Hero-Type Part 1

Hero-Type.

Barry Lyga.

DEDICATED TO CAPTAIN PETER G. MADRInAN.

AND MAJOR GREGORY C. TINE,.

UNITED STATES ARMY,.

BOTH SERVING IN THE MIDDLE EAST AS I WRITE THIS.

FINE SOLDIERS, BETTER FRIENDS.

"There I was one night, just a normal guy.

"And then there I was the next night...

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I was still just a normal guy."

-Bruce Springsteen, speaking to the crowd on July 7, 1978.

at The Roxy, Los Angeles, California.

Overture.

You know those pictures of fat people?.

I'm talking about the ones in the ads for diets and weight-loss drugs and stuff like that. You know them. They always show the "Before" picture of the person back when they were a big fat slob. And then they show the "After" picture, which is like this totally buff hottie.

Here's the thing about those pictures, though: For the longest time I couldn't figure out why the pictures were labeled "Before" and "After," because to me it was obvious they were two completely different people.

But I get it now-we're at least supposed to think that it's the same person, made over thanks to the miracle of whatever the company is peddling. It doesn't have to be just for weight loss. It can be for any big life change.

I've always been skinny, so I don't need to lose weight, but I think about those pictures a lot. Especially now. After my own big life change.

So why do my "Before" and "After" pictures look exactly the same?.

Hero.

Chapter 1.

Surreal.

Everywhere you go, it seems like there's a reminder of what happened, of what I did. You can't escape it. I can't escape it. I wouldn't be surprised if someone suggested renaming Brookdale "Kevindale." That's just how things are working out these days. The whole town's gone Kevin Krazy.

Take the Narc, for example. The big sign out front, the one that normally announces specials and sales, now says thank you, kevin, for saving our leah. That's just plain weird. The same spot that usually proclaims the existence of new flavors of Pop Tarts or two-for-one c.o.kes is now a thanks to me. It's just surreal, the word my friend Flip uses when he's slightly stoned and can't think of a better word to describe something strange.

But I sort of understand the Narc sign. After all, Leah's dad owns Nat's Market (called "the Narc" by every kid in town except Leah), so I get it.

But...

Then there's the flashing neon sign that points down the highway to Cincinnati Joe's, a great burger-and-wings joint. Usually it just flashes Joe followed by Says and then Eat and then something like Wings! or Burgers! or Fries! or whatever the owners feel like putting up that day. Now, though, it says: JOE.

SAYS.

GOOD.

JOB.

KEVIN!.

Even the sign at the WrenchIt Auto Parts store wishes me a happy sixteenth birthday. And when you drive past the Good Faith Lutheran Church on Schiffler Street, the sign out front reads: G.o.d BLESS YOU, KEVIN & LEAH. Which almost makes us sound like a couple or something. And I don't even go to Good Faith. I'm what Mom calls "a parentally lapsed Catholic." (Usually followed by "Don't worry about it.") Continuing the Tour of Weirdness that has become Brookdale in the last week or so, you can see similar signs all over. My favorite-the most surreal-is the one near the mall, where someone forgot to finish taking down the old letters first, so now it says, SPECIAL! SAVE KEVIN ROSS IS A HERO!

Gotta love that.

And, G.o.d, don't even get me started on the reporters.

You probably saw me on TV. First the local channels and then-just this past weekend-the bigtime: national TV, courtesy of Justice!. I didn't want to do the show, but Justice! was one of the big contributors to the reward money. I don't have the money yet, and it's not like the producers are holding it hostage or anything, but when someone's planning on dumping thirty grand into your bank account ... I sort of felt like I had to go on. Dad said it was my decision, but I could tell he was waffling. It's like, one part of him figured I deserved the money, and another part of him hated the idea of this big media company having that over my head, and another part of him probably wanted the whole thing just to go away.

Anyway.

They (you know, the Justice! people) filmed in Leah's living room, Leah being the girl whose life I saved.

See, here's the deal, the way I told it on TV and in the papers: I'm walking along near the Brookdale library and I hear this scream from down the alleyway. so I go running and there's this big guy and he's ha.s.sling Leah and he's got a needle in his hand.

He was big. I was-and am-small. But I couldn't help myself. I just threw down my, y'know, my backpack and I charged him and somehow I managed to get him in a wrestling hold like they taught us in gym cla.s.s. He dropped the needle and Leah screamed again and the guy grunted and tried to shake me off, but I was sticky like a parasite, man. I just held on and tightened my grip and he couldn't move.

And Leah called 911 and that would have been that, but it turns out the guy in question was Michael Alan Naylor. The surgeon. Or...

"The man responsible for a series of abductions, rapes, and murders throughout the Mid-Atlantic," said Nancy deCarlo, the host of Justice!, just before she introduced me to the nation in all my zitty, sweaty, panicky glory.

