And maybe it was a good thing that she was so bowled over by Justice Jack, because she went straight to the kitchen to call all her Wedgie friends and missed the newscaster talking about “this real-life superhero’s real-life sidekick … a mysterious person who vanished shortly after the altercation. Someone everyone’s calling … Umbrella Girl.”
I click off the TV quick and flop on the couch.
Umbrella Girl?
Oh, great.
TEN
Luckily, it wasn’t raining the next day, so Umbrella Girl didn’t need to bring her secret weapon to meet Marissa at Danny’s church.
She turned into Skateboard Girl instead.
We didn’t actually meet at the church, either.
We met at Hudson’s.
Now, the first person I saw as I cruised up Hudson’s walkway wasn’t Marissa or Hudson. It was Marissa’s little brother, Mikey—someone who used to be the world’s most annoying fat kid and is now, thanks to Hudson’s “boot camp,” a whole lot happier and a whole lot smaller.
“Sammy!” he squeals from the porch, then jumps down the steps in a single bound.
I get off my skateboard and laugh. “Hey, Mikey! Man, you are looking great!”
“Dude, did you hear about Justice Jack?”
I laugh again. “Dude? Since when do you call me dude?”
“Since he calls everybody dude,” Marissa says, coming through the front door. “And he’s obsessed with Justice Jack. He’s watched the news link over and over and over and over.”
Mikey looks at me with his eyes cranked wide. “I can’t believe you guys met him!”
Now, the new Mikey had become Spy Guy and had even been our ace in the hole once when dealing with Heather Acosta. He got so into it that on Halloween he went trick-or-treating as Spy Guy with a mask, a cape, and a big S on his chest. So him being excited about Justice Jack didn’t surprise me. “Dude,” I said back to him, “we met Justice Jack twice.”
Marissa starts shaking her head and giving me the kill-it signal, but I’m not getting why.
“Twice?” Mikey asks, pogoing around.
I eye Marissa and try to pick up on why she’s slightly spazzed about this. “No big deal,” I tell Mikey. “The guy’s everywhere.”
“No big deal?” Mikey squeaks. “Dude, how can you say it’s no big deal?”
“Spy Guy would love to be his sidekick,” Marissa says, rolling her eyes.
I look at Mikey all hurt-like. “What? You’re giving us the boot? Nice.”
“But you guys aren’t real superheroes,” he says, bouncing up and down. “Justice Jack is!”
“Yup,” I tell him. “Brought that purse snatcher down, boom.”
Marissa grits her teeth and tells me, “Do not encourage him!”
“I was being sarcastic!”
But Mikey is too wrapped up in thinking about Justice Jack to pay any attention to us.
“He would’ve given that guy a tour of Stomp City, too!” he says, kicking his foot in the air. “Lucky for the Snatcher he didn’t try to get away!”
I laugh. “The Snatcher?”
“Yeah! You know—like the Joker?”
Hudson’s on the porch now, and after he tells me hello, he says to Mikey, “Hey, m’man—are we doing our laps? The girls need to get going or they’ll be late.”
“Thanks, Hudson,” Marissa tells him, and after I park my skateboard on his porch, Marissa and I take off.
“So …?” I ask her when we get to the sidewalk. “Did you get ahold of Billy?” ’Cause when she’d called me to set up our meeting at Hudson’s, she hadn’t talked to him yet.
“Yes,” she says, kicking a pebble.
“And …? How’d he take it?”
“I told him I thought we should go back to being just friends, and he seemed to take it okay.” She kicks another pebble. “It’s not like he was heartbroken or anything. He was just kind of quiet.”
“How quiet?”
She shrugs. “Really quiet. Then he said, ‘See you around,’ like it was no big deal.”
We walk along in silence for a minute, and finally I say, “I’m glad you broke up with him.”
She looks at me. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.” I try to bite it back, but what I am is seriously upset, and it comes out anyway. “Because you just don’t get him.”
“What do you mean I don’t get him?”
I look her in the eye. “Quiet means heartbroken.” I throw my hands in the air. “Good grief—I have to tell you that?”
