Super

  “Leave him alone, Clay.”

  Clay’s smile grew wider and, if possible, uglier.

  “I’m surprised at you, New Kid. I’d have thought you’d be halfway home by now. You’re gonna need a place to change your shorts.”

  Clay laughed as he stepped over to the edge of the line of trees and wrapped his arms around a sturdy maple. Its trunk was too thick around for Clay’s arms, but he dug his fingers into the bark and pulled. And pulled. The veins in his neck bulged and his arms began to shake, but after a few seconds there was a deep-sounding crack. A snap of splitting roots and the whole thing lurched out of the ground, taking a giant chunk of earth with it.

  He lifted the tree above his head and grinned like a maniac.

  “I should flatten the both of you!”

  “Clay, man,” said Bud, “what are you doing? You’ll cream Daniel with that thing!”

  “Then he’d better move!”

  Clay assumed Daniel would run away, of course. Just as he assumed that Eric could take the hit. After all, he’d seen him take much worse. But only Daniel knew how very weak his friend was right now. That thing would kill him.

  “Clay!” shouted Daniel. “Wait! Don’t!”

  “Catch!” said Clay.

  In a cloud of leaves and dirt, Clay tossed the tree. It was a lazy throw, but it still spun toward Daniel, a thousand pounds of deadly wood. Daniel barely had time to react. He needed to run, he needed to …

  The leaves settled and the dust was making his eyes water, but Daniel was surprised to discover that he was still alive.

  Clay was still standing over the hole left by his uprooted tree. He was frozen still and he was staring, openmouthed, at Daniel. At the tree overhead.

  Daniel looked up to see the giant maple tree suspended above. He quickly glanced over his shoulder to see if Eric was behind him, but his friend was still on the ground. In fact, Eric’s face held the same shocked expression as Clay’s.

  Daniel was holding the tree. Alone. Over his head. All by himself. A thousand pounds of solid wood and dirt.

  No one said anything for a long time, until at last Bud broke the silence.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  First Flight

  The first time Daniel had flown, when Eric had taken him on that ride over the forests of Mount Noble, the cold wind had stung Daniel’s face and the tingle of vertigo had made his stomach do flip-flops the whole way. It had been thrilling but also terrifying. He’d held on to Eric with white-knuckled fingers, his arms around his friend like a bear trap. The whole flight had been a back-and-forth battle between the joy of flying and the fear of falling. After all, he hadn’t really been flying—Eric had been the one in control. Daniel had just been along for the ride.

  This time was different. Daniel didn’t feel the cold; or rather, he didn’t feel it in the way he’d ever felt it before. He was aware of the wind blowing, and he felt the sensation of it, just not the pain. He knew it was cold, but the cold could never hurt him. And as for holding on to Eric, well, that would have been hard since Eric was little more than a spot on the ground below him. And getting smaller by the second.

  Daniel was flying. Really flying. He wasn’t sure how—this wasn’t like walking or running, where you have the solid impact of earth-meets-foot to remind you what you’re doing. He just felt certain that he could, that the power was there. He could move mountains. Or fly over them.

  At last Daniel was super.

  After the fight with Clay, Daniel was as shocked as anyone else, even more so, to find himself wielding an enormous tree like it was a baton. If this had been a comic book, Daniel knew, he’d have had something heroic to say, a well-delivered superhero quip aimed at the villain he’d just thwarted. Instead, he went with the obvious:

  “Eric! I’m holding a tree!” he said.

  “I know!” answered Eric. “But how?”

  “I don’t know! What do I do with it now?”

  “Put it down!”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere except on me!”

  Bud was already long gone, and Clay was retreating as well. Daniel caught a glimpse of the boy’s face before he got out of sight, though. Clay’s already puglike features were contorted with hate—hate for the Supers and hate for Daniel. It would have concerned him, and it probably should have, except that Daniel’s brain didn’t have room for Clay Cudgens anymore. Things were different now.

