Not Your Villain (Sidekick Squad #2)(7)

He spent his first hour of his first day of school sitting in the time-out corner for being rude.

The other kids were coloring and drawing, and every so often one of them looked at him curiously. He stuck his tongue out at them too. He didn’t like the corner, and it was unfair that he had to be there.

He wished he was home on the farm: running through the fields, laughing as the water sprinkled over him, pulling up vegetables, eating tomatoes off the vine, watching Dad teach his big brother to cook jambalaya.

His stomach rumbled. He’d forgotten his lunch. He remembered exactly where he left it, on the kitchen table—a little box of rice and beans.

The kids weren’t drawing anymore. They were sitting at their desks, pulling things out of their backpacks, and eating. One kid ate grapes noisily, slobbering and dropping them clumsily.

He closed his eyes, trying to ignore his tummy.

“It’s snack time.”

“Huh?”

“Snack time. Ms. Pike said to come get you. Where’s yours? You can eat now. My name’s Emma.” She said all of this in one quick jumble, and he had an impression of warm, brown eyes and big, brown curls shaking enthusiastically as she swayed back and forth. There was a bright red bow in her hair.

“Don’t have a snack.”

“You can have some of mine,” Emma said. “Come on.” She held out her hand, and he took it, following her to her desk. She pulled a whole apple from a little bag. “Oh,” she said, her face falling. “My mom forgot to cut my apple today. My other mom always makes my lunch.”

He nodded. In all his five-year-old wisdom, he knew many things and that some grown-ups are better at some things than other grown-ups, like how Dad is really good at cooking, but Ma burns the food.

“You can have all of it.” She made a face. “I can’t start it.”

He took a big bite, crunched into the apple, and handed it back at her.

Emma’s whole face lit up. “Oh! Thank you!” She munched happily on the fruit and gestured for him to sit down.

There was an empty spot at the desk next to her and a projector where he could put his DED. He sneaked a look at her desk; her projector showed Emma’s letters in a careful scrawl: E, M, M, A.

Emma showed him how to connect his DED to the projector, and it flickered to life, scattering pixels into the air. He laughed as she swirled her fingers to draw shapes. “You put your name here. So everyone knows this is your desk.” She handed the apple back to him.

He shrugged, biting into it. “I don’t know. I’m still picking.”

Emma nodded. “What do you want? Do you know?”

“Um, I want to be Starscream when I grow up,” he said matter-of-factly.

“That’s not his name name,” Emma said, laughing. “You’re silly. You can have a hero name but you also need a name name.”

He nodded, chewing his apple thoughtfully. It was good, crunchy, not as sweet as the ones they grew on the farm, but still nice.

“Michael?” Emma offered.

He shook his head.

“Joe?”

No to that too.

“Simon?”

He laughed. “That’s my brother!”

“Jeremy?”

He shook his head, and Emma kept running through names.

“Sean?”

“My brother.”

“Wait—how many brothers do you have?”

He held up two fingers. “You can have one of mine. Or both of them.”

Emma giggled. “That would be fun. What about you?”

“I just don’t want to have both brothers. They are loud and smelly and always eating my food.”

“But you always have someone to play with! I don’t have anyone when I go home.”

“You can come to my house, and we can play together.”

“That sounds like fun!”

He laughed. He’d never been called fun. Annoying, yes, by his older brothers, but never fun.

“I like your laugh. Sounds like bells.” She said it with a happy grin.

“What?” He’d heard bells, but they don’t sound like anyone’s laugh.

“I learned that yesterday. You can say that something is like something else and grown-ups think you’re very smart. It’s called a—” she leaned close, as if it were a Big Secret. “Met. A. Four.”

“Okay.”

“Shhh, listen.” Emma pointed to the ceiling, and a chorus of bells, light and chiming, rang out a melody, and then a deeper one pealed in harmony. They’d sounded earlier, at snack time, but he’d been too frustrated to notice.

They were pretty. He still didn’t see how his laugh sounded like them, but that was okay. He had a new friend.

She smiled at him. “Every time we do something new, they make a pretty melody.”

“Bells,” he mused. “I like that.”





Ch. 2...





“Now arriving in Aerial City,” the computerized voice announces as the train slows to a stop.

Bells steps off the train, throws his duffel bag over his shoulder, and takes a deep breath. His last three sessions were in the South; this is the first time he’s been so far north. He’s not used to the cold. He pulls his jacket tighter around himself and, on second thought, pulls the collar of his sweater up to his nose. The air feels different, lush and heavy with moisture.