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  “Are you sure about that?” said Christina, shifting her attention from me to Dad.

  “Yeah,” said Dad, nodding. “I saw my dad put on that costume for work every day for eighteen years. It’s been a long time since I last saw it, but there’s no way I would ever forget that cape or those goggles. I just don’t understand where this guy could have gotten the costume from, though, because it disappeared with my dad ten years ago.”

  “That’s a mystery for another time, I think,” said Christina. She looked at me again. “The more important question is, where were you when the door to that tool shed was open? By your own account, you hid inside the tool shed for the entirety of the encounter. You didn’t emerge until long after the fight was over, by which time the police had arrived and started arresting Injectors. Can you explain why you are not in this picture and why you did not see this man, despite the fact that he was standing in the middle of the backyard with nothing to obstruct him?”

  I was sweating something fierce now, like how I did after a hard workout. I didn’t know how to answer in a way that would avoid arousing Christina’s suspicions. Or to my parents, for that matter. I was just glad that I had chosen to leave the Trickshot Watch in my room before I came down, because if I hadn’t, the gig likely would have been up the second I entered the kitchen.

  Thinking fast, I said, “Well, I’ll admit that my memory from that time is kind of fuzzy, because I was so scared and terrified. I hid behind the wheelbarrow inside the shed, which as you can see was turned on its side. That’s why you can’t see me there.”

  “What about the open door?” said Christina. “Can you explain that?”

  Christina had an incredibly intense stare, like she was looking directly into my soul. I was glad I kept my hands on my lap under the table, otherwise she would have seen them sweating and realized that something was up.

  “One of the Injectors did manage to open the door before that guy arrived,” I said. “Yes, I remember that now. Rodriguez—that was the Injector’s name—ripped open the door, but before they could shoot me, that guy appeared and defeated them. I didn’t see it, however, because I was too busy hiding behind the overturned wheelbarrow to risk looking at the fight.”

  “And when did you close the door?” Christina questioned. “Because the door was closed when the first officers arrived upon the scene.”

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I think it was probably the guy in the Trickshot costume. Maybe he wanted to make sure I was safe or maybe he didn’t know I was in there and just thought the door didn’t need to remain open. I just remember the door being closed from the outside.”

  “I take it, then, that you don’t know the man wearing the Trickshot costume,” said Christina.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Don’t recognize the guy at all. He’s probably not my grandfather, though. He looks too young.”

  It was meant to be a joke, but it came out kind of pathetic due to my nerves.

  Christina didn’t look amused. She picked up her phone and put it back in the coat of her jacket before looking at me again. “Well, you’ve answered all of my questions, I think. I’m going to write this all up in a report when I get back to HQ.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving already?” I said in surprise. “You’re not going to ask me more questions?”

  Christina stood up. “What else is there to ask? You already answered all of the ones I had, as well as a few new ones that I came up with during the questioning. I’m a rather busy woman, in case you can’t tell, so I don’t have time to spend talking to teenage boys like you all day.”

  That would have offended me normally, but I was so relieved that I had somehow managed to stumble my way through the questioning process without revealing who I really was that I was more relieved than anything. “Okay. Makes sense.”

  “Mister and missus McDonald,” said Christina, looking at my parents. “I wanted to thank you for allowing me to come into your house and speak to your son about this issue. With this information, the Rumsfeld City Police Department is that much closer to making the city of Rumsfeld a safer place for everyone.”

  “Uh, you’re welcome, detective,” said Dad, who seemed taken aback by Christina’s sudden change in attitude. He halfway rose from his chair. “Do you want me to get the door for you or—?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Christina cheerfully. “I might be a crazy big city gal, but I think I know how doors work. Thanks for the offer, though.”

  With that, Christina walked out of the kitchen. A second later, I heard the front door open and close, and then the sound of a car engine starting up and driving away down the street until it was out of hearing range.

