Hero-Type

OVERTURE

YOU KNOW THOSE PICTURES OF FAT PEOPLE?

I’m talking about the ones in the ads for diets and weight-loss drugs and stuff like that. You know them. They always show the Before picture of the person back when they were a big fat slob. And then they show the After picture, which is like this totally buff hottie.

Here’s the thing about those pictures, though: For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why the pictures were labeled Before and After, because to me it was obvious they were two completely different people.

But I get it now—we’re at least supposed to think that it’s the same person, made over thanks to the miracle of whatever the company is peddling. It doesn’t have to be just for weight loss. It can be for any big life change.

I’ve always been skinny, so I don’t need to lose weight, but I think about those pictures a lot. Especially now. After my own big life change.

So why do my Before and After pictures look exactly the same?

HERO

Chapter 1

Surreal

EVERYWHERE YOU GO, it seems like there’s a reminder of what happened, of what I did. You can’t escape it. I can’t escape it. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone suggested renaming Brookdale Kevindale. That’s just how things are working out these days. The whole town’s gone Kevin Krazy.

Take the Narc, for example. The big sign out front, the one that normally announces specials and sales, now says THANK YOU, KEVIN, FOR SAVING OUR LEAH. That’s just plain weird. The same spot that usually proclaims the existence of new flavors of Pop Tarts or two-for-one Cokes is now a thanks to me. It’s just surreal, the word my friend Flip uses when he’s slightly stoned and can’t think of a better word to describe something strange.

But I sort of understand the Narc sign. After all, Leah’s dad owns Nat’s Market (called the Narc by every kid in town except Leah), so I get it.

But . . .

Then there’s the flashing neon sign that points down the highway to Cincinnati Joe’s, a great burger-and-wings joint. Usually it just flashes JOE followed by SAYS and then EAT and then something like WINGS! or BURGERS! or FRIES! or whatever the owners feel like putting up that day. Now, though, it says:

JOE

SAYS

GOOD

JOB

KEVIN!

Even the sign at the WrenchIt Auto Parts store wishes me a happy sixteenth birthday. And when you drive past the Good Faith Lutheran Church on Schiffler Street, the sign out front reads: GOD BLESS YOU, KEVIN & LEAH. Which almost makes us sound like a couple or something. And I don’t even go to Good Faith. I’m what Mom calls a parentally lapsed Catholic. (Usually followed by Don’t worry about it.)

Continuing the Tour of Weirdness that has become Brookdale in the last week or so, you can see similar signs all over. My favorite—the most surreal—is the one near the mall, where someone forgot to finish taking down the old letters first, so now it says, SPECIAL! SAVE KEVIN ROSS IS A HERO!

Gotta love that.

And, God, don’t even get me started on the reporters.

You probably saw me on TV. First the local channels and then—just this past weekend—the bigtime: national TV, courtesy of Justice!. I didn’t want to do the show, but Justice! was one of the big contributors to the reward money. I don’t have the money yet, and it’s not like the producers are holding it hostage or anything, but when someone’s planning on dumping thirty grand into your bank account . . . I sort of felt like I had to go on. Dad said it was my decision, but I could tell he was waffling. It’s like, one part of him figured I deserved the money, and another part of him hated the idea of this big media company having that over my head, and another part of him probably wanted the whole thing just to go away.

Anyway.

They (you know, the Justice! people) filmed in Leah’s living room, Leah being the girl whose life I saved.

See, here’s the deal, the way I told it on TV and in the papers: I’m walking along near the Brookdale library and I hear this scream from down the alleyway. So I go running and there’s this big guy and he’s hassling Leah and he’s got a needle in his hand.

He was big. I was—and am—small. But I couldn’t help myself. I just threw down my, y’know, my backpack and I charged him and somehow I managed to get him in a wrestling hold like they taught us in gym class. He dropped the needle and Leah screamed again and the guy grunted and tried to shake me off, but I was sticky like a parasite, man. I just held on and tightened my grip and he couldn’t move.

And Leah called 911 and that would have been that, but it turns out the guy in question was Michael Alan Naylor. The surgeon. Or . . .

