Hero

Zach wants to talk to his mom about Mr. Herbert, but he’s afraid to admit he broke her rule not to visit the crash site. He also wants to learn more about his dad. (He already knows that Tom Harriman’s foster parents died in a car crash while he was at Harvard.) During their weekly Sunday morning coffee shop breakfast, Zach asks his mom if there’s anything unusual about his dad that he should know. He especially wants to know what his father’s life was like before he was adopted.

His mom admits that, though she tried, she never could learn anything about Tom Harriman’s early childhood, except that he spent some time living on the streets. Zach asks if his dad had any special talents; she says he was freakishly good at all sports; also, she adds sadly, he thought he was the world’s best pilot. Zach presses, but his mom says his dad simply was great at everything. Asked if he had any “magic,” she answers, “Your dad couldn’t even do a decent card trick” (132).

At school, Zach goes through the motions. Spence leaves him alone; Zach wonders if his mere willingness to fight was enough to keep the bully at bay. Meanwhile, his earlier feeling that something was happening to him—that he was changing—disappears.

During a walk around the Central Park reservoir’s running track at dusk, Zach tells Kate he feels like he’s on an elevator that’s trapped between floors. She sympathizes. Idly, he reaches in his pocket for his dad’s Morgan dollar. The coin is very warm.

Suddenly, three young men surround them. One, in a knit cap—the guy Zach saw hiding in the bushes weeks earlier—demands “the coin.” Kate, alarmed, takes Zach’s hand; she tells him to give them what they want. Zach feels once again the roar in his head. He tells Kate, “they don’t know how badly I’ve got them outnumbered” (138).

One of the guys grabs at Kate, but she twists and rolls away. Zack quickly knocks out two of them; somehow, he knows the right moves to win. He turns on Knit Cap, who says, “Not today,” leaps over a tall fence, and disappears into the reservoir. The other two guys are gone; Kate, frightened, says they vanished as if “deleted.”

Between Zach and Kate, she was always the “stronger one,” the one he leaned on. After watching Zach fearlessly dispatch the three assailants, who then disappear into thin air, Kate now feels afraid.

After sleeping restlessly, she wakes early Sunday and walks to a Starbucks for a large hot chocolate. She then heads for Central Park to look again at where the confrontation happened. She can’t find any evidence of the fight. The park is nearly empty; in the distance is a jogger.

Knit Cap interrupts her. Frightened, she tells him to leave. He smiles coldly: “I think I have other plans” (147).

Zach, his hearing lately amplified, hears Kate leave early Sunday morning. Puzzled, he steps to the balcony and sees her walking north. He throws on clothes and follows her discreetly. He sees Knit Cap grab her and runs toward them.

Zach picks up Knit Cap and throws him onto the grass. He grabs him by the jacket—Knit Cap is a bit dazed—and demands to know who sent him. Knit Cap won’t answer, but he says he knows a lot about him and his dad. He even calls him “Zacman.” Zach releases him, and the young man dashes away.

Kate asks why he let Knit Cap go. Zach answers, “He’ll be back” (154).

Zach’s mom spends more time with Uncle John: dinners out, movies, a Broadway play. Zach asks if they’re dating; she denies it. John and Zach resume their traditional “knock-around” days from when Zach was 10: Zach chooses the places they visit.

Today, Zach first selects Sylvia’s, a restaurant in Harlem, for lunch, where they pig out. Then Zach wants to visit City Field, so John gets them admission to the baseball diamond there. Zach runs the bases; they visit the Mets dugout; Zach gets a peek into the clubhouse.

John opens up, saying he’s not dating Zach’s mom but looking after both of them: “Trying to keep a promise to your dad. Not trying to be your dad” (161). They agree it’s a pact between them.

The next stop is PJ Clarke’s restaurant, where Zach eats so much that he reminds John of Tom. They finish their knock-around by walking in Central Park, enjoying the late afternoon.

Their walk gets interrupted: Looming before them is a giant.

The giant has hands as big as basketballs; his distorted face looks like a mask. He says, “The boy is coming with me” (165). Telling Zach to run, John charges the giant and slams into him. The giant barely budges; he reaches down, picks up John, and throws him in an arc across a field. John lands with an awful thud and lies still.

Zach leaps high and scissor-kicks the giant in the face. The giant swats Zach, who hits the ground hard. The giant lifts Zach, telling the boy he’s “not ready yet for someone like me” (167), hits him hard in the head, knocking him back down, and kicks him. Zach hears shouts and a siren, then loses consciousness.

Zach wakes up in a hospital. He drifts in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he sees his mom and Kate in the room. At one point, to his mom, Zach says, weakly, “You should see the other guy” (168-69). She puts a hand on his forehead and tells him he has two broken ribs and a concussion, but he’ll be ok. Asleep again, he dreams his father is trying to say something to him; the dream feels very real.

Mr. Herbert shows up. He says the fight proves that Zach is inexperienced but as powerful as his father. Mr. Herbert adds that he found Tony Harriman at about the same age, living on the street, and, like him, Zach needs to learn to make full use of his talents. Zach is irritated: He’s tired of all the riddles. Mr. Herbert says Zach needs to learn quickly, or “they win.”

He pulls out a coin: It’s Zach’s Morgan dollar. Mr. Herbert retrieved it from the park. He tosses it to Zach and leaves.

