Hero (21 page)

He expected Mr. Herbert to at least be a little bit surprised. But he wasn’t.

“You followed me,” he said, with a nod.

Not a question.

“Good boy,” he added. “The
invisible
boy.”

“I’m not looking for a pat on the head,” Zach said. “What were you doing in there?”

“I was trying to help you,” he said.

“You know what?” Zach said. “Sometimes I think I’ve gotten just about all the help from you I need. Or want.”

“You don’t understand,” Mr. Herbert said.

“Try me.”

The old man made a gesture behind him that took in the Dakota. “He doesn’t know what’s best for you,” he said. “He never understood what was best for your father, couldn’t get his mind around your father’s true destiny. It’s time he learned. It’s time he let go.”

“Uncle John says that you only do what’s best for
you.”

He nodded.

“Used those same words just now, as a matter of fact.”

“And do you?”

Mr. Herbert didn’t blink. “Used to, perhaps. Maybe I still do. Who’s to say?”

Zach felt heat rising to his face. He couldn’t hold back.

“Tell me why you’re here!”
Zach said.
“Tell me what you want!”

In a quiet voice, with that sad face on him again, the old man said, “Because I want to make things right.”

Then he was across the street in a flash. Across the street and into the park.

Gone.

Nothing to follow this time except a trail of words. The old man invisible himself.

ZACH
bolted across the street and into the park, thinking:
It won’t be so easy to lose me this time.

He was wrong.

Powers or no powers, he’d lost the old man. Again.

And he’d left Zach with one more riddle to solve: What had he meant by making things right?

Zach thought about going back to the Dakota, telling the doorman that John Marshall had another visitor. But he didn’t think he’d get the truth out of Uncle John, either. He’d just spin things his way again, play Zach a little more, try to make Mr. Herbert out to be the bad guy.

Zach felt angrier than ever.

Not angry at the old man or Uncle John. No, now he was angry at the man he’d always trusted more than anybody.

His dad.

For not preparing him.

For not telling him what was coming.

For dying.

Zach felt the same kind of rage coming up within him now that he’d felt that first time at school, with Spence Warren, the day he’d tried to knock down a brick wall with his bare hands.

“You’re angry?” Mr. Herbert had said one time. “Good. Use it.”

But how did he use this kind of anger against his dad? How did he take a swing at somebody who wasn’t even there?

When he was almost to Fifth Avenue, about a block from the apartment, Zach stopped. Looked down at fists that were clenched again.

Opened them.

And saw that each was holding one of the Morgan coins.

His and his dad’s.

Zach stood there looking at them, palms up.
Staring
at them. Almost as if he was waiting for them to do something, to be some kind of coin trick all by themselves. Waiting to feel the heat come off them. Waiting for the light.

Nothing.

Just like the one his dad had been carrying when his plane went down had done nothing for
him.

Good
luck
charms?

Where was the luck?

He closed one fist now, then the other. Then he turned and threw the coin in his right hand as far as he could into the park.

Then he threw the other one.

There was nothing magical or lucky about them.

Now they were like his father.

Gone.

Zach dropped to the ground right where he was.

And for the first time since his dad died, he cried.

IT
was the night before the big rally.

Zach and Kate had gone over to the park in the afternoon with Zach’s mom as she made what seemed like her tenth trip for what she always swore were her “final” preparations.

They listened to Paul Simon’s rehearsal, Zach still trying to imagine what the Great Lawn was going to look like when it was filled with two hundred thousand people.

Or more.

Two hours later they were back at the apartment, Zach’s mom still at the park.

They were searching his dad’s office.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Kate said.

“Looking for clues,” Zach said. “Some heads-up he might have left me without actually knowing it would be a heads-up.”

“Like what?”

“We’ll know when we find it,” Zach said.

“It feels creepy,” Kate said.

“I know,” Zach said. “And I know about being creeped out.”

He told her about the day he’d been alone in the apartment and came upstairs to find the message on the laptop:
Trust no one.

Kate was at one of the bookshelves built against the wall. She turned now, her face serious.

“What is it?” Zach said.

“That was me,” she said.

Zach was in the chair behind his dad’s desk. “What?” he asked.

“I said it was me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Zach said.

“Was.”

“You weren’t even there! It was one of the reasons I freaked at the time. The apartment was so empty and quiet except for me.”

Kate said, “You think you’re the only one who can sneak in and out of here? The only difference between the two of us is that I don’t need superpowers to do it.”

It was as quiet in there now as it had been that afternoon.

“But why?” Zach said.

“I finally got sick of you being like the rope in a tug-of-war between that crazy old man and your crazy Uncle John. So I thought I’d do something to get your attention.”

“You never told me you don’t like Uncle John,” Zach said.

“Let’s just say I never loved the guy,” Kate said. “Too slick. Always listening to everybody else’s conversation even when he’s supposed to be talking to you. Too charming. I kept my mouth shut about it because I know you love him.” She looked at him now with big eyes. “Or did,” she said. “And after what happened to your dad . . .”

“So why didn’t you just say something?”

“You wouldn’t have listened.”

“I always listen to you.”

She smiled. “You listen. But you don’t always hear.”

“So that was your way of trying to scare me straight?”

“Maybe a little bit. There was so much drama and mystery and freakiness going on—
still
going on—I thought leaving you a secret message was the best way to get your attention.”

“Well, guess what? It worked.”

“You want to hear something nuts?”

“Please don’t say you suspected it was me all along.”

“No,” he said. “I thought it might be . . . might somehow be my dad. I thought, just for a second, that he was still looking out for me.”

