SuperZero (3 page)

Today, we had a surprise visit from our school Double-Headmistress. She came in to our class and gave us a long speech about us being sterling stars of the future and splendid saviours of the city and special specimens of humankind. Both her heads kept talking, so no one else got a chance to get a word in.

Head 1: ‘Boys and girls . . .'

Head 2: ‘. . . and mutants and subspecies and . . .'

Head 1: ‘. . . you have all come together from near and far. Your families have sent you to us. Because you are unique. You are about to change the world. Each of you has been found by your parents to be supremely gifted . . .'

Head 2: ‘. . . and supremely weird . . .'

Head 1: ‘. . . stop interrupting me! Now, where was I? Yes, your parents have trusted us to bring out your superpowers, your abilities to fly or teleport, or morph,
or read minds, or—'

Head 2: ‘Yawn!'

Head 1: ‘Stop yawning. Stop interrupting!'

Head 2: ‘Stop talking!'

This went on for half an hour. Double-Headmistress gave us another long, moving, long, powerful (did I say long? Yawn!) speech about how we should use our superpowers only to do good and fight evil.

Head 1: ‘. . . and so I'd like to end by saying . . .'

Head 2: ‘. . . who is that rude boy who's asleep?'

So of course, they had to wake me up again, from when I'd fallen asleep again, and I bumped my head again and got another lump AGAIN.

Anyway, Double-Headmistress finally came to the point. There was apparently a chain-snatcher loose in the city and we superkids had been called in to the rescue.

Hoodie hoo!

‘I wanna go!' I jumped up.

Double-Headmistress's two heads swung around and dashed each other. Ow!

Head 1: ‘Ouch! And why, rude boy, must you go?'

Head 2: ‘Ouch! And why not?'

Anyway, Masterror made the team which, if anyone asked me, was useless. (Of course, no one asked me.)

There was Vamp Iyer, who's of no help in violent situations since he wouldn't draw a drop of blood and only drank milk, and Anna Conda (okay fine, she's not useless). And the last potential Catcher of the Chain Snatcher was . . . All the kids kept leaping up and holding their hands high. I just closed my eyes and focused. Good things come to those who wait (and focus). Focus—fowcussss—focussss—

‘Slime Joos!' barked Masterror.

Huh?

I headed home feeling lousy. Mom got hyper again. ‘My baby's got more spots. It must be measles. Let me feel your head . . . oh no—you're hot! You must have malaria. Or dengue? My god, you have dengue! From those mosquitoes. Or you could have that thing where your brain starts swelling—see all those lumps on your head—oh no! You also have a red gash on your cheek!' And then she wiped my ‘red gash' to find out it was only her lipstick. That shut her up for a while, and she went off to google what else I could possibly have got.

I sat near Gra who's always busy. I love looking at what he's up to and talking to him, though I know he can't hear half of what I say. He was pouring some orange stuff into a jar now.

‘I am no good at being a superhero, Gra. I just don't think I have it in me, y'know.'

He looked up at me and squinted. ‘What?'

‘I AM NO GOOD,' I said louder. ‘NO GOOD!'

‘No food, I know, I know,' he muttered. ‘There's never any food here. Your mother can't cook to save her life. I'm making guava jam. You want a lick?'

So I sat and licked a spoon of jam and told Gra about my rotten school day and finally ate half the jar of guava jam, and got a thumping tummy ache! (Mom is now googling diseases that have red spots and brain lumps and stomach pain.)

Itch, itch!

The day of the Great Rescue came. Anna Conda was sliding around the city, followed by Vamp Iyer and Slime Joos . . . and a big coconut tree branch (which, if you looked carefully . . . was me in disguise! You thought I'd really sit back quietly and let them do all the brave stuff?)

We went up one street and down another—nothing.

Our city has a lot of tall buildings in the office area, and the streets are usually blocked up with cars and people in a hurry. Only if you go out into the suburbs will you find pretty houses. And if you go further, to the blue hills on the edge of the city, you'll find our Superhero School. We're hidden in the middle of the hills, among tall pine trees. It's a pretty place to have a school full of nutjobs.

‘HELP!' The cry came from around the street corner.

Anna Conda slid over in a second. I saw her long tail disappear around the corner, with the other two charging behind.

My coconut branch and I went chasing after them, s-l-o-w-l-y. It's a little tough to run with a long cape and duckie undies and a coconut branch, you know.

‘Stop him! He stole my gold chain,' a hysterical red-faced woman was screaming and pointing. Of course, there were so many people on the roads that I had no idea who she was pointing at.

Anna Conda streaked after someone with a vegetable basket.

Vamp Iyer tried to grab someone selling sun shades by the neck.

Slime Joos started spurting slime at a whole bunch of tourists with cameras.

So, who do you think was the wisest? Me, of course. I ran at the woman. I would be smart and logical. ‘Tell me what happened,' I said, going up to her and patting her arm to calm her down.

