25 - Attack of the Mutant (3 page)

But no people. No one. Empty.

I grabbed the glass-door handle. My throat made a loud gulping sound as I
swallowed hard.

Should I go in? I asked myself. Do I dare?

My hand tightened on the glass-door handle. I started to tug the heavy door
open.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blue-and-white bus moving toward
me. I glanced at my watch. I was only five minutes late for my appointment. If I
jumped on the bus, I could be at the orthodontist’s office in a few minutes.

Letting go of the handle, I turned and ran to the bus stop, my backpack
bouncing on my shoulders. I felt disappointed. But I also felt relieved.

Walking into the headquarters of the meanest mutant in the universe was a
little scary.

The bus eased to a stop. I waited for an elderly man to step off. Then I
climbed onboard, dropped my money into the box, and hurried to the back of the
bus.

I wanted to get one last look at the mysterious pink-and-green building.

Two women were sitting in the back seat. But I pushed between them and pressed my face against the back window.

As the bus pulled away, I stared at the building. Its colors stayed bright,
even though the sky was so dark behind it. The sidewalk was empty. I still
hadn’t seen anyone come out or go inside.

A few seconds later, the building disappeared into the distance. I turned
away from the window and walked up the aisle to find a seat.

Weird, I thought. Totally weird.

“And it was the exact same building as in the comic book?” Wilson asked. His
blue eyes stared across the lunchroom table at me.

I nodded. “As soon as I got home yesterday afternoon, I checked out the comic
book. The building was exactly the same.”

Wilson pulled a sandwich from his lunch bag and started to unwrap the foil.
“What kind of sandwich did your mom pack for you?” he asked.

I opened mine. “Tuna salad. What’s yours?”

He lifted a slice of bread and examined his sandwich. “Tuna salad,” he
replied. “Want to trade?”

“We both have tuna salad,” I told him. “Why do you want to trade?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

We traded sandwiches. His mom’s tuna salad was better than mine. I pulled the
juice box from my lunch bag. Then I tossed the apple in the trash. I keep telling Mom not to
pack an apple. I told her I just throw it away every day. Why does she keep
packing one?

“Can I have your pudding container?” I asked Wilson.

“No,” he replied.

I finished the first half of the sandwich. I was thinking hard about the
mysterious building. I’d been thinking about it ever since I saw it.

“I’ve solved the mystery,” Wilson said. He scratched his white-blond curls. A
smile formed on his face. “Yes! I’ve solved it!”

“What?” I demanded eagerly.

“It’s simple,” Wilson replied. “Who draws The Masked Mutant?”

“The artist?” I asked. “Jimmy Starenko, of course. Starenko
created
The Masked Mutant and The League of Good Guys.” How could Wilson not know that?

“Well, I’ll bet this guy Starenko was here one day,” Wilson continued,
jabbing the straw into the top of his juice box.

“Starenko? Here? In Riverview Falls?” I said. I wasn’t following him.

Wilson nodded. “Let’s say Starenko is here. He’s driving down the street, and
he sees the weird building. He stops his car. He gets out. He stares at the
building. And he thinks: What a great building! This building would make a
perfect secret headquarters building for The Masked Mutant.”

“Wow. I see,” I murmured. I was catching on to Wilson’s thinking. “You mean,
he saw the building, liked it, and copied it when he drew the headquarters
building.”

Wilson nodded. He had a piece of celery stuck to his front tooth. “Yeah.
Maybe he got out of the car and sketched the building. Then he kept the sketches
in a drawer or something till he needed them.”

It made sense.

Actually, it made too much sense. I felt really disappointed. I knew it was
silly, but I really
wanted
that building to be The Masked Mutant’s secret
headquarters.

Wilson had spoiled everything. Why did he have to be so sensible for once?

“I got some new rubber stamps,” he told me, finishing the last spoonful from
his pudding container. “Want to see them? I could bring them over to your house
after school.”

“No thanks,” I replied. “That would be
too
exciting.”

