Almost Super Read online

  DEDICATION

  To Spencer, John, Steven, Jared, and Isaac, who once asked me for a bedtime story about superheroes, and refused to take no for an answer.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  1. Who Gave Great-Aunt Silva Matilda Fizzy Lemonade?

  2. I’m Always Afraid of Getting Lava Down My Tights

  3. Drink Your Goat’s Milk

  4. If He Offers Candy, Don’t Take It

  5. In the Bag, Benny. In the Bag.

  6. I Wish I’d Brought a Pair of Suspenders

  7. Watch This

  8. We Don’t Even Have a Taco Night

  9. Get the Triple Meat or Get Nothing

  10. This Is Beautiful Prose, Mr. Snuggly Bear

  11. Eyes on the Johnsons, Not the Paper Towels

  12. One of Us Is About to Be Disappointed

  13. It’s Been a Rough Week

  14. That’s Not a Surprise, That’s a Kick In the Teeth

  15. I’ve Always Wanted to Try Broccoli

  16. I Don’t Think That’s Even Correct Grammar

  17. To the Mitsubishi!

  18. It’s the Only Day of the Year We Get to Eat Caramel

  19. This Is No Ordinary Glove Compartment

  20. It’s Probably Safe to Assume You Don’t Get Invited to a Lot of Parties

  21. I Don’t Feel Like Holding Hands Right Now

  22. Do You Feel It?

  23. Would You Be So Kind as to Explain This Mess?

  24. My Name Is Rafter

  25. Do You See That?

  26. I Have a Question for You, Mr. Jones

  27. Don’t Think This Is Over

  28. You Can’t Just Ignore the Laws of Mathematics

  29. No One Answered

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  WHO GAVE GREAT-AUNT SILVA

  MATILDA FIZZY LEMONADE?

  I woke up on the worst day of my entire life fully expecting it to be the best day of my entire life. Sometimes life is funny that way. And when I say funny, I don’t mean funny as in, “Ha-ha, that’s a good joke, thanks for sharing.” I mean funny as in someone coming to your birthday party, punching you in the stomach, and then stealing your new puppy.

  Which I guess is to say it’s really not that funny at all.

  I remember everything about that day—the sights, the sounds, and the smells. More than anything, I remember the sharp stench of burning drapes.

  I smelled the smoke before I actually saw the fire. It was Monday afternoon and I was sitting on the piano bench next to my younger brother, Benny. We were in the living room, surrounded by the rest of my relatives living in Split Rock. Everyone had gathered for the big event.

  The reason I had cause for alarm was not just the smoke, but because Great-aunt Silva Matilda—who sat sleeping peacefully in her wheelchair—had just burped.

  And that meant trouble.

  Big trouble.

  “Does anybody else smell smoke?” I asked no one in particular, trying to keep my voice calm. I didn’t want to alarm anyone, but I guess when you ask a question like that—does anybody else smell smoke?—it’s bound to cause at least a little excitement.

  “I smell something too,” Benny said.

  Uncle Chambers, sitting on the couch, stuck his nose into the air. “I don’t smell any—” His eyes grew wide, and he pointed at the window. “FIRE!”

  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he hollered, “We’re under attack!”

  It might seem strange that my uncle thought we were under attack, but actually it’s not. My family gets attacked all the time. It kind of comes with the territory. But this time, as it happens, it wasn’t an attack. Aunt Verna was the first to find the source of the smoke. “Oh my goodness, it’s the drrrrapes!” she said, pointing toward the window.

  Now that I knew where to look, I could see the flames licking at the curtains like hungry snakes, growing larger by the second.

  Everybody got frantic at that point. We might have gone into full lockdown mode—because Uncle Chambers kept screaming that we were under attack—if Grandpa hadn’t taken charge. He blew a puff of air into his bristling mustache and rearranged the straw hat atop his head. He started barking orders from the corner, radiating so much authority he didn’t even need to stand up.

  “Chambers,” he said, hooking his thumbs into the straps of his overalls. “We’re not under attack. Stop blabbering—you’ll frighten the children. Everybody else, pipe down. I’ve never heard so much yammering in all my life. Jack! What are you doing standing there like a slack-jawed gopher? Set your refreshments down and try to be helpful.”

