Villainous Read Online Free PDF

can’t tell them!” said Daniel. His little brother, Georgie, had displayed bouts of super-strength on definitely one occasion, and possibly two. But the only indisputable timehad been in their final battle with the Shroud, which thanks to the super-villain’s memory-stealing powers, his parents remembered nothing about. Daniel now found himself waiting for Georgie to do it again, hopefully with his parents around this time. It was like living with a stick of dynamite that threw temper tantrums.
    “I guess he’ll do something sooner or later,” Daniel sighed. “I just hope he’s not mad at me when it happens. Could toss me through a wall.”
    Mollie laughed. “That’s so messed up.”
    “I know, but what else can I do? I guess I’ll just let nature take its course, and someday he’ll smash his tricycle into a little metal ball and that will be that. Then he’ll be my mom and dad’s problem.”
    For the next few minutes they just sat there on the rocks together and soaked in the sun. Mollie pulled her shoulder-length hair back into a small ponytail and looked up at the sky. Head tilted back, her bangs fell away from her eyes and the yellow sun lit up her face. She looked different somehow.
    “Hey!” said Daniel, pointing at her.
    “Hey, what?” said Mollie.
    “You pierced your ears,” he said, noticing for the first time two silver studs sticking out of her left ear, and a single one in her right. They glittered in the daylight, but the skin around them looked red and angry.
    “Oh yeah,” she said. “That.”
    “I didn’t notice before with your hair down,” said Daniel. “When did you do it?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mollie. “Last week sometime.” Then, as if retreating, she suddenly sank forward until her chin rested on her knees and her hair hid her ears. She sat like that, watching her toes as she wiggled them in the sunlight.
    What to say next? Something was expected, and Daniel knew he should probably offer a compliment, but he was honestly a little shocked. It’s not that the earrings looked bad; they didn’t. But they didn’t look like Mollie Lee. Sitting there in the sun with her hair drawn back and silver glittering in her ears, she had looked for a moment like a different girl entirely.
    “Yeah, well, on second thought, maybe I
will
fly a little,” she said after a moment, and before he could blink, she was gone. A speck high up in the sky.
    He’d gotten it all wrong. By not complimenting the earrings, Daniel had insinuated that he didn’t like them, which wasn’t the case. They were mostly just surprising, but somehow Daniel didn’t think that “Your earrings are surprising, Mollie,” would have been any better than stunned silence.
    If he couldn’t manage to talk to Mollie about her new earrings without hurting her feelings, how was he ever going to manage talking to Louisa about the kiss? Girls used to be easy—they were just like boys, only cleaner. But in the last year or so, he’d felt the differences between the sexes widening into a vast sea, and every time he tried to cross the divide, he just ended up sinking.
    Now he’d gone and hurt Mollie’s feelings because he hadn’t known the right way to compliment a few pieces of metal in her ears. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. He might as well put it out of his mind and go for one last swim while there was still sun on this side of the bridge. Then he’d better put on some more sunscreen if he planned on staying much longer. Daniel never tanned, but he could turn lobster-red in no time at all if he wasn’t careful.
    As he moved around the creek bank, Daniel stepped gingerly along the hot sandstone, careful not to slip on the slimy rocks near the water’s edge. He spotted Eric floating out over the swimming hole—not on the water, but hovering about a foot or so above it. He was following the tip of a snorkel that poked up out of the surface and traveled in slow circles beneath him.