“Look, I think you see something in Billy that isn’t really there. I hung out with him for a month—more than a month! You think I can’t see what’s there?”
This time I go quiet.
“Stop that,” Marissa finally says.
“Stop what?”
“Stop being quiet!” Then she snarls, “Or does this mean you’re ‘heartbroken,’ too?”
I just shake my head a little. “How far is this stupid church, anyway?”
“You don’t have to go, you know.” She steps up the pace. “Actually, maybe you shouldn’t go. Maybe you should hate me forever somewhere else.”
“I don’t hate you. I just can’t believe we’re back to dealing with Danny.”
“You don’t have to ‘deal’ with Danny. It’s my business, not yours.”
“What, so we’re not going to be friends anymore?”
She doesn’t say anything for, like, twenty steps. And finally she huffs out, “You need to give him another chance.” Then she gets all buttery-faced and says, “I swear, Sammy, he’s changed. You’ll see.”
The Community Church of Christ turned out to be nothing like St. Mary’s Church, where Grams sometimes drags me. When you see St. Mary’s, you know it’s a church. It’s got a pointy roof with a big cross, stained-glass windows, and a tall statue of Mary out front. And when you go inside, there are rows and rows of wooden pews, and up front there’s an altar and an organ, and it smells like a combination of candles and wood polish.
This church was more like a rec hall, with a big, open room, a low ceiling, a lot of linoleum, and cheap Christmas decorations pinned to the walls. The kind of room where you could bring out Ping-Pong tables, or tumbling mats, or folding chairs, depending on what the activity of the hour was. And even though it seemed as if it should have smelled like either pancakes or sweat, it smelled like … nothing. Probably because it was just too cold for any odor molecules to be bouncing around.
“I wish I’d brought a jacket,” Marissa whispers once we’ve stood inside for a minute. “And I don’t see Danny anywhere, do you?”
There were people already seated in the folding chairs, but it wasn’t crowded or anything, and, no, I didn’t see Danny. And after we’d stood around for a few more minutes, the minister walked up to the podium and I could tell that the service was about to begin. So I whispered, “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Yes.”
“Did Danny know you were coming?”
“Well … no. But he said he comes every week!”
“Marissa, I am not sitting through a sermon if Danny’s not here.”
“He’ll show up! Give him a chance!”
“Good morning!” the minister calls out. “If you could all take your seats, we’ll begin.”
“Let’s go!” I say through my teeth.
“You can go,” she says, moving toward the chairs. “I’m staying.”
I roll my eyes and follow her, mumbling, “Oh, good grief.”
“Just go!” she hisses.
“No way,” I tell her. And for the next hour, while Marissa stares at the door, praying for Danny to show up, I pick at the old OUTCAST sticker on the back of the chair in front of me and wish I was somewhere, anywhere, else.
“I can’t believe he didn’t come,” Marissa says when it’s finally over.
“That’s because you’re back in a state of Dan-ial.”
“He said he goes every week! And he
invited me.”
“Maybe if you’d told him you’d be here, he’d have backed up his lie by actually showing up.”
“Don’t call him a liar! It’s just some misunderstanding! And I was still with Billy when he called!”
“Look, can we just go back to Hudson’s and get something warm to drink?”
“I know,” she whimpers. “I’m freezing.”
So off we go to Hudson’s, and since I don’t want to sound like I’m harping on her for being such an idiot, and since she doesn’t feel like talking to someone who obviously thinks she’s an idiot, we don’t say much to each other on the way back.
“How was church?” Hudson asks when he answers the door.
“Freezing,” Marissa tells him, then gives him a desperate look. “Please tell me you have cocoa.”
“Certainly!” he says, and leads us into the kitchen.
“Where’s Mikey?” Marissa asks, pulling mugs out of a cupboard.
“He’s in the study practicing his martial arts.”
So I go to the study to see if Mikey wants cocoa, too, and I find him in front of a TV with a bathrobe on over his clothes, following along with a kung fu guru as he breaks down some fancy block-punch-twist-of-pain maneuver.
