Superheroes Don't Eat Veggie Burgers (2 page)

I've just spied the last empty seat near the back when a man in a gray cowboy hat and perfectly pressed blue jeans saunters up behind me.

“Howdy, pardner,” he says, nodding at me. A large cardboard box fills his arms, the bottom looking like it's going to bust wide open at any minute.

Everyone stops what they're doing. Even the nerds look up from their books, curious.

He waits for me to say something.

“Uh … hi,” I mumble, craning my neck up to see his face. It reminds me of a piece of beef jerky.

“I reckon you're Charlie Burger,” he says.

I blink at him. “You already know my name?”

He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. They twinkle like they hold a special secret.

“I guess I do,” he says. “I'm Mr. Perdzock, your sixth-grade science teacher. Most kids call me Mr. P for short.” We stand there for a full minute—him looking me up and down, and me thinking maybe I should've gotten a haircut this summer.

“Had a little trouble in the lunchroom, I hear,” he says. His eyes grow darker, like the ocean right before a Nor'easter blows in.

Someone snickers, and Mr. P's head snaps up, scanning the room. No one moves.

“Well, no sense worrying about that now.” He looks back down at me, and his face seems to soften a little, even though his eyes stay the same. “A little adversity is good for a guy, right, pardner? Keeps us in the saddle, so to speak.”

Pardner? Saddle?
It's like this guy just stepped out of one of those John Wayne Westerns my grandmother likes to watch.

When I don't say anything, he points toward an empty chair at the front table. “Why don't you mosey on over there and join the rest of the class.” I have to climb over an outstretched leg, and I practically trip over someone's backpack before plopping myself down smack-dab in the middle of the front row. A chubby girl with greasy hair and a bad sunburn sits next to me.

“Loser,” she whispers under her breath. I stare at her like,
Who're you kidding?
She rolls her eyes at me and looks away.

“All right now, where was I?” Mr. P asks.

The chubby girl raises her hand. “You were telling us you had something important to hand out.” She waggles her big bottom like she's a superstar for having remembered this, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I have a feeling I don't want to be on her bad side.

“Yes, right. Stay focused, Perdzock,” he says to himself. He glances around the room, then sets the box down. “Your writing journals.” He pulls out a pile of dark leather notebooks and starts walking down the aisles, slapping one in front of each of us, the heels of his cowboy boots click-clacking on the tile floor. “Make sure you put your name on the cover.” He stops when he gets to me. “You don't want to lose these.”

I pull a pencil out of my backpack as he continues, “Everyone in this room has a story to tell. These journals will be an important part of your first … experiment.” His voice is slow and thick, like maple syrup. “And who knows? Maybe your experiment will be the one to change the world.”

He drops a notebook in front of me.

“Or,” he says, winking, “at least make it an easier place for a few folks.”

I sneak a glance at Grant Gupta, who is my second best friend after Franki. Grant is the best striker on our soccer team and has been the school-wide spelling bee champ since third grade. He's also the shortest kid in our class and wears glasses as thick as the bottom of a soda bottle.

A hand shoots up across from me. It's Dolores Bryant's, the self-appointed Queen of the Nerds. Anybody who wants to keep a low profile knows to steer clear of her. “I have a question. Quite a few, in fact.” She stares down at something in front of her. A list, I bet.

Mr. P pulls a toothpick from his pocket and nods at her. “I like questions,” he says, popping it into his mouth. “Shoot.”

“Yes, well … can you tell us how exactly this journal will be graded? Do you have a syllabus, or some sort of rubric? I'll definitely need a rubric.” Groans are heard around the classroom, but Dolores ignores them. “I am planning on going to medical school, and this class is very important to me.”

A spitball flies past my ear and lodges itself in the back of Dolores's braid. Whistles are heard from the back row.

Mr. P puts his hands out as if he's stopping traffic.

“Now listen up, y'all,” he says, rolling the toothpick around with his tongue, “there is no rubric for this assignment, only one rule, you hear?” He surveys the room, his eyes growing cloudier. “You've got to write stories that come from your gut.”

