Naim snuck out of the house just after midnight dressed in black jeans, a black shirt and a black balaclava pulled over his face. Mom and Dad went to bed by 10:00 and turned off the T.V. at 11:00. They never woke at night, and they never checked in on him. These were his hours, from midnight until an hour before dawn.
       He walked across lawns, staying close to bushes, checking corners as he passed. A cop car cruised down the street. Naim crouched behind a tree. Even if they used their spotlight, they wouldn't see him. No one ever had. Cold grass tickled his hands, and the smell of it filled his nose.
       He wondered if invisibility was his superpower too, but he hadn't the nerve to try it, and besides he could, he knew. He stepped from behind the tree before the cops got there--he could walk right up to them and wave, but the risk was too great. Middle of the night. An Arabic-looking teenager wearing black. They'd shoot him for sure. Maybe he could be invisible, but his invisibility power wouldn't work if they could see him.
       The car continued, and Naim grinned. What good would invisibility do for a person who could only use his powers when no one was watching? Were you truly invisible if there was no one there to not see you?
       The cop car's taillights disappeared around a corner. Naim hopped up. Tonight he was on a mission. Somewhere someone else wearing black walked the neighborhood. He'd seen the figure two nights ago, crossing the middle school's playground, but a late-night janitor coming out of the building prevented him from following. Who else wandered the streets? Was it a burglar?
       Naim jumped to the top of a two-story on the corner overlooking the middle school. Of all his powers, he liked the jumping one best. It wasn't quite flying, but almost as good. The secret was not to jump too high. When he'd discovered the ability, he had a tendency to land hard, making a thump that alerted the household. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop presented the same problem. He weighed about one hundred and forty, but there was no way to throw that bulk straight to another roof without making a ruckus or, even worse, caving in the roof he started from or landed on. Roof to the ground and then roof again was the way to go.
       He hid behind the roof ridge, shadowed from the street light.
       Most houses in the neighborhood were single-level ranch-style. The occasional New England two-story provided higher vantage points, although the old water tower was good too.
       He focused on fenced yards beyond the school, where the mystery person had disappeared. Naim possessed exceptionally good night vision and, when he concentrated, telescopic vision too. Much better than binoculars. A light in the kitchen window a hundred yards away across the middle school's grounds revealed a man wearing a tee shirt, making a sandwich. The window swelled in Naim's view, like a zoom shot in a movie, until he could read the brand of peanut butter. Nothing interesting there.
       Naim pulled back. Every uncurtained window invited him to snoop. Mostly nothing to see, but there were many windows. The people slept or watched T.V. or sat at computers. Occasionally he . . . intruded visually. Saw what he shouldn't. To look at those private moments or not? It was a debate.
       He jumped off the roof and landed as softly as he could in the yard, leaving two deep footprints. Landing on driveways or sidewalks was better when he could find them. No traces he'd been there. No one visible. No one watching.
       He sprinted across Laurel Street and onto the school grounds.
       Naim clocked himself with a stopwatch when he'd discovered his powers a year ago. Given a twenty-yard buildup, he maxed at about forty miles per hour. Not bad: a mile in a minute and a half. He figured the track coach would love him. Of course, the only meets Naim could run would be where no one watched. Even one person's gaze from the stands would slow him to average speeds.
       Forty didn't sound too fast for people used to driving in cars, but forty when he ran was flat-out frightening. Both turning and stopping were slow, and although he seemed to be harder to hurt when he was in his unobserved mode, the idea of tripping at that speed scared him. The road rash would be terrible.
       Still, he crossed the schoolyard faster than an Olympic athlete, slowed, then leaped, clearing a six-foot privacy fence. This was his neighborhood. He knew who had dogs and who didn't. Greys and blacks filled the backyard. Whoever lived here left two dinner plates and a wine bottle on their picnic table.
       He leaped again and stood on the roof, looking down Primrose Drive. Good view of the street from here. A newer neighborhood without mature trees. Driveways picked up the streetlight and moon and glowed bone white. Windshields reflected. Porch lights stood out. When he squinted, the street looked like a night sky of stars and porch-light suns.
       A shadow moved against the bushes on the house across the street.
       Naim focused. A person dressed in black was remarkably hard to see at night, and when he stopped, he was nearly indistinguishable from the background, but he shifted positions again.
       Naim scooted to the side of the house, dropped to the ground, and then waited until the person in black's back was to him before racing across the street. The stranger was shorter and slighter than Naim, maybe just a kid, wearing a little black backpack.