  My cousin Jack stood near the door, holding a plate of green-olive pie in his hands. He looked like he’d been slapped out of a daydream. He set his refreshments down, freeing up his hands.

  This was important.

  A lot of people can do amazing things with their hands. Some people can paint a picture that looks as pretty as you please. Others can pick up a hammer and nails and build an entire house. But I’m willing to bet you’ve never seen anything like what Cousin Jack can do. You see, Jack’s last name is Bailey. And Baileys are different. Not just a little bit different. A lot different.

  Jack held out his right hand—though actually either one would have worked—and a stream of water poured from his palm. It was like those fancy fountains where the dolphin statue shoots water out of its mouth. Cousin Jack’s aim was true. Water struck fire, which sputtered and died in a hiss of steam. The drapes—now black and smoking—were drenched.

  Baileys are super.

  “Who gave Great-aunt Silva Matilda fizzy lemonade?” Grandpa asked. He said it in the same way that you would say, “Who smeared chocolate pudding all over the dog?” His face was stern. “Didn’t I tell everybody the bubbles make her burp?”

  You see, Great-aunt Silva Matilda is a Bailey, too. I’ve been told that in the “good old days” she could breathe fire just like a dragon in a fairy tale. She could knock over a supervillain at fifty paces and brown a marshmallow at a hundred. And though her crime-fighting days are long behind her—as are her s’mores-making days—she still has a little bit of power left.

  “Point her toward the fireplace, will you, Rafter?” Grandpa asked me. “She’ll likely be burping up a storm all afternoon.”

  I got up and wheeled Great-aunt Silva Matilda over to the fireplace, making sure to point her toward the bricks. In spite of all the ruckus, I watched the clock like a hawk. At that point, I still very much believed that today would be the best day of my life.

  Great-aunt Silva Matilda first burped at 4:02. By the time the fire was out, it was 4:03. And by the time I’d situated Great-aunt Silva Matilda by the fireplace and returned to my seat at the piano, the clock on the wall read 4:04.

  Nineteen minutes. In nineteen minutes, I would finally have a superpower of my own.

  That is why I expected it to be the best day of my life.

  At 4:23 in the afternoon, on February 29, any Bailey age twelve or older gets a superpower. Benny was twelve, and I was thirteen, so we’d both get a power at the same time. No one in our family knows why it happens to us—why the universe chose the Bailey family to be the defenders of everything right and good. We don’t question why. We just accept the responsibility.

  Benny started counting on his fingers. After a few seconds of flicking them up and down, he turned to me and asked, “How much longer?”

  I looked at the clock, hoping it had advanced another minute. It hadn’t. “Nineteen minutes.”

  “Why do we get our powers at four twenty-three?” he asked. “I wish it were at four thirty. That would make it easier to do the math.” Benny brighten
ed. “Actually, it would be better if we got our powers at four o’clock, because then we’d already be superheroes!”

  Benny flexed his muscles, and I hid a smile.

  Benny threw the clock a sour look. “I think that thing’s busted. I’m going to get something to eat.” He left the room.

  I counted the number of superheroes in the living room. There were eleven total, counting Great-aunt Silva Matilda. In just a few minutes, we’d have thirteen. I couldn’t help it. I was grinning like an idiot.

  Benny returned with a plate of traditional leap-year refreshments—green-olive pie, toasted buckwheat, and a glass of fizzy pink lemonade.

  4:08. I couldn’t sit still for another fifteen minutes. I walked over to the window and looked at the gray sky and gray snow. I guess maybe I should’ve seen that as an omen—all that gray.

  My sixteen-year-old cousin Jessie played with two of my younger cousins outside. In our family, you aren’t told the family secret until you’re ten—old enough to keep it safe. Jessie would keep the two younger children outside while Benny and I got our powers.

  I walked back and forth in front of the window, kicking absentmindedly at pieces of charred curtain.

  “Rrrrrrafter Bailey, stop that pacing,” Aunt Verna commanded. “My goodness, it isn’t prrrroper!”

