The Caped 6th Grader by Zoe Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

last two empty squares in the long sequence. “Riptide is filling the room with water. See? It's up to LG's knees already. But now that I've got her stuck in the room with the water gushing in … well, frankly, I'm having a hard time coming up with a solution to get her out.”
    I could feel my heart racing with excitement, because (a) I'm such a big Lightning Girl fan and this is exactly the kind of suspenseI live for, and (b) Electra was seriously asking for my input! She needed
my
help to figure out a way to rescue our hero!
    “Any thoughts?” she asked, sounding a bit desperate.
    “Well …” I studied the pencil sketches of Lightning Girl in her hero outfit that looked so much like mine, with the zippers and the hooks, and the supercool insignia, and the tool belt and …

    “THE CAPE!”
    Electra gave me a look that said
“Go
on,” so I did.
    “It's got to be a new one—you'll have to go back and add a scene. Is that okay?”
    “Of course.… Keep talking.…”
    “Well, I know because I've read every Lightning Girl ever written that her cape is just made of your basic, ordinary indestructible fabric. But let's say somewhere in this book she decides she needs a more aerodynamic cape, and maybe a new color … how about here?” I pointed to a place near the beginning of the story.
    “All right.” Electra made a notation on the storyboard. “And …?”
    “And while she's at it, she asks the suit designer to upgrade the cape a little, give it some high-tech properties, like super-absorbency, which she knows has become all the rage among trendy superheroes. And the designer says, ‘Sure, I just got some superabsorbent fabric the other day, and the color would be divine on you.’”
    “Yes!” Electra cried. “Yes, and if we put this scene in early enough, by the time Lightning Girl heads off on her mission to fight Riptide, she'll already have the new cape.”
    “So when she's stuck in the room and the water starts gushing in, she can use the cape to sop it all up and save herself.”
    “Wonderful!” said Electra, scribbling the image into the two empty blocks. “Zoe, this is brilliant. Frankly, I can't believe I forgot about superabsorbent capes—” She stopped short, her pencil pausing for just a second before it began moving again. “I mean, I can't believe I hadn't
thought of
superabsorbent fabric.

    How lucky for me that you're so inventive!”
    I smiled. “It just sort of came to me,” I fibbed. Of course, the fact of the matter was that I just happen to have a super-absorbent cape of my own, and it just happened to be stowed across the room in my backpack …
    … which, just at that moment, started to make a whirring sound.
    My backpack was
whirring?
    Well, that was new.
    I thought I saw Electra's pencil pause again. I swallowed hard, expecting her to ask what the noise was and where it was coming from. But she didn't say a word; in fact, maybe she hadn't paused at all—maybe I'd only imagined it. She seemed to be so into her sketches of the cape that she didn't even hear the whir.
    “Uh … excuse me,” I said, and hurried back toward the doorway.
    I grabbed my backpack and ran down the stairs with it, then ducked into the second-floor bathroom and closed the door.
    Okay … now what? Something was whirring, but I couldn't tell what or where it was. I checked the front pocket of my pack, then the main one. I ran my hands along the straps and even fiddled with the key chains, which I already knew were just plain key chains.
    Finally, I pulled out my supersuit and checked the tool belt. There, clipped to the left section, was what looked like a miniature walkie-talkie. I removed it from the belt and pushed the tiny green button that said Talk.
    “Zoe speaking,” I said; then, to sound official, I added, “I mean, Kid Zoom here.”
    “Well, hello there!” came a pleasant male voice. It was one of those twangy nasal voices that people often associate with old-time telephone