       Naim tapped the guy's shoulder.
       The stranger squeaked in surprise and tried to run, but his feet slipped on the wet grass. He went down.
       Naim took two steps, then knelt on the stranger's backpack, pinning him to the ground. "Settle down, bub," said Naim. "I just want to talk to you."
       The guy lurched as if he was trying to do a pushup, but Naim was too big to budge. "Get off."
       "If I move, you'll get away," Naim said reasonably.
       "I'm suffocating, you big clod."
       Naim leaned back to remove some weight but kept his knees down. "You're a girl."
       "And you're a mugger." She slithered free.
       Naim reached to grab her, but she just rolled over to sit up. "Not a mugger, a superhero. I'm keeping everyone safe."
       From a distance, he had thought she wore a black hoodie, but instead, her hair was long and dark. A black mask hid her eyes. Naim thought she looked familiar, even behind the mask. "What are you doing here?"
       "Why are you tackling people? Hey, I know you. You're Naim. You're in Mrs. McKlaskey's third-hour Algebra."
       "Aida?" Naim pushed the baklava up. It was too hot anyways.
       She shut her eyes. "Why do I bother with the mask?"
       Of all people, Aida Wasem. The girl who came to school in third grade with her clothes turned inside out for a week. She said she liked the look. Aida Wasem, who sang weird counter harmonies in the sixth-grade choir until the director transferred her to a study hall. She sat at her desk every day, opened a briefcase (what sort of high schooler carried a briefcase?), then lined up her collection of tiny trolls along the far edge like a line of guardians.
       A car turned onto the street. They both ran low into the shadows between the houses.
       "Why are you out here?" whispered Naim. It irritated him that she stood next to him. The night was his. For months he'd left the house after midnight, wandering the neighborhoods, racing down streets, crouching on rooftops.
       In June, he'd seen a man break into the Kupperman's garage. Naim called the police from the Ellenberg's roof. Ten minutes later, two cop cars pulled up, lights flashing. They pulled the guy from under the SUV, feet first.
       Aida shifted her weight from foot to foot, a slight girl, a half-head shorter than Naim. "I'm a superhero, of course," she said. "I fight crime."
       "You are not."
       She sounded offended. "I certainly am. I have powers."
       "Ha," said Naim. "If you were really a superhero, you wouldn't tell me, so clearly you are not. I know your identity. What you are is a nut job."
       "I'm super fast."
       "Yeah, sure. Show me."
       She put her hands on her hips. "Not with you watching. Turn your back, and I'll vanish."
       "What do you think that I'm a toddler? I turn my back, and you'll just run away."
       "Super fast running. Turn around, count to three, and I'll be a mile from here."
       The houses they stood between were thirty feet apart. The fence between the houses was twenty feet deeper into the shadows. Naim knew the people on the left kept a Rottweiler, and the ones on the right, a Collie with a poor disposition. "Okay," he said, facing away from her and toward the street. "One . . . two . . . three."
       The fence rattled as she went over.
       When he turned around, he glimpsed her leg disappearing. She'd gone to the right. Claws skittered against cement, and a dog growled, which woke the Rottweiler that barked explosively from the neighbor's yard.
        "Good doggie," said Aida from the other side of the fence, and then, "Shit!" Feet pounded across the lawn. Cloth tore, then chain link clattered as she went over the next barrier.
       Naim laughed. Clearly, Aida was not 'super fast,' but he bet she'd never run faster.
       He sprinted home, leaping houses as he went.

       Naim anticipated the start of Algebra. He arrived early and turned so he could watch the door.
       Just before the bell, Aida limped in. She glowered in his direction before taking her seat. Slowly and clearly uncomfortable, she opened her briefcase on the floor to bring out her trolls. The bell rang while she was still arranging them.
       Mrs. McKlaskey nodded to the class before taking roll. As always, she ignored Aida's display. Saul Hampel and his buddy Levi Shimer, two Neanderthals who wouldn't have a three-digit I.Q. if they combined their numbers, attracted McKlaskey's attention more. They snickered behind her back, talked over her lectures, and picked fights with people around them. The best week in the class had been early in the quarter when they both missed because of the flu.
