drama queens, and just like in mid-school everything that happens is always somebody else’s fault.
And just like in mid-school, none of the drama is about anything real.
We fight fake villains in fake film sets in fake scenarios, and the fake villains shoot fake bullets. Then we have to vote to throw people off the team, and we all make up some fake feelings about how traumatic that is.
It’s like what happened to Bubbles. Once they found out she was a real-life supermodel, her team gave her the boot. They kicked her out for not being fake.
That’s American Hero all over.
It’s just like mid-school, which is all about popularity and cliques, and where I’m not very good at popularity and cliques. The best I managed last year was that Sally Berkowitz told me I was her third-best friend, and Sally’s crowd wasn’t exactly the cream of the sixth grade.
I’m guessing things will change this next year, though, with my having the dragon and being a TV star. I think a lot of people will want to be in my clique.
I’m looking forward to telling Sally Berkowitz that she can be my third-best friend.
The reason that I figure I’m going to be popular when I get back to Jersey is that a lot of people can’t tell the difference between TV and the real. They’ll have seen me be a hero on television, and that will make them want to be my friend.
Like the fame rubs off or something.
But what they won’t understand is that I won’t be a hero in the real. I won’t have done anything with my wild card except participate in a whole bunch of phony contests, just about all of which I could have accomplished on my own if they’d ever let me carry more than three of my stuffed animals and if they hadn’t handicapped me with partners who were less powerful than me but insisted on camera time anyway.
When I go back to Jersey, I won’t have saved any real people, and I won’t have captured any real bad guys, and I won’t have changed the real world for the better. I’ll have just added another celebrity to the long line of useless celebrities you see on the covers of the magazines at the supermarket.
Some other players, they don’t have a problem with that. Rosa and Haley want fame, they want to be stars.
I don’t want to be a star. Stars are a dime a dozen.
What I want is to be a hero, like Lessa of Ruatha Hold. Who is a character in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider books, if you want to know.
[cut]
I’ll tell you what was real trauma, and that was when poor Rusty got stabbed in the back by Stuntman. It was just like in Master Harper of Pern where Lessa uses her telepathic powers to provoke the duel that kills Lord Fax. It was that traumatic.
Except of course nobody died, and my telepathy only works on stuffed animals. But still it was pretty bad.
I didn’t for a second think that Rusty said what Stuntman said he said. I don’t think anyone else on the Spades did either. But they were obliged to work up some fake outrage over this fake situation, and the result was that Rusty got cut from the team. The real trauma was what we did to someone who was supposed to be our friend.
We were supposed to be his teammates. But we didn’t stand up for him.
Well actually, one of us did. I voted to boot the Pop-Tart instead of Rusty. But I was the only one, and now I think Cleo knows it. She’s been especially sweet to me since the vote. And when someone like Cleo is super nice, you know she’s getting ready to stab you in the back.
(Just like in mid-school. What did I tell you?)
But I won’t get stabbed this week, because we won.
Thanks to me, by the way.
We met the robbers on the street outside the bank. In order to defeat us, the bad guys had to break into the bank safe and run off with bags of loot.
Rosa’s card had turned her into a giant banana, but that wasn’t going to stop the black hats. Cleo was able to pop around with a paintball gun and shoot the ordinary henchmen, but that wasn’t going to stop the rogue ace.
Who was Detroit Steel. A giant clanking armor-plated monster, for all that in real life he’s a good guy.
I really missed Rusty when I