My own gut doesn't feel so good. What's wrong with this guy? We're supposed to be dissecting frogs and mixing chemicals, not writing stories in some stupid journal. I look around to see if anyone else is as weirded out as I am, but if they are, they're sure not showing it.

He balls his hand into a fist and pushes it against his stomach. “I want you to open those gates and let your imaginations run as wild as a pack of ponies on a wide-open prairie. Set your ideas free, and see where they take you.”

The bell rings, and everyone grabs their book bags, stuffing the journals inside. As I pick up mine, a sharp jolt of electricity zips up my arm and through the hairs on the back of my neck, making me drop the journal to the floor. Mr. P bends over and picks it up.

“You like writing, son?”

I shrug. “It's not my favorite subject.”

He nods. “More of a science guy, huh?”

“Science just makes more sense to me.”

He smiles, and the cracks and crevices on his cheeks grow even deeper. “I want you to listen to me carefully, Charlie. A true scientist won't spend time on the things that make sense. He will ask questions about the things that don't. And even when he's figured out the answers to those questions, he still won't be completely satisfied. He'll always come up with more.”

I'm trying to make sense of what he's saying, but the room is getting hot, and Grant's standing in the doorway, waving at me to hurry up. No one wants to get caught talking to a teacher, especially not on the first day of school.

“Mr. P, if I don't hurry—”

He holds the journal out to me. “Words can be powerful. Believe in their magic and anything can happen.” His eyes sparkle like someone lit a firecracker behind them. “Do you believe in magic, Charlie?”

I blink. “You mean, like card tricks and stuff?”

“Not exactly,” he says, moving his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “You better get a move on. No sense in being late to another class.”

 

CHAPTER

4

“So, how was it?” my dad asks as I slide open the door of his minivan and dive in, face-planting onto a leftover veggie burger.

A voice from the backseat answers for me.

“Charlie got pantsed at school today,” my little sister singsongs, bouncing up and down on her seat. “And … guess what else.”

“Here we go,” I mutter into the burger. Lucy's only in fifth grade but always manages to know stuff, especially if it's about me.

“My brother,” she says, so loud that I bet even the lobstermen down at the wharf can hear, “wasn't wearing any
underwear
!”

Even though I can't see his face, I'm pretty sure my dad is grinning. “Charlie?”

“I couldn't find a clean pair,” I mumble.

“I mean, come
on
,” Lucy continues. “What kind of moron doesn't wear underwear to school? Especially
middle school
!”

I look up and shoot her my most evil stink eye, wishing for the millionth time in my almost twelve years of life that Lucy Burger had never been born.

The passenger door flies open, and my older sister climbs in, waving to her gang of groupies like they've just crowned her Miss Massachusetts.

“Did you hear, Stella?” Lucy bounces higher, eager for as much attention as she can get. “Did you hear the big news?”

Oh, great. The last thing I need is the Queen of Coolness knowing about this. “Lucy,” I say, shaking my fist in her face. “If you say another—”

Stella turns and flashes her bright-white smile in my direction. “Getting pantsed isn't a big deal, Charlie,” she says. “It happens.”

Like she would know. No one would even think about pantsing Stella Burger. She's been on the student council for three years in a row and on the dance team for two. She's so bent on becoming the most popular person ever to walk the halls of Gatehouse Middle School, I'm surprised she can even remember my name.

My dad pulls the van away from the curb and looks at me in the rearview mirror. “So … how was the rest of your day?”

“Weird,” I say.

“Weird?”

“Yeah,” I say, shaking my head. “It's just … well, science class wasn't exactly what I thought it would be.”

His eyebrows shoot to the top of his forehead. “But you love science.”

I come from a long line of scientists. My great-grandfather was a chemist who helped create nitroglycerin, which was later used to make dynamite. My grandpa Burger was a chemistry professor at Harvard. According to my dad, Gramps never invented anything but was willing to “die trying.” Whenever I ask what that means, my dad gets this pinched look on his face and says it doesn't really matter, because things worked out for the best. Which I guess is sort of true, since instead of becoming a scientist, my dad went to cooking school and invented a veggie burger that's so popular, people drive from all over New England just to eat one. A Burger's Best Veggie Burger is a local favorite around Cape Ann.