  “Well …” Mom looked at me and Dad, mystified. “That woman was certainly … different.”

  “That’s a nice way of describing her,” said Dad with a grunt. “She obviously thinks we’re just a bunch of hicks from flyover country. I don’t know why those idiots in the police department hired her if she’s just going to talk down to us like that.”

  “Maybe she’s just stressed from moving from such a big city like New York to such a small one like this,” said Mom, though she spoke rather halfheartedly. “Moving is always stressful, especially when you’re by yourself.”

  “Nah, I think she’s just stuck up,” said Dad, shaking his head. “I bet she won’t last one month here. Then she’ll go crawling back to NYC where her kind belongs.”

  Dad chuckled when he said that, while Mom frowned her disapproval but, as usual, said nothing about Dad’s crude jokes.

  Me, I said nothing, because I was still thinking about how lucky I had gotten. If the conversation had gone even slightly differently, my secret identity would have been blown before my superhero career even started. I made a mental note to avoid Christina if I ever saw her around town. She acted like she was satisfied with my answers, but deep down, I suspected that she didn’t believe them entirely and would be keeping a close eye on me from now on.

  I was snapped out of my thoughts when Dad slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, sport, how are you doing? You’re sweating like an elephant.”

  “What?” I said, looking at Dad. “Oh, I’m all right. She’s just a really intense lady.”

  “You can say that again,” said Dad. “Anyway, let’s stop talking about stuck-up women from big cities. I’m just glad to see that you’re all right and that those Injector idiots are going to rot in jail for the rest of their lives. So long as you’re safe, I don’t care who they have working for the police.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “Um, can I go back to my room now? I’m still kind of tired and I’d also like to take a shower.”

  “Wait a minute, Jack,” said Dad. “Today’s your birthday, remember? I got you a gift. I planned to give it to you when I got off work later, but now that we’re both here, I might as well give it to you now.”

  Dad pulled a small box out from under the table and gave it to me. The box was about the size of a smartphone, but slightly bigger. Written on the top were the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACK—FROM DAD.’

  “What is it?” I said, looking up at Dad.

  “Open it and find out,” said Dad.

  Wondering what Dad could have possibly gotten me for a present, I popped open the box’s lid and pulled out the object inside it.

  It was a small framed photograph. It showed Grandfather, still wearing his Trickshot costume but with the mask removed, holding a small baby in his arms, a proud smile on his face, while a young boy who looked to be about six stood next to him, also smiling, though he looked a little jealous of the baby in Grandfather’s arms.

  “See that?” said Dad. “It’s a picture we took of you, Dad, and Thomas not long after you were born. Told Dad to take off the stupid costume, but he insisted on wearing it. So this picture is about sixteen-years-old, the same age as you.”

  “I’ve never seen this picture before,” I said, looking up at Dad again. “Where did you find it?”

 
“I didn’t,” said Dad. He put an arm around Mom’s shoulder. “It was your mom here who found it in the attic while going through old family photos. I had forgotten about it, even though I was the one who had taken the picture all the way back then.”

  “It’s great,” I said, looking down at the picture again. “Grandfather looks really young in this picture, but he was in his forties or something around then, wasn’t he?”

  “Late fifties, actually,” said Dad, “but yeah, he always did look young, even despite the stress of being a superhero aging him a lot.”

  I looked at the picture again. I spotted the Trickshot Watch on Grandfather’s wrist. It was angled in such a way that the face of the watch faced the camera, though that looked more like coincidence than deliberate. Looking at Thomas, I was amazed at how he looked so much like Grandfather even back then, when he was just six.

  As nice as the picture was, I couldn’t help but feel sad when I looked at it. Both Grandfather and Thomas were gone. Granted, Grandfather, at least, was still alive, but Thomas wasn’t. It reminded me of how small our family had gotten over the years. Yes, I did have some aunts and cousins in other parts of the state, but they all lived far away from each other and we rarely saw them except for around Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the like. Seeing this picture and then looking at Mom and Dad reminded me of how big our family had once been.

