Synopsis:
Someone in ten-year-old Binny Jordan’s family has a super power – and it’s not her. Binny’s seven-year-old sister Cassie can turn herself invisible and now a strange man is keenly interested in what Cassie can do. Binny’s parents seem more distracted than ever, and her older brother Zach is hiding something of his own. Binny needs to find a way to protect her sister, but she’s never felt more alone.
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EXCERPT:
As Rembrandt and his owner walked their familiar path past the Jordan house, the man saw the oblivious jelly bean of a seven-year-old bouncing with the mirror on the sidewalk below the big house, and the determined and angry ten-year-old storming out of the house on a retributive mission. The man could see what was coming next, yet there was nothing he could do to stop it. Like watching two cars speed towards an intersection.
Rembrandt was distinctly less interested in the inevitable altercation between the girls, but seemed to have found something worthy of his attention at a telephone pole down the street. He started insistently dragging the man towards the pole.
The more the older girl yelled and advanced on her sister, the more interested the man was in seeing how the little drama played out. But Rembrandt was intent on reaching his own destination of interest. He’d already dragged the man halfway to the pole, and now the man was at least fifty feet from where the little girl was standing.
§
Three separate things happened almost simultaneously: 1) the little girl finally heard the older girl yelling, 2) the older girl turned the corner and finally was in a position to see her quarry, and 3) Rembrandt got sick of waiting for the man to move. Rembrandt jerked his leash and made a break for the telephone pole. The man almost fell over, losing his grip on the leash, catching his balance at the last second before he would have ended up with his face in the dirt.
When the man regained his balance and surveyed the scene, the little girl was nowhere to be found. She had been there one moment, and in the time it took for the man to recover from Rembrandt’s over-enthusiasm, she seemed to have just vanished. Into thin air as they say. But that was ridiculous. She must have heard her sister coming and high-tailed it out of there. And yet, how did she do it so quickly? Where did she go?
The older girl approached the spot where her sister had been. From what the man could tell, the older girl with the deepening scowl had never actually witnessed that the object of her vengeance was standing there in the first place. Apparently the younger girl was able to vanish before her sister caught sight of her. And anyway, the older girl was fixated on a shiny object that was lying on the ground. Abandoned.
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EXCERPT 2
“They’re just gonna cut him all up.” The young boy said to the man. The man responded “Would you like to spend some time alone with him?” The lines from the movie that Jay and Cassie were watching floated over to where Binny and Julie were standing in silence. Just listening.
Cassie turned to Jay on the couch and asked “Is he dead?”
Elliot, the boy from the movie responded, “Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead, ’cause I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything anymore. You’ve gone someplace else now. I’ll believe in you all my life, every day. E.T., I love you.”
“I don’t understand, why would they cut him all up?” Cassie asked.
Jay paused the movie, “For science honey. In the movie, the government wants to learn how E.T.’s body works.”
“So they can figure out his super powers? How he makes things fly?” Cassie wondered.
“Yeah,” Jay nodded slowly and seriously.
“But won’t that kill E.T.?”, Cassie worried, her eyes widening.
“Well, it looks like he’s already dead, darling.” Jay said, and then added as an afterthought, “But to be honest, the government would probably cut him all up even if he was alive. People aren’t often as gentle as they need to be with living things that are different and special.”
“Oh.” Cassie seemed to be thinking.
Jay unpaused the movie.
As E.T.’s heart started beating Cassie got excited, “he’s alive Daddy. E.T.’s alive.”
“I know baby. But that only happens in the movies. In real life, when the bad guys kill you trying to figure out what makes you tick, you don’t come back to life.”
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EXCERPT 3
“Binny, how many times do I have to remind you? Your mother and I are superheroes. It keeps us incredibly busy. Raising the three of you along with saving the world, is no small set of responsibilities. And besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned fighting evil, it’s that you can’t solve every problem in the world. Even when it seems like you have the power to do so. Sometimes people have to figure stuff out for themselves.”
