Sudden Superhero

10. Soul-Searching Sharks in Formaldehyde

TWO DAYS. That was all the time it took for news of Red Soldier, NYC's newest superhero, to go absolutely viral. I was scared, I admit it, seeing the grainy store surveillance footage of me kicking that guy get broadcasted on the local news. I was kind of paranoid that I would be recognized, even though my face was barely visible, and it wasn't like anyone outside of school even knew who I was. Except Jenny. And Ms. Henderson. And Kavanagh. And Tatiana Castro.

Okay, I supposed there was a small, minuscule handful of people who would know, but they already knew, and they wouldn't be a bother. I've already been told that the police have rules for these kinds of things, rules from Revere's days that were slowly forgotten when he retired. Now, with me around, the police would be revisiting those rules. They were not to bother me, as long as I didn't interfere with them, and that was fine by me. They had the right to pursue me if they saw me as a threat, and as long as I proved that I was a hero, not a villain, there would be no conflict.

The rest of my weekend had been rather uneventful. I spent Sunday studying for an English quiz on Brave New World and helping Mom at the bakery. It had taken three good rinses to get all of the flour out from beneath my fingernails.

It was Monday morning now, and I held my hand over my mouth, stopping myself from yawning. I adjusted my Yankees baseball cap so that my eyes were shaded from the bright sunshine that penetrated the bus windows. One-fifth of my entire grade was on this bus; the other four-fifths were spread evenly between the other four buses. Despite the fact that not all of us took art class, the eccentric art teacher, Mr. Davidson, decided to take all of us to a museum today for a full-day field trip.

I poked Ben, who was sitting next to me, on the shoulder. He closed his book and raised an eyebrow. "How much longer?" I whispered.

Ah, whispering: the thing that one does when everyone else on the bus seems to be asleep or taking some sort of pledge to shut their mouths. I'd have thought that a bus full of rambunctious teenagers would result in more noise, the ear-splitting kind, but it seemed that no one was in the mood to be rowdy on a Monday morning.

Ben shrugged, looking down at his pamphlet of the museum—which he'd been using as a bookmark—and pointing to the address. I just shook my head at him; the museum was new, none of us actually knew where it was, and the address only told me a name and street that I didn't even recognize.

"Gee, thanks," I said sarcastically, and he smirked and went back to reading.

I turned back to the window, sticking my earbuds in, turning up the volume a little bit. The last thing I needed was to fall asleep—mostly because I was afraid that someone would put me in a stupid position and take a picture.

After about ten more minutes or so, we reached the museum. I grabbed my backpack from underneath our seat and stepped off the bus. I stopped a few feet away and stretched a little, my limbs happy to be straightened out.

I shrugged my backpack straps closer to my neck and stood at the very back of one group with Ben. Our chaperone was my English teacher, Mrs. Hoede, and she passed out maps of the museum. I had to admit that the museum wasn't at all what I had expected. I was picturing a center-of-city architecture-extraordinaire building with a considerably large audience. While there were other people milling about here and there, this building didn't seem so sophisticated. It was rustic and floral, with large lawn space surrounding it and a few sculptures along the sides.

We stepped inside, each group taking a different tour with a different route so that we weren't just one big mass of kids that needed to be controlled. Everytime the tour guide stopped to show us something, I slipped Mom's camera out of its little case and snapped a picture. Most of the museum was history and historical art, with a few modern things thrown in here and there. I stopped at Damien Hirst's stuff and stared at it, opened-mouth, until Ben shoved me and told me to get a move on, so then I walked and twisted myself sideways at the same time to get the picture of a shark in formaldehyde as we left that room.