       Naim wrote a note, "You look like you something the dog dragged in," added his cell phone number, folded it, then tossed it to Aida when McKlaskey wasn't looking. A minute later, his phone buzzed.
       bastard
       He shrugged. fair enough -- could have warned you
       She texted one-handed under her desk without looking at her phone. Naim admired the technique. talk at lunch
       For the rest of the class, Naim tried playing 'sand sniper,' a game he'd invented at the end of last year. In the spring and fall, flies were a problem in the school. They bred at the dumpsters and then infested the grounds. Almost every room had a fly or two in it. To combat them, Naim kept a few grains of sand in his pocket. He dug out a single grain, placed it between his thumbnail and index finger, then looked for a fly. Every once in a very rare while, no one was looking at him. With thirty kids and a teacher in a room, it could be days before he was totally unobserved, but when he was, he could flick the sand grain at the fly at supersonic speed and kill it, no matter how far away it was.
       In his Spanish class last year, he'd picked one off as it flew from the windowsill to a bookcase. Perfect shot. The fly dropped to the floor, a grain-shaped hole punched through it, while the sand imbedded in the wall on the other side of the room, and he spent the rest of the day feeling proud and accomplished.
       But, like most days, although he took several shots, someone must have always been looking his way.
       Toward the end of class, Mrs. McClasky leaned over his desk and said, "I don't know what you are doing, but I'm sure you shouldn't be doing it. Cut it out."
       "You're a weirdo," Aida said as she sat next to him in the cafeteria, three pieces of chocolate cake and a carton of milk on her tray.
       "Not good training table for a superhero," he said.
       "Shh!" She glanced about. "That's my secret identity."
       Kids chattered around them. No one had paid much attention to Naim since elementary school. He was pretty sure he could stand on a table and take his clothes off, and no one would notice. He'd thought of doing it more than once.
       He said, "Do you have a hero name?" Up close, he noticed her arms weren't quite as scrawny as he thought. She had a little bit of definition. Narrow face. Dark eyes. Hid behind her bangs sometimes. Wore baggy clothes and beat-up tennis shoes. Lots of fresh scratches on her hands. He wondered if she'd gone through a thicket to get over the fence.
       "I'm still choosing. Maybe Night Hawk." She blushed. "I know that's a comic book character, but if you eliminated all the comic book personalities, there's no good names left."
       "So I could call myself Batman if I wanted."
       "Are you Batman?" she asked seriously. "You could be a young Bruce Wayne posing as Naim Haddad. Or you could be adopted. Are you adopted?"
       Some kids were tossing trash in the recycle bins and returning trays. Lunch was nearly over. "You're the weird one. Do you think if I was Batman, I would know it? When Bruce Wayne was sixteen, he was just an ordinary rich kid."
       "Ah," said Aida, "but he was an orphan. Do you look like your parents?"
       "Yes, idiot. The point is that superheroes don't know their adult identities when they're in high school. They grow into them."
       "Not true. Peter Parker became Spiderman in high school, and Superman knew he had powers all along. They were both orphans too."
       "You know that comics aren't real, don't you?"
       "You claim you have powers, but you don't think the comics are real. Isn't that a contradiction?" She crossed her arms smugly as if she'd just won an argument.
       "I don't 'claim' anything. I actually am superpowered."
       Saul and Levi, sitting one table over, laughed over a video on Levi's phone. Something pornographic, undoubtedly. Levi caught Naim's eye. "What are you looking at, whack job? Take a picture. It'll last longer."
       Saul said, "Don't even talk to those two. You'll get crazy cooties."
       "Virgin crazy cooties."
       "Communist virgin crazy cooties with herpes on top," added Saul.
       "Come on," said Levi. "We got places to go."
       "Kittens to kill?" said Naim.
       Saul and Levi pushed themselves up from the table, leaving their lunch trays behind. "You're always so mean to us," said Levi as they walked behind them.
       Saul punched Naim's shoulder. "There's an anti-bullying policy in this school. I might have to report you."
       After they left, Aida said, "Are you okay?"
       Naim rubbed his shoulder. "No problem," Although he wasn't sure that he hadn't heard something crack in the joint.
       "They're lucky you didn't go all uber powerful on their asses. Why didn't you smack him or dodge? He would've fallen on his face the way he swung."
       Naim laughed. "Uber powerful on their asses?"
       "Well, you know. You didn't have to take a hit." She put her empty plates and milk carton on his tray and then slipped her tray under his. "You must be really dedicated to your secret identity. I don't think I would have had the willpower."
       "I have a limitation."