Binny knew that Jay’s story was patently ridiculous. But Binny also knew just as well that there was no arguing with Jay on the premise that he and her mother led secret double lives as superheroes. It was his favorite fiction. But still, Binny couldn’t resist pushing back on this ridiculous notion anyway. “You’re not superheroes. There’s no such thing as superheroes. And you’re not even super parents. If you were, you’d do your JOB and stop your kids from misbehaving.”
“What I’m trying to say Binny, is that even with all my powers – parenting or otherwise – I don’t know if I can fix that for you completely. I can’t stop you from misbehaving, so what makes you think I can stop your brother and sister?” Jay reasoned.
“I don’t need superheroes for parents. Just actual parents who actually care.” Binny had lost interest in her food and was now putting her main energy into making her case to her father.
Jay smiled a bittersweet smile. He was stinging a little from Binny’s accusation but tried not to let it show. “Of course we care. And I suppose I could yell at your brother and sister and maybe it would work and maybe it wouldn’t. But in life honey, you are going to encounter people who mess with your stuff, call you names, lie about what they did, and maybe even worse.” Jay paused looking for some glimmer of understanding in his daughter’s face.
“No matter how powerful I may or may not be,” Jay winked in a rare acknowledgement that he may not in fact actually have superpowers, “you can’t spend your life waiting for everyone to behave the way they should. You’ve got to solve your own problems at some point despite the obstacles that other people put in your way. Be your own hero.” Jay reached across the table to hold Binny’s hands in his as if to emphasize the importance of his message.
Trying to be a little more conciliatory towards his daughter, Jay offered “Look, I think you’re right. Your mother and I have been distracted lately and are probably not giving you guys the attention you need. I’m sorry for that. And so is your mother. We’ll work on it.” Jay paused lost in his own thought for a moment and continued, “Sometimes I wonder if the reason you kids fight in the first place is just to get more of our attention.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Do not change the channel! Stop it!” Cassie’s screech could be heard loud and clear coming from the other room.
Jay raised his eyebrows as if to say “exactly”, and he and Binny shared a giggle as the screams escalated from the room next door. With things mostly mended with Binny, Jay paused for a moment shaking his head to himself and gathering up his energy to deal with the next crisis.
“I thought you were going to try and stay out of it and let everyone solve their own problems.” Binny teased her father, her eyes expressing her sarcasm.
“I said I would try. I may be a superhero but I’m not perfect.” Jay struck a pose, putting his hands to the top of his button down shirt as if to undo it revealing his superhero tights underneath.
Frowning a little, Binny offered “you don’t need to be a hero. Just go be a parent.” Binny seemed to feel that with her judgment rendered, the conversation was now over and started in again on the remainder of the waffles.
Jay decided this was as good as he was going to get from Binny that morning and headed into the fray developing between his other two children.
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EXCERPT 4
“Know of any good hiding places around here?” The man realized that perhaps the little girl’s presence was to his advantage in solving his little mystery.
The little girl just looked at him, puzzled.
“My dog’s name is Rembrandt,” the man interrupted himself.
“Hi Rembrandt” the little girl said as she continued to pet the dog, a little more enthusiastically now.
“Rembrandt, he likes to play hide and seek, so I was wondering if you knew of any good spots nearby to hide out.”
Cassie thought for a moment, then asked: “Dogs play hide and seek?”
§
A trip to the hospital seemed to be approaching Binny with frightening speed, but her back foot felt glued to the back of her skateboard. As her foot pressed down on the back of the board, Binny tried to lean forward to get the front of the deck firmly back on the ground. Somewhere in her brain she knew that this wouldn’t do anything more than delay her epic fall by a few more seconds. But her survival instincts had taken over.