Mikey’s got his back to me, so I just watch for a minute as he rewinds the lesson with a remote and goes through it again.
And again.
“Wow, Mikey,” I finally say, which makes him whip around with his arms in a deadly attack position. His eyes are all intense, too. “Easy, boy! I was just about to say how you’re going to be a black belt in no time … and see if you want any hot cocoa.”
“Cocoa? Sure!” he says, and suddenly he’s nine again.
So we head back into the kitchen, only before we get there, the doorbell rings.
“I’ll get it,” Mikey says, and charges for the front door.
“Is your mom picking you up already?” I ask Marissa.
She shakes her head. “Hudson’s giving us a ride home.”
“Probably another missionary,” Hudson calls from over by the stove. “We get a lot of that around here. Especially on Sundays.”
So I head to the door to help Mikey deal with whoever’s peddling their version of God.
Trouble is, when we open the door, what’s on the porch is definitely not a missionary.
ELEVEN
“It’s Justice Jack!” Mikey squeals.
“Good day, citizen!” Jack exclaims in his booming voice. And then he realizes that it’s me standing next to Mikey. “Have you no fear of retaliators?” he says to me in a low voice. “Evil yearns to crush you! Don’t you realize the impending doom?”
So, okay, now he’s sounding like a missionary.
Mikey’s looking up at me with his eyes cranked and his jaw dropped, so I just give him a little wobble of the head and whisper, “You do not want to be his sidekick.” Then I turn to Justice Jack and tell him, “I’m fine. We’re fine. No one’s in danger.”
“If you wore a mask when battling crime,” Justice Jack tells me, keeping his voice very low, “no one would recognize you when you answer the door of your abode.”
“For one thing,” I tell him back, keeping my voice very low, “I don’t live here. For another thing, nobody cares who I am. I’m not a superhero. I’m thirteen, get it? I’m just a kid, invisible to the masses.”
He stares at me through his mask a minute. “You underestimate your influence in this town.”
Hudson’s behind us now and cuts in with, “So how can we help you, Mr. Jack?”
And just like that, the Masked Maniac is back in superhero mode, booming, “It’s Justice Jack, good citizen, and I am on a quest to bring warmth to the unfortunate.”
“How’s that?” Hudson asks.
“We’re collecting jackets for the needy, as the nights have turned wicked cold and many in our fair city are without the means to keep themselves warm. Should you have a spare jacket you’d care to donate, that would be most appreciated!”
Hudson thinks a minute, then bobs his head. “Let me see what I can find.”
So while he goes off to look for something to donate, Mikey, whose jaw has been unhinged this whole time, asks Justice Jack, “Have you stopped any bad guys today?”
“There’s no escaping the Golden Gloves of Justice!” Jack says, holding up both hands and totally not answering the question. “And if the Gloves aren’t enough”—he un-holsters the hammer from his utility belt—“there’s always the Jackhammer of Justice! Or”—he whips out the flashlight—“we’ll teach them to see the light with the Justice Jack-o’-Lantern!” He slips the tools back on his belt and whips out a slingshot. “And if they refuse to see the light, they can say hello to the Pellets of Pain … t.”
“Pellets of Pain? Or Paint?” Marissa asks.
“Both!” he cries, then produces a small handful of little plastic balls—one’s gold, one’s red, and one’s glow-in-the-dark green. “Paintballs … And trust me, citizen, they hurt.”
“Cool!” Mikey squeals. “Can I try one?”
“I’m afraid not, little shaver. We use these only in battle to mark our mark, should he try fleeing the scene.”
Hudson’s back now, carrying a heavy tan coat that looks like it came out of an old war movie. “Wow,” I tell him. “That is cool.”
“Thank you, kind citizen!” Jack says when Hudson hands it over, and even through his mask I can tell he thinks the coat is awesome, too. Like maybe he should change his whole costume so he could fight crime in it instead.
