The Knights In Shining Spandex

By Emily Bentz and Tim Marron

The Johnson brothers were just a bunch of kids from Brooklyn. There was Cooper, an unsuccessful inventor, Matthew, a cocky basketball player, and Elliot, an innocent high school freshman. After they stumble upon a mysterious murder connected to some weird glowing goo, they find that they aren't quite themselves anymore. But when a real threat arrives in New York City, they soon realize that their new hobby is more than just a spandex suit and some fangirls on the side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312440852

Book preview

Chapter 1: The End of Normal As We Know It

I bet I can guess why you’re reading this. You probably thought this was going to be some dumb cliché imitation of a comic book. Maybe you thought that it would be a pathetic rip-off of a superhero origins story about a lame Peter Parker kind of kid who gets bitten by a radioactive bug and magically becomes a buff, amazing superhero, with a few good fight scenes and a woman in a tight black spandex suit. I bet the only reason you even opened this book in the first place was because you were either expecting the woman in the tight black suit, a few action-packed explosions, or some dangerous thing like a nuke that threatens to take out the entirety of the country. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t find any radioactive insects or Catwomen in here. Bear with me, and I promise you won’t regret it. It’s not as bad as it sounds.

I knew it was going to work this time. Last time, my measurements on the angle near the beginning of the track were a little bit off, but I’d been up ‘til 1 a.m. last night securing and re-measuring everything. I adjusted one of the strings and straightened out part of the track. This time, I knew it would work. I dashed into my brothers’ room to wake them up. They had to see it in action this time.

The second floor of our house is kind of like an attic; there are all these alcoves in Matt and Elliot’s room, where they hid their beds and desk. My room is barely big enough to be considered a closet (but there’s still plenty of space to pace back and forth). The bathroom ceiling slopes so badly that you can’t stand too close to the sink or toilet without hitting your head.

Matt was dead asleep with his face in his pillow. I wondered how my sixteen-year-old brother could effectively breathe like that. His limbs were sprawled across his mattress and his sheets were kicked to the end of the bed. One of his pillows had made its way to the floor as well. I wondered if Matt fought ninjas in his sleep or something. It made me grateful for my own, closet-sized room.

Get up! I said, grabbing the pillow off the floor and flinging it at his head. I missed and the pillow grazed his shoulder. There’s a reason I wasn’t the pitcher on my little-league team; I’ve never had very good aim. Matt flinched and rolled onto his back to look up at me.

What the hell, Cooper? he croaked in his morning drawl. It’s too early for this. Matt grabbed the pillow he’d been sleeping on and pulled it over his head, rolling back into his original position.

You’ve got to see this.

No. Not after you interrupted my sleep, Matt said, his voice muffled by his pillow. I huffed out a breath and turned towards Elliot’s bed. His dirty-blonde hair was sticking out above his blanket. When we were little kids, Matt and I tricked Elliot into thinking he was adopted, because he was the only one in the family with blonde hair. He was too young to remember what Dad looked like before he left.

I yanked his blanket off of the bed. Elliot was curled up in a tight ball, but he coiled up even more.

"Why?" he groaned, holding out the word. He was only fourteen and his voice hadn’t quite dropped yet.

Come on, get up. I’ve got to show you this.

Hell no. Five more minutes, Elliot said, pulling his blanket off of the ground and disappearing under it again.

Ten, Matt muttered from behind me.

Oh, what’s this little switch on the wall do? I said. I crept towards the light switch. Matt rolled over and sat up. Even in the dim light I could see his slate blue eyes grow wide. Nobody, me included, liked being woken up by bright lights. I don’t care who you are. At six in the morning, it’s just obnoxious.

I’ll murder you, he said. I stepped backwards and extended my hand towards the light switch and flipped it up. I guess all the fighting ninjas in his sleep paid off for Matt because I’ve never seen him jump out of bed so fast and tackle me to the floor.

"Don’t ever do that again," Matt growled through his teeth. He kept me pinned to the ground with just one hand. Despite being a solid two inches shorter, He’d always been stronger than me.

"Right, ok, got it," I coughed.

I led my brothers to the kitchen where an elaborate system of household items had been connected together with pulleys and wires. It was all attached to the cabinets in a descending zigzagging pattern.

Did the trash throw up all over the cabinets? Matt said still rubbing one eye open.

Wait a second, Elliot said, creeping closer to the cabinets. Is that my shoe?