I planned to take the bus and go see the building again that afternoon. But
Ms. Partridge gave us a ton of homework. I had to go straight home.

The next day, it snowed. Wilson and I and some other guys went sledding on
Grover’s Hill.

A week later, I finally had a chance to go back and take another look at the
building. This time, I’m going inside, I told myself. There must be a
receptionist or a guard, I decided. I’ll ask whose building it is and who works
there.

I was feeling really brave as I climbed on to the bus after school. It was an
ordinary office building, after all. Nothing to get excited about. Taking a
seat at the front of the bus, I looked for Libby. The bus was filled with kids
going home after school. Near the back, I saw a red-haired girl arguing with
another girl. But it wasn’t Libby.

No sign of her.

I stared out the window as the bus rolled past the comic book store. Then, a
few blocks later, we bounced past my orthodontist’s office. Just seeing his
building made my teeth ache!

It was a sunny, clear afternoon. Bright sunlight kept filling the bus
windows, forcing me to shield my eyes as I stared out.

I had to keep careful watch, because I wasn’t sure where the stop was. I
really didn’t know this neighborhood at all.

Kids were jammed in the aisle. So I couldn’t see out the windows on the other
side of the bus.

I hope we haven’t already passed the building, I thought. I had a heavy
feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have a real fear of getting lost.

My mom says that when I was two, she lost me for a few minutes in the frozen foods section at the Pic ’n Pay. I think I’ve
had a fear of getting lost ever since.

The bus pulled up to a bus stop. I recognized the small park across the
street. This was the stop!

“Getting off!” I shouted, jumping into the aisle. I hit a boy with my
backpack as I stumbled to the front door. “Sorry. Getting off! Getting off!”

I pushed through the crowd of kids and leaped down the steps, onto the curb.
The bus rumbled away. Sunlight streamed around me.

I stepped to the corner. Yes. This was the right stop. I recognized it all
now.

I turned and raised my eyes to the strange building.

And found myself staring at a large, empty lot.

The building was gone.

“Whoa!” I cried, frozen in shock.

Shielding my eyes with one hand, I stared across the street. How could that
enormous building vanish in one week?

I didn’t have long to think about it. Another bus pulled up to the bus stop.
“Skipper! Hey—Skipper!” Libby hopped off the bus, waving and calling my name.

She was wearing the same red-and-blue ski sweater and faded jeans, torn at
one knee. Her hair was pulled straight back, tied in a ponytail with a blue hair
scrunchie.

“Hey—what are you doing back in
my
neighborhood?” she asked, smiling
as she ran over to me.

“Th-that building!” I stammered, pointing to the vacant lot. “It’s gone!”

Libby’s expression changed. “Well, don’t say hi or anything,” she muttered,
frowning at me.

“Hi,” I said. “What happened to that building?”

She turned and followed my stare. Then she shrugged. “Guess they tore it
down.”

“But—but—” I sputtered.

“It was so ugly,” Libby said. “Maybe the city
made
them tear it down.”

“But did you
see
them tear it down?” I demanded impatiently. “You live
near here, right? Did you see them doing it?”

She thought about it, crinkling her green eyes as she thought. “Well…
no,” she replied finally. “I’ve gone past here a few times, but—”

“You didn’t see any machinery?” I demanded anxiously. “Any big wrecking
balls? Any bulldozers? Dozens of workers?”

Libby shook her head. “No. I didn’t actually see anyone tearing the building
down. But I didn’t really look.”

She pulled her red backpack off her shoulder and held the strap in front of
her with both hands. “I don’t know
why
you’re so interested in that ugly
building, Skipper. I’m glad it’s gone.”

“But it was in a comic book!” I blurted out.

“Huh?” She stared hard at me. “What are you talking about?”

I knew she wouldn’t understand. “Nothing,” I muttered.

“Skipper, did you come all the way out here just to see that building?” she
asked.

“No way,” I lied. “Of course not.”

“Do you want to come to my house and see my comic book collection?”