  Daniel dropped the tree with a loud thud that tickled the bottoms of his feet. It would take five grown men to just budge the thing, normally. Yet to Daniel it had felt no heavier than a folding chair. He stared at his hands. They didn’t look any different, but if he concentrated, he could feel something, a buzz, the vibration of energy in his muscles just waiting to be released. It started near his heart and ran through his veins, from his fingers to his toes.

  “Eric, what’s going on?” he asked.

  His friend shook his head. “I don’t know. How do you feel?”

  “Not that different, really. Just sorta tingly, I guess. My heart’s going crazy, though.”

  “Try something else,” Eric said. “Pick up Bud’s rock.”

  Daniel looked over at the bowling-ball-sized piece of limestone. He reached out his hands to scoop it up.

  “Uh-uh,” said Eric. “Try one-handed.”

  Daniel placed his fingers around the rock. Bud was a big kid, and he’d barely been able to carry it with both hands. Daniel hefted it easily, balancing it in his palm like a basketball.

  “Man,” said Eric. “Can you do more?”

  Daniel placed his other hand on the rock and squeezed. It took some effort, but after a few seconds of trying, he shattered the rock between his palms. Eric had to duck to escape the flying shrapnel.

  “More powerful than a locomotive,” said Eric. He pointed up at the sky. “Able to leap tall buildings?”

  “No way,” said Daniel. Then, “You think?”

  “One way to find out.”

  Daniel looked up at the sky. Stars were just starting to wink at them through the blue-pink firmament of twilight. He took a deep breath, letting the air fill his lungs, then felt that vibration turn into something more, like a current of electricity. His calves were twitchy, eager to jump. His arms were already stretched high above his head, almost involuntarily reaching skyward. His body was telling him to go up.

  And he did. He flew. One leap and he kept going, shouting as he soared through the heavens higher and higher, all the while willing the ground to stay away. He was a creature of the air now. Nothing else mattered, not even the sound of Eric calling his name. Beneath the howling wind and his own laughter, he was only barely aware of Eric’s warning, calling to him like an echo.

  “Wait! You’re going too fast,” Eric shouted. “Don’t go too high!”

  Daniel didn’t understand. How could he be too high? This was glorious. This was flight! This was everything that Eric and Mollie had experienced but Daniel had only ever imagined. This was freedom.

  This was every kid’s dream.

  The world was receding. Even the roar of the wind was becoming little more than a faraway humming in his ears, like a lullaby. His eyes were closed. Why were his eyes closed?

  The ground hit him like a wrecking ball to the face. Or rather, Daniel hit the ground. When the earth beneath him finally stopped spinning, Daniel opened his eyes to see that he’d plowed into a bank of fir trees. Pine needles were drifting down around him like a shower of snowflakes. After a few minutes Eric came running toward him. Daniel’s head throbbed with a dull ache that kept rhythm with his heart pounding in his temples.

  “What … what happened?” Daniel asked.

  “You … flew too high, too fast,” said Eric. “You get that high, you start to run out of oxygen. Man, you scared me. I didn’t know if you were tough enough to survive a fall like that.”

  Daniel stared at him, not comprehending.

  “Daniel, you flew.”


  Daniel looked around him at the snapped pine branches, the gout of dirt that had been torn up as he’d skidded to a halt. He remembered the wind. For some reason the air smelled differently up there. It was hard to talk past the knot in his throat. The words just weren’t there, so he nodded instead.

  “Wow, Daniel,” said Eric. “You really flew. And that tree … how’d you do that?”

  Daniel cleared his throat, suddenly self-conscious.

  “I don’t know … puberty?”

  “Man, come on!” said Eric. “This is serious!”

  “I know! I know! But I don’t know what to say. I have no idea what’s happening to me!”

  “Do you feel like you could do it again?”

  Daniel shifted his weight beneath him and thought about the wind. He felt that same tingle in his hands and feet, just a bit weaker now. He concentrated on it as his feet began to lift off the ground. Then he suddenly felt dizzy. His stomach flipped over on itself and he had to sit back down.

  “Whoa, whoa, take it easy,” said Eric, putting a firm hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “You just about killed yourself last time, you know.”

