SuperZero Read Free Page B

school!’
    Number of chains snatched: 18
    Number of chain-snatchers caught by superkids: 0
    Number of times Masterror screamed at me back in school: 127

7. Superheroes shouldn’t use the stairs
    There was so much excitement today in class that as soon as the morning bell rang, everyone stampeded in. Even the stairs began to yelp. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ cried the stairs, ‘you guys are going to kill me!’ Obviously, that stopped us for a bit, and we looked at the strange new talking stairs. I mean, they were not talking yesterday.
    Of course, then Blank made himself reappear from the stairs, and he was all red and bruised. Serves him right for being invisible.
    Anyway, the reason we were all rushing in was that it was our first flying class—and it was going to be taught by a guest lecturer. No Masterror! It was too good to be true.
    Double-Headmistress was dressed to kill. Head 1 had a pink scarf, and Head 2 had a red wig on. They both looked flustered and giggly.
    Head 1: ‘Today, we have the greatest master of the greatest art from the greatest . . .’
    Head 2: ‘. . . well, he’s the tiniest actually.’
    Head 1: ‘This grand flying master has come down toteach you at my invitation.’
    Head 2: ‘Well, mine really. He likes red hair.’
    While we tried to figure all this out, biting our nails in anticipation of our great guest lecturer, we heard a shout. Lizzie Lizard was running around in the class, her long tongue flicking in and out, trying to zap an insect. ‘It’s a fly. Ah, got it!’ she yelled.
    Head 1: ‘No, no, no, not the Fly!’
    Head 2: ‘That’s our great guest lecturer! The Fantastic Flying Fly!’
    There was a stunned silence in the class. Had our class on flying ended before it began? Lizzie Lizard hung her head, embarrassed, and poked out her long tongue again, dropping the Fly on to the teacher’s table. The Fly looked green and sticky. He lay on his back with all six legs stuck in the air.
    ‘I have come here from the jungles of the Amazon,’ he finally said. ‘I have escaped iguanas and eagles on the way. I will not let it all end in the stomach of a hungry girl! Let the class begin.’
    And so the class began.
    And it was epic!
    ‘Each one of you is amazing. Each one of you has a superpower that no one else has,’ said the Fly, and he seemed to be looking at me straight in the eye. I saw hundreds of images of myself in his eye. Flies have compound eyes, in case you didn’t know. They can see 360 degrees around them. I was really beginning to be in awe of this great little guy.

    ‘Some of you can fly, and some of you can climb. The main question is not how high you go up but how you come down.’
    He wrote on a big piece of paper: ‘Fear of flying’. And then he folded it into a paper plane and threw it out of the window. The class was on the second floor and we all rushed to the window to see it flutter a bit in the wind and then swoop down to land in the playground sandpit. ‘Get it, Anna Conda,’ everyone said. Anna Conda gracefully slipped right out of that window, and down the rainwater pipe and in a jiffy, she’d picked up that plane.
    ‘See?’ said the Fly. ‘The flying class is not just about flying. The main thing is to channelize whatever power you have inside you.’
    Everyone started practising. Slime Joos ejected this long stream of slime and slid his way down it. Blank just disappeared and reappeared down in the sandpit. I sat at my desk and made more paper planes.
    There was a buzz in my ear.
    ‘SuperZero, go use your power, boy,’ said the Fly.
    I shook my head. ‘I have no powers.’
    The Fly said, ‘Look me in the eye.’ I did, again, but all I saw were images of a boy who could not fly or do anything cool. ‘I’m a zero,’ I said. ‘SuperZero.’
    ‘You can be the biggest hero of them all. But only ifyou believe you are.’ The Fly flew off.
    I closed my eyes and felt miserable. If only I had some way to get that paper plane. But I could not fly.