Don’t touch! I said, swatting his hand away. Do you have any idea how long it took me to calibrate everything? It was at that moment that Mom decided to enter the room.

Cooper, what’s all this? she asked as she buttoned her suit jacket. Her tone wasn’t that of a mother supportive of her child’s elaborate dreams. She sounded more like someone who was tired of being messed with.

"This will make breakfast easier," I explained.

How’s it gonna make breakfast easier if I can’t even get to the cereal bowls? Matt asked with a scowl as he smoothed down his chestnut-brown hair.

Shut up Matthew, I snapped. I walked over to the doorway. I stepped over to the end of the counter and switched on the main controller system I’d salvaged from our old toy train set. A set of four spoons had been attached to each other at the end like the spokes on a Ferris wheel. The spoons began to turn in a clockwise motion and scooped up marbles out of a dish. As the spoons rotated, they dropped the marbles into a paper towel tube I’d cut in half, like a slide. The marbles rolled down the tube into a bucket attached to a pulley system. As the bucket filled with marbles, it began to lower down to the counter. On the other end of the pulley was a plate with a piece of bread on it. The plate rose into the air and got stuck on a wooden spoon. As one end of the plate tilted into the air, the bread slid right off of the plate and flopped directly into the toaster.

It worked, I said to myself. "Yes! It worked!" When I turned around, Mom smiled warmly at me. Elliot didn’t look like he was entirely awake yet. Matt was giving me a weird look, as if he was confused. I ran over to switch off the controller.

Or… you could just put the bread in the toaster yourself, Matt said. I pushed my thick-framed glasses back up my nose and scowled at him. Out of the three of us, I’m the one that looks most like Mom, and I inherited her narrow nose. My glasses are constantly sliding down.

You’re missing the point, I started. I waved him away. It’s…forget it. It’s not like you care anyways.

Cooper, Mom started. This is wonderful, it really is, but… I need a coffee mug.

Yeah, sure, I said, my dampened spirits showing through my tone. Did no one care at all how cool this was?

I’m going back to bed, Matt mumbled. As he left the room, Mom’s phone rang and she disappeared into the living room to retrieve it. I glanced back to see Elliot still standing in the same spot.

I thought it was cool, he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Yeah, I muttered as I untied his track shoe from the pulley system. Here’s your shoe back. Elliot left me alone in the kitchen and I stood in the doorway admiring my work. Sure, it was kind of a pointless idea, but it was still pretty cool. I’ve been trying to invent useful stuff around the house for a long time now. Even if no one else was proud of me, I was.

I heard the front door open when I was brushing my teeth and didn’t even have to guess who it was. I already knew it was Tabitha, our next-door neighbor. She was Matt’s age and moved here five years ago from England, just west of London.

Morning, gentlemen! Tabbi said in her accent. I could tell she meant to call us gentlemen in a sarcastic way. I poked my head out the bathroom door and waved. Matt appeared out of his bedroom. His hair no longer looked like a girl had been running her fingers through it all night. Now, his hair was spiked up in the front (a hairstyle Tabbi christened the douchehawk). That was his thing. His hair always had to look good. Tabbi was the same way with her hair. None of us know what her natural hair color is because she always dyes it. Judging by her younger sister Catherine’s hair, we think that it’s blonde. The past two months her hair’s been bright raspberry-red. She and Matt shared several other traits, and it was often terrifying to be with them in the same room. Even though Tabbi was from a different continent, the two of them were so alike that they could have been twins.

Did you come to steal our food again? Matt asked. The two of them stood in the hallway, just outside the bathroom door. I had to suffer through the whole conversation.

"Of course not. I came to see my favorite people in the whole wide world!" Tabbi said in a babyish voice as she pinched Matt’s cheeks.

Aw come on now, Matt said, rubbing his cheeks. I know you came just to see me.

Of course, Tabbi muttered. The amount of sarcasm coming out of the two of them was beginning to flood the house. Tabbi stuck her nose up in the air and scrunched up her face. I smell something burning, she said. I quickly spit out my toothpaste in the sink and ran into the kitchen. A faint plume of smoke was rising out of the toaster. I pulled the lever up and the toast popped up. It was the color of tar and smelled like, well… like burnt toast. I went to pick it out of the slot in the toaster, but the bread was still scorching hot. I yelped and dropped the toast on the counter, sending an explosion of black crumbs across the granite. I dashed over to the sink and ran cold water across my burned fingertips.