Still, I think I'd rather invent stuff that blows up than a burger made of bean sprouts. I guess that's just me.

“It's my science teacher,” I say, digging a half-eaten box of Nerds out from under my seat. “He gave us these journals and told us that we're supposed to write stories in them instead of lab reports. And…” I mumble, “he looks like he's older than dirt and just stepped out of the Wild Wild West.”

Stella kicks off her sandals and laughs.

“Oh … you got Mr. P,” she says, putting her feet on the dashboard. “I never had him, but I've heard he does the same thing every year—hands out a bunch of fancy leather notebooks to all his sixth graders, then tells them stuff like, ‘Your stories will change the world,' and ‘Writing is magical,' right?” She studies a bright-pink toenail. “Don't worry—he'll disappear around fall break and come back ready to teach science.”

“Disappear?” My dad glances over at her, then back at the road. “Where does he go?”

Stella shrugs. “Somewhere exotic, like the Caribbean or Cambodia … I don't really pay attention to stuff like that.”

“So what happens to the journal writing?” I ask. Maybe things are looking up.

“Finito,”
she says, picking off a piece of polish. “Everyone says that eventually he loses interest in the whole writing thing and starts teaching about gravitational pull and the speed of light … junk like that.”

Great, I think—staring out the window as we pass the wharf, Wowee Hair Salon, and Hampton's Hardware—two months of torture before we get down to the good stuff. What a waste.

My dad glances back at me again. “Cheer up, Charlie. In celebration of your first day of middle school, I'm cooking meat tonight.”

I sit up straighter. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

He nods. “You betcha, buddy. Bacon lasagna cooked to order by yours truly.” Having a dad who's a vegetarian chef means meat gets cooked in our house only on special occasions.

“Ewww,” says Lucy. “Animal flesh is revolting.”

“Hey now,” says my dad, turning off the main street and onto our narrower one. “This is a special day for your brother.” He winks at me. “First day of middle school means lots more responsibility, right, son?”

I force the corners of my mouth to turn up.

“Maybe he could start with being responsible enough to put on underwear,” murmurs Lucy.

“Button it, freak show,” I tell her.

She leans up against the seat, and I can smell her strawberry lip gloss. “Just because I am two years ahead of my class in math and a way better soccer player than you doesn't make me a freak, Charlie,” she says, batting her eyelashes at me. “It makes me gifted. Big difference, buddy boy. Big.”

“All right, you two. Enough.” My dad pulls into our gravel driveway and cuts the engine. “Everyone, out.”

Lucy and I unbuckle at the same time, then race for the mailbox. I get there first, lift open the front flap, and snatch out the envelopes, holding them high above my head so she has to jump for them. It's a battle we've waged for years.

But today, something other than a bill or a piece of junk mail falls out of the pile and drops onto my sneaker. It's a regular envelope, but right away I recognize the gold seal in the corner and the return address: Cape Ann Soccer Academy, Gloucester, MA.

Lucy stops jumping.

I flip it over, and my stomach does a flip, too. It's addressed to me, Charles Michael Burger.

Lucy's mouth hangs open, her eyes all buggy. “You got the Letter.”

Stella, who had been walking with my dad, stops and turns to us, her face looking like she just took a swig of sour milk. Even though Stella couldn't care less about soccer, she knows what this means. Rejections from the academy come in the mail. Acceptances come over the phone.

“Open it,” Lucy demands.

“Nope,” I say.

Lucy stomps the ground, her curls bouncing like springs on her shoulders.

“Come on, Charlie. I promise I won't—”

A sudden string of four-letter words from the front porch cuts her off. We both turn in time to see my dad's grocery bag split open. Onions, celery, and a bag of organic apples spill onto the front porch. My special-occasion bacon lies in a puddle of goat's milk.