       "Like kryptonite?"
       "Yeah, sort of. My powers only work if no one is looking at me. I don't understand the physics. I don't have to know that they're watching. If I'm observed, I'm just an ordinary guy."
       "So you can't fight?" She looked puzzled. "We need to explore this. What's your next class?"
       "P.E. We're timing laps today. Three minutes or quicker for a half mile to get an 'A.' I've never done it."
       "That's ironic."
       "More embarrassing than anything."
       She said, "I have Computer Apps. We're learning how to save files, which everybody in the civilized world can already do. I can skip it. We did the half-mile in P.E. last week. Everyone waits in the stands until it's their turn."
       The fact that he spent his whole lunch with Aida didn't seem remarkable until he sat in the stands beside the track. Naim hadn't said ten words to her in all their years together in school. She'd always been out of step. As far as he knew, nobody talked to her. And the more he thought about her, the sadder he became because what did it say about him that he talked to her now?
       On the track, the teacher recorded stats from the first runners. He weighed them, measured their height and checked their pulse and blood pressure. The teacher had told the class on the first day that he was writing a paper for his graduate work, so he constantly gathered data. Everyone thought he was ridiculous.
       The problem with Aida was that, of course, she didn't have superpowers. She was delusional, like when she talked to her toy trolls on her desk or when she made songs with bizarre lyrics to sing to herself on the bus.
       Why he shared his secret with her was beyond him. Now that he had a moment, he kicked himself for approaching her last night. If he'd just left Aida alone, everything would be fine. But he did talk to her, and now he had to deal with questions and curiosity.
       Beside that, it was possible that Saul and Levi were right about 'crazy cooties,' but only about Aida. If other kids saw them hanging out, pretty soon they would just lump them together. What little status he had (which was almost none) would disappear. He would go from being benignly ignored to actively mocked. He needed to nip this problem before it grew any larger.
       "So, what is our plan?" Aida said.
       Naim jumped. He hadn't heard her coming. "We don't have a plan. In fact, there isn't a 'we' to have a plan with. You need to not wander around when you should be in bed. You'll get hurt. This is a 'make my day' state. You'll get shot."
       Aida looked at him, dumbfounded. "You don't think I can protect myself? What a sexist thing to say?"
       "It has nothing to do with you being a girl."
       "Is it my superpowers? You doubt them?"
       Naim folded his hands in his lap. He hadn't thought out this encounter, and it wasn't going well.
       Aida's jaw dropped. "You don't think I have superpowers."
       Naim stopped himself from nodding. "No, it's not that. I'm just afraid you'll get into something you can't handle. I've been patrolling for almost a year. I know the danger spots. You can't just run around outside at night without some experience."
       Aida's lips grew thin, and she squinted at him, a dozen frown lines on her forehead. "You just try to stop me, Naim Haddad. Don't you think it's a little convenient that no one can see you do anything super? Maybe you're the one who's walking into trouble at night. Maybe you're a fake, not me. You might not be special at all. You don't become stronger by making me weak." She stomped away.

       Naim unhappily waited for midnight and his parents to be solidly asleep. He didn't like Aida; she hadn't even been on his radar before last night, but the hurt on her face before she left the bleachers this afternoon felt like a bad bruise. Moving silently, he dressed in his night blacks and slipped out the back door.
       Clouds blew in during the evening, and now they roiled uneasily, glowing from the city lights. Moist air swirled in the treetops. He wondered if he jumped hard, as high as he could, if he would reach the clouds that hung so low. Naim had never tried a straight power jump. He'd always aimed to go over something or land on top of it. The sidewalk would be the best place to go from. If he launched from the lawn, he would lose most of his spring in the soft dirt.
       When he reached the clouds, the fall back would be hundreds of feet, maybe a thousand. Judging a vertical distance like that was tough. He set his feet and readied himself. Tumbling on the way down was not an option.
       Tall jumps would settle his mood. He turned his face to the cloud, took a deep breath, crouched, and then sprung.
       Maybe eighteen inches. His knees buckled when he hit the sidewalk so soon.
       Who was watching? The windows in his house were black, and he was sure his parents weren't up. Was a neighbor sitting in the dark looking out of his house? No one visible.
       At ordinary speed, he trotted to the back gate and then down the alley. When he'd gone a block, he jumped again, this time for the Hoffstedter's roof. Made it easily. From there, across the street, another leap over a house this time, and twenty blocks later, he looked down on the middle school again.