I was so frazzled and mixed up, I said yes.

I hurried out of Libby’s house less than an hour later. Those
High School
Harry & Beanhead
comics are the most boring comics in the world! And the art
is so lame. Can’t everyone see that the two girls are drawn exactly the same,
except one has blond hair and one has black?

Yuck!

Libby insisted on showing me every
High School Harry & Beanhead
comic
she had. And she had shelves full of them!

Of course I couldn’t concentrate on those boring comics. I couldn’t stop
thinking about the weird building. How could a whole building vanish without a
trace?

I jogged back to the bus stop on Main Street. The sun was sinking behind the
buildings. Long blue shadows tilted over the sidewalks.

When I get to the corner, I bet the building will be back! I found myself
thinking.

But of course it wasn’t.

I know. I know. I have weird thoughts. I guess it comes from reading too many
comic books.

I had to wait nearly half an hour for the bus to come. I spent the whole time
staring at the empty lot, thinking about the vanished building.

When I finally got home, I found a brown envelope waiting for me on the
little table in the hall where Mom drops the mail.

“Yes!” I exclaimed happily. The special issue of
The Masked Mutant
!
The comics company was sending out two special editions this month, and this was
the first.

I called “hi” to my mom, tossed my coat and heavy backpack onto the floor,
and raced up the stairs to my room, the comic book gripped tightly in my hot
little hand.

I couldn’t wait to see what had happened after The Galloping Gazelle sneaked
into The Masked Mutant’s headquarters. Carefully, I slid the comic book out of
the envelope and examined the cover.

And there it stood. The pink-and-green headquarters building. Right on the
cover.

My hand trembled as I opened to the first page.
MORNING OF A MUTANT
was the big title in scary red letters. The Masked Mutant stood in front of a
big communications console.

He stared into a wall of about twenty TV monitors. Each TV monitor showed a
different member of The League of Good Guys.

“I’m tracking each one of them,” The Masked Mutant said in the first dialogue
balloon. “They’ll never find me. I’ve thrown an Invisibility Curtain around my
entire headquarters!”

My mouth dropped open as I read those words.

I read them three times before I let the comic book slip out of my hands to
my bed.

An Invisibility Curtain.

No one can see The Masked Mutant’s building because he slipped an
Invisibility Curtain around it.

I sat excitedly on the edge of my bed, breathing hard, feeling the blood
pulse at my temples.

Is that what happened in real life?

Is that why I couldn’t see the pink-and-green building this afternoon?

Was the comic book giving me the answer to the mystery of the missing
building?

It sounded crazy. It sounded
totally
crazy.

But was it real? Was there
really
an Invisibility Curtain hiding the
building?

My head was spinning faster than The Amazing Tornado-Man! I knew only one
thing. I had to go back there and find out.

After school the next afternoon, I had to go with my mom to the mall to buy
sneakers. I usually try on at least ten or twelve pairs, then beg for the most
expensive ones. You know. The ones that pump up or flash lights when you walk in
them.

But this time I bought the first pair I saw, plain black-and-white Reeboks. I
mean, who could think about sneakers when an invisible building was waiting to
be discovered?

Driving home from the mall, I started to tell Mom about the building. But she
stopped me after a few sentences. “I wish you were as interested in your
schoolwork as you are in those dumb comics,” she said, sighing.

That’s what she always says.

“When is the last time you read a good book?” she continued.

That’s the
next
thing she always says.

I decided to change the subject. “We dissected a worm today for science,” I
told her.

She made a disgusted face. “Doesn’t your teacher have anything better to do
than to cut up poor, innocent worms?”

There was just no pleasing Mom today.

The next afternoon, wearing my new sneakers, I eagerly hopped on the city
bus. Tossing my token into the box, I saw Libby sitting near the back. As the
bus lurched away from the curb, I stumbled down the aisle and dropped beside
her, lowering my backpack to the floor.

“I’m going back to that building,” I said breathlessly. “I think there’s an
Invisibility Curtain around it.”