Sidekicks (5 page)

“Dake Dah Combainer! De Boop id bine,” I ordered Spelling Beatrice.

“Oh, what? Now I’m not good enough to fight?” The Complainer complained.

I raced around Le Poop, faster than he could rotate with his butt in the air. He wasn’t able to track me. The speed caused a vortex of debris to spin wildly around Le Poop. He raised both his arms to launch a double-pit attack, but a large piece of debris swept up by the vortex hit him in the temple and ended his stinky reign of terror.

I turned to help Spelling Beatrice with The Complainer, but suddenly the roof caved in.

The last thing I saw before the rubble fell on me was the laughing face of The Professor, smoking pointer stick in hand and the rope that once held his wrists at his feet.

Chapter Six

Evil Leaves the Cap off the Toothpaste

I dug myself from the rubble. I was bleeding, but not too badly. They had left me for dead, trapped under a ton of collapsed ceiling. The Professor and The Complainer had revived Le Poop and taken the other sidekicks.

One thing that’s really cool about being fast is that sometimes you can do things faster than people can see. So after The Professor blasted the roof, I dove for cover under the Sidekick Super Computer desk.

And I made it.

It didn’t protect me completely, but enough to save my life — and if you ask me, that’s more than you can expect from furniture purchased at a yard sale.

“More money for me!” Pumpkin Pete had gloated when he stuffed the leftover twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. We had spent an entire Saturday driving from garage sale to garage sale looking for new Sidekick Clubhouse furniture.

Every bone in my body ached, but I had a job to finish. I had a whole lot of saving to do, and I was alone.

And then I heard the groan.

It was Exact Change Kid. He had been buried beneath the rubble as well. He was a little more beaten up than me, but otherwise okay. I helped him up.

“Thanks, Speedy,” he moaned. He looked at the mess of rubble and scratched his head. “It’s going to take forever to find all my pennies.”

“Don burry, dahm dure dere are benty mo in da Thidegick Thuber Gouch dofa gushions.”

Exact Change Kid gave me a blank stare. “Huh?”

Spelling Beatrice’s Scrabble tile nose clip! I took it off and tried again.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty more in the Sidekick Super Couch sofa cushions. Come on. We’ve got to save them.”

“How?” Exact Change Kid asked.

Sometimes, you don’t worry about the how’s. Sometimes you just have to dive in and hope things sort themselves out. When people are in danger and you are their only hope, it’s really one of those times.

“Look!” I spotted a
T
tile on the ground by the huge hole in the far wall. Good old Spelling Beatrice had left her tracking tile behind, hoping someone would be able to use it. “We can track the homing
Q
tile that Spelling Beatrice still has!”

“Quick!” Exact Change Kid said, and I was very surprised, as I didn’t think “quick” was even a word in his vocabulary. “To the Sidekick Super Rocket of Blastingness!”

“We have a rocket!?” I said, shocked.

But Exact Change Kid didn’t answer. He raced toward the hole in the wall, and I ran as fast as I could with my throbbing ankle.

“Oh. Wait a sec,” he said, stopping.

Exact Change Kid walked to a door on the far side of the Sidekick Super Clubhouse and knocked.

“What?” an irritated voice called from inside.

“Who’s in there?” I asked Exact Change Kid, having always thought that that door was just a closet.

“Latchkey Kid,” Exact Change Kid replied and cracked open the door.

“Hey, me and Speedy are going out for a bit, okay?”

“Okay . . . ,” Latchkey Kid replied. He sat on a couch, watching TV, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“There’s some leftover meat loaf in the Sidekick Super Freezer of Frozen Justice,” Exact Change Kid told him. “Just put it in the microwave on high for four minutes, okay?”

“I know! I know!” Latchkey Kid spat back.

“You know, it’s a beautiful day out. Maybe you could go to the park or something?”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

“Okay. We’ll see you around nine o’clock,” Exact Change Kid told him. “If it’s any later, we’ll call, and then maybe you can have Mrs. Johnson come over.”

Latchkey Kid didn’t answer. He stared at the TV and took a swig from his soda. Exact Change Kid slowly closed the door.

“Maybe we should call a sitter?” he asked.

“Come on!” I urged and pulled Exact Change Kid through the gaping hole in the wall.

We raced across the Sidekick Super Additional-Parking Parking Lot of Justice.

“Where’s the rocket?” I asked.

Exact Change Kid raced up to a cardboard box and crawled inside.

What awaited me inside was not an elevator that would take us down to the ultra-technology level of the Sidekick Super Clubhouse. It wasn’t a transporter that would beam us to the bridge of the rocket. It wasn’t even a go-cart with a chipmunk running on a treadmill as the engine.

“This isn’t a rocket!” I yelled. “This is just a cardboard box with knobs and dials painted on the inside!”

Exact Change Kid hung his head, broken by the pounding hammer of reality. “I know, I know,” he sobbed. “I was hoping no one would notice.”

I crawled out of the box and kicked it. My foot broke through the cardboard side.

“Oh, great!” Exact Change Kid shouted from inside. “Now it’ll never get off the ground!”

Spelling Beatrice’s tracking tile beeped in my hand. It grew faint. “Come on! The signal’s fading! They’ll be out of range soon!”

The two of us raced from the parking lot and stood on the street corner. I could run there myself, but my ankle was still hurting from being buried under the rubble, and I had to save all my strength for the final battle.

And there
would
be a final battle. I wasn’t about to give up.

“There!” Exact Change Kid shouted, pointing down the street.