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The man was getting nowhere. The little girl had no idea what he was talking about and this tiny spot on the Madrona hillside was quite unremarkable. No trenches. No trap doors. No empty tree trunks. As a child, the man had read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories translated into his native language. And in his current profession he’d found one of the famous fictional detective’s most famous quotes particularly useful: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
As the man reviewed the events of the previous day and his observations of the area, the voice inside his head telling him there must be another explanation grew ever more quiet. If there was nowhere for the little girl to hide, and there was nothing shiny nearby that could have produced that flash of silver light, then the inescapable conclusion was that the little girl was the first human on earth with a –
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
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Binny screamed as she hit the ground. The skateboard had decided that Binny was no longer interesting company and shot out from under her like a missile. For her part, Binny was happy for the separation, landing squarely on her butt on the patch of grass running down the edge of the sidewalk. Binny slid several feet to come to a stop right in front of her sister, the strange man, and his large dog.
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EXCERPT 5
When Binny arrived, Zach was yelling at Cassie for straying too far from the house. He was pretty angry.
“You were more than two houses away from home.” Zach lectured his baby sister.
“No I wasn’t.” Cassie responded angrily.
“One. Two. Three. Four.” Zach counted the houses up the street. “Four is not two. It is four. And the rule is two. Not four.” Zach was really upset now.
“Binny said I could break all the rules.” Cassie was now pointing at her sister.
“You said what?” her brother turned to Binny accusingly. Binny’s eyes widened as she sputtered in defense.
There was something different in her brother’s voice. “I didn’t say that. And I told that girl next door to keep an eye on her. It’s not my fault that she didn’t listen.”
“Yes you did!” screamed Cassie. You said I could break all the rules and go wherever I want. You said it! You said it!”
“Are you insane??” Zach glared at Binny.
“I, I, I…” Binny stuttered.
“What is that smell?” Zach started wondering. “Is that you? You smell awful.”
Cassie didn’t miss a beat and held her nose with a loud “Pee-yoo”.
“I sat in dog poop.”
Zach started laughing, and it turned out Binny’s tear tank wasn’t empty after all. At the sight of Binny sobbing, Zach stifled further laughter and turned serious, awkwardly trying to comfort her with a soft, “Sorry. Sorry. It’s ok.”
Zach mercifully changed the subject by turning his attention back to Cassie’s transgression. “She was talking to that scary man and his scary dog again. You shouldn’t have told her to break the rules.”
Binny now started screaming through her tears. “Break the rules? Break the rules? You were the one who told me that she was fine on her own. And knew how to use her brain. I told you about that man who was talking to her, but you didn’t listen. Neither of you would LISTEN to me.” Binny’s anger was rising even further and now it was Zach’s turn to be defensive.
“I’m not the one who told her to go wherever she wanted. If something had happened, this would have been YOUR fault!” Zach was yelling too now.
The yelling and pointing escalated back and forth between Binny and Zach. It had started out heated and now it was growing out of control. The kids were name-calling and trading shouts back and forth. Each was blaming the other for what might have happened to their sister. Cassie, standing between them, tried to shield herself from their verbal blows.
First her hands went to her ears, and then she lowered herself into a half crouch. And then, the thing that the man had suspected, the thing the man hadn’t actually seen, the very thing the man was deep down certain had happened – did actually happen.
Bright silver tendrils of light snaked their way around Cassie’s limbs, body, and head. They looked like ivy made of white lightning. The ivy grew quickly to form a loose web around the little girl. Suddenly, Cassie herself appeared to go out of focus, like they were looking at her through a camera where the lens had been zoomed in too far.
Zach and Binny’s argument halted abruptly mid-sentence as they both stared at Cassie. The two children froze – and then, before they could say or think anything at all, their baby sister, curls and all, winked out of existence.
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About the Author:
Hillel Cooperman has pretended to be a superhero since he was a small child. He conceived of the story of the 
Madrona Heroes in the summer of 2012 on a trip abroad with his family. By winter, he had started writing in earnest. He lives in the Madrona neighborhood of Seattle with his three children, their three cats, and thousands of Lego bricks. His superpower is procrastination. The Madrona Heroes Register is his first novel.
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Links:
Website: http://madronaheroes.com
Twitter: @madronaheroes
Available in four parts from Amazon (for Kindle): Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four
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