SuperZero (6 page)

What BigaByte has eaten up so far:

• Gra's turnips
  
• Mom's catalogue of Buy One Get One Free (because it had a picture of a can of tuna on its cover)
  
• Dad's brand new tennis shoes
  
• A whole set of tennis balls
  
• All the jellies that Mom made (Yippee!)
  
• A poster of a very meaty WWF wrestler off my wall
  
• The papier mâché sculpture of a dancing woman that some aunt gave us
  
• Mom's recipe book of unbearably terrible food she keeps cooking (Yippee again! This dog may be useful after all.)
  
• Gra's dentures
  

What BigaByte has NOT eaten so far:

Any of the special dog food that my dad rushed out to buy for him.

*

I sat high on my study table in my room, far enough from BigaByte because I noticed he liked ankles. He slept on my rug, snoring and rumbling and letting out burps and farts at regular intervals.

Suddenly, I heard my name whispered. ‘SuperZero!'

Whaaat? Could this dog talk too?

‘SuperZero!'

The voice came from the window. In a bright square of sunshine, I saw a pigeon sitting on the ledge plucking at its feathers. Was the pigeon talking? Was I finally getting my superpowers—hearing animals talk?

Then slowly a shape appeared. Blank. ‘How's the monster mongrel?'

‘Shh, he's asleep!' Then I remembered how everyone in class was being so mean to me and snapped, ‘Why are you here?'

‘Hey, I'm sorry about earlier. Look, I'm here to help you. I feel really rotten about the um . . . rotten time you're having.'

I eyed him suspiciously but then, I needed a friend badly. So I gestured him in to the room.

Blank sat on my bed, feet up and far away from the snoring BigaByte. ‘Look, l had this idea. How ‘bout we do some research? See how all the superheroes got their powers, huh?'

It made sense. A little. Okay, a lot. We got on to my computer and began to google.

The Incredible Hulk: Some experiment to do with gamma ray radiation. Whenever he got really boiling mad, he'd turn big and green and powerful.

‘Can you turn angry and try?' asked Blank.

‘Nah, I've been angry tons of times. Almost all the time nowadays. I don't turn green at all.'

‘Your nose turns red. Maybe that's a start?'

‘Bah, read on.'

Spiderman: Got his powers when a radioactive spider in some science experiment lab or something bit him.

‘That's not gonna happen. Nothing wants to bite me—I tried.' A snore escaped from under the bed.

Blank whispered, ‘BigaByte could bite you. But I guess he'd just chew off your leg or head or something. Not much use as a superhero if you had no head.'

We moved on. Blank said softly, ‘Whoa, Frankenstein's monster—scariest of them all. All because of an experiment gone wrong.' Then he said happily, ‘Here's a guy I love. Obelix. He's super strong because he fell into a big pot of magic potion when he was a kid.'

I chewed on my cape. ‘Hey Blank! Something's weird here. Everyone's getting superpowers because of experiments and stuff, y'know. So all we need to do is find someone who's doing an experiment, right? And then I get bitten or fall in or get zapped by radiation or whatever.'

‘Yesss!' shouted Blank. The idiot! Because that woke BigaByte up and we had to throw him the biscuit jar to keep him munching. No really, the jar, because the biscuits were long gone. BigaByte settled down to chew the jar.

‘He's cute, really,' I said. ‘And I've always wanted a dog.'

‘He's not a dog. He's a black hole—everything disappears inside him. Where does it all go?'

We moved to the dining room to find something else to stuff BigaByte with, and as we passed the TV, we saw Tara Rumpum throwing her arms around.

‘She's epic!' sighed Blank. ‘I think she's the coolest thing since . . .'

‘Shaddup!' I shouted, because she was saying something that was an incredible coincidence.

‘And who would say that from this little town, one of the future forces of the world may emerge. An innovation as life-changing as the wheel . . . as . . . as the printing press, as . . . as false teeth! Here, in this big churning cauldron, is an experiment that has successfully and cheaply converted cow dung to biogas, which will change the way the world uses fuel forever and ever and ever and . . .'

Blank and I stared at each other. An experiment! We turned and scooted out of the house super quick, with BigaByte waddling behind us as fast as his fat legs would allow.

Mom called after us, ‘Blank, how nice to see you. Would
you like some jellies? I made them this morning . . . now, wherever have they gone? I left them to cool right here.'

We were a cloud of dust in the horizon by then.

The biogas place was on the outskirts of the city. A high wall surrounded the compound, but what's a high wall to ten-year-old boys, right? A boy who can't climb a wall isn't worth his boyness. BigaByte couldn't climb, of course. But we heard him go to work on chewing chunks of that wall. He'd bite through it before we could say ‘Tara-rum-pum!' And there she was, all shiny hair and long red nails, waving around. Till she saw us. Well, me.

‘You!' she yelled. ‘The boy who flooded the building. Stay away!'

No girl in high heels is fast enough for a boy on a mission! We zoomed in under elbows and through legs to where the experiment was happening. People in white coats and masks were adjusting tubes and poking something around in a big pot.

Magic potion! Experiment! It had all the right cues. Wow, finally, finally, FINALLY I was going to get my superpowers. And with that happy thought in my head, I dived right into that pot.

