The Nameless Hero

JOSHUA DREAD

The last day of the sixth grade wasn’t turning out the way I’d expected at all. And that was
before
the substitute librarian tried to kill me.

I was in my room, looking for something to wear, when an explosion rocked the floor beneath me. Whatever it was, I had a feeling my mom and dad were involved.

Take it from me, when you have supervillains for parents, you get used to unexplained noises in the house. It might’ve been a new invention my dad was testing out. Or maybe one of my mom’s experiments had gone terribly wrong.

Either way, I wasn’t going to let it bother me. Not on a day like this. The school year was finally coming to an end. Summer was right around the corner.

Just the thought of it made me smile. Two and a half months of sleeping late and watching TV, not worrying
about homework or schedules. Two and a half months of nothing.

If only I’d known how wrong I was.

My dad was seated at the dining room table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Strands of morning sunlight shone through the window, reflecting off the abnormally thick rims of the glasses he’d customized to regulate his super-vision.

“Morning, Joshua,” he said.

“Hey, did you hear a noise a minute ago?”

“Noise? What kind of noise?”

Before I could answer, another crash erupted. It sounded like it had come from the kitchen.

“
That
kind of noise,” I said. “What was that?”

“Oh, that’s just Elliot,” Dad said. “He’s making pancakes.”

All of a sudden, a robot lurched into the room. He looked a little like a tin trash can, with protractible arms on either side of his body and flat paddles for feet. His head was a cube-shaped hunk of metal that wobbled on top of a thin plastic neck.

Elliot had made his entrance.

Dad had come up with the idea for Elliot after sharing a ride with Captain Justice seven months earlier. It had been awkward enough for my parents to carpool with
their sworn enemy, the superhero they’d been fighting for years. On top of that, Dad had also seemed a little jealous of Stanley, Captain Justice’s robot butler in the driver’s seat.

“Why can’t
we
have a robot butler?” Dad had complained once we’d gotten home. “We’re two of the most successful supervillains in the world, right?”

“Of course, honey,” Mom had said, massaging the back of his neck.

“Then we deserve a robot butler too!”

And so Dad had set out to build one. But the thing about my dad is, when he gets really excited about an idea, he becomes kind of impatient. It’s part of the reason why our house is so packed with inventions. He’s always working on five things at once. And it’s also part of the reason why all these inventions are usually a little bit … flawed.

Elliot was a good example. He’d only been in service for a couple of weeks, but he’d already destroyed half our house. He’d smashed the front window during his attempt to clean it. The living room rug had been torn to shreds as a result of his “vacuuming.”

Breakfast didn’t seem like it was going to turn out any better.

“The pancakes look delicious,” Dad said to Elliot.

I glanced at the charred brown mush that Elliot was carrying. It looked more like grilled boogers than pancakes. But Dad just went on talking to Elliot like he was the best robot butler in the world.

“Thank you for preparing breakfast,” he said.

“You are welcooooome,” said Elliot in a slurred electronic voice. “It was my pleasummmmack!”

Did I mention that whenever Elliot spoke, his voice came out sounding like a radio going haywire? Dad kept promising to fix the robot’s speech function. Obviously, he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Elliot set down one of the plates on the edge of the table. The other plate missed the table and crashed to the ground in an explosion of porcelain shards and lumpy batter. He looked up at my dad with his big glowing eyes.

“My apologies, Mr. Dormmmilack.”

“That’s quite all right, Elliot. And my name is pronounced
Dominick. Do-mi-nick
.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Dummy-neck.”

“Close enough,” Dad said in a reassuring tone.

We both watched as Elliot attempted to pick up the shards of broken plate, tearing out several large chunks of the dining room floor in the process.

“It’s important to remain encouraging,” Dad whispered to me as Elliot tottered back into the kitchen, scattering pieces of porcelain behind him. “I really do think he’s made some progress.”

A crash rang out from the kitchen. It sounded like an entire drawer of silverware had been dumped on the floor.

“I’d better go check on that,” Dad said, jogging through the door.

A moment after Dad left the dining room, Mom entered.

“Morning!”

Having a robot butler isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds. Most of the time, Elliot’s attempts to tidy up around the house result in widespread destruction
.

She leaned against the doorframe, her long black hair still wet from the shower. Her green eyes crinkled at the sides as she smiled at me.

“What happened here?” she asked, glancing down at the smashed plate and the missing sections of the floor.

“Elliot,” I said.

Mom nodded. No need for further explanation.

“He’s in the kitchen with Dad right now.” I could hear the muffled sound of Dad speaking encouragingly to Elliot. “How long are we gonna have to put up with that thing?” I asked.

“Which thing?” Mom asked. “The robot or your dad?”

“I was referring to the robot.”

She let out an exhausted sigh.

“This is important to your father,” she said. “So I think we have to support him.”

“But why do we even need a robot butler in the first place?”

“Ever since that ride with Captain Justice, your father has—” Mom glanced toward the kitchen and lowered her voice. “He’s felt a little … 
insecure
.”

I heard the rumble of drawers opening and closing. My dad’s voice called out, “No, Elliot. Please don’t put the cheese grater in your mouth!”

Mom took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “This hasn’t been easy for either of us, you know. We spent the last ten years fighting with Captain Justice. Now we’re not sure how we’re supposed to feel about him.”

I couldn’t deny that my parents had been acting unusual
for the past seven months. At least by their standards. Neither of them had been involved in a single attempt to destroy the world. Not even a
continent
.

It was bizarre.

Don’t get me wrong. I was happy to see my parents considering other career options. For as long as I could remember, I’d known that they were different from other parents. And not different in a good way. More like they were different in a molten-lava-is-about-to-wipe-out-New-Jersey-and-it’s-all-their-fault kind of way.

All along, I hoped they would find jobs that were more normal. Or at least less evil.

Now it looked like that was exactly what they’d done. Over the past seven months, Mom hadn’t once used her power to control vegetation as a part of any supervillainous schemes. Instead, she’d been totally caught up in her job as a horticulture professor at Sheepsdale Community College.