They stuck me on Leah's sofa with Leah, who looked poised and calm and radiated perfection. It was like "Beauty and the Beastly" or something. Nancy talked. I listened. I answered her questions, but I can't really remember it at all. I was too caught up in the moment, sitting so close to Leah that I could smell her perfume and the hot TV lights and the Justice! people running around and everything. It was crazy.

They showed a reenactment of the whole thing, shot in grainy black-and-white, with some little emo kid playing me, running down the alley, jumping...

It was TV. They didn't tell the whole story, of course.

Maybe that's because I didn't tell them the whole story.

Chapter 2.

Bus Ride of Champions.

It's hard to get used to the way the world's treating me. No one ever really paid attention to me before, and now...

Well, for example, there's People. They wanted to put me on the cover along with other "Teen Heroes!" like the kid who woke up at night to smell smoke just in time to get her family out of a burning house, and the other kid who went to computer camp even though his home had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (I don't know how going to computer camp makes you a hero, but People says it, so it must be true, right?) But let me tell you something-bad enough I agreed to have my face plastered all over TV. I wasn't about to give People an interview, so they cut me from the cover, thank G.o.d.

Oh, and then there were the reporters. Billions of them.

OK, not billions, but a lot. It's down to a few local guys now, but for a while there, there were about ten or fifteen of them and they were sort of camped out on the sidewalk and in vans on the street where me and Dad live. Which was embarra.s.sing because we live in this c.r.a.ppy bas.e.m.e.nt apartment in an old house and people took pictures of me coming out of it. They took pictures of Dad, too, when he came home from work, which is also embarra.s.sing because he's usually in his overalls and doesn't look all that impressive. I tell people my dad works for the government, which isn't a total lie. He used to be in the army and now he's a garbage man. That's sort of a government job. Government contracted, at least.

You'd think that it would be against the law to hang around outside my home and wait to take pictures of me, but Dad says it's not.

"You're considered a public person now," he told me in a rare moment of lucidity. "The privacy laws are a little less strict around you. The sidewalk and the street are public property, so they can wait there as long as they want."

He told me to just ignore them, that they'd go away as soon as there was another story to cover.

Easy for him to say. Dad doesn't care what anyone else thinks. But I'm ugly, OK? And I have face pizza like you wouldn't believe, so I really, really hate having my picture taken. Bad enough everything was splattered all over TV courtesy of Justice!, but now I also have to deal with the thought that my picture might show up in the New York Times or US Weekly?

I was pretty much fed up with walking into a solid wall of bodies and flashbulbs every time I left the house, so it's actually cool that Justice! has aired, because now they've mostly gone away and I can just go to the school bus like a normal person.

I hop on the bus and the doors close and it's totally silent. Like someone just cut a nasty fart and won't own up to it.

And then someone clears their throat and says, "Way to kick a.s.s, Kevin."

I don't know who says it. I can't even turn in time to look for the person before suddenly the whole bus erupts into applause. It's like drums in a tin can.

G.o.d, even on the school bus. I can't escape it. I thought this was over last week, but I guess the airing of Justice! over the weekend just got people going again.

I expect the bus driver to shout for us all to get quiet and for me to sit down, but when I look over my shoulder, she's standing up, clapping her little heart out for me.

This is unreal.

What do I do now? What do I say? Am I supposed to make a speech or something? G.o.d, I hope not.

I smile as best I can-when I smile, my face becomes even uglier, so I avoid it whenever possible. see, my lips sort of peel back and my teeth just hang out there like they're dangling in s.p.a.ce. So I keep my lips pretty tight together when I'm in situations where I have to smile.

"Thanks," I say, because I don't know what else to say. The bus driver slides back into her seat, which I take as my cue to sit down.

I take the first seat I see, not pressing my luck. It's next to a kid I don't know, a freshman.

"Saw you on TV," he says. "You looked OK."

You'd have to cut through ten miles of bad jungle overgrowth before getting within p.i.s.sing distance of "looking OK" for me, but he's not pulling my leg. He seems sincere, a sure indicator of some horrible variety of brain damage. Poor kid. so young.

"Way to kick that guy's a.s.s," he goes on. "I read about him online, you know? They called him 'the Surgeon.'"

"Yeah. I know."

"Because he would anatize his victims," the kid announces proudly.

"Anesthetize," I tell him. I have some trouble p.r.o.nouncing it myself, but at least I try.

"Yeah, that's what I said. And then he would cut them up, all surgical-like. With a scalp. Like the Indians."

Wow. He managed to mess up vocabulary and history all at once. That's impressive.

"He used a scalpel. That's what doctors use."

The kid snorts as if I'm pulling his leg. He turns to look out the window, muttering something about "big-shot hero." I let it go. I don't need to add shoving a freshman out the bus window to my list of problems.

Chapter 3.

School Dazed

At school, there's occasional smatterings of applause and some cheers, even from people who don't know me. people who just saw me on TV or who maybe heard about things from Leah or one of her legions of friends. I hate the attention. I duck my head down and do the best lips-over-the-teeth grin I can in response. I hate my teeth. Along with the rest of my mouth.

And the rest of my face, for that matter.