Freddie Ramos Gets a Sidekick Read online

  Friday morning, the doorbell rang as I was finishing breakfast. Mom ran to answer it.

  “David!” Her voice sounded like she was singing, the way it always did around him.

  His voice sounded worried. “Rosa, come outside. You need to see something.”

  “¿Qué?” I heard Mom’s voice through the open door. “¿Qué pasó aquí?”

  Mom only spoke Spanish to David when she was excited. I left my cereal to see what was going on.

  There was a perfectly shaped hole, the size of a nickel, on the door beside the knob. It looked like the holes in the fence by Building F.

  “Who would drill a hole in your door?” David asked.

  “A robber?” Mom said.

  David looked more closely at the hole. “It’s deep, but it doesn’t go all the way through.”

  “Is that important?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” David said, “at least no one can look through this hole into your house.”

  So the hole wasn’t for spying or breaking in. What else could it be for? Was this hole connected to the ones in the fence?

  Mom picked up her purse. “David is driving me to work, and we don’t want to be late. Can you tell Mr. Vaslov about this hole, Freddie?”

  I nodded because I planned to tell Mr. Vaslov the second I figured it all out.

  When David’s blue car drove off, I touched my purple wristband.

  The first thing I did was check the fence. The four holes were still there, plus three more.

  Starwood Park must have someone with a drill. I’d seen Mr. Vaslov use one. His drill made a buzzing sound and left bits of sawdust behind, just like I was seeing now. Who was the driller? Were there other holes around Starwood Park?

  I raced around the buildings. My Zapato Power smoke gave me sharp vision, like someone looking through binoculars. I spotted two more doors in Building G with holes in them. Building H had window frames with holes. The driller had been very busy!

  Who was it? A person with a tool? Or something else? Once I saw a scary movie with a giant flying robot that drilled holes everywhere. Remembering that movie made me want to be sure I could get out of the way quick. I pressed my wristband to test my super bounce.

  BOING! BOING! BOING!

  My super shoes let me jump high enough to see the roof of any building at Starwood Park. I was ready for a scary robot. Except I didn’t have time. School was about to start. Superheroes need to know things so they can make good decisions. And I couldn’t be smart if I didn’t go to class.

  I reached my seat in Mrs. Blaine’s classroom a second before the tardy bell rang. I was tired. It had already been a busy morning.

  After lunch, we went to the playground. Maria wanted to practice cartwheels.

  “Let’s have a race!”

  I liked flipping upside down and whirling like a wheel across the grass. In gym, Mr. Gooley made us stay on the mats, and he made us stop if we got too wild. On the playground, Maria and I could be as wild as we wanted.

  Jasmin was watching from a bench nearby. Maria asked her to join us. Soon, there were three sets of legs flying in the air close together, near the bench.

  “Watch out!” Maria shouted.

  I swerved so my foot wouldn’t hit Jasmin’s head. BOOM! My foot hit the bench instead.

  “OW!” I screamed.

  Maria plopped down beside me. “Are you hurt?”

  “YES!” I grabbed my foot and moaned.

  “We’ll take you to the nurse!” Jasmin said.

  Maria and Jasmin let me lean on them while I hopped slowly to Mrs. Cole’s office. They didn’t complain about how many times I said “OUCH!”

  Mrs. Cole was nice too. She took off my sneaker very gently so she could look at my foot. I looked too, and I didn’t like what I saw.

  My ankle was as purple as my shoe!

  6. Big Blue Boot

  Mom came to my school with David.

  “Mi hijito.” Mom stroked my cheek. “Don’t worry. We’re here.”

  David carried me so I didn’t have to hop with a hurt ankle. He drove us to the hospital in his blue car. It was different having two grown-ups with me. My dad was a soldier who died a long time ago. I’d never had anybody but my mom to take care of me before.

  “Hang in there, Freddie,” David said. “It should only be a little while longer.”