‘No! No! No!' shouted everyone, while I suddenly realized I was sinking in something that felt like slush, like quicksand—like FREAKING COW DUNG!!! And then I realized why everyone around had masks. This thing smelled like fresh poo! Which it was! From a hundred cows. And I was voluntarily swimming in it.

Now the people around weren't shouting any more. They were holding their stomachs and laughing. Blank was so embarrassed that he just vanished. I gasped for breath, churning my arms around while Tara Rumpum got her cameraman to focus on me. Again!

Then amidst all that laughing came a burst of ferocious growling, and the crowd scattered, screaming. BigaByte came charging in like a stallion. (A fat, funny one, but who cares). And when he saw me sinking there, he just threw himself roaring at the big pot and chewed off a big
wedge of it so that it cracked, and I just sort of fell out, covered in cow dung.

Outcome of the experiment that went wrong:

• I got no superpower but I got a smell so bad that no one came near me for a week.
  
• Tara Rumpum put my picture in the papers with the headline 'The Bullshit Boy'.
  
• Dad has given Mom an ultimatum that either I get out of this Superhero School or he gets out of the house forever.
  
• I have a dog who loves and rescues me (and this makes up for all the rubbish outcomes above). I gave BigaByte my bi-monthly report card to chew up to show how much I loved him.
  

Blank, BigaByte and I'd started hanging out together most of the time now. Since Blank was usually invisible, it would look like I was having a conversation with a dog. And what a cool dog too! Like there was this one time when he actually saved me from TRex, who's a big bully at heart (if he has a heart, which I doubt).

So when TRex caught me trying to talk to Anna Conda during Super Swimming class (which is only great for the kids who have fins or super lungs actually), his red eyes grew redder and smaller until they were just slits, and if he could breathe fire, he would have. And it's tough enough to breathe underwater without trying to breathe fire at the same time.

When we were in the showers after the swim, I saw this huge shadow towering over me, blanking out all the light. TRex stood there. ‘You think you're cute, huh?' he growled.

I didn't know what the right answer was but I had this image of Mom telling me to always tell the truth. ‘Uh, yes.'

Wrong answer! He lunged out at me and with his scaly
arms picked me up and tossed me into the air. I bounced off the ceiling and came slithering down the wet wall of the shower cubicle. If you're wondering why I didn't scream for help, it's because I only had my duckie undies on, and you know what a laugh riot they'd caused already. No way was I gonna squeal!

TRex was now aiming a kick at where it would hurt most when I saw another shadow. Shadows were the in thing that day I guess. Of a small fat sausage on four legs. The most beautiful shadow in the world to me right then.

BigaByte launched himself at TRex. He took the big, hulking dino-boy totally by surprise and the red eyes grew wide for an instant. TRex, who was around ten times larger than BigaByte, had to really struggle to shake my loyal dog off. TRex's huge prehistoric jaws and razor-sharp teeth kept snapping at the air and his powerful tail thrashed around. But BigaByte wasn't called BigaByte for nothing. He held on to the back of the big bully's neck and wouldn't let go. It gave me time to think at least.

Then I got it. I turned the shower to hot—boiling hot—and aimed it at TRex. ‘You guys were wiped out with hot lava the first time around. Guess you just never learn, dontcha?' I yelled, while a shocked TRex recoiled violently, and then scalded by the water, he let out a scream that sent poor BigaByte flying off into the wall. The scream shook the school building because a whole bunch of students and teachers came running over.

The school cheerleading team was screaming outside, ‘Gimme a T—Gimme an R—for Teeee-Rex!' The Dice, a snotty kid in mid-school, was taking bets about how many teeth I would lose.

Everyone squeezed through the shower-room door to see my remains. Weren't they surprised then to see me standing in victory (though still in only my yellow duckie undies) with a whimpering TRex huddled against the wall, crying for his mommy. (BigaByte, who was stressed out enough, was now eating up all the soap.)

Anna Conda let out a gasp. She looked at me with a look I hadn't seen in ages. The ‘You're my hero!' look.

I heard a buzz around my ear, and smiled up at whom I knew by now would always be around when I most needed him. The Fly whispered, ‘Well done, boy. You know now that being a hero is not always about how big and strong you are. Sometimes, it's about how small you are and how big you think.'

I think I'll take some time to figure that out.

Right now, I was soaking in some rare admiration. A lot of the kids who'd been bullied by TRex were going out of their way to be nice to me. Even Slime Joos was being a lot less slimy around me. Dare I hope that things were improving around here?

Anna Conda slid up to me after class and batted her eyelashes at me shyly. She put a big card into my hand and said softly, ‘I hope you can make it, SuperZero. It would make my day.'

I opened the card, which was full of roses and hearts and other girlie things, but that's not important—it was an invitation to Anna Conda's birthday party! And she was inviting ME. I was so, so happy!

I stopped on the way home at a toy shop and pushed my nose against the window. I gazed at all the pink doll's houses and skipping ropes and skating shoes in the shop window, already imagining myself giving Anna Conda the best gift ever.

‘If only I had some supermoney to get superrich superfast, BigaByte,' I sighed, ‘I'd buy Anna Conda everything in this shop.' It took all my strength to pull BigaByte back. He was ready to chew up the glass window just so I could go in and make my wish come true.

I gave him the shop sign to eat up to show him how much I appreciated it. The shop sign read ‘Pretty Kitty Toy Store'. It must have tasted like cat!