Perry Moore - Hero

Hero by Perry Moore

ISBN 9781407043746

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

For everyone

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Perry Moore grew up in Virginia. His father, a Vietnam veteran, inspired the character of Hal Creed. Perry is the executive producer of the Chronicles of Narnia films, and his book about the making of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a New York Times bestseller. With his partner, Hunter Hill, Perry recently wrote and directed his first feature film, Lake City , starring Sissy Spacek. This is Perry's first novel. He lives in New York City.

www.perrymoorestories.com

CHAPTER ONE

I NEVER THOUGHT I'd have a story worth telling, at least not one about me. I always knew I was different, but until I discovered I had my own story, I never thought I was anything special. My destiny began to unfurl during my very last game at school. What started with an accident on the court ended with the single most devastating look I ever got from my father. And it made me want to die.

At the game, I'd scored twenty-two points, which already topped my personal best by a basket, and I showed no signs of slowing down. Every time I sank the ball, I could hear a lone deep voice begin to cheer a full second before the rest of the bleachers chimed in. Dad's voice was hoarse from screaming, but I could still tell it was him, because no one else there would bother to remind me to follow my shot or get my hands up for defense.

I ran down to the other end of the court and posted up under the basket, and I caught him out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting in the remote upper lip of the bleachers, in his usual spot, away from everyone else. The crowd was sparse up there, which he said gave more room for a man of his considerable size to spread out, stand every few minutes, and stretch his back. The truth was that the extra room also made it harder to tell that people were uncomfortable sitting close to him.

I was surprised to see a young couple sitting near him that night. The husband would occasionally turn around to agree with my dad on a call or congratulate him when I made a shot. They were probably parents of one of the freshmen on the team. Didn't recognize my father yet.

But I got the feeling they found something about him familiar. Like someone they'd seen on TV, in a movie, a local politician, or someone vaguely famous. They would have recognized him right away if he'd been wearing his mask. My guess is he'd probably saved their lives at some point. Dad always ran into people whose lives he'd saved. I could tell because his left jaw would clench, just a smidge, a bicuspid ground into a molar a telltale sign that he was either going to be ignored, maligned, or dismissed by someone who was only still breathing by the good graces of my father's actions. He never wanted me to see it, but kids aren't stupid. Even if Dad had ever possessed superpowers, invulnerability wouldn't have protected him from the shame of having people look down on him in front of his own son.

I looked over and saw that Dad had his bad hand in his pocket as usual. I couldn't tell from that far away if he was grinding his teeth. The minute the new couple would go to shake his hand, they'd figure it out. The hand always got 'em.

Usually the only person who sat alone at the games was Mr. Carrier, whose wife had shown up at a PTA meeting more than once with a black eye. He always tried to strike up a conversation with Dad.

"Hi, Hal, Bill Carrier. We met when we picked the kids up from basketball camp, remember me?"

"Vividly."

Dad wouldn't shake Carrier's hand, no matter how many times he tried to strike up a conversation. And it wasn't because he was uncomfortable with his deformed appendage, either; it was because Mr. Carrier didn't deserve the courtesy after what he'd been doing to his wife. Dad was like that with his convictions, utterly firm, no gray areas.

Dad had a perfect attendance record at all of my sporting events, except for one game four years ago, and that wasn't because he didn't try to make it. He punched out of work at five on the nose, never a second later, when I had a game. That winter he'd been nursing a severe cough, and on that particular day, he finally collapsed in the parking lot after a nasty coughing fit brought on by helping my geometry teacher push her Tercel out of a snowdrift. In the examination room at the hospital, the doctor told us she'd never seen such an acute case of pneumonia where the patient had been ambulatory, much less alive. My dad came the closest he ever had to smiling when he heard that. He tied his hospital gown tightly around his waist, still the trimmest midsection he knew of for a man his age, and readjusted his shoulders as if he were suiting up to enter battle. He wasn't one to toot his own horn, but you could tell he liked to win, even if it was just against an infection.

He was so dedicated to my games that he even showed up the night he discovered Mom had disappeared for good. He just sat up there in the back corner of the bleachers, same as any other game. He cheered when we were up, he shouted at the ref to get a new pair of glasses when we were down. He waited until after the game to tell me the news.

"Why didn't you say something?" I lowered my voice, careful not to show too much emotion in front of my team.

"No use losing a game over it," he said.

Since I was on such a hot streak this particular night, Dad didn't have a whole lot to say to the ref. Yet despite playing the most spectacular ball of my life, we were about to lose to the Tuckahoe Trojans. Before you laugh at the name, understand that this was the toughest school around. In fact, after some unfortunate postgame assault issues, they'd been banned from the schedule for the past five years. Rumor had it that if they lost a game, they'd break the fingers of the opposing team members, at least whoever they caught. One finger for every point by which they lost. An eye for an eye, a finger for a point.

Needless to say, things were a little rough in the paint that night. I'd been popped in the eye by an elbow during a mad grab for an airball, but I could tell that it wasn't a black eye because it hadn't swollen shut yet. The jab took me by surprise, first because it hurt like hell, but also because after the guy who threw it popped me, he followed the ball down to the other end of the court, stopped, stared at me with contempt, and then did the strangest thing.

He winked. Like he was flicking me off with his eyelid.

A little on-court hostility wasn't uncommon. Sometimes it could be a great motivator, help get your juices going. But this was different. Somehow this was personal, and the more I thought about it, I knew I'd seen this guy somewhere before.

He was a good two inches taller than I was a rare thing, particularly because he was my own age. The summer between fifth and sixth grade I'd had an agonizing growth spurt when I grew over a foot in the span of three months. Dad sat up with me during those long excruciating nights on the stretching block (i.e. my old twin bed). He brought me orange Popsicles and laid cool washcloths on my forehead and played cards with me until the pain passed.

About this time I started having the seizures, too. Although the doctor said there was no connection, you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out the link between shooting up out of your body and losing control of it. Soon I would discover that seizures weren't the only strange things my body could do.

So it was pretty unusual for me to play against someone who was even taller than I was. The guy's shoulders were broader and more worked-out than mine, too, like he took the business of physical training much more seriously than most people our age. The line of his jaw jutted out straight and severe. There were deep pools of dark in his eyes, so you couldn't tell where the pupils ended and the irises began. When you looked in his eyes, you saw a darkness that went on forever to some faraway place, where neither you nor I nor anyone else was welcome to go. And I got this sense from the way he leaped up for the ball, just a hair above everyone else, that he was deliberately holding back. Like he could have touched the ceiling if he'd wanted to. When he sprinted, his breath was even and controlled, like he was saving it up for something else, something more important.