Archvillain by Barry Lyga Read Free Book Online Page B

camera, “I just hope that when people need help it’s the kind of help I can give!”
    Oh, puke. Kyle nearly gagged on his cereal.
    Matt Lauer grinned and cut to video from last night — Mighty Mike stopping a gush of lava in Hawaii with his freezer vision.
    Freezer vision! Who came up with these dim-witted names?
    (Kyle had tried staring out the window at a fire hydrant for an hour, but apparently he did not have freezer vision. One point to Mighty Mike.)
    “We’re so glad you were able to visit with us, Mighty Mike,” said Matt Lauer. “Tell me a little bit about this project of yours with the government.”
    “Well, the project is me, I guess. I visit a special clinic a few times a week and they run some tests on me. Trying to figure out how my powers work, really.”
    “That must be exhausting, doing that all the time.”
    “I don’t mind. I’m happy to help.”
    “Well, I know you have to be in school soon, and we wouldn’t want you to be late.”
    “Oh, that’s all right,” Mike said. “I can fly pretty fast.”
    “That you can,” said Matt Lauer. “That you can.”
    Kyle clenched his fist around his spoon, mashing it into a twisted wreck of stainless steel. Too bad, but it was the only way to keep from throwing that same spoon through the TV screen. He would throw it away and hope his parents wouldn’t notice.
    Bad enough the world — including Bouring Middle School — had decided to bow down and worship a punk from outer space. Worse yet was that Mighty Mike got to enjoy his powers — he got to fly to school from the set of the
Today
show, while Kyle had to take the bus!
    He stalked out of the house without saying good-bye to his parents and threw the balled-up spoon with a fraction of his new strength, aiming at the sewer grate across the street. The spoon clanked once against the grate and then dropped in.
    As he waited for the bus, Kyle fumed. He had gotten very good at fuming lately. His own incredible intelligence was frustrating enough, but with Mighty Mike added into the equation, life in Bouring was quickly becoming torture.
    He put in his earbuds while he waited. “Have you figured out how to get rid of Mighty Mike yet?”
    “There’s a lot of information to go through,” Erasmus said, a bit impatiently. “What are
you
doing to help?”
    “I’m busy with living a life. You don’t have to worry about that.”
    “I thought you were smart enough to live a life
and
plot the destruction of your nemesis.”
    Kyle ignored it. “You know, before that brat arrived, I figured I was only a few years away from running this town. Once I got into high school, I would have been unstoppable.”
    “But now there’s Mighty Mike.”
    “Yeah. Who gets excused from class at least three times a day to go attend to some crime or accident or natural disaster. I can’t decide which is worse: being bored out of my skull by school or watching everyone bow down in Mike’s direction.”
    “I have some news for you. I’ve been calculating some of your powers and their limits based on the nights you’ve been sneaking out to the mine. Unlike Mike, you are limited to just flight and enhanced speed, strength, and endurance.”
    “No kidding, genius. It’s not fair.”
    “Not fair? You can run for miles without getting tired; you
could
fly at Mach 1 if you could figure out how to avoid the sonic boom.”
    “Mike has been clocked at faster than Mach 1,” Kyle said, sulking.
    “I wonder how he manages to move so fast without shattering every window in Bouring?”
    “Who cares? The point is,
he
gets to have fun and have crowds cheering for him while I have to stay hidden!”
    “Kyle, look on the bright side: You are the most powerful kid ever born on Earth.”
    “That’s not enough. I thought this Mighty Mike worship was just a passing fad, like when everyone wore capes. But this town has totally fallen head over heels in love with him.”
    “It’s pathetic.”
    “I know!”
    On the bus,