“What?” I said. “It’s just a bus.”

“Just a bus to you. A fortress of solitude to me!”

The bus pulled over at the curb and we raced inside.

“Sir, by the power vested in me through the use of Spandex, I’m commandeering this bus for the battle against evil!” Exact Change Kid told the driver.

“Whatever,” the driver said, pulling from the curb. “That’ll be two dollars and ten cents. Each.
Exact change only
.”

Exact Change Kid leaped in front of me and thrust out his arms as if he was protecting me from a charging bull.

“Stand back, Speedy,” he said, filled with determination and purpose. “Stand back and watch me shine!”

Back at the Sidekick Super Clubhouse, Earlobe Lad raced into the main room.

“EVERYBODY! LOOK!” He shouted and pointed to a pair of giant lead earmuffs wrapped around his head. “NOW YOU CAN TALK AS LOUD AS — HEY... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?”

The microwave beeped. Latchkey Kid looked up from behind the open door of the fridge.

“They’ll be back around nine,” he said, popping open another can of soda.

Chapter Seven

These Chapter Titles Make No Sense

“Amazing.”

“What?” Exact Change Kid asked, raising his sullen head from his hands.

“It’s just amazing, that’s all. Absolutely amazing.”

“What is?” he asked again.

“Nothing. It’s nothing,” I replied.

Exact Change Kid hung his head again. This time it sunk a little lower between his knees than before.

“Let me ask you a question,” I began, trying my best to not yell. “If I could
not
run fast, and I mean really,
really
fast, do you think I’d call myself Speedy!?”

“No.” Exact Change Kid whimpered.

“Then why in the world does a sidekick named Exact Change Kid NOT have one hundred percent exact change the only time in his stupid life he’ll ever really need it!?”

Okay. I was shouting now.

“I didn’t know my utility belt was back in the rubble. How do you expect me to have exact change without it?”

“Then maybe you should call yourself Exact Change Utility Belt Kid!”

“That’s a stupid name ... although Exact Change Utility Belt
Boy
does have a nice ring to it.”

The two of us sat on the curb. We’d gotten half a block before the driver had kicked us out. “Exact change only!” He laughed as the door hit me in the butt on the way out. “And happy Halloween.”

“Now what?” Exact Change Kid asked. “I hate to admit it, but I’m not much good without my change.”

“
Without
your change? I don’t know where you’ve been for the last two hours, but you’re not much good
with
your change, either!”

Okay, that was a little low and the moment I said it, I felt bad. But I was on edge, and when I’m on edge I do edgy things.

I felt my ankle. It still hurt too much to use my super speed. Sure, you might be able to walk on a sprained ankle, but try running 90 miles per hour on one. I had to use my brains. It was the League of Big Justice’s only hope.

Use my brains!? The League of Big Justice didn’t stand a chance.

“Do you still have your cell phone?” I asked.

Exact Change Kid pulled a phone from one of his hidden pockets. Time seemed to stop as I faced one of the most difficult choices I had ever made. Once I dialed, there’d be no turning back. Spelling Beatrice’s beeping
T
sounded in my hand, as if to remind me my sacrifice meant nothing if it saved lives. I pressed the phone to my ear.

“Hi, Mom? I need a favor . . .”

Within fifteen minutes, my mom arrived in her Oldsmobile station wagon. We climbed into the car.

“Guy tells me you throw pennies,” my mom said as Exact Change Kid buckled his seat belt.

Trust me. It just went downhill from there.

Spelling Beatrice’s tracking tile did the job and led us directly to the secret base of the Brotherhood of Rottenness. It was hidden in a garbage dump. How fitting.

At least for Le Poop.

I was hiding behind a small mound of flies, leftover pizza, and something that might have been alive at one point but now was just kinda stinky. Exact Change Kid was across the street getting change at a mini-mart.

And my mom was in the parking lot.

I had told her this was just a training drill.

If I had told her the truth, there was no way she would have let me go anywhere near the garbage dump. She parked in the lot to wait for our “drill” to be over so she could take me home.

At least I’d convinced her to stay in the car.

From my hiding place, I had watched the evil ones carry Boom Boy, Spice Girl, Spelling Beatrice, and Boy-in-the-Plastic-Bubble Boy through a large hidden door, and I was waiting for Exact Change Kid to return before we attacked.

That’s what I
wanted
to do, but the thing about evil is, it just seems to have a mind of its own. The large door started to slide closed. Once it did, I knew there would be no way for us to get into the base. It was now or never.

I bolted from my hiding spot. Pain shot through my ankle, but I ignored it. I had to. With each super-speed step, the pain stabbed higher up my leg. The door didn’t care how much my ankle hurt. It was closing. I pushed my speed up to 72 miles per hour and dove, barely sliding past the threshold as the door slammed shut and cut me off from the rest of the world.

That’s when things really got bad.

Everything started to shake. That’s never good when you’re in a building, because buildings that shake when there’s no earthquake can only mean one thing: Two Ton Tom was attacking.

I turned to face his artery-clogged attack, but he wasn’t there. I was alone. So if a building shakes and Two Ton Tom isn’t attacking, then what that really means is that the building isn’t a building.

It’s a rocket ship.

Below, Exact Change Kid raced up with a fistful of dimes. “Take that!” he shouted, and he flung the coins at the ship as it ripped away from its garbage-covered camouflage and slowly lifted into the sky.

I peered through a window in the ship’s side. The last thing I saw was Exact Change Kid covering his head as the dimes fell back to earth and rained down on him like candy from a broken piñata.