That was clever, Tabbi said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with Matt. Both of them crossed their arms and leaned on opposite sides of the kitchen doorway.

You got a little, uh, Matt said, pointing to the side of his mouth. I wiped my hand across my mouth and came up with a palm smeared in a foamy toothpaste and drool mixture. I rinsed my hand off in the sink and looked over at the blackened bread on the counter. The smell of burning toast was still looming in the air, and it was only a matter of time before the smoke alarm went off. I waved a dishtowel around the smoke alarm overhead.

What in the world is going on out here? Mom asked as she joined us all in the kitchen. Oh, hello Tabitha.

Morning, Ms. Kim, Tabbi replied sweetly. And to answer your question, Cooper was cooking.

Well maybe someone else should do breakfast this morning, Mom said. I gave her an annoyed look as she came over and kissed my cheek. I’m heading out now. She kissed Matt’s cheek and left the room, probably looking for Elliot. When she returned, phone in one hand, laptop bag hanging off the other arm, she added, You boys be good and have a great day at school. And Tabitha, keep an eye on them, won’t you, Dear?

I always do Ms. Kim, Tabbi grinned.

Chapter 2: A Sweet Slice of Reality

I’m fascinated with chemistry. Actually, I love pretty much every kind of science. One year for Christmas, when I was like seven or eight, I got one of those Lego sets where you build a robot and sync it up to your computer to make the parts move. After that, I’ve always been fascinated with building and creating things. In fact, I want to get an engineering degree at Princeton. It’s nothing special, but you know, it’s useful.

It wasn’t until this year that I really started looking forward to chemistry class. I don’t know if it was fate, destiny, or just sheer luck, but somehow Molly Abrams was late to the first day of class and got put with me, the only one who didn’t have a lab partner yet. Thank God.

I’ve seen Molly around school before and I had a few classes with her. She’s one of those people who you look at, and then, your brain does that little, whoa, hello voice, and you can’t really stop looking at them. Maybe it’s the intensity of her eyes—so pale blue they’re almost grey. Maybe it’s her smile—whenever she smiles, you can tell she’s doing it out of kindness, not pity. Maybe it’s the way she carries herself—as if she doesn’t realize that she looks better than half the girls trying to fling themselves at the nearest person with a Y chromosome.

Last year, the two of us were in the same English class and we got paired up to do a presentation together. That’s how I met her— that class. My junior year was awful— to put things lightly. I’d just quit the cross-country team the beginning of the year. There was this rumor going around that it I’d actually been kicked off the team because I was caught with a guy in the locker room (the real reason was because I screwed up my ankle over the summer and was afraid to injure myself even further). Some guys thought the rumor was gross, and soon I was getting the word faggot thrown at me in the halls.  Let me also say this: I don’t swing that way.

So, while I was darting through the hallways junior year, trying to avoid eye contact with any of the guys in that group who thought I deserved a new nickname, Molly was one of the few people who pretended that the rumors didn’t exist. She didn’t judge me or crack jokes about me. She just did her work and consulted me when she needed to consult me. I thought it was pretty strange that a girl who wore a cross necklace to school every day and suggested using quotes form the Bible for our To Kill a Mockingbird presentation would treat a wrongfully-labeled gay guy like a normal human being. I guess that’s why I was pretty excited to have her as a lab partner. I knew it would make things a little better.

Okay, back to the present. Today we were studying Avogadro’s Law. Our teacher, Mr. Finch, was a fifty-something-year-old with combed over grey hair and round silver Harry Potter-style glasses. He always wore a tie and a suit jacket— I guess so he could look professional or something (One year at a pep rally, the entire student body was crammed into the gym where it was so sweltering hot that it made late July seem like a joke, and there was Mr. Finch with the rest of the teachers, standing tall and proud in his jacket and tie). So, is the man classy? Yes. Exciting? About as much as a rock. A rock you’d find on the side of the road, to be specific.

Molly must’ve been thinking along the same lines, because beside me, she had her elbow on the table holding up her head, looking like she was about to drift off into a daydream. Her light-brown hair was over her shoulder and gathered on the black lab table like a lake at the bottom of a milk-chocolate waterfall. In the margins of her notebook she’d been drawing vines with leaves and flowers crawling up the sides of her notes. She always drew birds or flowers during class. I asked her once if she was an artist because she always doodled across her notes, and she laughed and said, no, but it was a nice no, like she was touched I’d thought she was talented. Everything she did was nice. I guess that’s why I can’t keep my eyes off her.

