Superhero Squad

  For my real life superhero!

  My light and my love, Azuka.

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgements

  Lightning Girl 1: First Chapter

  Superhero Stats

  About the Author

  About the illustrator

  Copyright

  1

  Suddenly, my foot slipped.

  There was a loud gasp as I managed to just find my grip in time, stopping me from falling through the air. I clung on for dear life, my arm beginning to ache and my legs dangling. Finally, I found a foothold and hauled myself up into a stable position. I looked down at my audience and gulped.

  “Don’t look down, Aurora!” Kizzy cried, standing on the ground directly beneath me, my dog Kimmy at her side. They both seemed miles away. “Remember, you’re a superhero! You can do this!”

  I nodded and lifted my gaze to meet that of my enemy. He was just a few feet away. He spotted me and immediately narrowed his eyes to threatening slits.

  “I can do this,” I whispered, repeating my best friend’s encouraging words. “I CAN DO THIS.”

  I reached out towards him. He recoiled from my fingertips before swiping his arm at me. I just managed to pull my hand away in time, letting out a yelp as I tried to regain my balance.

  “I can’t do this!” I wailed. “It’s all over!”

  There was a deathly silence as Kizzy let my words sink in.

  And then she burst out laughing.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Kizzy giggled, shaking her head. “It’s only a cat. And according to his owner, Mister Salmon is usually very friendly. Just grab him and get him down here. You’ve been up in that tree for twenty minutes.”

  Mister Salmon looked quite content sitting on the branch next to mine, licking his paw, blissfully unaware of the chaos he was causing. I repositioned my feet on the branch and stretched my arm forward again, determined to complete the mission of rescuing this cat from this tree.

  He took another swipe at me with his razor-sharp claws, hissing loudly. I let out a long sigh.

  Being a superhero was REALLY overrated.

  Ever since the world found out about my superpowers a few months ago, I had been in such high demand that I hadn’t had time to think.

  When I first discovered my weird ability to shoot powerful light beams out of my hands halfway through the spring term, I had been sworn to secrecy by Mum. It turned out that she didn’t have a boring office job, like she’d always told me. She was, in fact, a superhero saving the world on a daily basis.

  So all those times she’d come home with her hair on fire and scorch marks on her face, she hadn’t just returned from “an invigorating class of hot yoga” like she’d claimed. She had actually been busy stopping someone evil from taking over the world.

  Yeah. It had been a lot to take in.

  Mum had gone on to explain how every woman in my family has superpowers, including her twin sister, Lucinda, and their mum, Nanny Beam. As if that wasn’t completely overwhelming, I also had to get my head round the legend about how the Beam superpowers came about in the first place: when the planet was plunged into a strange darkness, centuries ago, my ancestor Dawn Beam harnessed the powers of the most precious stone you can imagine, the Light of the World, and lit up the earth once more.

  Then those magical powers were passed to her daughter and then her daughter, and so on and so forth, through every female Beam until you get to … well, me.

  It has always been the responsibility of the Beam women to use their powers of summoning light to secretly protect and save the world from darkness.

  But I kind of messed up the whole secrecy thing due to a minor incident when lots of people witnessed my superpowers. I stopped my evil science teacher, Mr Mercury, who was really the notorious Blackout Burglar, from stealing all the precious stones, including the Light of the World, from an exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

  I should have guessed that Mr Mercury was a bad guy right from when he first arrived at our school in January. There were so many signs that we missed. For a start, he gave me detention ALL THE TIME for no reason whatsoever.

  (OK, yes, I did accidentally kick a football at his head and, fine, once I knocked his food all down his shirt. Oh, wait, and that time I flicked blue ink at him. Then I almost destroyed a room on a school trip. And I never listened to a word he said because his voice was so dull. But aside from that, no reason whatsoever.)

  Now we know why he chose being a science teacher as his disguise – he got a job at our school so that he could ask my dad, who was the professor in charge of the precious stones exhibition, to give us a school tour of the Natural History Museum; the perfect opportunity for him to scout out how best to steal the stones without anyone suspecting him.

  Thanks to Kizzy, who worked out his evil plan in the nick of time, we were able to stop him from getting away with the precious stones, although we still don’t know who he was working for. Not even my dad had known just how precious one of the stones in the collection was, but someone out there knew exactly what it was. They had paid Mr Mercury to steal the gems, promising him that he could have them all except for one – the Light of the World.

  We’d only worked it out after Mr Mercury had been arrested and Mum and Dad realized the symbol on the stone matched the glowing scar on my palm. Mr Mercury is now safely behind bars in a London prison but, to this day, he has refused to give up the name of the person he was working for and we have no idea how they know about the Light of the World, or why its pattern matches my scar.

  It is all a bit creepy, to be honest.

  Anyway, after that evening my picture was suddenly all over the internet with bold headlines declaring:

  My secret wasn’t so secret any more. Everything changed.

