The Nameless Hero (7 page)

“First time tanning?” The woman leaned forward on the
counter, her frosted blond hair falling across her orange shoulders like an avalanche. “I can always tell. So let me guess—now that summer’s here, you kids want to get your beach bodies looking good, am I right?”

“Er, actually,” I stammered, “we were sort of—”

“No need to be embarrassed,” she interrupted. “I’m not here to judge your pale, pathetic bodies. Believe me, I didn’t always have this perfect tan.” She indicated her orangey skin. “I had to
work
to look this good.”

“We’re not here to get a tan!” I said insistently.

This seemed to get the employee’s attention. She stared back at me. For a second or two, the only sound was the repeated
click-click
of her painted fingernail against the counter.

“Well,” she said. “If you’re not interested in a tan, then why
are
you here?”

Sophie stepped forward and placed the slip of paper onto the counter. “We’re here about this.” She slid the paper forward.

The woman looked at the paper. The clicking of her fingernails stopped.

“Where did you find this?” she asked.

“It just sort of … appeared,” Sophie said.

“And what about you three? Did you also receive these notes?”

I nodded and pulled the slip of paper out of my pocket. The dark-haired girl did the same. Milton hesitated. Then he set his jaw and stepped forward to lay his invitation down.

With the four slips in her hand, the woman glided out from behind the counter. A wave of perfume swept past as she crossed the room. When she reached the front door, she pressed a button on the wall. The steel grate began lowering again, blocking any view from outside.

When she turned back around, I felt a jolt of shock run through me. All of a sudden, there was something very different about her.

Her shoulder-length bleached hair had somehow shortened and become a deep auburn color. But that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Her orange tan and chapped lips were gone, replaced by pale, freckled features and bright green eyes.

She looked like a totally different person.

“My name’s Brandy,” she said, and even her voice had changed. “Sorry to Shift so suddenly. We have to keep up appearances here. That’s how I ended up with the beef jerky complexion. Come along. Gavin’s waiting for you.”

I was having trouble following everything. Did she really just transform into another person? And who was Gavin?

Brandy led us across the salon until we were standing in front of the tanning bed. “This will transport you to headquarters.”

“Hold on a second,” Milton said. “We’re supposed to go to headquarters in … a tanning bed?”

“Of course,” Brandy said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. She lifted the top of the tanning bed. “Now … only one person can fit inside at a time. Who’s first?”

With her ability to look like anyone she wants, Brandy is a master of disguise. But when she mysteriously goes missing, Joshua is left wondering whether she ever revealed her true self
.

“I’ll go,” Sophie said.

As she stepped forward, I gave her a surprised look.

“What?” She shrugged, smiling. “I’ve never taken a ride in a tanning bed before.”

Sophie climbed inside and lay flat on her back. I caught one last glimpse of her face before Brandy lowered the top. Pressing a button on the side of the tanning bed caused a faint buzz to grow louder and louder until it filled the room.

I flinched as a panel of the wall opened up, revealing a tunnel. All at once, the tanning bed shot forward, vanishing into the tunnel with a
whoosh
. The sound grew fainter until I couldn’t hear anything at all.

“Our headquarters is located a half mile beneath our feet,” Brandy explained. “It takes the pod about a minute to get there.”

Pod?
She must’ve meant the tanning bed. Before long, I could hear it again from somewhere deep in the tunnel—only this time the sound was growing louder. The pod must’ve been approaching. A moment later, the tanning bed shot back through the hole in the wall and came to a stop where it had been before.

When Brandy lifted the top, the bed was empty. Sophie was gone.

Milton was the next volunteer. Brandy helped him into the tanning bed, then lowered the top. I could hear his muffled voice from inside.

“Hey, shouldn’t there be a seat belt in here? And where do the air bags come out in case of—
WAAAaaaaahhhhh
!”

Milton’s scream vanished into the tunnel, along with the tanning bed.

While we waited, I turned to the stranger from the bus. She had a birthmark below her right eye that was shaped exactly like a star.

“Hi,” I said. “Have we—”

“Met before?” The girl shook her head. “We haven’t.”

“Well, my name’s Joshua.”

A mischievous grin formed on her face. “I know.”

I stared at her. First the out-of-control bus without a driver, then the tanning salon employee who could change her appearance, and then a complete stranger who knew my name.

There’d been way too much craziness packed into one morning.

I opened my mouth to ask what the heck was going on, but my voice was drowned out by the sound of the returning pod.

“I’ll go next!” the girl volunteered. She fixed her mysterious smile on me for a moment longer, then climbed into the tanning bed.

Once the pod had whooshed out of the room again, I glanced up at Brandy. “The way you transformed back there—that’s your power?”

Brandy nodded. “It’s called Shifting.”

“So that means you can be anyone you want to be?”

“Pretty much,” Brandy said in a dull voice.

“That’s awesome! The first thing I’d do would be to change myself into someone taller. And stronger. Or maybe I’d impersonate the president for a little while, just to see the looks on people’s faces.”

Brandy smiled knowingly, like she’d done all that and a lot more. “Shifting can certainly be fun. The unfortunate thing is you spend so much time pretending to be other people, you start to forget who you really are.”

I guess we had more in common than I’d thought. Like Brandy, I’d spent a lot of my life pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Maybe I couldn’t alter my appearance, but I’d been through enough false identities to last a lifetime.
Several
lifetimes, actually.

When the tanning bed reappeared, Brandy said, “Your turn.”

I still wasn’t 100 percent sure, but after seeing the others go before me, I couldn’t back out. I climbed inside the tanning bed and settled onto the soft cushion.

“See you soon.” Brandy smiled down at me. Then she lowered the top, and everything went dark.

