Hero by Perry Moore Read Free Book Online

first joined the basket¬ball team and Clayton Camp came over to play.
    We'd shot baskets in the driveway with the hoop my dad had just hung above the garage. When we got bored, Clayton ran inside and pulled some action figures out of his overnight bag. All superheroes. All superpowered.
    "I'll be Uberman, you can be Right Wing." He handed me my action figure. Superpowered heroes were bad enough, but Right Wing was outright treason.
    "I don't know if that's such a good idea," I replied. I glanced over at my father hosing down lime in the yard. He stopped by the bushes to chop a garter snake in half with a shovel. He disappeared into the backyard to dispose of the remains.
    "C'mon, it'll be fun. We can blow up some people or something. I've got firecrackers." He pulled some low-grade fireworks out of his bag.
    We played at the foot of the driveway, near the gutter and behind the bushes, so no one could see us. We used the figurines to simulate our own battle sequence, and with Clayton at the helm, there was a lot of death and destruction.
    He went for a firecracker to blow up some of his sister's old Barbies.
    "Why don't you use the flare instead?" I cut my eyes toward the yard; I couldn't see Dad. "Something not so . . . loud."
    "Good idea," he said. "We'll torch her hair."
    Somehow Uberman and Right Wing, despite their combined superspeed, let Barbie's head melt to an expressionless clump of hair and plastic under the heat of the flare.
    Clayton reached for the pack of firecrackers and then lit a match.
    "Look out, it's Frankie Flamethrower! He's going to finish her off!" Clayton shouted.
    "Clayton, don't light the—" I reached for the firecrackers, but he'd already lit a fuse before I got the words out.
    He held the firecrackers high in the air away from me and pushed me to the ground.
    The wick had almost burned down to the cracker, and I could see in a split second it would explode the entire pack in Clayton's hand. A flicker of panic sparked in his eyes when he looked to his hand and saw how quickly the wicks were burning down.
    "Throw it!" I yelled. "Throw it!"
    But he was too scared to do anything, like the firecrackers were stuck to his hand with glue. He was frozen.
    And a forceful stream of warer blasted the fireworks out of his hand and almost knocked him off his feet.
    I looked up and saw Dad standing across the yard with the garden hose—gun. He marched over toward us spraying water nonstop from the hose. He never let the stream off of the fire¬works until he was certain that there wasn't a spark left. Then he turned the stream of water on the action figures and blasted them into the gutter.
    "My heroes!" Clayton watched the force of the water wash them down the gutter.
    Clayton slipped in the mud as he struggled to get up. He was crying, still scared, and humiliated. My dad reached out his hand to help him up.
    Clayton pushed my father away and ran inside crying. I stared at the muddy handprint on my father's work shirt, and then I picked up the soggy firecrackers to throw in the garbage. That was the last time Clayton came over.
    So it didn't seem like such a good idea to put up a poster of a superhero—shirtless or not. I ended up throwing the poster away in a Dumpster behind the Food Lion, but that didn't mean I couldn't go online every now and again to sneak a look.
    The Web site promised a host of treats for subscribers, but I wasn't stupid enough to give them a credit card number. My dad had been through enough scandal to last a lifetime, and he didn't need to add gay Internet porn to the list next time he went in to get his hard drive upgraded. Which is why I was super careful to wipe the history of all prior sites before I gave the computer back. I cruised around the "free tour" section, which I'd only been through about one hundred times. The last page had this shot of Uberman, totally naked except for the "JOIN NOW!" strategically placed over his manhood. Most people would feel shortchanged, which