Moments later, Uncle John drops by. He hasn’t shaved in days. Zach asks how he is; he says he had a bad back and a “whopper” of a headache but got through it. He asks what the previous visitor wanted. Zach asks if he means “Mr. Herbert.” John smiles and says the man goes by many names and that he’s definitely not Zach’s friend. Instead, he’s one of the people that Zach’s dad used to call “the Bads.” John says he knows all about Zach’s new abilities, having worked with Zach’s superpowered father during years of battles against the Bads.

Zach doesn’t know whom to believe. Frustrated, he shouts that he wants his father back. John assures him that he can fill in for Zach’s dad. He’ll be away on business for a while; he asks Zach not to look for fights. Zach thinks, “Tell that to the fights […]. They’re the ones that keep looking for me” (181).

John is still away, and Zach’s mom leaves for a Kerrigan campaign trip in California. Back home, Zach feels itchy but doesn’t want to go out. He realizes he’s afraid of the dangers that now surround him. He watches a favorite movie on TV. Afterward, he hears someone walking around upstairs. He calls Alba’s name, then Kate’s, but gets no response. He checks the downstairs rooms, then goes upstairs, where he finds his laptop is on, but he hasn’t yet used it on this day. He hears Alba return home downstairs. He looks at the computer screen: “Trust no one” (186).

Zach doesn’t tell Kate about the mysterious visitor or John and Mr. Herbert’s visits to his bedside. Feeling alone and scared, he misses his mom. When she returns from her campaign trip, he hugs her tightly.

Over ice cream, she tells him why she’s away so much for the Kerrigan campaign. Kerrigan invited Zach’s dad to be his vice president. Tom, at first, didn’t want to accept, but he realized that he was “getting too old to leap tall buildings in a single bound” (189), and he needed another way to serve his country. Thus, getting Kerrigan the presidency is “unfinished business” involving Zach’s dad.

Zach wants to get out of the city. He convinces Alba and Kate to go with him, over spring break, to the family’s vacation house in Amagansett, near Montauk. When they arrive, Zach and Kate ride bikes to the beach, where they have a picnic. Zach talks about his fears and uncertainties; Kate says, “Developing superpowers will do that to a person” (192).

She wants to visit the crash site. They bike several miles, then walk into the field. It’s been five months since Zach was first there; new grass, growing tall, makes the place look like it’s healing. Pointing and describing, Zach explains what happened that first day with Mr. Herbert.

As they get ready to leave, two high school joggers run past, but they stop, and the red-headed one compliments them on their bikes. He tells his buddy, whom he calls Eric, that he wished he had a bicycle that fancy and expensive. Eric yanks Kate’s bike away and gets on. Zach removes Eric from the bike and tosses him over a low wall. A truck skids to a stop, and two more men get out. One grabs for Kate while the redhead grabs Zach, who throws him into the truck’s driver, then frees Kate.

He tells Kate to ride away, but she refuses, so he keeps knocking down the assailants. As they get back to their feet, Zach glances at Kate, who mouths, “Bring it.” Zach keeps moving quickly, landing blows, remembering to avoid “clean shots.” Quickly, only one opponent remains standing.

A voice calls out, “Stop!” It’s Mr. Herbert. Zach asks if the men are from him. Mr. Herbert says, “They’ve all been with me, Zacman. From the start” (201).

Mr. Herbert orders the four fighters to leave; they drive away quickly. He tells Zach the assaults are lessons. Zach, angry, says the old man is “twisted, crazy,” and that he doesn’t trust him. The man explains that the attacks had to seem real so that Zach would learn how to “stand and fight” (205) and that Zach has passed the tests. Zach’s father was a hero, and how it’s Zach’s turn.

Kate takes Zach’s hand. She demands an explanation. Mr. Herbert says there’s only one hero at a time, and when the Bads killed Zach’s father, it caused Zach to become the new hero. The Bads will try to control Zach; failing that, they’ll try to kill him. Mr. Herbert’s job is to give Zach the preparation his father couldn’t.

Zach asks why he should trust Mr. Herbert, especially after someone warned him not to trust anyone. Mr. Herbert says, “Good!” but urges Zach to trust himself.

The old man leaves. Kate wonders if he is on Zach’s side; Zach supposes Mr. Herbert is out for himself. He hopes he can at least learn from him who killed his father.

Back in New York, Zach’s mom and John are back from their respective projects. John and Zach chat briefly in his room about Mr. Herbert—Zach’s computer secretly sends video chat to Kate so that she can listen in—but John wants them to go out to the terrace to keep Zach’s mom out of the loop, as John and Zach’s dad always did.

John warns Zach that Mr. Herbert will get the boy to believe him by mostly telling the truth. Zach’s father, John believes, trusted Mr. Herbert for too long; he learned late that the old man was the true danger. As for the looming peril, Mr. Herbert warns about, John says, “The one who’s coming after you is him […]. The evil is already here” (218).

After John leaves, Kate and Zach go walking and discuss what he said. Kate concludes that they don’t know which of the two men is lying and that, for now, Zach can’t trust John, even though he’s been part of the family their whole lives.

Late that night, feeling itchy again, Zach sneaks out and travels around the city on foot at high speed, even climbing the Chrysler Building, at the top of which he bellows challenges to his enemies. He takes the subway up- and downtown, arriving finally at his home stop to be back in bed before Alba wakes up.

As Zack exits the subway, a young man confronts him. Zach grabs him and shoves him against a wall, demanding to know what he wants. The guy is terrified; Zach lets him go. He realizes he could turn into a bully. The thought scares him.