Molly must’ve sensed me looking her way, because her eyes turned up to look at me. I quickly glanced away and pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose. Molly sighed beside me.

I wish this class didn’t make me want to drop out, Molly whispered. I nodded, interested in what she was saying, but also trying to tune in to what Mr. Finch was going on about. I just don’t understand it all.

Wh-what’s that? I stuttered. Jeez. It would be a miracle if I could ever get a full sentence out clearly around her.

"Why did they decide to call them moles? she asked. I mean… why couldn’t someone have come up with a nicer word, like blue or something?" I grinned, and she smiled back.

Yeah, I agreed. "Like… h-how many blues are in, uh… 5 grams of CO2?" Molly smiled again and actually wrote down the problem, trying to solve it.

"I’d say about 0.135 blues," she said when she finished. I adjusted my glasses and pointed to the mistake on her paper.

Ac— actually, you added wrong here, I said. It… it would be more like 0.114 blues. Molly pouted in frustration.

"Mr. Johnson, what does nf represent in the equation?" Mr. Finch called out in his bellowing teacher voice.

Uh, uh, the… final number of… um, total number of moles? I answered, sounding like I was asking a question.

Correct, Mr. Finch said, turning to the whiteboard to write something else down. Apparently I’d been paying enough attention.

I’m so terrible at conversions, Molly continued. How did you get so good at it?

I— I guess I just got lucky, I shrugged. Being in Calculus helps, too.

Mr. Finch was handing out a worksheet with problems on it. I glanced over the first one. With some hesitation, I started setting up my answer. Molly peered over with wide eyes, watching my chicken scratch unravel on the paper.

I’m glad I got stuck with you as a lab partner, Molly said. I need all the help I can get. I smiled at her again, feeling the tips of my ears get warm.

Yeah, me too, I said. I mean, uh, not the part about me needing help, but the stuck part. I can help you, if, uh, if you need it. When I realized how stupid my comment had sounded, I turned my head towards the wall and winced. Way to play it cool, Coop, said the little voice in the back of my head. For some strange reason the voice sounded a lot like Matt.

Speak of the devil, I found my younger brother with Tabbi at lunch. The three of us always sat together, surrounded by Matt’s and Tabbi’s friends. The juniors and seniors had a different lunch period than the freshman and sophomores, so Elliot didn’t eat lunch with us. I didn’t have many friends at school, mostly because a lot of them abandoned me after the cross-country rumors emerged. The only club I ever joined other than the cross-country team and the Honors Society was the robotics team, but the people there never got along with me. It was mostly because I always had ideas to improve the robot we were building and they liked to do things their own way. So, I ditched robotics and brought my inventing talents home. Well, if you could call it talent. Before my toaster marble run, my previous creation had been turning our little circular robot vacuum into a floor mop. It wasn’t necessarily a success. The vacuum didn’t survive and Mom wasn’t too happy about that.

Cooper, put your book away, Tabbi scolded from across the table. This is a caf; it’s not a classroom. This is the place where you eat lunch.

Please Tabbi. He’s so buried in science laws and physics shit that he can’t be bothered to eat anything. Matt scoffed. I looked up at my brother and glared at him, letting him know silently that he was taking things too far.

This is history, I corrected. I have a test on the Mongolians tomorrow. Also, just so we’re clear, I eat lunch; I’m just not hungry today.

Or yesterday, Tabbi pointed out.

"Or last week," Matt added. I knew my ears were turning red.

Ok, whatever. So I don’t eat lunch, what’s the big deal? I said. I’m just not hungry. I’ve got more important things to do.

More important than eating? Matt questioned.

Cooper, look at yourself, Tabbi said. Her voice had lost its sarcastic tone and was more serious now. Her native British accent was even starting to come out again. You’re as skinny as a popsicle stick. It’s not good for your health; I’m sure of that.

Not to mention he’s a weakling, Matt said, leaning over towards Tabbi. She tried to hide her smile, but I saw it clearly.

Seriously, this isn’t a joke, Tabbi said. She shoved her lunch tray towards me.  You need to eat something.

Thanks Tabbi, but I really don’t want any of your processed carbohydrates, I said, returning to studying.

The term is tater tots, Matt said. "Speak English, not Geekinese. We’re normal human