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  Dedication

  For my boys

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. Very Fine Screaming, Son

  2. I’d Conk Him on the Head

  3. I’ve Always Wanted to Sing Bass

  4. If I Throw Up, It’s Going to be a Pudding Rainbow

  5. Today You Must Excel at Hunkering Down

  6. I’m Thinking I Need to Take Up Taxidermy

  7. I’d Love a Good Fight with a Ninja

  8. I’d Choose the Bear

  9. That Means It’s Bad News

  10. Please Tell Me They Have Manuals

  11. I Feel Like a Suitcase

  12. That Seems Like a Fine Next Step to World Domination

  13. We Don’t Need to Think

  14. A Jones

  15. Well, Now You’re Just Being Silly

  16. You Know I Don’t Think as Fast as You

  17. What If You’re Wrong, Rafter?

  18. Stragglers Will Have to Hitchhike

  19. Do You by Any Chance Speak Portuguese?

  20. Don’t Mind Us, We’re Just Here to Save the Day

  21. It’s Simple Mathematics

  22. Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaw

  23. Did You Hit Your Head on the Way Here?

  24. I Definitely Think We Should Use Our Angry Voices

  25. It’s a Trap!

  26. Well, That Was Easy

  27. Or 20.3 Kilometers, If You Prefer Metric

  28. He’s Going to Escape

  29. At Least I Got to Conk a Jones

  30. That’s Really Starting to Frost My Cupcake

  31. You Wouldn’t Hurt Me

  32. I Beat You Again

  33. Gotcha

  34. I Need Your Help

  35. I’ll Knit Them First Thing Tomorrow

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  VERY FINE SCREAMING, SON

  The only good thing about hanging like a sleeping baby—strapped to your father’s belly in an oversized canvas carrier—is that he can’t see it when you roll your eyes.

  But let me back up.

  Dad and I hovered over a lake. It was almost midnight and the Milky Way spread across the sky like sparkling morning mist.

  “Uh . . .” Dad’s voice came from behind me. My arms and legs hung down in front of me like . . . well, like a sleeping baby’s. “You don’t by any chance know where we are, do you, Rafter?”

  That isn’t what made me want to roll my eyes. Dad getting lost wasn’t anything new.

  Usually when Dad and I go flying, he picks me up and leaps into the air. I’m thirteen and not exactly a lightweight, but he has a supersuit that gives him extra strength. And flying is his superpower. Or rather, was his superpower.

  Tonight, it wasn’t his power that kept us hovering over the lake. It was a military-grade jetpack strapped to his back. He needed one hand to work the controls, and the other to hold his phone so he could use the map application.

  That’s why I was in the oversized canvas baby carrier.

  “Sorry, Dad, I have no idea where we are,” I replied. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  A cluster of lights poked through the darkness on the far side of the lake, but not enough to be the city of Three Forks, our destination. Actually, I didn’t think Three Forks even had a lake.

  “Well, drat,” Dad said. “This map application seems to be broken. Also, everything is in French.”

  This still wasn’t when I rolled my eyes.

  My dad is amazing. He’s a superhero. He’s also the only person I know who can get lost carrying a GPS-enabled super-smartphone.

  Dad put the phone in a pocket of his supersuit. I should have brought my phone but I didn’t have any pockets. I still didn’t have a supersuit of my own. I was wearing black sweatpants and a black long-sleeved shirt.

  Dad punched the small screen on his supersuit. The jetpack whined louder and we started moving.

  I found the North Star off to the right, which meant we were heading west. That was at least the right general direction.

  The breeze against my face carried a hint of warmth. Summer lurked around the corner, and the air up here was clear and fresh. I filled my lungs with the sweetness. It felt good to be outside. Really good. I’d spent too much time indoors the past few months, doing something my Dad called hunkering down.

  I’d started hating those two words. Hunkering down. They were supposed to sound active. Like maybe we were hiding in the trenches, waiting for the right time to charge. But really they were just a fancy way of saying we were hiding. Hiding from supervillains.

