My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain

  OUT OF THIS WORLD REVIEWS FOR

  MY BROTHER IS A SUPERHERO

  “I even think my dad would like reading this book!”

  David, The Book Squad, The Beano

  “Cosmic! Amazing! Outstanding! Probably the funniest book I have read for a long time.”

  Alison A. Maxwell-Cox, The School Librarian

  “I was so addicted to it that my mum had to make me put it down.”

  Calum, aged 11

  “Funny, fast moving and deftly plotted, it’s the best thing to hit the superhero world since sliced kryptonite.”

  Damian Kelleher, Dad Info

  “You know a book is going to be good when you’re giggling after five minutes… Ideal for comic readers and superhero experts.”

  Nicola Lee, The Independent

  “An excellent adventure story with real heart that’s also properly funny.”

  Andrea Reece, Lovereading4Kids

  “You’ll laugh until you fall out of your tree house!”

  Steve Coogan

  “A brilliantly funny adventure with twists, turns, crazy characters and a really hilarious ending. Fantastic!”

  Sam, aged 11

  “Brilliantly funny.”

  The Bookseller

  In some parallel dimension two of you are

  voluntarily eating salad, and the other isn’t

  asking me to mow the lawn.

  “Come on, Luke,” I muttered to myself as I steered Zorbon’s craft past another supernova. “How difficult can it be to pilot a stolen interdimensional spaceship to a parallel universe?”

  I sat wedged in the command chair at the centre of a wraparound control panel laid out with a confusing array of touch-sensitive buttons and sliders. A Head-Up Display glowed at eye level showing a moving map of the immediate space around the vessel and a lot of probably very important numbers. Unlike the display, which moved slowly, through the clear bubble canopy stars flew past at an alarming rate. A read-out indicated I was travelling at a speed of 3. Though 3 what, I had no idea.

  Swiping Zorbon’s keys and “borrowing” his ship had seemed like a good idea at the time. But now as I wrestled with the controls, the words of the universe’s greatest smuggler and starship pilot rang in my head. “Travelling through hyperspace ain’t like dustin’ crops.” Years ago, when I’d heard Han Solo speak those words in the first Star Wars film, I was puzzled. My confusion arose because I thought Han was referring to an actual person named Dustin Crops.

  A light flashed green on the control panel. I was just thinking that at least it was green and not red when the bleat of an alarm reminded me that in Zorbon’s topsy-turvy universe red and green were reversed. Uh-oh. I glanced at the floating display. The symbol depicting my tiny craft was heading rapidly towards a big dark circle in space. Now, wasn’t there another name for an enormously dark space circle?

  Black Hole!

  I wrenched the control stick to one side in an effort to miss the giant cosmic dustbin. I felt the craft turn and figures on the display confirmed a change of direction. It looked like I would avoid catastrophe but it was going to be close. I held my breath as I skirted the edge of the gaping hole. Time seemed to slow as I looked up through the canopy into a throat of endless darkness. It was blacker than the Chislehurst Caves I’d begged Dad to take me to when I was little. I was going through one of my periodic Batman phases and wanted to scout out a potential Batcave. Dad led me and Zack to a section he knew where the tour guides never went. Deep underground Dad turned off his lamp, to give us a little fright, he said afterwards. I freaked out, but I didn’t want Dad to know how scared I was. Somehow Zack sensed my anxiety and found my hand in the dark. Though it was years later, there in the cockpit of the interdimensional craft, I could feel my brother’s invisible fingers give mine a reassuring squeeze.

