Cheto: Cheto, #1

By Tim Foster

Cobán was no different from any other eight-year-old. Actually, that isn't true. He was smaller than most, never stopped talking, and was as smiley as you could imagine. Aside from that though, he could have been any eight-year-old anywhere.

 

Everything changed for him after he was diagnosed with leukaemia. Now, don't think this is a sad story, far from it. This is the story of a world-famous superhero. Superheroes are chosen by the universe and Cobán, or Super Cheto, was right up there with Spiderman and Superman.

 

Being eight, he wasn't exactly the most accomplished superhero in terms of leaping tall buildings or foiling international diamond smuggling gangs, but he was very good at taking credit for generally just being in the way. Like all superheroes, nobody knew Cobán was Super Cheto, but superhero he was.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Foster
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201592127

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bum Cheeks

Not all good things come easily in life. Nobody asked Spiderman if he wanted to be bitten by a radioactive spider. No one asked Superman if he wanted to leave all his friends and family forever. True superheroes are chosen. Cobán learned that when he gained his powers.

Cobán wasn’t always a superhero though. Up until shortly after his 7th birthday he was a normal, slightly below average height boy. He loved rugby, Minecraft, tennis, all the things that normal, slightly below average height boys love to do. There was nothing special about Cobán, his brothers, sister, or his mum and dad.

Dad worked in technology, or the future as he called it. Mum ran a small business from home and his sister, well, she was just plain annoying. Ameyal was three years older than Cobán and as far as Cobán was concerned that was a three-year head start in being the most irritating, frustrating, and aggravating sister anyone could have the misfortune to have been born with.

He loved his sister, of course, and there were times when, just for a very brief moment, a glimmer of good showed through her harsh, annoying exterior.

But mostly she made it her life’s work to get in his way and ruin everything. Dad kept threatening to send her to military school, but Cobán doubted that even the military would be able to get along with her for long.

HE OFTEN IMAGINED A big army major dragging her off to do square bashing and drills. He never really understood what square bashing was, or why they would need to bash squares in the army, and drills were something that dad used when he wanted to look cool and industrial for mum, so it didn’t make sense that they’d have soldiers using those instead of guns either. It didn’t really matter though since once the army had Ameyal for 5 minutes, she’d have driven them so crazy they’d be firing her out of a tank all the way back home.

EVERYONE CALLED COBÁN, Cheto. Nicknames tend to have weird or unusual origins. For example, dad says he used to work with someone they nicknamed God.

He used to walk with his bum checks tightly clenched and it made him walk funny. Dad would say. He moved in mysterious ways, so we nicknamed him God

Cobán’s nickname was equally unusual. Nobody really knew where it came from. At school in México his friends just started calling him that. He wasn’t called Cobáncito or any traditional nickname. It wasn’t the Argentinian meaning of posh either. Cobán could hardly be called posh.

He would often sit with his sister and her friends when waiting to be collected after school. Because he was small, her friends all cuddled him and spoke in really high-pitched voices that made Cobán’s ears hurt, just like those women in the shopping centre who dress their dogs in costumes and talk to them.

Cobán liked cuddles, so he didn’t mind so much. Once his sister and her friends overheard the nickname Cheto though, that was it. He was Cheto to his friends from then on.

It’s probably because he’s small, thin and orange like a Cheeto, said Ameyal meanly.

Cobán didn’t mind. In fact, he quite liked his nickname.

Things changed for Cobán though just as he turned seven. Initially, it was a bad thing,