Usually, after a sidekick’s first mission, there’s a big press conference. Reporters are everywhere, photo-ops are held with the mayor, and the mentoring superhero introduces him or her to the world. Obviously, that didn’t happen to me. The only good thing from my mission is that there was no press conference, so the general public still doesn’t know who the new sidekick is. Which means I get to hide my pathetic sounding name for at least a little while longer.

Unfortunately, the new sidekick is all anyone is talking about the next day at school.

“Yeah, but I heard he’s called Wormy or something like that?” 

I cringe, listening to a couple of students talking behind me. So now, not only has my code name been leaked, but it’s getting butchered.

At lunch, I sit in the cafeteria trying to ignore everyone but fail miserably. I hear a couple of girls talking off to the side, and as much as I want to block out their words, my ears perk up when they start talking about the battle.

“The video didn’t show much, but he looks so weird,” one girl says.

“Totally,” her friend replies.

I hear a male voice next. “You guys talking about that new sidekick? Totally lame, right?” 

Trying to look over without it being obvious that I’m eavesdropping, I see the guy. It’s the same thirty-year-old-looking senior that bumped into Pete in the hallway yesterday.

“What do you think his power is, he can summon worms up from the ground or something?”

Everyone lets out a laugh, but indignation builds inside. My power? What do they mean what’s my superpower? Isn’t it obvious? Staring down at my backpack in front of me, I think about it for a minute, and the sad truth forms. No, it’s not obvious.

I’ve been so horrified over my disastrous first outing, I never thought about how it actually looked to anyone who saw the video—which overnight has reached up to five million views.

Sure, to me it looks like I teleported away, but that’s only because I know what happened. To everyone else? It looks like I got blasted away. Or worse, someone at headquarters beamed me away, afraid I was about to get injured. So, if I’m not a scared sidekick, jumping away from danger, I’m an incompetent sidekick who has to be watched over and taken care of.

“No. No. No,” I say, slamming my head into the table.

“Dude, you think that’s a good idea?” Pete puts his books down and sits in front of me. “What about that head injury you said you got yesterday?”

Oh yeah, my text message. “Oh … right. I was just thinking about my first pop-quiz this morning. I’m pretty sure I failed.” It’s not a lie to cover up. We did have a pop-quiz, and I’m positive I failed.

“Sucks,” Pete replies. “So, what exactly happened yesterday?”

“What do you mean?”

He moves his light brown hair off his forehead, then pushes up his glasses. He cracks open a soda, and I scan the cafeteria as everyone talks and eats their lunch.

The same height as me, he’s lanky since he avoids any form of physical exertion. He’s a total science buff, so he’s much more comfortable in front of a science fair experiment than he is playing football or lifting weights.

Part of me still wishes I could tell him everything. It’s embarrassing right now, but we’ve shared more than our fair share of humiliating stories with one another. 

“You said you tripped and hit your head?” he questions, then takes a sip of his drink.

“Oh, yeah.” I glance around again, unsure of how to explain. “I just tripped over a sprinkler or something on my way to the bathroom. I don’t even know.”

“Wow, crazy. Glad you’re okay though.” 

“Yeah, me too.” Oh, Pete. If you only knew how not okay I really am.

“So listen, I was talking to Jasmin’s cousin, Cheryl? She said she’s having a party this weekend. It’s mostly gonna be juniors and seniors, but since Jasmin’s her cousin and we’re all friends, she invited us. Wanna go?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, grimacing. I’ve gotten my ‘I think I might be busy’ face down solid after having to make excuse after excuse over the summer while I was training.

“Come on, man,” Pete implores. “We hardly did anything this summer, and it was supposed to be our big,” he makes air quotes, “getting ready for high school summer.”

It’s not that I don’t feel bad about always bailing on Pete. I do. But being a sidekick is a serious matter, especially if I ever want to get promoted to a superhero. On the other hand, who knows when—if ever—I’ll get another assignment after the colossal failure that was my first mission.

“Well, okay.” 

“Yes!” He fist pumps.

By the time my last class of the day rolls around, I’m so sick of listening to everyone talk about the lame new sidekick, who either teleported away or got beamed away. But even worse, I think my brain’s going to explode if I hear one more person talk about “some worm guy, who eats worms to gain super strength.” You could insert any superpower; hyper speed, flight, heat vision. Apparently, word is going around that I eat worms to gain access to my superpower. Unbelievable.

I’m so over the day that I don’t even notice Jasmin walking behind me when we’re leaving campus for the day.

“Hey, Robbie,” I hear a soft voice.

Turning around in complete apathy, my scowl instantly switches to shock. “Oh, h-hey, Jasmin.”

“So, did you hear—”

“Yes, yes, I heard,” I cut her off. “Some new sidekick in King City eats worms to be able to run at hyper speed or something stupid like that.” The annoyance practically drips from my words.

“Oh, no, not that. About my cousin’s party this weekend?”

Even though I’ve had a crush on her since fifth grade, I’ve never asked her out. Not even when Pete told me it was a lock in seventh grade because he heard from a friend of a friend that she kind of liked me. I just couldn’t. I don’t know if it was because I was too shy, or that she’s so pretty, or that every time I get around her my legs turn to Jell-O and I always seem to spit out gibberish. It’s probably all of those things.

And then I got my superpower. My life became infinitely more complicated with that, and … here we are. 

“Yeah, Pete was telling me something about it. Are you going?”

“I think so. I mean, Maria really wants to go, so I think we are. You’re going, right?” she asks, biting her glossy pink lip.

The way she looks at me with those big, hazel eyes makes me wonder if she’s hoping I say yes. Does she like me? Could she? I guess it doesn’t matter since I can never tell her who I am anyway. Not that I want to, with my spectacular debacle of a debut.

“Yeah, I think I’m going,” I answer.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

We stand there, an awkward silence building before we start walking again. It’d be awesome if she did like me, but now? With all of this other stuff going on? For the first time since getting my power, I’m starting to regret it.

“Uh … are you going this way?” I ask.

I only live a few blocks from King City High, in a quiet little suburb. But I remember Jasmin telling me in the past that she lives in a high-rise condo, on the upper west side of the city.

“Yeah, I’m meeting Maria at a friend’s house.” She smiles.

“Oh, cool.”

The awkward silence grows as we continue to walk next to one another, step for step, neither of us saying anything. I wish I could talk to her, but what would I say? Finally, we reach an intersection, and I figure this is the best time to say good-bye without it being weird. 

“Well, I’m down this way.” I point behind me.

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I’m going that way.” She points in the opposite direction.

I give her a friendly nod and turn around, continuing on my way. Why does my head turn to mush every time I’m around her?

“See you tomorrow, Robbie,” she calls out.

I turn around and find her smiling, which in turn cements a grin on my face. “Yeah, see you tomorrow.” I wave, taking a few steps backward, and then trip. Regaining my balance before landing on my butt, I look over to find her giggling. Smooth.