Eighth-Grade Superzero (2 page)

He doesn’t puke in public.

I turned Night Man into a series of graphic novels; I focus on the story, Joe C. does the art. When I started writing, Donovan liked to draw a little, so he covered that. But when Joe C. came along with his three years of illustration classes, we took it to another level. Donovan stopped helping pretty fast.

We’ve put together
Night Man
Volumes I through VI already, and I tried to write the Big Finish all summer, because my sister Monica told me that eighth grade is your last chance to cement a positive image. I was going to present
Night Man,
like
BAM!
at the first day of school assembly — but something else ended up on display.

“These are good,” I say, handing back his drawings. “I need to get inspired; I want the ending to be really big.”

“You’ll come up with something,” Joe C. says. “You always do.”

Ruthie plops down next to me, almost knocking down Joe
C.'s row of Juiced! bottles. I’m afraid to look at her lunch. Last week she made a vow to “effectively utilize nutritional resources” because of all the people starving in the world, so she mixes different leftovers and calls it a meal. She says her usual quick prayer and pulls out slices of beets and cheese on an end piece of whole wheat bread. Ruthie’s been my best friend ever since kindergarten, when we were both in the West Indian American Day Junior Parade and she said I wasn’t a real Jamaican. Yeah, I was born right here in Brooklyn so I’m more “Yankee” than “Yardie,” but she came here when she was three, so whatever.

“I may get the New World Order Collective going again,” says Ruthie. “I can’t be the only person who cares about thinking globally.”

“Maybe you should start another petition,” says Joe C., elbowing me.

“I already have. Cristina Rodriguez was in the library. She was my first signee.”

“Hey,” I say. “I bet if you add up all of the signatures on all of your petitions, Ruthie, you’d have, like … tens of names!” Joe C. and I laugh. Ruthie does too. Ruthie’s okay. Even though she takes a bite of my pizza.

“I’m sorry that I don’t concentrate on more important things, like comic books,” she says, rolling her eyes. Not okay. She grabs some of my chips.

“Can I offer you something to eat?” I ask. “Something of yours?” She takes more of my pizza. I grab it back from her just as “Sparrow” Barrow and Vijay Chandra come by our table. Sparrow’s chattering as usual, and Vijay’s carrying a camcorder. They do the school TV show,
Talkin Trash,
which comes on during
homeroom. Sparrow got her nickname because she has the skinniest legs and the chirpiest voice ever.

“Uh … Roger?” says Vijay. Everybody used to call him The Terrorist, especially during the annual Tolerance Week activities, but then he grew a hundred feet last summer and now he thinks he’s all that. A lot of girls do too.

“It’s Reggie,” I say.

“Yeah, right,” he says, not looking at me. He turns a little so he can face the girls’ table next to us; it looks like he’s filming their legs. A couple of them are wearing skirts, so knowing Vijay, he’s probably aiming a little bit higher.

Sparrow clears her throat. “So, um, Reggie, we’re doing an exposé on cafeteria food, and we have a proposal for you.” (Giggles.) “You’re … a
celebrity,”
she says (giggle), “and you can put that to good use. We want to do on-air taste tests of cafeteria food. You can be our Puke-O-Meter.”

Ruthie snorts. “And you think we can’t hit new lows,” she says. “I salute you, Erica.”

“Thanks,” chirps Sparrow. Then she thinks about it for a minute. “Whatever.” She turns her back on Ruthie while Vijay lines his camera up with Ruthie’s chest area.

“I’m not interested,” I say. “At all.”

Sparrow starts to say more, but she gets distracted by something a few tables away. “Come on, Vijay, it looks like there might be a food fight.” She scampers off on her little bird legs. Why she wears miniskirts every day and Mialonie Davis doesn’t is one of the world’s great mysteries.

Justin walks into the cafeteria; half the girls start giggling and the other half touch their hair. Donovan runs over to
him and I see that the back of Donovan’s shirt says B
OOTY
H
unter
. I hope Blaylock busts him.

It used to be the four of us: me, Donovan, Ruthie, and Joe C. We sat together at lunch. We’d play two-on-two chess in Underwood Park. Donovan taught us poker. Then one day he just didn’t show up. We went over to his house to see what was up, and his mom was all, “He’s out with his friends.” I thought
we
were his friends.