  Daniel took a deep breath and looked up at the stars. How far had he gotten? Must’ve been pretty far to start losing oxygen. He’d heard of climbers running out of air on the top of Mount Everest, and that was nearly 30,000 feet. Eric was right—Daniel hadn’t even realized what he’d been doing, or how fast or how far he’d been flying. It was as if the wind had just pulled him along, and he hadn’t had a care in the world. Not a fear.

  “You were fly-drunk,” said Eric.

  “What?”

  “That’s what Michael used to call it. You get up there with nothing but the wind and you kind of lose yourself. It’s easy to do, but it’s dangerous. Michael used to joke that friends don’t let friends fly drunk.” Michael was one of the Shroud’s last victims. He’d had his powers, and his memory, stolen from him on his thirteenth birthday, but before that he’d been the greatest flier Noble’s Green had ever known.

  “Eric, has anything like this happened before? I mean, someone getting powers who wasn’t born here?”

  Eric thought for a minute. “No, not that I can remember. But we don’t get a lot of new kids here anyway, so maybe it was just a matter of time.”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Daniel.

  Eric smiled. “So, I guess … welcome to the club, Super.”

  Daniel shook his head. He certainly didn’t feel that super now. The nausea was passing, but he still felt weak and tired, like he’d run a marathon in hundred-degree heat. All he wanted to do was sleep.

  “I feel terrible. I don’t think I could fly now if you pushed me out of a plane.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a slow process—you getting your powers. Maybe because you weren’t raised here, you just haven’t stored up enough … superpower or whatever. You’ve got a small gas tank.”

  Daniel shrugged. It didn’t sound right to him, but he was willing to go with any explanation for the time being. He was so tired, it hurt to think, but through the haze, one thing did occur to him. A worrying thought.

  “Eric,” said Daniel, “why didn’t you come after me?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eric. Daniel noticed that his friend wasn’t looking at him. Eric always looked you in the eyes when he talked to you.

  “When I flew off, you didn’t follow me. If you were so worried about me, why didn’t you follow me? Eric, look at me.”

  Eric looked at Daniel, and what Daniel saw in his friend’s eyes was something he’d never seen there before: fear.

  “You didn’t fly after me because you couldn’t,” said Daniel. “Right?”

  “I tried, but … it just … disappeared.”

  Daniel shook his head. Eric’s power disappeared. At the same time that Daniel’s appeared.

  “Like back at the creek?”

  Eric nodded.

  “Eric …”

  “No! Don’t say it, Daniel. Don’t even think it.”

  “Come on!” said Daniel. “Your flight and your strength go missing just as I become super-strong and start to fly!”

  “No. You’re not like him. You are not the Shroud!”

  “Look, I’m not saying I am, but—”

  “Just forget it, Daniel. Get the idea that your powers and my problem are somehow connected out of your head. You’re becoming a Super because you deserve to be, Daniel. You are not becoming Herman Plunkett. And whatever’s going on with me, we’ll fix it. I’m already feeling better. I’ve probably just got the super-flu or something stupid like that.”

  Reluctantly, Daniel nodded. He didn’t believe him, but he was too tired to argue anymore and too exhausted to think clearly. But he remembered that night not so long ago when he’d woken up in a cave in the Old Quarry, to discover Eric unconscious and the Shroud whispering offers in the dark. Offers of power. He’d said no to them all. He’d said no then.

  “Another thing,” said Eric. “Though I can’t wait to see Mollie’s face when you fly past her window, let’s not tell the others just yet, okay? You and me can figure this out together, but I don’t want to worry them.”

  “Okay. But if it gets worse …”

  “If it gets worse, then we’ll talk.”

  Eric helped Daniel dust himself off as best he could. But Daniel’s hair was still in a tangle, and he looked like he’d been belly-crawling through the forest.

  “I think we’ll walk the rest of the way, what do you say?” Eric said.

  Daniel nodded, and the two friends headed for the lights of Elm Lane and the Corrigan home.

  “That dinner offer still stand?” Eric asked.

  “Of course,” said Daniel. “We need to celebrate with some really terrible food.”