  The hull groaned as immense forces clawed at the fragile ship. I could feel it come to a full stop and slowly begin to reverse direction. I was being pulled into the hungry Black Hole. If I couldn’t break free of its gravity then my mission would be over before it had even begun. I needed more power. Scouring the baffling control panel my eye fell on a likely symbol. I mashed it with my thumb. There was a pause, then piano music tinkled from hidden speakers and a woman with a weird high-pitched voice began to sing. A message scrolled across the Head-Up Display. It read: Cosmic Classics (remastered). Instead of more engine power, I’d activated Zorbon’s favourite playlist. The voice fluttered and swooped like flappy sleeves and just as I was wondering, “What’s a wuthering height?” the craft lurched sideways and began to spin. I’d lost control. Recovery systems triggered automatically. The cushioned pads of the command seat inflated, hugging me as tightly as Grandma Maureen when she hasn’t seen me for ages, the autopilot assumed control of the flight systems and an oxygen mask fell from the ceiling.

  The main drive strained like Dad’s old Fiat on a cold winter morning. On the display 3 ticked up to 4 and with a grunt Zorbon’s craft shot out of the mouth of the Black Hole. I was free! The command seat relaxed its grandmotherly grip and I sat back with a sigh of relief.

  I suspected my destination might be on a list of Zorbon’s previously visited stops, and I was right. I tapped the address and let the ship do the rest. As I whizzed across the universe I reflected on my epic journey. I was just like Superman, sent to safety from his doomed homeworld. Except that my homeworld wasn’t exactly doomed, and in the comic it’s Superman’s dad who sends him. My dad didn’t know I was gone, not yet. But he would. I wondered if he’d even care. Mum and Dad didn’t care about much these days. I pushed the grim thought to the back of my mind, where it could make friends with all the others. There was no looking back – I had to put things right. Now all that mattered was my mission.

  On the control panel a new light flashed. The ship slowed and came out of hyperspace. Suspended before me in the darkness of regular space lay the third planet, Earth.

  But not my Earth.

  Adjusting its spin, Zorbon’s craft entered the atmosphere and blew a futuristic space raspberry at mankind’s finely tuned UFO detection systems. The Head-Up Display indicated that a cloaking device had been activated to deal with any nosy radar sweeps. The hull glowed hot and the whole craft shuddered as it skimmed the upper air. It continued its descent, knifing through low cloud to emerge over land. It was night, but a label on the display confirmed my position above the United Kingdom. A few minutes later I was circling over the south-east corner, but as I homed in on my ultimate destination there was a bang from somewhere deep inside the ship and it dropped so fast my stomach was left five hundred metres above.

  “Auto-landing failure,” cooed the ship’s central computer. “Switching to manual control.”

  The virtual control-stick pressed itself into my hand. Land the ship?! At that point an ordinary person might have panicked. But not me. I wasn’t merely Luke Parker, schoolboy and comic-book fan.

  I was Stellar!

  Granted superpowers by Zorbon the Decider to fight for truth, justice and … well, probably not to steal his spaceship. But anyway, I had powers. In fact, if I’d wanted to I could’ve pulled the eject lever and flown to earth under my own power. But I needed the ship – it was essential to my plan. Using a combination of regular flight controls, telekinesis and my natural brilliance I steadied the craft and prepared to set it down. I identified an out-of-the-way landing spot deep in the woods, far from prying eyes, the sort of place even a random dog walker would never stumble across. And by that I don’t mean that the dog was random, like a collie crossed with an envelope, I mean— Actually, never mind.

  As I prepared to touch down a gust of wind lifted one corner of the ship
and before I could correct it the opposite corner had touched the treetops. Before I knew what was happening I was cartwheeling through the air towards a large structure illuminated by multiple spotlights. Through the spinning canopy I glimpsed some kind of warehouse. Just before we crashed against it, the ship did this weird dimensional sidestep and ghosted through the roof without smashing it – or me – to pieces. At the last possible second alien safety systems re-engaged, bringing us to a controlled stop.

  I popped the canopy and jumped out. The ship’s emergency lighting flooded the immediate landing area. I seemed to have arrived in someone’s bedroom. At least, it looked like a bedroom, but something felt off. For a start no one was here. Not that they hadn’t yet come to bed, it looked as if no one had ever slept here. It was then that I noticed all the other bedrooms laid out around an open corridor and a bunch of labels with weird alien names. In a flash I knew where I was.