       If Aida was out, she might return to this spot. Naim wondered if she lived nearby. He should have searched for her on his computer.
       What would he do if she appeared? He couldn't force her to stay at home, after all. Maybe he could bargain with her. Where did she get troll dolls, for example? If he could track some down, he could bribe her.
       A car rolled slowly down the street, its headlights cutting ghost swords in the foggy air. Naim moved far enough down the roof that only the top of his head would be visible. Not a cop car. Moving too carefully to be someone returning home late from work. It stopped in the darkness between two streetlights in front of the middle school. No movement from within. Even with telescopic vision, Naim couldn't see the occupants. Inside the car, a match flared.
       The driver lit his cigarette, opened the door, looked up and down the street, then moved to the trunk. A second later, the passenger emerged. They both wore hats that shielded their faces from above, but Naim recognized their builds: Levi and Saul. They took two baseball bats, a crowbar and a bolt cutter from the trunk before heading across the lawn toward the school.
       A couple of months ago, someone broke into the elementary school and smashed computers, aquariums, and student art projects. They'd trashed the library. Naim stayed home that night to watch an Indiana Jones marathon instead of going on patrol. He'd read the news the next day, sick with responsibility.
       911 gave him a recorded message that the operators were busy.
       He tried to jump from the roof but only went a couple of feet. Someone was watching! Good thing he was standing in the middle and not the edge. A trellis that reached the gutter on the north edge gave him a ladder down.
       When his foot touched the ground, a voice said, "You're not being very super."
       Naim nearly fainted. Aida stepped away from the house's shadow. Black truly was an effective camouflage at night. "You nearly got me killed. I told you it didn't work when I'm being observed."
       "No fooling," she said. "You looked stupid clambering over fences and wading through bushes. I've been following you since your house."
       Naim collected himself. "Well, then, you weren't watching closely. I covered the last quarter mile in about thirty seconds."
       "Yeah, right." She peered across the street. Somewhere near the school, metal clinked heavily against metal. "What do you think the demented duo are up to?"
       "Come on." Naim bent low and ran toward the middle school, using Levi's car as a screen. Crouched beside it, he tried to see into the building's shadow, where Levi and Saul had disappeared, but it was too dark.
       Aida panted beside him.
       He took out his phone but got the same message. "My guess is they're breaking and entering, followed by malicious mischief. If I can get the police here, we could save the school a lot of damage and make going to Algebra more tolerable. I need to slow them down." He unscrewed the air valve on the rear tire, then pressed in the valve pin. Aida followed his lead, and soon both tires were flat.
       Naim tossed the valve cap away. "That was satisfying, but we can't see anything from here." He dashed from behind the car and toward the school, staying in the trees' shadows and out of the streetlight.
       A pair of doors that led into the school's cafeteria had been secured with a chain and padlock looped through the doors' handles, but the chain lay on the cement. Naim looked through the window to make sure the cafeteria was empty, then gently pulled the door open.
       "What do you think you're doing?" Aida grabbed his arm, holding him back. "Can't you call the police department directly? What kind of emergency system gives you busy signals?"
       "After ten o'clock, the only way to get police help is 911." Naim squeezed through the open door.
       Aida followed.
       He stopped, then whispered urgently, "You really don't need to be here."
       "I'm not leaving." She sounded determined.
       They ran to the other side of the cafeteria. Far down the unlit hallway, glass broke and someone laughed.
       Naim said, "Even if I got ahold of the cops now, they'd take forever to get here. Those morons could cause thousands of dollars in damage. If they know the police are on their way, they'll stop."
       Aida said, "You don't think they'll bash you when you tell them?"
       "It's the weak part of my plan."
       "Wait. You're going to yell, get their attention? They'll come running, and I hear you're not that fast," Aida said, digging into her backpack. "I can help with this. We need to slow them down." She pulled out a spool of fishing line. "Two-hundred-pound test. Very useful. Tie an end over there."
       When Naim secured his end, Aida pulled the line taut and tied hers. The fishing line stretched across the hall about a foot off the floor, almost invisible in the weak security light.
       Naim thought about how much of a lead he'd like. "Let's do another up there."
       Something heavy crashed in a classroom. One of the boys hooted in joy.
       They fastened the line. Naim stayed on his knees and tried 911 again. The operator picked up.
       "Cops are on their way. Are you ready?"