  One in particular—October Jones.

  I stretched out my hands, feeling the breeze rush between my fingers like water in a stream. I loved to fly. Usually, my younger brother, Benny, and I fought over who got to go out flying with Dad. But two weeks ago Benny had downloaded a new game to his phone called Virtual Goat Ranch. Now he spent his extra time raising virtual goats. Apparently, three of his goats were pregnant, and he wanted to be there as soon as the baby goats were born so he could give them names.

  Dad picked up speed and the wind grew to a roar. It didn’t matter how many times I flew, I never grew tired of it. Whatever problems I had in my life, at two thousand feet everything looked peaceful. Up in the empty sky. Alone.

  “Try not to move around so much,” Dad called out. “You’re throwing off my balance.”

  Well, not exactly alone.

  “Sorry, Dad!” I shouted over the noise.

  We flew for another twenty minutes or so before Dad slowed down.

  “Is that a swamp down there?” he asked. “Does Three Forks have swamps? I told your mother we should have waited until morning.”

  Dad looked to his right. “Wait a minute. Is that . . . is that Mount Rushmore?”

  Right there. That is when I rolled my eyes. But like I said, from my spot in the big baby carrier, Dad couldn’t see me.

  “Not unless we’ve traveled eight hundred miles off course, Dad.”

  “That does it,” Dad said. “I’m calling your mother. She’s going to have to look us up on the tracking system and give us directions.”

  Dad started unzipping zippers and opening pockets on his suit.

  I had a sickening thought. “Just don’t unbuckle my—”

  I heard the whip of canvas passing through a metal buckle, and then the snug material around my waist went slack. I fell, tumbling through the night sky.

  Not again, I thought.

  Stars and lights from the ground spun in dizzying circles. Wind rushed loud in my ears, but I could hear Dad’s voice calling from somewhere above. “I told you not to wiggle!”

  It wasn’t my wiggling that had made me fall, but I decided that now wasn’t the best time to start an argument.

  “Um . . . ,” I yelled (and yelling “um” is harder than it sounds). “Dad, can I get a little help here?”

  I spread out my arms and legs so that I stopped spinning. I estimated I had at least twenty seconds before I hit the ground.

  “I can’t tell where you are!” Dad’s voice sounded closer this time and to the right. “It might help if you scream.”

  I could hear teasing in Dad’s voice, but just to be safe, I screamed. I screamed for a solid five seconds until I felt Dad’s arms around me.

  “There you are,” Dad said. “Very fine screaming, son.”

  “I get a lot of practice.” I rolled my eyes for the second time that night.

  “Hey, look there.” Dad pointed. “It’s Three Forks!”

  Sure enough, the familiar Three Forks Sugar Beet Factory loomed off to our left, its large cement smokesta
cks cutting into the sky.

  Dad strapped me back into the carrier and then flew down to read a street sign. He flew up, over, and back down to read another. He repeated this until I felt certain the mashed potatoes and chard I’d eaten for dinner were having a wrestling match in my belly.

  Finally, we reached our destination—an old house just beyond the city limits where we were supposed to meet my cousin.

  Well, I use the word cousin loosely. I have hundreds of relatives—maybe a thousand. Uncles, aunts, cousins, second cousins, cousins once removed. We’re spread out all over. There are Baileys in every major city and township in the country. I’ve found it’s easiest just to call everybody cousin, unless they’re old. Then they’re an aunt or uncle. If they’re really old, or look a little insecure, I call them great-aunt or great-uncle.

  Dad landed on the lawn. Or what had been the lawn once. Now it was mostly weeds, dead grass, and crusty dirt. Paint peeled from the small white clapboard house. Brown vines clung to the walls, as if they were trying to pull the building into the earth. Bits of trash lay scattered around the yard.

  I checked the address on the side of the home. “Who are we meeting here again?”

  “John Bailey,” Dad said. “And his nephew. They were the only survivors of the Joneses’ attack here in Three Forks.”