  “IKEA,” I mumbled.

  From inside the ship I heard the onboard computer’s voice once more. “Activating environmental stealth mode.”

  The ship began to change shape, transforming from its classic saucer-with-legs outline into a stylishly minimalist bedroom set. In seconds it had morphed into a bunk bed, a modular sofa and a storage unit in lime green.

  “Flat pack achieved,” declared the computer, which was now a bedside lamp. I knew it was the lamp because every time it spoke the light would flash. I could have sworn that the computer’s voice sounded different too. Like a detective from one of those Scandinavian TV shows Mum and Dad were always watching. Which made sense since it was trying to fit in to its surroundings. I had to admit that it was a brilliant disguise. No one would ever notice an extra bedroom in IKEA.

  With the ship safely concealed I made my way out of the store to the nearest road. I shivered in the cold night air and took a moment to look up at the stars and reflect on my journey. I’d come a long way. The universe was a big place, but the multiverse was incomprehensibly bigger. Infinite, in fact. Universe upon universe, floating forever in the darkness. It was why I had risked all to travel here. That, and comics. They had taught me that in the multiverse everything is true. From planets made of cheese to civilisations where the dominant lifeforms are hyper-intelligent unicycles, worlds where dinosaurs still roamed, to worlds where everyone is a cowboy (and rides a dinosaur), anything that can be imagined existed out there, somewhere. I was counting on it.

  For instance, at that very moment not far from where I stood, my family lay asleep in their beds. A parallel version of my family, leading different lives: Mum, Dad, Zack and me. I scanned the road ahead.

  It was time to go and wake myself up.

  “I sincerely hope The Avengers do not show up,” said Serge, looking round the tree house, “as we are dangerously low on quiche.”

  He made a good point. Not about the quiche, but he was right about one thing. The tree house was crowded with superheroes, all chatting to each other about how super they were, while enjoying a finger buffet.

  In one corner munching a sausage on a stick stood Star Lad, aka my big brother Zack Parker. Next to him Dark Flutter, otherwise known as my friend and neighbour Lara Lee, sipped sparkling apple juice from a plastic champagne flute. And finally there was Stellar, whose real name was Luke Parker. Yes, I know, that’s my name too. Bear with me, as this gets a bit multiverse-y.

  The Luke Parker on the opposite side of the room came from another, nearly identical Earth that existed in a parallel dimension to ours. From what I could understand of the complex science involved, he and I were basically the same person – being born, growing up, doing all the same things – until a fateful decision caused our paths to split. And what changed everything?

  An unfortunately timed call of nature, that’s what.

  I went for a wee and missed the most important five minutes in history, when a trans-dimensional alien called Zorbon the Decider visited the tree house and bestowed my big brother with powers. Precisely the same thing happened on the parallel Earth, with one crucial difference.

  The Other Luke held it in.

  Which meant he was still in his tree house when Zorbon popped round to hand out superpowers. In his world he, not Zack, was the one who became Star Lad. Stellar. In his world he prevented the planet-crushing Nemesis asteroid from destroying the earth. And now he was here. In my world.

  “Good one,” Zack roared with laughter, clapping Stellar on the back. “You’re so funny.”

  I ground my teeth together until they squeaked. The Other Luke had only been here twenty-four hours but I was already sure about one thing.

  I didn’t like him.

  For a start he refused to be called Other Luke, or Luke Two, or Super-Annoying-Luke, claiming that he was the original and if anyone should be footnoted to avoid confusion it ought to be me. The cheek! Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only one with an issue. Zack thought he was simply hi-lari-ous, Serge was fanboy-ing over the new superhero, as usual, and Lara was already lining him up for an interview in the school newspaper. Worst of all, they just assumed that Luke-Out-Here-Comes-Trouble and I must be best buds since we were pretty much the same person.

  Serge appeared at my shoulder, holding a silver tray piled with some kind of breaded fishy things. He had proposed the welcome party for the new arrival and taken it upon himself to provide the catering.