The man responsible for a series of abductions, rapes, and murders throughout the Mid-Atlantic, said Nancy deCarlo, the host of Justice!, just before she introduced me to the nation in all my zitty, sweaty, panicky glory.

They stuck me on Leah’s sofa with Leah, who looked poised and calm and radiated perfection. It was like Beauty and the Beastly or something. Nancy talked. I listened. I answered her questions, but I can’t really remember it at all. I was too caught up in the moment, sitting so close to Leah that I could smell her perfume and the hot TV lights and the Justice! people running around and everything. It was crazy.

They showed a reenactment of the whole thing, shot in grainy black-and-white, with some little emo kid playing me, running down the alley, jumping . . .

It was TV. They didn’t tell the whole story, of course.

Maybe that’s because I didn’t tell them the whole story.

Chapter 2

Bus Ride of Champions

IT’S HARD TO GET USED TO the way the world’s treating me. No one ever really paid attention to me before, and now . . .

Well, for example, there’s People. They wanted to put me on the cover along with other Teen Heroes! like the kid who woke up at night to smell smoke just in time to get her family out of a burning house, and the other kid who went to computer camp even though his home had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (I don’t know how going to computer camp makes you a hero, but People says it, so it must be true, right?)

But let me tell you something—bad enough I agreed to have my face plastered all over TV. I wasn’t about to give People an interview, so they cut me from the cover, thank God.

Oh, and then there were the reporters. Billions of them.

OK, not billions, but a lot. It’s down to a few local guys now, but for a while there, there were about ten or fifteen of them and they were sort of camped out on the sidewalk and in vans on the street where me and Dad live. Which was embarrassing because we live in this crappy basement apartment in an old house and people took pictures of me coming out of it. They took pictures of Dad, too, when he came home from work, which is also embarrassing because he’s usually in his overalls and doesn’t look all that impressive. I tell people my dad works for the government, which isn’t a total lie. He used to be in the army and now he’s a garbage man. That’s sort of a government job. Government contracted, at least.

You’d think that it would be against the law to hang around outside my home and wait to take pictures of me, but Dad says it’s not.

You’re considered a public person now, he told me in a rare moment of lucidity. The privacy laws are a little less strict around you. The sidewalk and the street are public property, so they can wait there as long as they want.

He told me to just ignore them, that they’d go away as soon as there was another story to cover.

Easy for him to say. Dad doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. But I’m ugly, OK? And I have face pizza like you wouldn’t believe, so I really, really hate having my picture taken. Bad enough everything was splattered all over TV courtesy of Justice!, but now I also have to deal with the thought that my picture might show up in the New York Times or US Weekly?

I was pretty much fed up with walking into a solid wall of bodies and flashbulbs every time I left the house, so it’s actually cool that Justice! has aired, because now they’ve mostly gone away and I can just go to the school bus like a normal person.

I hop on the bus and the doors close and it’s totally silent. Like someone just cut a nasty fart and won’t own up to it.

And then someone clears their throat and says, Way to kick ass, Kevin.

I don’t know who says it. I can’t even turn in time to look for the person before suddenly the whole bus erupts into applause. It’s like drums in a tin can.

God, even on the school bus. I can’t escape it. I thought this was over last week, but I guess the airing of Justice! over the weekend just got people going again.

I expect the bus driver to shout for us all to get quiet and for me to sit down, but when I look over my shoulder, she’s standing up, clapping her little heart out for me.

This is unreal.

What do I do now? What do I say? Am I supposed to make a speech or something? God, I hope not.

I smile as best I can—when I smile, my face becomes even uglier, so I avoid it whenever possible. See, my lips sort of peel back and my teeth just hang out there like they’re dangling in space. So I keep my lips pretty tight together when I’m in situations where I have to smile.

Thanks, I say, because I don’t know what else to say. The bus driver slides back into her seat, which I take as my cue to sit down.

I take the first seat I see, not pressing my luck. It’s next to a kid I don’t know, a freshman.