  He took off the jetpack and leaned it against the porch. Dad climbed the stairs, then rang the doorbell. “I forget exactly how we’re related. I think it’s through your great-uncle Hjalmar Eugene. Or maybe it’s my great-uncle Hjalmar Eugene. Either way, I’m sure he was great. Because he was a superhero.”

  I gave Dad a courtesy laugh. “How did Uncle John know to call Grandpa?”

  “Probably like the rest who are calling him,” Dad said. “They just keep trying different places until somebody picks up the phone.”

  Two months ago, we’d been attacked by a family of supervillains known as the Joneses. Benny and I, with help from our superfriend Juanita Johnson, had been able to stop them in Split Rock, but not before the villains had stolen everyone’s superpowers.

  I guess technically we still had superpowers, although I don’t think I’d call them super. My brother could change his belly button from an innie to an outie. Dad could burp in Russian. I could strike matches on polyester, not just on matchboxes.

  We weren’t exactly what you’d call a threat.

  And it didn’t just happen to us. We’d started getting calls a few days after the attack. The Joneses had attacked superheroes everywhere. Most of our relatives had gone missing, but a few managed to escape. All of them had lost their powers, just like us. Since everybody in Split Rock was still accounted for, that became our home base. One by one, superheroes started gathering at Split Rock.

  Gathering to hunker down.

  Dad rang the doorbell again. Candlelight flickered inside the house. A voice called out, “Sorry, it’s hard for me to get up. Let yourselves in.”

  Dad looked at me and raised his eyebrows. He opened the door, and we entered the house.

  Things were as rundown inside as they were outside. Light from several candles bathed the room in shadows. Stacks of newspapers, magazines, and grocery sacks sat on top of every flat surface. A collection of stuffed animals rested on boxes in one corner. They seemed to stare at me with empty eyes. A dishwasher lay on its side against the far wall. A large vase containing a dead cactus perched on top.

  An old man sat in the front room. Crutches lay on the floor next to him, and he had one leg propped up on a milk crate. A cast covered his leg from ankle to knee. Five toes stuck out of the white plaster like little mushrooms. He had a blanket draped across his lap and a bandage wrapped around his head that covered one eye and half his face. White whiskers poked out around his jaw and chin. He looked familiar. I must have seen him at one of our family’s many reunions.

  Dad walked across the room and held out his hand. “Hubert Bailey,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m the great-grandson of Gjorts Ingavald Bailey.”

  The older man leaned forward and shook hands with Dad. “John Bailey,” he said. “Son of Hjalmar Eugene. Sorry for not getting up. The doctor says I shouldn’t put any weight on this leg for at least another week.”

  Uncle John sat back and motioned with his hand. “Please, have a seat. My nephew should be out in a moment.”

  I looked around. An old sofa sat against the wall by us, but a large stuffed moose rested on top of it. Not just a moose’s head, but an entire stuffed moose. Someone had positioned a cone-shaped party hat between the moose’s antlers.

  “Yes, well uh . . . ,” Dad said. “We’re fine standing. How are things with you?” He motioned toward the cast. “Is that from the attack?”

  Uncle John nodded. “I was on the roof hanging up our decorations for National Peanut Month. There was a flash of light, and suddenly I don’t have my powers. I’m a Stretcher—or rather, I used to be. I’d gotten on the roof by stretching, so there I was, stuck up there without a ladder. I hit a patch of ice, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital with this.” He motioned to his leg. “I got out of the hospital a day later and found my nephew, who had managed to avoid being captured. Of course we immediately assumed it was the Johnsons.”

  The Johnsons are another family of superheroes. For years, members of our two families had been fighting—in every major city in the country—with both families claiming to be the real superheroes. I’d thought Juanita Johnson was a villain, until she became my friend.

  “But the Johnsons had gone missing just like us, and when we finally found you all up in Split Rock . . . well, you told us it wasn’t the Johnsons. That’s when we started looking for this third family. The Joneses.”

  I had been staring at all the crazy stuff in the room, but this comment focused my attention back to the conversation. “Have you found anything? About the Joneses, I mean?”