  Eric chuckled, and then the two walked in silence past the now-glowing streetlights. But all the way home, Daniel imagined that he could hear whispers in the dark.

  Chapter Six

  Superheroing 101

  That night the dream returned. After dinner, and a groggy goodbye to Eric, Daniel barely made it back to his room, where he fell asleep without even taking off his clothes. He was back in the Old Quarry, fighting the Shroud. As before, he wrestled with Herman Plunkett, struggling to tear the meteorite pendant from the old man’s throat. Again, as his fingers closed around it, they burned away like butter against a hot stove. The details were all the same, like a recording of a dream rather than the actual thing. The same up to the end, when suddenly the Shroud disguise melted away, revealing the weak old man beneath. Herman was pleading with Daniel, begging him for something—mercy? But Daniel didn’t listen. He stood over his fallen enemy and held up his ruined right hand. The flesh was gone, but in its place was a hand made all of green fire.

  Daniel woke up clutching his hand tightly to his chest. He quickly counted the fingers to make sure they were all there. He lay there for a few moments, staring at the ceiling while he worked out the phantom pains from his hand, and he noticed something odd. Normally he woke up looking at the sunlit window, but this time he was staring up at the bookshelf, which was clear on the other side of the room. As he rubbed the sleep from his sticky eyes, the rest of the room came into focus.

  He was on the floor. He’d been sleeping on the hard wooden floor at the base of the bookshelf, but he had absolutely no memory of how he’d gotten there. The ache in his fingers was gone, only to be replaced by a very real crick in his neck and a stabbing pain in his lower back—at some point he’d apparently rolled atop a piece of H.M.S. Nelson.

  The bed was wrinkled, but the covers were undisturbed, and nothing else in the room seemed to be out of place. So without a better explanation, Daniel must’ve been sleepwalking. He’d never done that before, but then, recently he’d been doing a lot of things he’d never done before.

  He could fly, for one thing. Or at least, he had flown. He’d had the power yesterday. He’d soared as high as any Super dared go.

&nbs
p; But where had the power come from? Was Eric right when he said that Daniel was finally a Super, or was there another, darker explanation? In his dream he’d stood over Herman, his hand made of emerald flame. Witch Fire …

  Daniel sat up and tried to rub some warmth back into his bare arms. The mornings were getting cooler, and autumn would come early this year. But there was a chill in Daniel’s bones that had nothing to do with the changing seasons. He stood in front of the bookshelf and flexed his fingers as he looked down once more at his bare hand. He didn’t wear a watch and he owned only one ring, a ring he’d never worn.

  Reaching up to the topmost shelf, Daniel retrieved a very special book. It was a hardcover, a very old edition of The Final Problem, with a black-ink-and-gold-embossed illustration on the front showing Sherlock Holmes battling his arch-nemesis, Moriarty, over the Reichenbach Falls. The book was unusually light for its size because Daniel himself had hollowed out the inside pages to make room for a small ring of polished black rock. He flipped the book open to the hollowed-out middle and looked at the ring. The ugly circle of black rock looked like it had been carved out of coal, but Daniel knew better. It had been a gift from Herman Plunkett himself, who’d told Daniel that he’d crafted it from the very same meteorite that gave Plunkett his power-stealing Shroud abilities. The old villain had intended it for Daniel to use as his protégé.

  Daniel had never worn it, but he hadn’t destroyed it either. He hadn’t tossed it into the deepest bottom of Tangle Creek or buried it far off in the remote woods. But worse than that, he hadn’t told anyone about it. He’d kept it here on his bookshelf, a secret. He’d convinced himself that this was the safest place for it, that he was keeping it out of the wrong hands. But safe from whom? His friends?

  There had been several times over the last few months when he’d come close to telling the Supers about the ring, but each time he’d chickened out at the last minute. He’d had it for so long now, and to tell them would be admitting that he’d kept something from them, something that could turn into a threat to all of them. The longer he went without telling, the guiltier he felt. The guiltier he felt, the harder it was to tell his friends the truth. He was stuck.