Speedy to the Rescue!
“Spuddy! Spuddy!” Pumpkin Pete’s voice cried out over my cell phone. “I need your help!”
“It’s not laundry day!” I replied.
“No! Something worse! I — hey! Hey! Get away from me! Don’t! No! Aaaah!”
Pete’s phone went dead. He really was in trouble! I leaped from my chair. “Gotta run!” I said, and jumped up to head for the League of Big Justice.
“Hey! Speedy! You haven’t voted for the new sidekick!” Exact Change Kid said.
“Can’t vote now! Gotta save Pete!”
“What’s with that guy and never wanting to vote?” Boom Boy asked.
“Maybe he just doesn’t like democracy,” Exact Change Kid commented.
“It’s probably because Spelling Beatrice always beats him when they play it,” Spice Girl commented.
“That’s Scrabble,” Spelling Beatrice corrected. Exact Change Kid pulled out the ballots and handed them to the other sidekicks. He dropped one under the table for Earlobe Lad.
“I need a pencil,” he mumbled. “And could you please not drop it so loudly? And whose stomach is gurgling? Aaah! Will everyone please eat lunch before these meetings? Is that too much to ask?”
I ran through the League of Big Justice Super Justice Lobby and past the League of Big Justice Super Souvenir Gift Shop of Justice, and that was when I saw him. Pumpkin Pete came racing toward me like the building was on fire, or at least like it was Halloween night and an angry pumpkin-carving mob was on the loose.
“Spuddy! Spuddy! You gotta help me! It’s terrible! Terrible!” Pete shouted.
“What is it, Pete? Is evil attacking? Is King Justice in trouble? Is it an angry pumpkin-carving mob on the loose?” You never know.
Pete collapsed and I caught his big, fat, orange pumpkin head with both hands. “The horror! The horror!”
“What’s happening, Pete?! You have to tell me!” “He’s evil! Pure evil!” Pete’s head slumped in my arms. And that was when I saw it.
“Where big orange bawoon man?” Super Vision Lad yelled, racing around the corner toward us.
Pete jumped up and hid behind me. “Get that monster away from me!”
“Pete! It’s just Super Vision Lad!” I assured him.
“Super Vision Lad, or the greatest evil the world has ever known?” Pete gasped.
I looked at Super Vision Lad. He made a spit bubble between his lips. It popped, and he giggled, “I wike bubbose!”
“The kid’s mother... she tricked me! Promised me ten bucks an hour if I watched him until six o’clock! The kid’s unstoppable! She should pay me a hundred dollars a minute!”
“Well, Pete, what’re you going to do?”
“I’m not going to do anything! It’s your problem now!” Pete informed me, and pushed me toward Super Vision Lad.
“Me? I don’t want to babysit this kid! I’m a sidekick! I have to be ready to fight evil at all times!” I couldn’t believe Pete was trying to pawn this kid off on me.
What am I saying? Of course I could believe it. “You want to fight evil?” Pete asked. “Just turn your back on that kid for ten seconds. I swear, he needs constant supervision!”
“Tacos are funny!” Super Vision Lad shouted, and started banging his head against the display stand of Pumpkin Pete action figures at the League of Big Justice Super Souvenir Gift Shop. One of the action figures fell off the top shelf.
“I have all the powers of a pumpkin!” the action figure boasted when it hit the floor. Super Vision Lad picked up the doll and began to chew on its big, fat, orange pumpkin head.
“You break it, you buy it!” Pete shouted, and then immediately ducked behind me again.
“Look, Pete, I have to get back to the other sidekicks and vote,” I informed him. “By this time, they probably think I really, really hate democracy.”
“And well you should!” Pete snorted. “I hear that Spelling Beatrice always kicks your butt when you play.”
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. But then, I almost never had a clue about what Pete was talking about. Or Exact Change Kid. Or Spice Girl, Boom Boy, Earlobe Lad, and Boy-inthe-Plastic-Bubble Boy.
Oddly enough, though, I knew exactly what Boy-in-the-Cardboard-Box Boy had been talking about.
“Sorry, Pete. I have to go,” I told him, and started to head down the hall. “I have to play in my first football game tonight.”
It’s a long story, but basically, I lost my temper one day at school when Mandrake Steel (a.k.a. Charisma Kid) was taunting me in front of Prudence Cane (a.k.a. The Girl I Have a Crush On But Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive Even Though I Sit Next to Her in Class). So I used just a little bit of my super speed to make Mandrake look stupid, and the school’s football coach saw me. Let’s just say he made me the starting running back on the spot.
Sure, I’m too small to play. Sure, I’d never played real football before the first team practice, and sure, I was more scared to play in tonight’s game than when I saw Pumpkin Pete blasting off from Pluto in the final escape rocket, but I figure a little super speed goes a long way.
Or at least it goes far enough to help me avoid any broken bones when the padded giants on the other team try to squish me.
I was almost safely out the door when Pete shouted, “Wait! You can’t go! Don’t you remember Rule #2?”
I froze. Nailed on a technicality!
I turned around, and in a deeply sighing breath said, “ ‘Rule #2: No matter how crazy it sounds, no matter how dangerous you think it may be, always, always do what a superhero asks you to do.’ ”
“Nah!” Pete scolded. “That’s Rule #9!” “There is no Rule #9!”
“If there’s no Rule #9, then how come you just recited it to me, smart guy?”
“Because that was Rule #2!” I said. “Weren’t you paying any attention when I trained you yesterday?” Pete slapped his forehead with his viney hand. “Rule #2 is — and please try to pay attention this time — Rule #2 is: You have to baby-sit. See ya!”
Pete turned and raced down the League of Big Justice Super Justice Lobby. “Pumpkin feets, don’t fail me now!” he yelped.
“Do I at least get to keep the ten dollars?” I shouted.
Pete skidded to a stop at the door to the League of Big Justice Inner Sanctum of Justice. “Are you kidding? All money earned by a super-hero goes to charity!” he called back.
I thought for a moment, then shook my head. “And let me guess, you’re donating this money to the Charity to Help Persons with Big, Fat, Orange Pumpkin Heads?”
“Bingo!” Pete said and slammed the door behind him.
The thing is, Pumpkin Pete is the only person with a big, fat, orange head.
Like a pumpkin.