  I instantly became one of the most popular girls in my class. I was asked for selfies with both students AND teachers during lessons throughout the entire summer term, never getting a moment to myself. I felt like I was being watched, in the hope that I might do something super extraordinary at any moment.

  Which, by the way, made things like tripping over my own feet even more embarrassing.

  “You’re a celebrity now,” Kizzy said with a laugh, when the headmistress asked if I approved of the name the school committee had chosen for the newly refurbished science wing: the Lightning Girl Laboratories.

  I was so relieved when the summer holidays started, but it just got worse.

  Now that I wasn’t in school and had some free time, I was constantly getting calls from people all over the country, desperately needing my help with cases, like this one with Mister Salmon. Cats stuck up in trees … again and again; walkers who had accidentally got their foot caught down a rabbit hole; tricky light bulbs that needed changing; pigeons trapped in the London Underground, flying around the tubes in a panic; and drivers queuing in traffic jams, looking for advice on a better route.

  The closest I’ve ever been to a vaguely exciting incident was when I was called to a haunted hotel last week, but it turned out to just be an owl stuck in the air vents, hooting mournfully.

  At least that mission didn’t involve heights.

  “Mister Salmon is
being very stubborn,” I informed Kizzy, looking longingly at the ladder. “Maybe we should just leave him here and he’ll come down on his own.”

  Kizzy didn’t look up from her phone.

  “No, according to his owner and the neighbours, he’s been up there a good few hours meowing in distress.”

  I raised an eyebrow while Mister Salmon calmly cleaned his whiskers. “He doesn’t look in distress to me!”

  “Well, we have to get him down in the next ten minutes otherwise we’re going to go off schedule.” Kizzy held her phone up so that I could see the spreadsheet on her screen before tapping her watch impatiently. “You’re needed on the other side of town soon. You’re opening a new bus stop. So grab Mister Salmon and shimmy back on down the ladder.”

  “Huh?” I leaned against the tree trunk, pulling a leaf from my hair. “What does opening a bus stop even mean?”

  “It means that they’ve built a brand-new bus stop and they want you to cut the ribbon to declare it officially open for use. A lot of papers are sending journalists.”

  I grimaced at the idea of photographers and reporters. I still wasn’t used to all the media attention. It was so weird to see photos of me online with captions like the one I saw yesterday: “Superhero Aurora Beam takes her energetic German Shepherd, Kimmy, for a walk, without realizing that she has toilet roll stuck to her shoe! Read below for more on this exclusive story!”

  My brother, Alexis, read that and then laughed solidly for about ten minutes before printing out loads of copies of the photo and sticking them EVERYWHERE around the house.

  And I mean everywhere. I even found a copy taped to the inside of the dishwasher.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said to Kizzy. “Reporters want a photo of me cutting a ribbon to open a bus stop?”

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t realize opening bus stops was a thing.”

  “It certainly is.”

  “According to who?”

  “According to your Personal Assistant.”

  “Ah.” I sighed, admitting defeat. “Well, in that case, I’ll be there. My PA is always right.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  I caught Kizzy’s eye and we both broke into wide grins. I never actually asked Kizzy to be my PA; she just decided one day that she was and that was that. She was brilliant at it, too, because she was so organized.

  “Come on, Mister Salmon,” I pleaded, turning my attention back to the cat. “Did you hear Kizzy? If you don’t let me rescue you, then a new bus stop won’t be opened on time. It would be a DISASTER!”

  “I can hear your sarcasm from down here, you know,” Kizzy told me, sharing a look with Kimmy before giving her a pat on the head. “Maybe Kimmy is putting off Mister Salmon. Should I take her around the corner out of sight or something?”

  “And leave me stuck here in a tree on my own?”

  “Mister Salmon is the one who is stuck. You’re meant to be the rescuer.” Kizzy crouched down to tickle Kimmy’s chin. “Maybe Mister Salmon is scared of dogs.”

  Kimmy rolled on to her back, letting her tongue loll out, so that Kizzy could scratch her belly.

  “Yeah, she looks really ferocious,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Right, Mister Salmon, if I edge a bit closer…”

  I shuffled along the branch, ignoring the worrying creaking sound coming from under my feet, and then reached out to grasp the branch that Mister Salmon was contentedly perched on, careful not to shake it and frighten him. Edging nearer, I calmly stretched my other arm out and in one quick movement, swept my hand under his tummy and pulled him safely into my chest.

  He yowled loudly and immediately began to scramble and scratch to get free from my grip.

  “Stop … doing … that…” I gasped, clinging to him with one arm while using the other to balance myself as I made my way back along the branch towards the ladder. “I’m … trying … to … save … you!”

  As I got on to the first rung he clawed free, scaling my legs to hop down the ladder, before landing neatly on the ground. He eyed Kimmy suspiciously, looked back up at me still in the tree and gave one last hiss, before pouncing away across the grass towards his home down the street.

  His owner, who had been watching from a safe distance on his front lawn, opened his arms and swept Mister Salmon into a giant hug.