  Hospitals are not places where things happen fast. We waited to see a doctor. We waited for an X-ray. We waited for results.

  “Would you like a peppermint?” David asked.

  “How about some water?” Mom asked.

  Mom and David did their best to keep me busy. It sort of worked. I only thought about my Zapato Power some of the time, not all of it. Mom had put my left sneaker in her giant handbag, so I knew it was safe. What I didn’t know was how soon I’d be able to run again.

  “Six to eight weeks,” the doctor said as she fitted a big blue boot on my foot. “Your ankle is broken and needs time to heal.”

  The thought of not running for so many weeks felt terrible. A few tears leaked from my eyes.

  Mom hugged me. David touched my back.

  “Lo siento,” he said.

  What? David told me he was sorry in Spanish. I thought he didn’t speak Spanish like Mom and I did. Were there things about David I didn’t know?

  By the time we got home, we were all hungry. Mom ordered pizza, and David helped me get comfortable with some pillows on the couch. He also gave my guinea pig, Claude the Second, a carrot.

  Then Mr. Vaslov called.

  “Gio told me about the cartwheel accident,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I have to wear a big blue boot,” I told Mr. Vaslov, “and use crutches.”

  “It won’t be forever,” he said.

  “It will feel like forever,” I answered.

  “We’ll work on your goggle tracker,” Mr. Vaslov said. “You don’t need to run fast to be an inventor.”

  But I did need Zapato Power to be a hero. Who would find Gio’s dog? Or Amy’s sunglasses?

  And how could I find out who was drilling holes at Starwood Park? I still wanted to solve that mystery myself and show Mr. Vaslov he only needed one kid with super-powered shoes.

  On Saturday, Mr. Vaslov and I worked in his toolshed. We put a new button on my wristband and an electronic chip in my goggles.

  “Now they can communicate with each other,” Mr. Vaslov said.

  “Should we test it?” I asked.

  Mr. Vaslov nodded. “Let’s go outside.”

  I put my goggles on the grass and walked away on crutches. I could move, just not very fast.

  “Press the new button on your wristband,” Mr. Vaslov said.

  RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!

  What was that? Was Puppy loose again? No! My goggles were making that sound. They were barking like a dog. And Mrs. Flores was passing by on the sidewalk with her beagle. He started barking too.

  “This is too much noise,” I told Mr. Vaslov.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “We need to program the electronic chip to make a different sound.”

  Mr. Vaslov explained trial and error. It meant that the first time inventors tried something, it didn’t always work the way they expected.

  “Inventors don’t give up,” Mr. Vaslov said. “They keep trying until they get it right.”

  We went back inside the toolshed. Mr. Vaslov asked me to sit down on one of his stools. He sat down too.

  “Let’s talk about the small Zapato Power shoes,” he said. “I think Amy should get them.”

  7. Amy Is Brave

  I shook my head. “Amy loses stuff. She’s not responsible.”

  “You lose your goggles,” Mr. Vaslov reminded me.

  Oops! That’s why we were making a tracker.

  “Are you sure you need two kids with super speed?” I asked.

  Mr. Vaslov rubbed his bad knee, the one that made it hard for him to walk across Starwood Park. With my foot in a boot, he woul
d only have his electric scooter for help.

  “Is it because I broke my ankle?” I asked.

  “No,” Mr. Vaslov said. “Amy is a brave girl. She will put the small shoes to good use.”

  Bullies bothered Amy when she first came to Starwood Park. She learned to stand up for herself and make friends.

  “Amy would help others, like you do,” Mr. Vaslov said.

  Mr. Vaslov was usually right about people. I wished I felt so sure.

  “Can I call her?” Mr. Vaslov picked up his phone.

  I didn’t want to say yes, but I didn’t have a good reason to say no.

  When Amy arrived, we showed her the small Zapato Power shoes and told her what they could do.

  She jumped up and down. “Can I try them?”

