utility belts, utility hooks, grappling belts, butlers, blasters, bunkers, cryogenic containment labs, and all that other junk. It just adds up. Time. Stress. Money.

Yet every Super who has ever been asked about the hardest part of the job will tell you it's not the deadly combat or the sleepless nights or the pressure of thwarting giant alien death rays aimed at the planet. It's keeping the secret. They have manuals on how to deal with all that other stuff. How do you deal with the loneliness? The fact that, on some basic level, you do
everything
for
everybody
and no one even bothers to say thanks, because they don't even know who you
are
?

So you let something slip. Maybe while having a drink after work, you say something about the time you punched a hole through the roof of a car or accidentally set your living-room couch on fire with your heat vision. Sometimes you forget a little detail. The scorch marks on your boots or the radio-active goop that is still somehow tangled in your hair from your run-in with extraterrestrial terrorists.

Sometimes you do it on purpose—a casual comment to someone you care about, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she will figure it out and guess your secret. Because then you no longer have to bear the burden alone. Because
somebody
knows. Somebody else has to carry it with you. But by then it is too late. Your secret is out. You've been compromised. The best Supers are the ones who can stay behind the mask. Who never show their hand.

Take the Fox. Nobody knows very much about her.
I
only happen to know her secret identity because Jenna told me, swearing me to absolute secrecy. In fact, it's the only time I know of that Jenna's broken the Code. And if she hadn't told me, I would never have guessed. The Fox has short, flaming red hair, sparkling blue eyes, and stands about five foot seven. Kyla Kaden has long, flowing raven-black hair, light-brown eyes, and stands at least six feet, though if you looked in her closet you'd probably find rows of high-heeled shoes and a few wigs. Kyla wears sharp business suits and lots of makeup. The Fox wears a white-and-red jump suit and a matching white mask that covers half of her face. Stand them next to each other, and you would swear you were looking at two different people.

A disguise is about playing to expectations. Helping people believe what they want to believe. Kyla Kaden is the founder and CEO of Kaden Enterprises. She came to this country at the age of twenty-two to start her own business. The heiress to a huge estate left to her by a father who supposedly died in a fire when she was a teen, Kyla applied her genius-level IQ to the field of weapons engineering, developing satellite-guided missile systems for the army. She was wealthy, accomplished, and beautiful.

She couldn't possibly have time to be a superhero too.

But that's the thing about the Fox. Like the best of them, she's hard to pin down.

That night, as I'm finishing the third act of
Julius Caesar
(
Et tu, Brute?
), I hear my father groan from the living room. My mother asks him what's wrong, and he tells her the crazies are on TV again. They've interrupted
Jeopardy!
for some kind of special announcement. I wonder which group of crazies he's talking about—there are a lot to choose from—but then I hear the Fox's name mentioned and practically trip over myself careening down the stairs. I turn down the hall to find my parents sitting on the couch, staring at her. Her wavy red locks stream out from beneath the white mask she wears. Her blue eyes blaze. Though her sword isn't strapped on, she still looks every bit as dangerous as she did when she was cutting down drones back at the pool. She stands at a podium, her hands gripping the sides as if she's about to tear it out of the ground. She could, of course. With ease.