“Oh, Zach,” she said, “I never meant for that to happen.”

“I know,” he said. “I thought it was one more thing that couldn’t be explained in a normal world, or what used to be a normal world. And that he had found a way to send me a message.”

“You know something? I actually believe your dad would have given you the same message I did.”

Zach nodded. He reached into his pocket and felt the now-familiar emptiness. No coins to feel solid in his hands. Nothing to tell him all would be all right.

Help me,
Zach thought.
Dad, I don’t know how to deal with all this.

That’s when his eyes landed on the framed cartoon strip his dad had always kept by the side of his desk. It was an old strip called
Pogo.
Pogo is sitting in a swamp and the caption reads:

“Yep, son.

We have met the enemy.

And he is us.”

THE
house phone chirped just as Zach finished getting dressed for the rally—his mom having been dressed for hours—and Alba told them Senator Kerrigan was on his way up.

The plan, Zach knew, had always been for him to stop here, then for Zach and his mom and Kate to get in one of the cars in the motorcade taking them all into the heart of Central Park.

“I still don’t understand why we just can’t walk over,” Zach said.

“Because,” his mom said, “this isn’t one of those days when Central Park is the personal playground of Zach Harriman.”

It turned out the senator even had two Secret Service guys with him for the elevator ride up to the apartment.

The Secret Service men stood guard as Senator Kerrigan hugged Zach’s mom, then turned and told Kate how pretty she looked in her summer dress. When the senator turned away, Zach couldn’t resist pointing to his own cheek, his way of telling Kate she was blushing.

She shot him a mean look back.

Then the senator came over and offered Zach a low five. “Hear you’ve been working the phones for me,” he said.

“No big deal,” Zach said. “I felt like I ought to do something more than just watch the whole thing from the sidelines.”

“I’ll take all the help from the Harrimans I can get,” the senator said.

He leaned down a little so he and Zach were eye to eye.

“We would have made a great team, your dad and me,” he said. “This is going to be his campaign as much as it is mine, you can trust me on that.”

Then he said to Zach, “My aides make fun of me, because I say this all the time, but this is going to be the best day of the campaign yet!”

All along, Zach had wanted this to be that kind of day for his mom, because of all the work she’d done, because this was the first thing that seemed to make her really happy, her old self, since Zach’s dad had died.

But he
did
want it to be great for Senator Kerrigan, too, maybe because the senator reminded him of his dad more and more.

Maybe heroes still
could
win the day.

 

The rally was scheduled to begin at one o’clock.

Senator Kerrigan had told them he’d been over to the Great Lawn yesterday, practicing his speech in front of policemen and Secret Service men and workers still making the finishing touches on the stage, and the invisible bulletproof shield that would run the length of it.

“A
shield
?” Zach said.

“Not my style, believe me,” the senator said. “It’s the world we live in, son.”

Zach understood more than he wanted to.

When they all went downstairs at noon, Zach saw that Fifth Avenue had been shut down in both directions. There were three limousines waiting, one for the senator and a couple of his staffers, another for more of his staff and one for Zach and his mom and Kate. All around the limousines were police cars with flashing lights and more policemen on motorcycles. Photographers and television cameramen were behind both sides of blue barricades on the sidewalks, with still more police keeping them back.

When everybody was ready, they pulled away from the building.

“Wayyyyyy cool,” Kate said, sinking back into the plush seat of their stretch.

“Still think we should have walked it,” Zach said.

“Poo on you,” Kate said.

“Good one,” he said. “Poo. You
are
smarter than a fifth grader!”

She punched him.

The limos pulled up next to the huge tent that had been erected behind the stage. When they got out, Zach saw more blue barricades and rope lines, police everywhere and more Secret Service in dark suits. On either side of the Great Lawn were two temporary stands for television cameras and photographers.

“Why so much protection?” Zach said to his mom.

“Because the people in charge of doing the protecting
hate
wide-open spaces like this.”

Paul Simon was inside the tent, guitar slung over his shoulder, a Yankee cap on his head, chatting with the senator. Zach’s mom went off and seemed to be talking to everybody at once, as if these were the last moments before the biggest party she was ever going to throw in her life.

Zach and Kate had been given the kind of all-access passes to wear around their necks that they gave you at concerts. They walked out of the tent and around to the side of the stage.

It was then that they got their first good look at the crowd on the Great Lawn, and it was more than he had imagined, more people in one place than Zach had ever seen in his life.

“O . . . M . . . G,” Kate said.

“Tell me you just didn’t say that,” Zach said.

But the truth was he felt the same way.

It looked like a concert audience, with some people sitting on blankets, others standing and dancing to the beat of the music blaring through the loudspeakers. And for all the security in the area, what Zach really saw were happy faces, more young than old, waiting to hear the senator’s speech.

Like it
was
a party.

“Tell me you’re not crazy excited,” Kate said.

“I am,” he said, and before he knew it, the mayor was introducing Paul Simon and this huge roar exploded from the crowd as he began to sing “Mrs. Robinson.”

Zach couldn’t help himself now, his senses were in total overdrive, like the energy of the day was trying to short-circuit them. He
was
excited, too excited.

The way he became when his sixth sense knew something was about to happen.

IT
is my high honor to welcome to our great city the next president of the United States . . . Senator Robert Kerrigan!” The crowd was cheering so wildly by the end of the sentence that even with a microphone, the mayor’s words could hardly be heard.

Zach’s heart was beating faster now, and not just because the big moment had finally arrived.