  There was no way I could bring Thomas back to life. I could save Grandfather, possibly, but even then, there was no guarantee that I would be able to do that anytime soon.

  But one thing was certain: I was going to use the Trickshot Watch to take down the Injectors and Icon, no matter the cost.

  CHAPTER NINE

  For the rest of the day, I mostly napped, except at dinner time when the ice cream cake came out of the freezer. Then Mom, Dad, and I had cake together and just generally had a good time. It was a nice distraction from all of the bad stuff that had happened recently. Plus, the cake was absolutely delicious, the best cake I had had in a long time. I made a mental note to get another cake just like this as soon as the next excuse for eating cake came up.

  I slept surprisingly well that night, but my dreams were weird. They mostly consisted me of running and hiding inside the tool shed, but what I was running from changed constantly. Sometimes it was the Injectors, sometimes it was Christina, and sometimes it was just a large, shadowy mass that would definitely hurt me if I let it get me.

  Such dreams would have scared me normally, but I didn’t find them quite as scary as I should have. Maybe it was because I had the power of Trickshot now, so if any of those people came after me, I could defend myself.

  In any case, when I got up the next morning, I found that my phone was full of texts from my friend Kyle. Apparently, he had been texting me all day yesterday, trying to find out if I was okay or not after I ran out of the bus with the Injectors chasing me down. I was about to text him back, but then decided that Kyle probably deserved to actually hear my voice, rather than just read a simple text from me saying I was okay.

  So I dialed Kyle’s number and waited for him to answer his phone. I didn’t have to wait long. Two beeps and then I heard Kyle’s slightly breathless voice on the other end, saying, “Jack, is that you? Did you get my texts?”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said, nodding as I sat up in my bed and yawned. “All four hundred of them. I’m perfectly fine. The Injectors didn’t hurt me or anything.”

  “Whew,” said Kyle. “I really thought you were a goner when I saw those three Injector guys leave the bus to get you. And when I heard that four more Injectors joined them … well, I wasn’t exactly making plans to go to your funeral, but I figured I should prepare just to be safe.”

  I chuckled. “Nah, I don’t think I’m going to die anytime soon. It was very scary, though.”

  “I bet,” said Kyle. “I’m amazed you survived at all, by the way. I’ve always heard that whenever the Injectors come after you, that you never survive. They don’t take prisoners.”

  “And they wouldn’t have taken me prisoner, either, if I hadn’t been saved,” I said. “I got lucky.”

  “Yeah, who defended you, anyway?” said Kyle. “Some of the other kids at school are saying Bug Bite appeared out of nowhere and saved you, but others are saying it was an entirely new superhero no one has ever seen before. I haven’t been able to find out who is right.”

  I paused to think about what I should tell Kyle. It was too risky to tell him that I had saved myself as Trickshot, because even my parents didn’t know about my identity as Trickshot yet. Even if Kyle was my friend, I wasn’t sure I was ready to involve him in this just yet.

  So I said, “I’m not sure. I was inside the tool shed the entire time and there weren’t any windows or anything that I could use to look outside. Whoever saved me probably was a super of some kind, though, because there’s no way an ordinary person could have taken down seven Injectors by himself like that.”

  “Well, I heard rumors that Trickshot did it,” said Kyle, “but that doesn’t make sense, of course, because your granddad retired ten years ago, so there’s no way it could be Trickshot unless someone somehow got their hands on his costume again or made their own.”

  “Uh, yeah, right,” I said, nodding. “Whoever it was, I’m grateful they came to my rescue. There’s no way I could have saved myself, not unless I ran into some police officers accidentally, of course.”

  “Right,” said Kyle. “Everyone at school is talking about you, but I’m the first person to actually talk to you since then, I think. Even Debra has been worried about you.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Debra? You mean Debra Ackerman?”