“It would be nice if those two didn’t rule the school this year,” I say. “If we were all about looking out for one another instead of hierarchy.”

“Yuck, ‘rule the school,’ “says Ruthie. “That’s so … Western, so imperialistic.”

“Whatever, Secretary-General,” I say. She’s gotten worse since we did Model UN. “This is school. Someone is always at the bottom of the food chain. I just don’t want it to be me anymore.”

“Nobody likes people who spend their time wanting to be liked,” she says. “That’s one of the laws of … humanity or whatever.”

“Easy for you to say. You
like
being weird.” I duck and say “Remember Dr. King!” as Ruthie lunges for me.

“Make change, be change,” she says, eating one of my peach halves.

“Why don’t you run for president?” I shoot back. “You’re all about Change with a capital C.”

“Ha! A revolutionary like me do something so … mainstream? Besides, you people are not ready for me full-strength.” Ruthie’s parents have a storage room full of posters that say things
like “End Poverty Now,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “They LIED.” They use them every six months or so when the whole family marches on Washington for one of the many things they march and yell and write letters about.

“You could pull a Brian Allerton,” I say. “If another candidate gets all subversive, people might pay attention.”

“That is
not
what being subversive is about.” Ruthie pulls out a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies and hands it to me. “What did that do for Clarke anyway? And where’s Brian now? Total establishment.” Blaylock came down hard on Brian, and word is that his parents paid a boatload of money to get him into private school.

“Did you bake these cookies, or did your mom?” I ask.

She gives me a look and mutters, “My mom.”

I wolf them down.

“I gotta pee,” says Joe C.

“Thanks for letting us know,” shoots back Ruthie. “Here, take some of this stuff with you,” she adds, giving him some of our lunch trash. “And you know I’ll be watching you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recycle, reuse,
repetitive,”
he says, getting up. “See you guys later.” He turns to me. “Low-pro. You know, just let it go.” He smiles and shakes his head. “Poet and didn’t know it! I could kiss myself.” Ruthie and I both groan, and he leaves.

“Is youth group on Saturday or Sunday this week?” Ruthie asks. “Where are we meeting?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “I’ll e-mail Dave.” Dave is the congregation librarian and youth group leader. Youth group is basically a few of us hanging out and talking about churchy stuff, but it’s
not boring like church. We’re supposed to meet in the library during services on Sundays, but sometimes we have to move the meetings when the bishop bogarts the library for “meditation on the Word.” That word is usually “nap.”

Lunch is almost over and I can hear girls screeching and squealing as Hector does his grand finale cafeteria trick — shooting milk out of his nose. I see Justin standing next to Mialonie’s table, and she’s smiling up at him like he’s a movie star or something. Donovan is talking to her friend Josie, who’s cute, but not as cute as Mialonie.

“Give me that,” I say to Ruthie, pointing to the empty milk carton. She hands it to me, and I stand up and toss it into the trash. Two points.

“Woo hoo!” Ruthie yells, but nobody hears.

I make it home just in time to grab a new bag of plantain chips and a Coke before big sister Snuffleupagus gets back and sucks down all the food in sight. I think Pops is around, but he doesn’t come out, so I just head upstairs, skipping over the creaky steps. Who knows what kind of mood he’s in; sometimes it’s worse when he’s all fake happy, like a morning show host. He watches a lot of TV while he waits for job phone calls that never come. When I was little, I used to hate it when he’d work late, but now I’m praying for him to have a meeting to go to or something.

There’s a Post-it from Mom stuck to my door about the mess in my room. She never gets that
I
know where everything is, and that’s what matters, right? Right. I don’t hear any roaring, so
Monica must be out on the courts trying to dunk on some old guys. She spends hours out there, challenging anyone who shows up. She and Pops have been doing extra drills together so she can get ready for community-league tryouts in a few weeks. Guess there’s a Big Scary She-Male division.

I step over the books on the floor and turn on my Mac. There’s an e-mail from Reverend Coles — he sends out these corny form letters to all the kids that supposedly belong to our church. I guess their parents don’t make them go as much as mine do. The subject line of his e-mail is “WAZZUP from a member of the God Squad!” I press delete. Mom and Pops are always pushing me to go see Reverend Coles to talk about spiritual things. They actually want me to open up to someone who says to call him “Reverend
Cools.”