  Mr. Vaslov looked at me. “Amy needs a teacher.”

  For the second time that day, I didn’t have a good reason, to say no.

  I took Amy to the place beside the overhead track to practice. She zipped back and forth at least twenty times.

  “I feel like a rocket!” She laughed.

  Amy’s shoes didn’t work exactly like mine. Mr. Vaslov had made a silver wristband with one button to control hers. She didn’t have super hearing or super bounce, only super speed.

  Amy zoomed past me in a cloud of Zapato Power smoke. She was as fast as a flash of light. Was that what I looked like when I ran? Cool!

  When she stopped to rest, I explained a few more things.

  “The smoke comes out of your heels,” I said, “and it makes you invisible.”

  “Does it help me see better too?” Amy asked. “I feel like I’m wearing binoculars.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I call that Zapato Power eyes.”

  “Awesome!” Amy smiled. “So tell me what I can do. I want a superhero job.”

  Amy wasn’t the only one who wanted to do superhero stuff. But she was the only one right now who could run around and find out who was drilling holes at Starwood Park.

  She took off the second I asked. Now I knew what it was like to be a teacher who told kids what to do.

  Amy came back a few minutes later with a report.

  “There are ten holes in the fence now, and two in your front door.”

  “Two in my door?” I repeated.

  We went back to 29G and examined the holes together.

  “Who would do this?” Amy wondered.

  “Could it be a giant flying robot?” I asked.

  “I hope not.” Amy put her eye near one of the holes.

  “Something’s moving in there!” She stepped back.

  BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

  “A bee!” Amy shouted.

  She could have run away and left me stuck on crutches with my big blue boot. Instead, she stood right beside me as the bee flew over our heads and around the building.

  “What’s a bee doing in your door?” she asked.

  We needed a grown-up to understand this. It was time to go inside and call Mr. Vaslov. He came over a few minutes later on his red electric scooter.

  “It’s a carpenter bee,” Mr. Vaslov said. “They spread pollen and help plants the way other bees do.”

  “Other bees live in hives,” Amy said. “And make honey.”

  “Not these,” Mr. Vaslov said. “They make nests in wood, and sometimes they damage houses.”

  “Does that mean we have to stop them?” I asked.

  Mr. Vaslov sighed. “We have to protect the buildings.”

  “We can’t kill bees!” Amy cried. “They help flowers grow!”

  Amy was right. I learned about that in school. Bees needed to be protected too. How could we save the bees and Starwood Park?

  8. A Good Team

  It was Saturday night, not Thursday, so David was having dinner with Mom and me. He wanted to know how my first day in the blue walking boot was.

  “Busy!” I said. “I solved a mystery!”

  Mom wasn’t exactly glad to hear there were bees living in our front door.

  “Do they sting?” Mom asked.

  “Mr. Vaslov said most of them don’t. Carpenter bees are not the same as bumblebees.”

  “Do they look alike?” David asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “We should learn more,” David said after dinner. “Let’s look them up.”

  He turned on Mom’s laptop, and we did a search on the internet until we found some pictures.

  “Carpenter bees aren’t fuzzy like bumblebees,” David said. “Their bodies are black and shiny.”

  Knowing the difference between carpenter bees and other bees was important. Except it didn’t solve the problem at Starwood Park.

  “How do we make them want to live somewhere else?” I asked David.

  David started typing. “Let’s find out!”

  The first website we found said we should use poison.

  “That’s not safe for the bees or us,” I told David.

  “Tienes razón,” David said.

  I was glad to hear David agreeing with me. I just didn’t expect him to say it in Spanish.

  “¿Hablas español?” I asked.

  “I’m taking a class,” David explained, “to surprise your mom.”

  So that’s where he went on Thursday nights. If David was learning Spanish for my mom, he must really like her. Did that mean I might be getting a dad one day?

  “Mom thinks it’s good to know more than one language,” I said.

