Chapter 1
GIRL REPORTER UNCOVERS SCOOP OF THE CENTURY
Here’s the scoop: A supervillain lives on my street.
And that’s just the sort of breaking news I’m after.
The sun shines through my window for the first time in days. Before the rain can return, I grab my backpack and check my supplies: two pens (yes), three mechanical pencils (yes), Lois Lane press pass from Halloween (yes!), spare notepad (yes). Slipping the strap over my shoulder, I snatch my regular notepad from my bed and practice flipping it open. It swings to the next blank page with a satisfying snap.
I’ve known about the supervillain—alias Paddle Boy—ever since he moved here in January. Supervillains can generally be identified by a few basic signs:
Important, often rich family (bonus points if the parents are odd).Scheming attitude.Puts others (or their belongings) in danger.Takes credit for stuff, especially stuff that someone else did.Makes a big show of everything.The very first time I saw Paddle Boy, I witnessed his senseless evil: wanton destruction of private property (signs #2, #3, and #5). I don’t know what this guy has against canoe paddles—he fled the scene before I could catch him—but that’s one of many questions I intend to get answered this summer.
Wonder Dog sits at attention by my door, her tail thumping on the carpet and her blue eyes sparkling with mischief. When I grab her leash, she hops up and turns circles. White and gray fur comes off her in a cloud. Australian Shepherds may be soft and adorable, but it would take infinite brushing to conquer their shedding. I blow some stray strands out of my mouth as I hook her leash to her harness.
“We’ve got a story to catch!”
When my Language Arts teacher, Ms. Thuran, asked me to write a headline-making, news-breaking article for the Junior Journalists Contest in the fall, I doubt she realized I would snag a story as big as this.
Wonder at my side, I march down the stairs and to the front door. Mom is sitting in her home office, one room over, and she leans back in her chair.
“Starting your investigation already?” she asks. “You know, you’re allowed to enjoy summer break a little. You don’t have to hop to work the Monday after school gets out.”
“I’m on deadline,” I remind her. “And I have my first lead.”
“Ah, I seem to have raised a career woman.” Mom shakes her head but toasts me with her mug. “May your sleuthing be successful. I expect a full report when you get back.”
I pull the door wide. “I’ll see. Some of this might be confidential until publication.”
“Have fun!” Mom calls after me.
“Yes, ma’am!” I reply in my best naval-officer-voice. As the door swings shut, I turn to survey my surroundings. Our lot looks like a badly cut piece of pie with the point at the street. On one side we have a neighbor, and on the other side there’s a steep, briar-covered bank falling into the creek—we call it Little Hunting Jr., because it’s a tiny tributary off Little Hunting Creek. The driveway cuts down the middle of our wedge-shaped front yard.
June occupies Northern Virginia with an attempt at humid heat—but after my family was stationed in Florida and Mississippi, I have a high standard for “hot.” And this, like most things in Virginia, is lukewarm at best.
Wonder pulls me down the steps to our lawn, sniffing around for the perfect place to pee. I’m not sure why she bothers searching, because she always goes in the same spot, but it gives me a chance to write in my notepad.
Date: June 17. Time: four o’clock p.m. Weather: Thick dark clouds and everything dripping, but no rain right now. Little Hunting Jr. has flooded into our yard, almost up to the pine tree where we store our canoe.
A canoe that’s still short one paddle. We do have a single paddle left, but that gets really inconvenient out on the water. Dad says it’s too much work keeping the canoe straight without the second paddler, and the current on the Potomac is too strong. Basically, Paddle Boy ruined everything.
After Wonder’s done her business, I head toward the street. Paddle Boy lives five doors down from us, in an unassuming yellow house. This may not fit Supervillain Criteria #1 (rich family), but I’m willing to bet the simple everyday-man act is all part of his plan. Few would suspect this to be the choice hideout for a sinister mastermind.
Our street is basically a long narrow U, with a drainage ditch in the middle. Water in the ditch passes through concrete pipes where Wakefield Street meets Stratford Lane, then flows down toward my house at the bottom of the U, where it goes through some more pipes and then to Little Hunting Jr. and finally Little Hunting Creek. I cross to the far side of the street, so I can start with a bit of spying, scope out the scene.
But before I pick a good scouting spot, Paddle Boy’s front door opens. I tug Wonder close and duck behind a skinny tree.
Paddle Boy walks out.
He carries a big plate in his hands—I can’t tell what’s on it—and he’s dressed in his normal I’m-just-an-innocent-kid clothes. It’s the same kind of outfit he wears to school, an artful disguise our teachers never see through. They all think he’s so great because he gets good grades and combs his honey-blond hair and says thank you to the bus driver. A classic bad-guy-pretending-to-be-good act. But I won’t be fooled. What can he be doing out here?
He turns onto the street and begins walking toward me. Well—toward my house. I dive from behind the skinny tree to a slightly thicker one, though it isn’t ideal cover. The water in the drainage ditch rushes like a river between me and him, gushing through the concrete pipes under the street ahead of me, then out into the ditch flowing fast toward the other pipes back near my driveway. Though they’re nearly as big as I am tall, today the water almost completely fills them. At least with this barrier, Paddle Boy can’t jump over to me and smash something else. Like my pencils.
Paddle Boy’s gaze flits in my direction, and I press hard against the trunk. But Wonder—who has absolutely no common sense—wags her tail and gives a friendly bark.
I roll my eyes. There’s no avoiding it now, so I spring out in the open. Across the median, I shout, “Hey! What are you doing?”
Paddle Boy startles and the plate flies out of his hands, scattering—cupcakes?—like grenades over the asphalt. His face turns redder than Superman’s cape—villainous rage, I’d guess—and he runs the other way.
“Hey!” I call after him, scribbling notes without even looking at my notepad.
But right then, Wonder lunges.
If there is anything Wonder loves more than peeing, it is human food. And Paddle Boy just dumped a whole lot of human food for the taking.
The leash rips out of my hand. My notepad goes flying in the other direction. Wonder plunges into the water.
I run to the ditch’s edge. “Wonder, no! Come!”
She keeps swimming, too keen to pay attention to me. Distantly, I hear a door slam—Paddle Boy has gone inside. A wad of branches breaks loose upstream, slicing through the brown water. It misses Wonder by a foot, racing on toward the pipes. I open my mouth to call again.
Wonder’s head jerks to the side. Her leash, tangled in the branches, yanks her downstream, too.
I run along the bank. “No!” I shriek.
Now Wonder turns toward me and tries to move against the current. But she doesn’t make any progress—the pull of the branches is too strong. The pipes are getting closer, and if she’s sucked in, she could drown.
“Wonder!” I fling off my backpack and rush a few steps into the ditch, immediately soaked to my shirt. The water shoves me over, grabs my legs, and whirls them out from under me.
For a breathless moment, I kick at nothing, but then my toe catches on the submerged bank and I manage to push myself up the sloped side, sitting in the filthy mud. Ahead of me, the branches move faster as they near the big pipes. Wonder’s head bobs under the surface and up again.
“No,” I cry, voice cracking.
Text copyright © 2020 by Alyssa Hollingsworth
Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Deborah Lee