Sometimes I talk to Dave; he does God-talk without preaching. I never say anything to him about the whole Pukey deal, but I think he knows. I hope that’s not because he can smell it on me, like Loser Funk or something. I shoot him an e-mail and try to be kind of casual and jokey, like a guy who says “hey” instead of “hi” and gets hugs from all the girls.

I log out and check out the rest of the Night Man ideas that Joe C. gave me. I pick up my notebook and a pen, but I’ve got nothing.

“Reginald!” Uh-oh. It’s Pops.

“Coming.” I wipe the crumbs off my face and run downstairs. Pops is in the kitchen.

“I just bought some plantain chips…. You haven’t happened to have seen them, have you?” Uh-oh. That “have/haven’t happened” stuff — he’s in a bad mood.

“Uh, yeah, sorry … I’ll go get them.” I start to run back upstairs.

“Forget it. Let’s just figure out dinner so your mother doesn’t have to come home and cook.” He sighs. “So, what’s new at school, son?” he says in this real hearty TV dad voice.

“Nothing,” I say. He keeps looking at me, so I add, “Oh — we’re having a special election do-over … for school president….”

The danger with talking about the election is that he’s always telling me the same old story about how he was elected Head Boy or Top Dog (or whatever it was called in old-time Jamaica) by a unanimous vote because he had the respect of his peers.

“Now that’s something to get involved in — leadership! You know, I was the first boy at St. Joseph’s to be elected —” he starts.

“Yeah, I remember, Pops. I’m not running for anything.” I wait for him to say I should be a leader, blah blah, but he just sighs as he takes a huge package of free-range chicken from the top refrigerator shelf.

“I don’t know why your mother keeps shopping at that Whole Foods,” he says. “We can’t afford this eco-eating anymore. Chop up the onions and garlic and let’s get this started.”

I get a couple of red onions from under the sink and pull out the Big Knife. The front door slams. The Monster’s home.

“Be careful with the door, Monica!” Pops yells.

“Whatever,” says my sister Monica, stomping into the kitchen. “My day sucked. What’s Little Lord Suckyboy doing — ruining dinner again?”

“Monica, watch your mouth.”

We all have to, Pops, I think. With her hair pulled back like that, all we see is her big mouth.
I start chopping, hard. I have to squint to keep from tearing up.

“Sorry,” Monica says sarcastically. “I forgot we live like we’re on the Family Channel.”

“Don’t start. Not today,” Pops says as he rinses the chicken. “I had two interviews canceled. They hired other people before they even saw me.”

Monica and I look at each other. Truce for now.

“Maybe you need a new look, Pops,” she says.

“They didn’t
see
me, Monica,” snaps Pops. “That’s the point.”

“I know, but in general, I mean, maybe you could get a whole makeover, like your look, your attitude, the way you talk and everything … maybe be a little less, um, old-school?”

Pops drops the meat, washes his hands, and walks out.

“Good job, hobgoblin,” I say.

“Shut up, hobbit.” Monica starts rubbing spices onto the chicken pieces.

“Don’t mess it up like you did last time,” I warn. “That was nasty.”

Monica shoves me, then washes
her
hands and walks out. Looks like I’m making dinner. I’m an okay cook. I get the chicken simmering and head to my room to tackle my mountain of homework. As I go up the stairs, I pause in front of the office and catch a glimpse of Pops mumbling to himself as he types on his computer. Probably working on another cover letter.

Dinner’s pretty good, if I do say so myself. And I might as well, because no one else is saying anything. Mom made a rule that we have to eat together at least three times a week. She says it gives us time to savor the flavor of family life, cherish the big moments. We actually used to have fun at dinner, playing word games and stuff; now we usually mutter a little, shovel the food down, and run away. I say grace, even though it’s Monica’s turn. That’s about it for table talk.

We have lemon pound cake for dessert. Mom has been getting up in the middle of the night to bake. It’s kind of weird, but I’m not gonna say anything, because the results are all good. Dessert cheers things up a little, so I try out a little meaningful conversation for us to savor later.

“I’ve been thinking,” I say through a mouthful of cake. “I need a new image at school.”

“When are you going to give it up?” Monica says. “You’re a lost cause.”

“Go eat some babies, Voldemort,” I say.