  “Sí,” David said. “She’s right!”

  We smiled at each other before going back to our internet search.

  “Look!” I said. “There’s a safer way to make carpenter bees go away.”

  I couldn’t wait to tell Mr. Vaslov and Amy.

  In the morning, I went to the toolshed with a spray bottle that smelled like lemons. I explained how it worked.

  “This isn’t poison. It won’t hurt the bees. They just don’t like the smell of citrus fruit.”

  “Brilliant!” Mr. Vaslov said. “They will leave on their own before I fill the holes and paint.”

  I felt full of brain power. I’d figured out how to save the bees and Starwood Park. So I was only a little sad when Mr. Vaslov called Amy for a job that needed super speed.

  “Can you run around the buildings and spray every hole you see?”

  “Absolutely!” Amy said.

  While Amy was gone, Mr. Vaslov and I worked on my goggle tracker. We talked about the new sound I wanted in place of the barking dog.

  “Is that all you want to change?” Mr. Vaslov asked.

  I decided it would also be good for the button to have a flashing arrow that pointed in the direction of my goggles.

  “This way, I can know which way to go,” I told Mr. Vaslov.

  “Inventive thinking!” Mr. Vaslov approved. “And we have the equipment and the software to program this change.”

  Amy came back to the toolshed just as we were going outside for a test. She wanted to help.

  “Can you drop my goggles behind one of the buildings?” I asked.

  “Sure!”

  Now we were ready. I pressed the new button on my wristband. We followed the arrow down the sidewalk and behind Building C, until we heard my goggles.

  BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

  Mr. Vaslov winked at me. “A bee sound is much better than a bark.”

  Amy was waiting for us, standing beside my goggles. My invention worked perfectly.

  “Wow!” Amy said. “Can you make a tracker for me? My sunglasses are lost. They fell off while I was running.”

  Mr. Vaslov patted my back. “What do you think, Freddie?”

  I was glad I had invented something both Amy and I needed. We were going to make a good team.

  Don’t Miss Freddie’s Other Adventures!

  One day Freddie Ramos comes home from school and finds a strange box just for him. What’s inside?

  HC 978−0−8075−9480−3

  PB 978−0−8075−9479−7

  In this sequ
el, Freddie has shoes that give him super speed. It’s hard to be a superhero and a regular kid at the same time, especially when your shoes give you even more power!

  PB 978−0−8075−9483−4

  Freddie’s super-speedy adventures continue—now he has superhero duties at school!

  PB 978−0−8075−9484−1

  When Freddie’s zapatos go missing, how can he use his zapato power?

  HC 978−0−8075−9485−8

  PB 978−0−8075−9486−5

  There’s a blizzard in Starwood Park—but the weather can’t stop a thief! It’s up to Freddie and his Zapato Power to save the day!

  HC 978−0−8075−9487−2

  PB 978−0−8075−9496−4

  What happens when Freddie outgrows his zapatos?

  HC 978−0–8075−9497−1

  PB 978−0−8075−9499−5

  How will Freddie learn to use his new super hearing without becoming a super snoop?

  HC 978−0−8075−9500−8

  PB 978−0−8075−9542−8

  Freddie’s failing math and trying to protect a new girl at school—but his Zapato Power is no help! What will Freddie do?

  HC 978−0−8075−9539−8

  PB 978−0−8075−9559−6

  Mr. Vaslov is building a drone to help him take care of Starwood Park—but that’s Freddie’s job! And when Freddie finds out his mom has a new boyfriend, he’s worried about their relationship too. How can his Zapato Power help with all this change?

  HC 978−0−8075−9544−2

  PB 978−0−8075−9563−3

  is the author of more than forty books, including Freddie Ramos Takes Off, a Cybils Award winner, and Never Say a Mean Word Again, a Sydney Taylor Honor Book. She lives in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. A former school librarian, she loves to interact with young readers through author visits and Skype. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com.