Something clicked near my head: the sound of the pod locking closed. Next came the humming sound that I’d heard before—except louder now, pulsating all around me.

I waited with my sweating hands clasped by my sides. And then—all at once—everything kicked into motion.

It was like I was on one of the roller coasters back at AwesomeWorld. Except this time I was on my back, sandwiched inside a tanning bed. The pod swayed—first right,
then left. The force pulled my body with each turn, but I was too tightly packed inside to slip around.

After following a sharp curve, the pod began to slow down. Just as it seemed to be coming to a stop, an eerie feeling came over me. There was a moment of nothingness.

And that was when the floor dropped away.

My stomach shot up into my throat as I plummeted downward. The pod veered and twisted. All I could do was clench my teeth and wait for it to be over.

When everything finally leveled out and the pod coasted to a stop, I let out a relieved breath. My entire body felt jittery from the ride.

With a sharp click, the top of the tanning bed was unlatched and lifted upward. Light washed into the enclosed space. I blinked, waiting for my vision to adjust. All I could see was the dark silhouette of someone standing above me.

“Welcome! You must be Joshua!”

The man standing beside the tanning bed was small and stocky, with a stomach that bulged out in front of him. He was mostly bald, but a dense thicket of hair poked out from beneath the collar of his shirt, as if all the hair on his head had migrated downward and eventually settled on his chest.

“My name’s Gavin,” he said in a gruff voice. “Gavin Garland.”

I climbed out of the tanning bed and wobbled in place on unsteady legs. Looking back where I’d just been, I was suddenly overwhelmed with embarrassment. A charred black burn mark stretched across the inside of the tanning bed. It was shaped exactly like my body.

Spontaneous combustion. You never quite know when it’s going to kick in.

“S-sorry,” I said. “That happens sometimes when I get excited.”

“No need to apologize,” Gavin said. “The journey to headquarters tends to provoke strong emotions. And strong emotions trigger the powers of Gyfted children. I had to cover my eyes when I opened the pod and saw your friend Sophie inside. She was glowing quite brightly.”

The mention of Sophie made me realize that she wasn’t there with us. And neither was Milton.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I was just wondering—”

“Where your friends are?” Gavin smiled. “Not to worry. They’re in the main room.”

I had a lot more questions, but Gavin was already moving at a quick pace. “Come with me,” he called without turning around. “We have a busy morning ahead of us.”

I jogged to catch up, following Gavin down a twisting corridor. Along the way, I noticed a series of tiny video cameras attached to the ceiling. They swiveled to track me everywhere I went.

Gavin led me through a doorway and into a vast open space. The walls and floor were completely white, stretching out in all directions, making it tough to tell where the floor ended and the walls began. There was nothing else in the room—no furniture, no windows. A sea of white that looked endless, even though I knew it couldn’t be.

In the middle of all this were Sophie, Milton, and the weird know-it-all girl. Beside them was a guy who looked a couple of years older than the rest of us. There was something oddly familiar about him. He had a confident
smile and light brown hair that swept over his forehead.

Gavin gestured to the group. “I believe you already know Sophie and Milton. And this is Miranda.” He pointed to the dark-haired girl. She waved, shooting me another mischievous grin.

Next Gavin turned his attention to the older guy.

“And this is nFinity.”

That was why he looked so familiar. nFinity was one of the most famous superheroes in the country. Although he was only fifteen, he showed up regularly on YouTube videos and daytime talk shows. He was a regular in the pages of
Super Scoop
, the magazine devoted to superheroes and supervillains.
Super Scoop
covered hard-hitting news like “Which Evildoer Was Spotted Kissing Her Archnemesis in a Nightclub?” or “How Raven Fury Lost Twenty Pounds by Exercising with a Mutant!”

The reason I hadn’t recognized nFinity was because he wasn’t wearing his usual uniform and mask. Instead, nFinity was sporting a more casual look: a fashionably wrinkled T-shirt and blue jeans.

As we approached the group, I cast a puzzled glance around the enormous room. “Where’s everyone else?”

“There is nobody else,” Gavin replied. “Gyfted and Talented is a
very
selective program. We only invited the best of the best.”

“But …” I thought back to the brochure, the images of happy kids sitting around a holographic campfire. “I guess I kind of expected something more like—”

“Summer camp?”

“Well … yeah.”

“The highly confidential nature of this program requires a certain amount of misleading advertising. The truth is, Gyfted and Talented goes far beyond any ordinary summer camp.”

Gavin must’ve noticed the hesitation that was still gripping me.

“No need for concern.” His face formed into an assuring smile. “If you aren’t happy here, you’re welcome to leave anytime. I only ask that you stick around long enough to find out what we’re all about.”

I felt a little of my reluctance fall away. “All right.”

“Excellent!” Gavin clapped his hairy hands together and ushered me to join the rest of the group. “Now—before we proceed, I believe this would be the best time to dismiss our uninvited guest.” Gavin’s gaze shifted toward Milton. “I’m terribly sorry, my boy, but this meeting is only for those who’ve been chosen.”

“But—but I had an invitation,” Milton stammered.

“Your forgery may have convinced Brandy, but it’s not going to work on me. This is an elite group. And unfortunately, Milton, I’m afraid you weren’t selected to be a part of it.”

Milton’s face dropped. His bottom lip quivered. I’d seen him get skipped over when teams were being picked. I’d seen kids tease him and call him names. But I’d never seen him look this devastated before.

“You were able to make it this far,” Gavin said. “Which
shows that you’re quite clever. But I’m afraid that isn’t enough to be a part of this group. Now, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in the corridor until we can escort you back to ground level—”