       Aida nodded.
       They retreated to the cafeteria doors. Naim cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey, Saul and Levi!"
       The mumbled voices in the distance fell silent.
       "We called the police. You better get out of here." His voice echoed.
       At the far end of the hallway, someone poked his head out of a door. Naim waved. Both boys sprinted into the hallway carrying their bats, way faster than Naim imagined.
       He pushed Aida into the cafeteria. "Got to go!"
       "Wait," she said, then pulled a fire alarm. Claxons erupted, and emergency lights flashed like strobes. Something clattered behind them, followed by loud cursing. The vandals had hit the first trip line.
       Aida made it to the outside doors before Naim and held them open for him. Instead of running, she picked up the broken chain and pulled it through the door handles. Cut like it was, it wouldn't hold the doors at all. Naim opened his mouth to tell her, but she joined the broken ends together, wrapped her hands around them and squeezed. When she let go, the metal had melted together.
       "That'll hold them," she said.
       They flopped down onto the grass behind rose bushes twenty-five yards from the door but effectively invisible in the shadows.
       Levi and Saul pounded at the doors for several minutes before one of them had the wit to break out a window.
       Police cars, their lights glowing red and blue, came around both ends of the block after Levi stopped his car to look at his ruined tires.
       Naim should have been ecstatic like he had been after stopping the burglar during the summer, but he kept replaying the image of Aida holding the chain, welding it together with her touch.
       As more police and a firetruck arrived, Naim and Aida retreated across the lawn and into the neighborhood, sticking to the alleys. They walked silently, like panthers.
       Finally, Naim said, "You really are a superhero."
       "I told you I was." Wearing her black mask, dressed in black, she didn't look ridiculous to him anymore. He wondered what else she could do.
       Aida said, "I did follow you here. I watched you come out your back door tonight. You climbed up the Hoffstedter's van to get onto their roof."
       Naim stopped, facing her. Garbage bags lined the alley. Tomorrow was trash day. From the middle school, the fire alarm suddenly cut off, plunging them into silence. He remembered the jump well, how he'd estimated the height of the Hoffstedter's house perfectly, how he'd settled there without a bump, how he'd speed ran and leapt the rest of the distance to the school, defying gravity, a superhuman, a minor god.
       "Of course, you didn't see me. I told you the powers only work when I'm unobserved."
       Aida shifted from one foot to another, her hands in her pockets. "I followed you the whole way, when you went through gates and when you hid from that car on Lincoln Ave. It's a long hike. But you said you made it to the school in thirty seconds. I watched, Naim. Nothing ever happened. I don't think you have superpowers."
       Naim thought about how to answer. She'd been out of touch with reality as long as he'd known her, living in her strange little world with toy troll dolls, having spirited discussions with herself. However, she'd been helpful tonight. The fishing line trick was pretty good, and she certainly was brave, but he felt sorry for her. Having superpowers didn't keep her sane. He didn't want to hurt her feelings again. How could he convince her that she was wrong about him?
       Aida said, "Maybe you should stay home at night, Naim. It might not be safe for you out here."
       Arguing wouldn't do any good. "Sure, Aida. Whatever you say."
       When she left, Naim started toward home, about a two-mile trip. Between superspeed and jumping, he'd be there in three minutes. He broke into a trot and then into a run. At the end of the alley, he stopped, gasping for air with his hands on his knees. Someone must be awake who can see me, he thought. A block later, he tried to jump over a fence but skinned his forehead against it instead when he stumbled on his take-off step. Normally no one is up and about this time of night, he thought as he rubbed the scrape. He studied every window he could see. His telescopic vision seemed to be on the fritz too.
       Forty-five minutes later, he walked into his backyard. It would be dawn soon, and his mother would wake him for school.
       No one tells you about superhero hours, he thought. No one ever wonders how Batman can patrol Gotham at night and be a rich playboy during the day. It might be a good idea to sleep tonight, just for the rest.
       He'd go to school, assume his secret identity for the day, and after a good sleep, he'd be ready to dress for the darkness again. I really need a superhero name, he thought. Something that will strike fear in the hearts of the guilty. Something catchy and memorable. Maybe he'd work on that during Algebra. Mrs. McClaskey would assume he was taking notes. No one around would know how special he was. Even crazy Aida wouldn't know.
       How lucky his classmates were to have two superheroes in their class.
       They'd never suspect their good fortune or to whom they owed their thanks.