  He shook his head in wonder. “How did the world suddenly become so full of superheroes?” He thrust the tray under my nose. “Sole goujon with mango and lime dip?”

  “No, thanks.” I pushed it away. “And what is that music?”

  “It is my Serge Gainsbourg playlist.” He prodded the volume control on the portable Bluetooth speaker. “He is my namesake.”

  Serge appeared to be named after some bloke who sang like he was gargling with gravel-filled mouthwash. My namesake was refilling Lara’s glass and launching into yet another side-splitting anecdote that involved him singlehandedly saving the world. The other world.

  I sidled closer to Serge and whispered, “Are we quite certain he’s not an evil robot double?” It was a reasonable question. We’d barely had time to catch our breath since running into a cyborg imposter in the course of thwarting an alien invasion last month.

  Serge sighed. “We have been through this, mon ami; he is the real thing.”

  I bristled with indignation. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are the real thing, of course,” stuttered Serge. “But he is also the real thing.”

  I grunted and stuffed a goujon into my face. “Well, what’s he doing here? All we know is what he’s told us: that Zorbon the Decider dropped him off. What are we now – a superhero crèche?”

  Serge sighed. “I am perfectly confident that some world-shattering event will be along presently, bringing with it yet another interlude of horror, anguish and indigestion. But perhaps first we could take a brief moment to enjoy the buffet.”

  I watched him cross the room and offer round the tray. Hey-Luke-At-Me continued to impress the others with his fabulousness. At one point Zack was laughing so hard he choked on a pizza whirl and Stellar had to use his telekinetic power to dislodge it. They carried on talking shop, comparing cape lengths and discussing which was better – a full-face mask or one that covered just the eyes. Lara was explaining how she could control most small animals, except for cats. No one could control cats. Then she organised everyone into a line and took a photo with the new phone she got after her parents split up.

  The break-up had just happened. She and Cara were still living in the house on our street but her dad had moved out. Lara said it had been coming for a long time, but she was still really upset. I told her it could’ve been worse. When Scarlet Witch and the Vision broke up, his mind was wiped, she went bonkers and they discovered their twins were pieces of a demon’s soul. I think that helped put things in perspective for her. And at school I knew loads of kids whose parents didn’t live together. What’s more, as far as I could make out,
there was an upside. While I wouldn’t like it if my mum and dad decided to go their separate ways, when George Barton’s broke up, he got an iPad. Judging from Lara’s shiny new smartphone there seemed to be a pattern involving separation and high-end electrical goods.

  Lara marshalled Stellar and the others for one more snap. The three super-buddies and Serge hadn’t seemed to notice my absence. Which was understandable, since there I stood in the middle of the group, being funny and charming. Me. Not-me.

  My greatest wish in the world was to become a superhero – and it had come true. Right wish, right person. Just the wrong world. This was so weird.

  “This is so weird,” said Luke-What-Schrödinger’s-Cat-Dragged-In. “Hey, Other Luke, don’t stand there vibrating like a sad electron. Get over here and join the party.”

  Now he was calling me Other Luke? He’d gone too far. Whose parallel dimension was this anyway? “If I were an electron then as part of a quantum field I could effectively be in two places at once,” I sneered. “So I could be standing here outside the party, and also over there with you. At the same time.”

  There was a long silence. I imagined the others were being impressed by my brilliant comeback.

  “Well, you kind of are,” said Stellar with a broad grin that displayed two rows of shining white teeth. Toothpaste was clearly more advanced in his dimension.

  “Show-off,” I muttered under my breath, and grudgingly made my way over.

  “Stand there,” ordered Lara. “Serge, you too. I want a picture with everyone.”

  I shuffled up next to the others as she positioned her phone for a high-angle group selfie.

  “Not too close, Other Luke,” Stellar warned. “You and I must be very careful never to touch one another. We are already stretching reality to breaking point by existing in the same dimension. We’re like matter and antimatter. I’m obviously matter. Please keep your distance, for the sake of all reality.”