  “Thank you!” he yelled, as the grumpy Mister Salmon attempted to wriggle away from his enthusiastic nuzzling. “Thank you so much!”

  “Well done, Aurora!” Kizzy smiled, watching them while I made my way back down the ladder. “You see? You really are a truly brilliant superhero.”

  Just as she came to the end of her sentence, my foot slipped forward and I lost my grip on the rung I was holding on to.

  Oh. Noooooooooo.

  I yelped as both my legs went flying forward through the gap, whilst the rest of me went toppling backwards, so that I ended up dangling upside down, my legs hooked around the rung I was supposed to have stepped elegantly on to.

  I desperately grappled at the sides of the ladder to try and pull myself back up, but they were too slippery.

  There was a brief pause before Kizzy exploded into uncontrollable laughter.

  “Help! It’s not funny!” I exclaimed. “Kizzy!”

  “I’m sorry,” she wheezed, clutching her stomach. “But you should have seen your face! That seemed to happen in slow motion! Are you OK?”

  “No. I am not OK!” I huffed, although her laughter was so infectious that I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Can you please come and help me down?”

  She walked towards the ladder and stood in front of me, bursting into a fresh round of giggles as she realized my face was level with her knees.

  I folded my arms, which is, I found out, quite difficult to do when you’re dangling upside down. “Are you finished?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by excited screams coming from a group of girls running down the road towards us.

  “LIGHTNING GIRL!” one of them was shouting, pointing at me and looking at the others. “I told you it was her! Quick!”

  “This. Can’t. Be. Happening,” I said under my breath.

  The girls came racing over with their phones, jostling with each other so they could crouch next to me and get selfies with me while I dangled there. “We’re your biggest fans!” they kept saying, cramming in for a group photo.

  “Kizzy,” I hissed, as the girls argued over the best filter to use on the next photo. “The blood is kind of going to my head here.”

  Kizzy cleared her throat. “All right, thanks so much, everyone, but Lightning Girl has a busy schedule and she’s … uh … in a bit of a situation right now that she needs to … sort out, so if you could all move along…”

  They groaned in disappointment as Kizzy ushered them on their way. I tried to keep smiling as though I was perfectly at ease about hanging by my knees the wrong way up, and it was all part of my plan, aware that they were glancing back every now and then from the road.

  “Right, now that your fans are gone,” Kizzy said, clapping her hands together, “let’s get you down from there.”

  “Finally. And, Kizzy?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t think they’ll show anyone those photos, do you? Of me stuck upside down on a ladder, I mean.”

  “No, course not,” Kizzy smiled warmly, as her phone began to beep incessantly in her pocket. “No one will ever know.”

  *

  BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN:

  LIGHTNING GIRL STUCK ON LADDER!

  Click on the link below to go to our website and view a full video and more photos of this HILARIOUS superhero mishap!

  2

  “Aurora? Aurora, wake up!”

  Someone shook me awake. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. I could just make out a load of blurred faces looming towards me.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  I screamed in fright and instinctively my powers rushed through me, burs
ting from my hands and brightening the room.

  “Aurora!” someone yelled. “It’s us!”

  “Kizzy?”

  I quickly brought my powers under control. “What’s going on?”

  I realized I was at the kitchen table and Mum and Dad were there, along with my best friends from school: Kizzy, Suzie, Georgie and Fred. They had all flung themselves to the floor at my sudden light-beam outburst and were slowly getting to their feet. Kimmy was so distressed by what had just happened that she ran outside to bark at the sky.

  “I told you, I should just have woken her gently on my own,” Mum said pointedly to Dad. “I knew she’d get a fright.”

  I rubbed my aching neck. “What happened?”

  “You must have fallen asleep at the table,” Dad said gently. “Again.”

  “I hate it when you don’t give any warning before blasting out your powers like that,” Suzie groaned at me, lifting her hands to her hair to check her sleek blonde ponytail was still as neat as usual.

  “I could have broken my ankle when I ducked those light beams, and then my blossoming gymnastics career would be completely over!”

  “It’s not exactly Aurora’s fault,” Georgie reasoned, winking at me. “She did get woken up by a big crowd all standing round her. That’s got to be pretty scary.”

  “Not as scary as the time someone dared me to eat the hottest chilli pepper in the world,” Fred said, giving Kimmy a scratch behind her ears when she came back into the kitchen. “It nearly blew my head off.”

  “Oh please.” Suzie sighed, rolling her eyes and straightening her jumper. “You can’t even handle a mild curry.”

  “Yes, I can,” Fred huffed.

  “No, you ca—”

  “Anyway,” Kizzy interrupted, smiling at me, “we should probably tell Aurora why we’re all here.”

  “What time is it?” I asked, blinking at the sunlight shining in through the windows. “I don’t remember falling asleep. I’m so confused.”

  “It’s three p.m. You did your magazine photoshoot this morning, remember?” Kizzy prompted. “Then you had lunch with the mayor, and then you said you needed to pop home to grab your new Lightning Girl jacket—”