The first hall had kids my size standing around a teacher. I rushed to join them until I realized it was a group from another elementary school. UGH!
The second hall had a school group too. Those kids were way too tall to be my age.
By the time I caught up with my class, my heart was pounding, but not from running. Mrs. Santos had noticed me.
“Freddie?” she questioned. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in a while. Have you been staying with the class?”
“I’m doing my best.”
And I was. Except Zapato Power was distracting me. I heard people with problems I could solve.
“The baby’s teddy bear dropped out of the stroller.”
“Where’s my bracelet? It was on my arm a minute ago!”
Instead of seeing how astronauts walked on the moon or the control panels in a cockpit, I was running around looking for a teddy bear and a bracelet. I pretty much missed everything until the end of the day when my class visited the gift shop. That’s when I turned off my Zapato Power hearing to listen to my friends.
“Why is everything so expensive?” Jason whined. “I only have five dollars.”
“I only have four,” Geraldo said.
They were both doing better than I was. I had two dollars and thirty cents—all Mom had in her wallet that morning.
“Even the key chains cost too much,” Maria complained.
Everything in the museum store was cool, from socks with moon pictures to kid-sized space suits. Everybody, including me, wished they could buy at least one thing.
“Do you have something that costs less than two dollars?” I asked the white-haired man behind the cash register. His name tag said Bob, and he wore thick glasses and had stubble on his chin. He reminded me of my inventor friend, Mr. Vaslov.
“Follow me!” His friendly smile let me know I had asked the right person.
Bob led me to a spinning metal rack filled with postcards. They all had colorful pictures of astronauts, airplanes, and the moon.
“Seventy-five cents each,” Bob said. “Four dollars for a pack of six.”
¡Excelente! I called Geraldo over and soon my whole class crowded around. With so many happy kids grabbing, cards fell on the floor. That made a mess! But I didn’t mind cleaning up while my friends paid for their postcards. It gave me extra time to pick one. Did I want the red airplane or the space walk?
While I tried to decide, everyone else followed Mrs. Blaine and Mrs. Santos out the door.
“Hey, kid!” Bob called to me. “Your class just left.”
I raced out of the store in a panic. I’d missed my chance to get a souvenir. I couldn’t miss the bus too.
“Sit with us, Freddie!” Maria waved. She was in the third row, beside Geraldo.
I plopped down at the end of the seat.
“So many airplanes!” Geraldo said. “They made me want to be a pilot.”
“I liked the room with the activities,” Maria said.
All around me, kids were talking about the stuff they’d seen at the museum. No one knew I’d been busy finding a lost little boy, a bracelet, and a teddy bear. No one knew how much I wanted to see what I’d missed. Sometimes being a superhero is lonely.
We got back to Starwood Elementary just before three o’clock. Mrs. Blaine looked tired, like counting heads all day was a big job. When the bell rang, she gave us a weak wave. No homework for the weekend!
In a blink I was out the back door of the school and up the stairs leading to Starwood Park Apartments. I should have been home two seconds later, feeding my guinea pig, Claude the Second. But just outside my apartment, 29G, my ears caught a moaning sound.
“WAAAEEE! WAAAEEE!”
I rubbed the buttons on my wristband to hear better.
“WAAAEEE! WAAAEEE!”
Did somebody else need help?
