Sidekicked Read Online Free Page A

problems, though it probably doesn’t attract the criminal element quite the way Justicia does. Something about this city just draws the bad guys like flies to a Dumpster. Mr. Masters calls it job security.
    â€œI’m just going to go wash up,” I say, and slink up the stairs, listening to my father whisper to himself that the Fox is easy to look at, though.
    Back in my room, I pull my mask from my backpack and take it to the bathroom to wash it out. There are few things worse than having to put a sweaty, snotty piece of spandex on over your face. I rinse it carefully and set it over the vent beneath my bed to dry; then I peel off my shoes and change into a pair of sweats. I slip on a Highview Middle School sweatshirt to help hide the cuff marks, just in case, and look around the room for my homework
    The place is a disaster—a landfill, my mother would say, though it is mostly by design. Like most thirteen-year-old boys, I have a few things that I don’t want my parents to discover—heavy-duty steel cable, highly volatile chemicals, thermal imaging goggles, fuse-head electric blasting caps, that sort of thing—all carefully concealed. I’ve found that if you keep enough other junk lying around, the sheer effort to clean it all up is too much for any parent, and they don’t even bother to touch the stuff you keep in the top of your closet or underneath your bed. There are a few posters on the wall, a couple of junior academic decathlon medals, and a dozen books strewn about. I sift through the piles to find Julius Caesar and then promptly drop it into another pile of schoolbooks representing the night’s to-do list. Finally I turn on my computer to see if I have any messages. There’s just one. From Jenna.
    Give me a buzzzzz later.
    I try to think of something clever to say back, but I’m not in the mood.
    I walk to my parents’ bathroom to raid my mother’s medicine chest for something to put on my wrists. My only discovery is some lotion that claims to come from rain forests and smells like melons. Scented lotions have a tendency to give me migraines, so I just turn on the cold water and soak. If I concentrate, I can block out the slow burn and focus on the sweet sting of the cold. It has taken me years of therapy to learn to control my power this much—to focus my overly keen senses and weed out all the extra input. I close my eyes and listen closely for a moment. I hear the sound of the TV and my dad scratching his armpit. My mother is chopping onions for a salad. Next door, Mrs. Polanski is singing Justin Bieber in the bathtub.
    I open my eyes and get a good look at the boy in the mirror, who watches me back, mimicking my squinted expression. Shaggy brown hair, skater style. Dull bluish-gray eyes. Mostly straight teeth. Blackheads checkerboarding my nose. The rumor of stubble on my chin. “You again,” I say to myself.
    When you’re a teenager, everybody is waiting for you to be something or somebody else—your friends, your parents, your teachers. Sometimes you lose track. Are you the shy kid in the back of the room who apologizes for even accidentally touching Susan Childress’s arm, or the guy making bombs in the backyard? Are you the helpless nerd with the backpack on hoping you don’t get the snot beat out of you by the school bully, or the helpless nerd with the mask on, hoping you don’t get the snot beat out of you by the town’s crazy new super-villain?
    Or maybe you’re just the helpless nerd staring at the other helpless nerd in the mirror, talking to yourself, wondering which of you needs more help.
    The bread is burning, though my mother doesn’t know it yet. She calls up that dinner’s ready, which is my cue to put my mask back on and pretend to be the kid who stayed after school to finish his science project. The honor-roll kid who the bumper sticker on their Corolla brags about. The kid they don’t