Hudson puts a hand on Mikey’s shoulder and asks Jack, “How would you feel about posing for a picture with an aspiring crime fighter?”
Justice Jack turns his mask on me.
“Not me!” I tell him, and point to Mikey. “Him.”
Justice Jack puffs up his chest. “Why certainly!” he booms in his superhero voice.
So Hudson grabs his camera and we all go out to the porch, and although Mikey is totally spazzing with happiness, he does manage to hold still long enough for Hudson to snap a picture of the two of them.
And Hudson’s just put down the camera when Justice Jack suddenly whistles between his fingers. “Up here!” he calls out to a guy in a black mask and a blue cape. Then he turns to us and says, “The Ace of Hearts is helping me today.”
“What happened to the King of Clubs?” I ask, checking out his new sidekick.
Justice Jack frowns. “He wasn’t very reliable.”
So up trots the Ace of Hearts. And now we can see that his cape is actually a threadbare towel, pinned to his T-shirt, and that his face is really weathered and that some of his teeth are missing. “No luck,” he pants.
Justice Jack looks him over. “We need to work on your hero gear,” he says with a frown. “That’s just not cuttin’ it.”
“I could be your helper!” Mikey cries. “I have a costume and everything!”
“No!” Marissa squawks, and Justice Jack sizes him up, saying, “Maybe in a few years, champ.” And with that he bounds down the steps crying, “Onward!”
“I can’t believe you gave him that cool coat,” I grumble after he’s gone.
Hudson shrugs. “I have to trust it will be put to good use.” He smiles at us. “So … what about that cocoa?”
We all go, “Oh, right,” then head back inside and make cocoa. And even though Mikey’s on a superhero high that seems like it’ll last the rest of his life, Marissa descends into Dannyville despair in no time.
“So what are you going to do?” I ask her when we get a minute alone on the porch.
“I don’t know,” she whimpers.
“If you call him, he’ll just snow you with some story. Like he wasn’t feeling well, or he overslept, or he’s gone every single Sunday except today, or—”
“Stop it! What if it was something like that? It’s not fair to judge him until we’ve heard what he has to say.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. Go call him. Get snowed.” br />
But she doesn’t call him. She just sits there looking out across the porch railing, until finally, very quietly, she says, “I don’t think he could lie to my face.”
“Since when?”
“Stop it, Sammy!”
I put my hands up. “Sorry. You’re right. I should be helping you, not jabbing at you.” I shake my head. “I just don’t trust him, and I don’t know what to do.”
She looks me in the eye. “Go with me to his house.”
“To his house? When?”
“Now.”
“You’re serious?”
She nods. “We’ll go up, knock on the door, and see what his reaction is.”
I think about the insanity of this a minute, then shrug. “Why not?”
So we announce that we’re going for a girl-talk walk so Mikey won’t ask to tag along, and then head out.
Now, Danny’s house isn’t exactly next door. From Hudson’s, you’ve got to go past the mall, across Broadway, and then zigzag back into a neighborhood with old tract houses and thirsty yards. So it took us a good twenty minutes to get there, and when we did, Marissa chickened out.
“What? No! We didn’t walk all this way for nothing!”
“But what if—”
I grab her by the sleeve. “You’re going.”
“But—”
She tugs back, but I drag her up to the front door and ring the bell.
“What am I going to say?” she whispers frantically. “It’s like I’m checking up on him!”
But it’s too late to turn back, because the door swings open and there’s Danny.
“Marissa!” he says, his eyes popping wide. And then he looks at me and gets a little nervous. “Uh … what’s up?”
I can tell Marissa’s about to pee her pants, so I just shrug and tell him, “We missed you at church this morning.”
He looks back and forth between me and Marissa. “You went?”
Marissa nods and gives him dopey little puppy eyes, which makes me want to slap her silly.
“Man, I’m so sorry,” he says to her, oozing smooth as he steps out of the house and pulls the door mostly closed behind him. “I didn’t feel good this morning so I just went back to bed! I’ve gone every single week until now, too!” He cocks his head a little. “I thought you said you couldn’t go.”