Saw you on TV, he says. You looked OK.

You’d have to cut through ten miles of bad jungle overgrowth before getting within pissing distance of looking OK for me, but he’s not pulling my leg. He seems sincere, a sure indicator of some horrible variety of brain damage. Poor kid. So young.

Way to kick that guy’s ass, he goes on. I read about him online, you know? They called him ‘the Surgeon.’

Yeah. I know.

Because he would anatize his victims, the kid announces proudly.

Anesthetize, I tell him. I have some trouble pronouncing it myself, but at least I try.

Yeah, that’s what I said. And then he would cut them up, all surgical-like. With a scalp. Like the Indians.

Wow. He managed to mess up vocabulary and history all at once. That’s impressive.

He used a scalpel. That’s what doctors use.

The kid snorts as if I’m pulling his leg. He turns to look out the window, muttering something about big-shot hero. I let it go. I don’t need to add shoving a freshman out the bus window to my list of problems.

Chapter 3

School Dazed

AT SCHOOL, THERE’S OCCASIONAL SMATTERINGS OF APPLAUSE and some cheers, even from people who don’t know me. People who just saw me on TV or who maybe heard about things from Leah or one of her legions of friends. I hate the attention. I duck my head down and do the best lips-over-the-teeth grin I can in response. I hate my teeth. Along with the rest of my mouth.

And the rest of my face, for that matter.

I’m only in homeroom for five minutes when the phone rings on Mrs. Sawyer’s desk. Dr. Goethe would like to see you, Kevin. So I trudge off to the principal’s office . . .

. . . where Dr. Goethe leans back in his chair, beaming, as he reminds me that this afternoon will be the very special town assembly to honor me for my unwavering heroism, with plenty of important people and press in attendance.

You know, you’ve always sort of flown under the radar, Kevin, he goes on. so it’s great to see this. I hope you’ll take all of this attention as a sign and really step up your game.

Whatever. My grades are OK. I could do better, but why bother?

This will actually be the third such assembly for me; Dad says I can ditch them if I want, but he also says it would be polite to keep going, since people are going to so much trouble. There was already one at the Elks Club and the VFW, and now the whole town is showing up at school this afternoon.

I assure Dr. Goethe that I haven’t forgotten and then I try to have a normal day, but that isn’t going to happen. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen again.

There’s a palpable silence when I enter the lunchroom, everyone turning to look at me. Leah is eating lunch with her usual group, and everyone seems to be waiting to see if I’ll sit down with her, even though that hasn’t happened yet and won’t happen. Not a chance. I know my place.

Tit waves to me from his table in the corner. He’s with Jedi and Speedo. I sit down with them and try to ignore the million eyes boring into me from all angles. Why does everyone have to stare? Why can’t they just let me be?

And then it’s like the entire cafeteria sucks in its breath all at once. Like we were all watching TV or something and a car blew up out of nowhere. Or something. I don’t know. I’m bad at metaphors or similes or whatever they are. Ask any of my English teachers.

Tit clears his throat really loud, trying to get my attention. Jedi makes his vvvvvvvvvhnn noise, and I look up from my dry hamburger and Leah is standing there. I try to swallow, but I’m nervous and my throat’s dry and I think, Oh, cool, Kross—you’re going to choke to death right here, but that doesn’t happen and instead I sort of cough and I think, Oh, even better—you’re gonna spit up a gross brown wad of partly chewed burger while Leah’s standing here and the whole school is watching.

But somehow that doesn’t happen either. I manage to keep my mouth shut and my food somewhere between my teeth and my throat.

There’s an endless moment of silence. It’s like church. Been a while, tell the truth. But I remember it well—this is what it sounded like in church, just before Mass, when the processional music stops and Father McKane stands at the altar and everyone’s perfectly quiet for just those few seconds between the last strains of music fading away and Father McKane saying . . .

Leah saves the day by speaking, because I’m just sitting there, lost in my Catholic past. First she flashes me this totally dazzling smile that nearly blinds me and makes me ponder the awesome power of those tooth-whitening strips. Then she says, I wanted to invite you to my party.