  “Yeah, your girlfriend,” said Kyle teasingly. “Not that I’m surprised, given how nice she is, but I thought I would mention it anyway.”

  I rolled my eyes. Debra Ackerman, one of my classmates, was not my girlfriend. But I had had a crush on her for a while now and had been trying to muster up the courage to ask her out. Kyle knew how I felt about her, which he teased me about whenever he got the chance because that was just the kind of friend he was.

  “Maybe you should ask her out when you come back to school on Monday,” Kyle suggested. “You’re sixteen now, which I’m sure makes you a man in some foreign country somewhere in the world. And men ask out the women they want.”

  “Says the guy who’s never asked out a girl in his life,” I said.

  “I’m not telling you to fight and die for some great cause here,” said Kyle. “Just saying that now’s your time, dude. Go for it.”

  I shifted uncomfortably on my bed. “I’ll ‘go for it’ when I feel like it. Anyway, let’s change the subject.”

  “Like we always do whenever I tell you to ask Debra out.”

  “This is important,” I said. “Remember when that one Injector, Rodriguez, claimed that one of us had something that belonged to the Injectors? Something they were trying to take back?”

  “Of course I remember that,” said Kyle. “What about it?”

  “Because I want to know if you found out who might have had what the Injectors wanted,” I said. “Did anyone admit to stealing from them or anything?”

  “Of course not,” said Kyle. “Do you really think that anyone would admit out loud that they outright stole something from the Injectors? That would be like walking onto Times Square and announcing to everyone that you stole a million dollars from the mafia. No one is that desperate to get put on the hit list of the Injectors, not even the emo kids who talk about how much life sucks all the time.”

  “But someone has to have something that belonged to the Injectors, right?” I said. “It doesn’t seem likely that the Injectors would bother hijacking a school bus unless they had good reason to.”

  “I don’t know,” said Kyle. “I haven’t gone around demanding that the other kids empty their backpacks or lockers so I can see if they have anything that might have belonged to the Injectors at some point. Personally, I think the Injectors
just made that up as an excuse to rob us.”

  “But it doesn’t really fit with how the Injectors work,” I said. “I’ve never heard of them robbing or hijacking a school bus before. My theory is that one of the other students has or had Power, but who, I can’t say.”

  “I bet it was Ryan Bond,” said Kyle. “He seems like the kind of guy who would steal from a group as dangerous as the Injectors. Plus, he’s friends with Robby, who we know actually did try to buy Power from the Injectors.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” I said. “Ryan is a jerk and jerks like him are more likely to do something stupid like that than other people. Still, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, especially without any evidence.”

  “Okay,” said Kyle. “Anyway, do you want to hang out today? I didn’t get to pay for your lunch yesterday at school, so maybe we can grab lunch or go see a movie. I heard the newest White Leopard movie is supposed to be pretty good.”

  I opened my mouth to say sure, but then I glanced at the Trickshot Watch, which sat on the desk next to my bed, and remembered that I had promised to train with TW today. “Sorry, Kyle, but I won’t be able to hang out with you today. I’ve got a lot of chores to do today and stuff, so I can’t hang out with you right now.”

  “Oh, okay,” said Kyle, who sounded somewhat disappointed. “Well, maybe we can hang out on Sunday, then, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Yeah, Sunday sounds good,” I said. “Anyway, see you later. I’ve got to go.”

  I ended the call. At the same time, the Trickshot Watch flashed and TW stood before me again, his arms folded behind his back and a curious expression on his face.

  “Was that your friend Kyle?” said TW.

  I nodded as I put my phone back on my desk. “Yeah. He was just calling to make sure I was okay because he hadn’t heard from me since yesterday.”

  “What a good friend he is,” said TW. “It reminds me of the friendship Gregory had with his fellow superhero, Jinx. The two of them always had each other’s back, even though they worked in two different cities.”