  The Joneses. The real family of supervillains, they had kept the Johnsons and the Baileys fighting for decades. They’d stayed hidden in the shadows, doing who-knows-what while the superheroes fought among themselves.

  Uncle John shook his head. “Haven’t found a thing. It’s like they don’t even exist. We’re still chasing down a few leads, and . . . well, my nephew and I, we’re working on a few other ideas.”

  I was starting to like Uncle John. Only two Baileys had survived the attack here in Three Forks, but it sounded like instead of hunkering down, they were doing something. They were fighting back. In Split Rock, we had almost eighty Baileys and Johnsons gathered from all over the country, and all we’d managed to do was perfect the art of hiding.

  “We’ve been able to piece together what happened,” Dad said. “After they took away everybody’s powers, the Joneses rounded everyone up and took them.”

  “Took them? Took them where?”

  Dad shook his head. “We don’t know. One Bailey from Nebraska said that no one was hurt, but he watched his family get loaded into a bus. The bus just drove away.”

  Uncle John rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “We’ve got to do something. All of these missing superheroes. Supervillains hiding and plotting, plotting and scheming.” Uncle John looked me in the eye, his voice low and serious. “It’s only a matter of time before everything falls apart.”

  I nodded. I had the sudden desire to stay in Three Forks and help.

  I jumped at a noise coming from the kitchen.

  “Ah, here’s my nephew now,” Uncle John said.

  A older boy carrying a backpack entered the room. I put him at about sixteen or seventeen. His blond hair flopped over green eyes. He was muscular and tan. He looked . . . well, put him in a supersuit and he’d look exactly like a superhero.

  “Hi,” the boy said, crossing the room and holding out his hand. “I’m Thimon.”

  It took me a split second to realize that he had a lisp. “Simon,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s not Simon,” the boy said, smiling. �
��It’s pronounced Thimon. My parents had a weird sense of humor.”

  “You mean . . .” I’d never heard of such a thing. “Your name is really Thimon? Like . . . T-H-I-M-O-N?”

  Thimon nodded.

  I didn’t know what to say. “Sorry about that.”

  Thimon shrugged. “It could have been worse. If I was a girl, they were going to call me Thethily.”

  Dad cleared his voice. “You said on the phone that only Thimon is coming with us. Are you sure you won’t come too? Split Rock is very likely the safest place in the country right now.”

  Uncle John shook his head. “Thimon and I were following up on a few last leads here. I’ll wrap them up, let my leg heal, and then I’ll make the trip. Two or three weeks. A month at the most.”

  Dad cleared his throat. “Well . . . It’s a school night for Rafter. We probably should get going.”

  He didn’t seem interested in whatever Uncle John and Thimon were working on, but as soon as I got a chance, I was going to ask. I wanted in on it.

  Thimon was shipping most of his luggage. We said our good-byes to Uncle John and headed out to the front lawn. Dad put on the jetpack and strapped me into the front and then wrapped his arms around Thimon.

  “Ready?” Dad asked.

  “Yep,” Thimon said.

  “Me too,” I replied.

  Dad pressed the controls on his wrist. The jetpack whined to life and we were off.

  The wind was too loud for us to talk much. I used the time to think instead.

  Hiding. Waiting. Watching.

  The one time in my life when I’d felt almost super was when Benny, Juanita, and I had saved the day. We hadn’t hunkered down. We’d run out into a dark night and faced a supervillain. Ours was the only city where all of the superheroes had escaped capture, thanks to us. We’d beaten a supervillain.

  We’d beaten October Jones.

  October Jones is not somebody you’d want to meet in a dark alley in the middle of the night, or in a nice park in the middle of the day. Or anywhere, for that matter. I’d met him and almost hadn’t survived.

  The wind blew into my face, stinging my eyes.

  October was a Super-super, which meant he didn’t have just one power. He had all the powers. I still remember the last thing he said to me before getting into his helicopter and disappearing into the sky. Now I know your name, Rafter Bailey, and believe me, that’s not a good thing.