In a way, I’m glad for the burger plug jammed in my craw; otherwise, I’d probably say something witty and brilliant like, Huh? Instead, I just nod wisely.

My parents are letting me throw a party next Friday, and I wanted . . .

She looks around, suddenly aware that everyone in the lunchroom is staring at us, that the usual dull roar of conversation has quieted to a burble of whispers. Beauty and the Beastly all over again. Good for her—she doesn’t let it bother her.

I wanted to invite you, she says, smiling perkily and bouncing a little bit. I force my eyes not to follow the bounce, which is easier said than done.

She holds out a little cream-colored envelope. After fifteen or twenty years, I realize that it’s for me. I take it.

I really hope you can come, she says again, and spins around and marches back to her table.

I rediscover my ability to swallow just as the lunchroom erupts into applause. Oh, God. Not again.

"Dude, you rock and you roll," says Tit.

Cut it out.

Jedi jumps in. Man, you know who’ll be at that party? All the hotties, man.

Can I go with? Speedo asks.

Shut up, guys. They’re talking too loudly and I don’t want someone to overhear my buddies acting like the horn-dogs they (OK, OK, we) really are. It’s embarrassing.

I wanna go with, Speedo says.

Tit reaches out for the invitation, but I shove it in my pocket before he can grab it. stop it, guys. No one’s going.

Tit shakes his head. You saved her life and stuff. You should go.

Yeah, Jedi says. "Maybe she’ll give you a special reward." He mimes oral sex with a french fry.

I look around, panicked, making sure no one notices. The guys crack up. They don’t know. They don’t care.

Later, in science class, I examine the envelope. I’m supposed to be taking notes, but I sit in the back and for once no one is looking at me.

A little cream envelope, very lightweight. My name written across the front in what must be Leah’s handwriting: Kevin. I like the way she makes the K, with a sort of flourish, like it’s something special.

Green ink. Green is her favorite color.

It isn’t sealed. I pry out the card inside. It’s a stiff piece of matching cream paper, preprinted—in green, of course—with Leah’s name and address and the time of the party. Leah has written at the bottom Don’t forget a bathing suit! and I think for a second that I might pass out.

And then, off to one side, is another handwritten note. Did she write this on all of them? I don’t think so—the handwriting is slightly different here, as if she jotted this last part down quickly, in an uncertain rush.

Please come.

That’s all it says. Two words.

God, how do I get into these things?

Chapter 4

The Council of Fools

OK, I’VE HAD ENOUGH MIND-NUMBING WEIRDNESS for one day, so after bio I decide to skip math. I head off to the auditorium instead. There’s a janitor’s office back there, behind the stage and off the wings. It’s locked, but Speedo scammed a key last year and made copies for all of us. The office is always empty at this time of day because that’s when the custodians all head out to McDonald’s for lunch.

I’m not the only one who needed some time away, it looks like. Flip and Fam are here, slobbering all over each other on one of the pitted metal desks.

Whoa, sorry, guys. I start to back out.

No, no! Flip jumps up. Fam looks a little annoyed, but she just runs her fingers through her hair and straightens her clothes. Hail, Fool! Dude, stick. Stick.

I sort of want to leave because I’m sure they have better things to do than hang with me right now, but Fam doesn’t look annoyed anymore, so I guess I’ll stay. I wish I were alone, though. I really just want to be alone right now.

Hail, Fool, I say back, and Fam repeats it.

So today’s the big day, huh? Flip gets this gleam in his eye, and for a second there, I’m worried. As soon as I knew about it, I begged him—honestly begged him—not to pull any pranks at the ceremony this afternoon. Bad enough I’ll be on display for everyone in town; I don’t need some craziness interrupting it and stretching it out.

No sooner do I think it than the door opens and in comes the rest of the crew: Speedo, Jedi, and Tit. The gang’s all here, and the room’s a confusion of Hail, Fool! as everyone says hi.

And then Tit starts chanting, Kross! Kross! Kross! and the rest pick it up, except for Flip, who just looks bored, and I don’t