  Aunt Verna—she has a streak of crazy running through her at least a mile wide. She sat on the sofa with her legs crossed and a napkin draped with careful precision on her lap. Her back was ramrod straight and her graying hair was pulled back into a small, tight bun. Aunt Verna is obsessed with being proper.

  I thought about pacing more just to annoy her. One of the benefits of having an aunt who acts proper is that if I make her mad she can’t exactly throw me over her knee and whack me a good one. That wouldn’t be proper. But I didn’t want any problems, especially today. So I went back to the piano and sat next to Benny. Grandpa spoke up from his chair. “Verna, how are your speech lessons coming along?”

  “Oh my goodness, they arrrrre simply divine,” Aunt Verna replied. “You know, the Brrrrritish masterrred the concepts of good conduct and grrrrace hundrrrreds of yearrrrrs ago. In only two months I went frrrrom sounding like a rregular commonerrr to sounding like a Brrritish queen!”

  I mumbled so only Benny could hear. “I think she went from sounding like a crazy aunt with an American accent to a crazy aunt with a bad English accent.”

  That made Benny snort and then choke on his olive pie. I whacked him on the back, and he recovered. Aunt Verna glared at both of us.

  “What do you think yourrrrr superpowers will be, dearrrr nephews?” she asked. Her rolling r’s sounded more like a fake machine gun than a British aristocrat.

  Benny spoke up first, his voice filled with excitement. “I want to be a Speedy. If I can run fast, maybe I’ll lose my baby fat!”

  Benny has always been a little bigger than me. I learned pretty fast not to wrestle with him because I usually lost. Even though he’s younger, he’s about the same height. He has a round face, plump cheeks, and a little extra padding around his midsection. Whenever Grandma Stevens comes over—Grandma Stevens is my mom’s mom, so she doesn’t know about the Bailey family secret—she always pinches Benny’s cheeks and asks him when he’s going to lose his baby fat. It drives Benny nuts.

  Uncle Chambers, sitting next to Aunt Verna, rubbed his bald head and peered at Benny over his glasses. Uncle Chambers is missing about four teeth, and when he smiles, the black spots next to his white teeth remind me of a piano. “A Speedy? Cousin Roy is a Speedy, ain’t he, Verna? Over in Oak City?” Aunt Verna likes to speak properly. Uncle Chambers . . . not so much.

  “Isn’t he, dearrrrr,” Aunt Verna said. “The prrrrroper term is—”

  “And ain’t Cousin Roy only seventeen years old? I reckon we won’t get another Speedy in the family for at least a decade—probably two.” He pointed a crooked finger at Benny. “You know what we really need is another Stretcher. Great-uncle Ike is getting on in years, and he’s starting to lose his elasticity. One of these days I wager he’s going to snap in two. That won’t be fun, I guarantee. I don’t want to be around to clean up after that mess.” He made a snorting sound and drained his cup of fizzy lemonade.

  “I don’t want to be a Stretcher,” Benny said. “They don’t get to wear supersuits, and they’re stuck in special-ops missions because they’re not that good at fighting. I’m going straight to the battles!”

  “Well,” Uncle Chambers said, “I think you’ll be a Stretcher.” He gave Benny a stern look.

  Benny folded his arms, returning Uncle Chambers’s look with a glare of his own.

  “What about you, Rrrrrafterrrrr?” Aunt Verna asked me.

  I could have told them the truth—I knew exactly what power I wanted.

  Grandpa had superstrength. He could lift a car as easy as lifting a cat. But his strength was in more than just his muscles—he was an anchor. We’d just had that scare with the fire, and he’d taken care of the situation without having to put down his cup of fizzy lemonade. If a mob of supervillains had come crashing through the front door, Grandpa would have kept us all safe. He would have saved the day.

  That was the power I wanted. And that is what I wanted to do: Save the day. I had a secret dream that someday my family would be in trouble. Nobody would be able to save them, and then I’d come along. I’d come along and save the day.

  But I wasn’t about to tell all that to Uncle Chambers and have him make fun of me.