‘Help!' she screamed again. ‘Here's another one! He's trying to steal my bangles!' She began to pummel me with her handbag, and suddenly, there was a whole crowd of people around us.

‘Where's her chain, you thief?'

‘Small boy like you and so evil!'

‘No, no!' I protested, ‘I'm the good guy!'

‘Then why are you hiding in coconut trees and attacking women?'

As the crowd began to grow, with me protesting my innocence and getting nowhere, I changed tactics. I managed to slide between their legs and run. A few gave chase. I ran as fast as I could, my legs pumping and the stupid cape flying behind. Someone would just grab that cape now and pull me . . .

. . . up . . .

. . . up into a tree! Huh? I found myself on a branch, wrapped up by a snake!

Anna Conda uncoiled herself from around me and before I could even say ‘Thank you' she glared at me. ‘Next time, just stay back in school!'

Number of chains snatched: 18

Number of chain-snatchers caught by superkids: 0

Number of times Masterror screamed at me back in school: 127

There was so much excitement today in class that as soon as the morning bell rang, everyone stampeded in. Even the stairs began to yelp. ‘Ow, ow, ow!' cried the stairs, ‘you guys are going to kill me!' Obviously, that stopped us for a bit, and we looked at the strange new talking stairs. I mean, they were not talking yesterday.

Of course, then Blank made himself reappear from the stairs, and he was all red and bruised. Serves him right for being invisible.

Anyway, the reason we were all rushing in was that it was our first flying class—and it was going to be taught by a guest lecturer. No Masterror! It was too good to be true.

Double-Headmistress was dressed to kill. Head 1 had a pink scarf, and Head 2 had a red wig on. They both looked flustered and giggly.

Head 1: ‘Today, we have the greatest master of the greatest art from the greatest . . .'

Head 2: ‘. . . well, he's the tiniest actually.'

Head 1: ‘This grand flying master has come down to
teach you at my invitation.'

Head 2: ‘Well, mine really. He likes red hair.'

While we tried to figure all this out, biting our nails in anticipation of our great guest lecturer, we heard a shout. Lizzie Lizard was running around in the class, her long tongue flicking in and out, trying to zap an insect. ‘It's a fly. Ah, got it!' she yelled.

Head 1: ‘No, no, no, not the Fly!'

Head 2: ‘That's our great guest lecturer! The Fantastic Flying Fly!'

There was a stunned silence in the class. Had our class on flying ended before it began? Lizzie Lizard hung her head, embarrassed, and poked out her long tongue again, dropping the Fly on to the teacher's table. The Fly looked green and sticky. He lay on his back with all six legs stuck in the air.

‘I have come here from the jungles of the Amazon,' he finally said. ‘I have escaped iguanas and eagles on the way. I will not let it all end in the stomach of a hungry girl! Let the class begin.'

And so the class began.

And it was epic!

‘Each one of you is amazing. Each one of you has a superpower that no one else has,' said the Fly, and he seemed to be looking at me straight in the eye. I saw hundreds of images of myself in his eye. Flies have compound eyes, in case you didn't know. They can see 360 degrees around them. I was really beginning to be in awe of this great little guy.

‘Some of you can fly, and some of you can climb. The main question is not how high you go up but how you come down.'

He wrote on a big piece of paper: ‘Fear of flying'. And then he folded it into a paper plane and threw it out of the window. The class was on the second floor and we all rushed to the window to see it flutter a bit in the wind and then swoop down to land in the playground sandpit. ‘Get it, Anna Conda,' everyone said. Anna Conda gracefully slipped right out of that window, and down the rainwater pipe and in a jiffy, she'd picked up that plane.

‘See?' said the Fly. ‘The flying class is not just about flying. The main thing is to channelize whatever power you have inside you.'

Everyone started practising. Slime Joos ejected this long stream of slime and slid his way down it. Blank just disappeared and reappeared down in the sandpit. I sat at my desk and made more paper planes.

There was a buzz in my ear.

‘SuperZero, go use your power, boy,' said the Fly.

I shook my head. ‘I have no powers.'

The Fly said, ‘Look me in the eye.' I did, again, but all I saw were images of a boy who could not fly or do anything cool. ‘I'm a zero,' I said. ‘SuperZero.'

‘You can be the biggest hero of them all. But only if
you believe you are.' The Fly flew off.

I closed my eyes and felt miserable. If only I had some way to get that paper plane. But I could not fly. Planes could fly, not boys. I felt so tiny and useless. I was a huge disappointment to everyone. And then I felt my head burning—that inexplicable heat. I felt something pointed hit my head. Loud gasps erupted from the rest of the class.

The paper plane had launched itself from the sandpit and seemingly flown up two floors to zoom in through our class window . . . and straight at my head. Another windy day? Or was there a chance—a teeny-weeny-micro-weeny chance—that I'd made it happen? But how?

The Fly was in front of me again, hovering and smiling.

I saw hundreds of images of a very happy boy smiling back at him.