  “I’ll be happy with whatever power I get,” I said. Apparently that was a proper answer because Aunt Verna smiled and nodded.

  I checked the clock again. 4:14.

  Nine minutes left.

  I had to find something to help kill the time. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Dad had given Benny and me phones an hour earlier. Like a lot of things we own, the phone wasn’t exactly normal.

  I opened up the Bailey Family Locator app, which showed a map of the city. I zoomed in until you could see our neighborhood. Flashing yellow dots showed that all twelve of the Bailey superheroes were gathered at our house, but this app would show me where everyone went, no matter where they were in the city. They’d just put a new cell tower in the city dump, and my reception had improved by leaps and bounds.

  Mom came in from the kitchen. “Ah, we need more lemonade.” Her hands glowed blue, and the almost-empty bowl sitting on the coffee table floated into the kitchen. Mom left, and a moment later the bowl floated back to the coffee table, filled with pink liquid.

  Dad appeared in the doorway. “Let’s get going!” he shouted, rubbing his hands together. He turned and faced the kitchen. “Everybody into the living room. Hup, hup, look lively.”

  Benny squirmed next to me on the piano bench. “It’s almost time,” he said, his voice quivering with enthusiasm. “Rafter, it’s almost time. I can’t believe it’s almost time!”

  I could feel my heart thumping against the inside of my chest. It felt like a trapped animal trying to break out of a cage. The rest of the family began to squeeze their way in around the furniture.

  Rodney, my older brother, came into the room and took a seat. He rested a tablet computer on his knees and poked at it while he waited. Sometimes Mom gets after Rodney for spending too much time on his computers, but since his superpower is all in his brain, he has a good excuse. Rodney manages our family’s entire computer network and security system.

  Anxious murmurs filled the air. It reminded me of the few minutes right before a baseball game starts. Everybody in the stands is watching and waiting and you know that any second the batter is going to approach the plate, the pitcher will throw the ball, and the game will be underway.

  I checked the clock.

  4:21.

  My stomach lurched.

  Dad was stuck at the door of the living room. He tried stepping around relatives before he finally gave up and used his power. He floated to the ceiling, hovered to the middle of the roo
m, then landed gently on the floor.

  If I didn’t mention it, Dad can fly.

  Dad never passes up the opportunity to make a speech (or a lecture, depending on the situation). He cleared his throat, and the room fell silent. “Thank you all for coming,” he said. “It’s nice to be surrounded by family on a day like this. It’s our hope that with the addition of these new superheroes, we’ll finally be able to triumph over our archenemies—those vile, evil, dirty, rotten supervillains—the Johnsons!”

  Dad shook his fist, and a wave of grumbling spread across the room. Several of my relatives shook their fists in reply.

  I know the name Johnson doesn’t exactly sound like the best name for supervillains, but it’s all part of their plan. With a normal name, they fit right in with the regular citizens of the city. It’s quite sneaky when you think about it.

  4:22.

  “Ever since this noble feud began back in . . . oh, who can remember when it began, really . . . anyway, ever since then we have kept the citizens of Split Rock safe from those villains. And we’ll continue until we best them!”

  Everyone nodded, a few of my relatives clapped, and Aunt Verna said, “Hearrrrr, hearrrrr, my good chap.”

  Dad didn’t get any further with his speech. The clock—which had been synched up with an atomic one on the internet—flipped to 4:23. The hoping, the waiting, and the wondering were about to come to an end.

  Starting with Benny.

  “I’m feeling something weird,” he said. “It’s like a tingling in my face!” Benny rubbed his face and squirmed on the bench.

  “Hot dog, it’s happening!” Dad shouted. “Rafter, do you feel anything?”

  I shook my head, then had a horrible thought. “Hey . . . am I adopted?”

  Dad shook his head. “And even if you were, as soon as you’re legally a Bailey, you get a power on the next leap year.”

  This was true. That’s how Mom got her power—after she married Dad.

  Benny’s eyes were shut tight. He didn’t look like he was in pain, but he didn’t look comfortable, either. He tilted his head to one side and closed his eyes even tighter. His eyebrows scrunched together, and he hugged his arms across his chest.