Illustrated by Warwick Johnson-Cadwell
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First published 2024 001
Text copyright © Charlie Higson, 2024 Illustrations copyright © Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, 2024
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This book is dedicated to Superman – for saving the world (several times)
I bet you dream about having special powers. I do. Suddenly being super strong and fighting off bullies. Or flying through the air like a bat, or a bird, or a spaceship. Or being able to turn invisible. That’s the one I dream about. For a shy boy like me being invisible would be great.
But what are the worst superpowers? The really rubbish ones? In fact, who’s the worst superhero ever ? Which superhero would you never dream of being?
That’s what we were talking about in Library Club the other day. I’d better explain. Library Club is where I hang out at school. It doesn’t sound very cool, does it? It needs a better name. Like, I don’t know, Secret Adventures of the Mind Club, or Explorers of the Universe Club. But no. It’s just called Library Club. Or LC . And I guess, to be fair, it’s not cool. So why would it have a cool name?
I like reading a lot, but I mainly started going to LC because they have proper computers there. My computer at home is my dad’s old laptop, which he bought about a hundred years ago and has a cracked screen. Most apps and games don’t work on it, and our internet is so slow that if I want to look something up it’s quicker to get the bus to the library, find a big book of facts, check out the index, go to the right page and read it. The computers at Library Club aren’t exactly super new, but at least you can look something up and get an answer before you’ve grown a beard and need false teeth.
Other kids like me go to LC at lunch or after school and it’s actually fun. I’ve got some good friends who use the club. Like Archie. Archie was the best footballer at school, and everyone wanted to be his mate, but he broke his leg really badly and he still has it in plaster, with a big boot. Archie loves comics and superheroes and he likes to come to the library where he can read in peace. He’s popular enough still not to be called a nerd, which is what the rest of us get called.
And worse.
My other two best friends at LC are Maximal Element (not his real name), and Grace Watson (real name). Maximal knows just about everything and is really into science. His real name is Mohammed, but he prefers Mo. Actually, he prefers Maximal Element. He says it’s his rapper name. But he never does any rapping. We
don’t say anything about it, though. If he wants to be called Maximal Element, then we’ll call him Maximal Element.
Grace is really funny and makes jokes about the rest of us all the time, but not in a nasty way. She’s one of those people that if they say something sarky to you it means they really like you. She reads more books than anyone I know. Sometimes she reads two or three in one day. That’s like a kind of superpower, I guess. And she’ll tell us the stories of all the books she reads – doing all the voices of the characters in them. She really likes funny books and is great at doing silly voices.
There’s one thing about Library Club that really isn’t cool.
We might not be able to carry on doing it.
Our school doesn’t have a lot of money and space and they’re always talking about making the library a lot smaller and closing down Library Club. Maybe even closing the library altogether. So, me and the other guys have been trying to make a film, you know, like an ‘appeal’ film, to try and raise funds. Maximal’s been filming some stuff, and Grace has been doing some funny characters, but, to be honest, it isn’t very good. It doesn’t look like a proper film at all. It looks like something that a twelve-year-old boy’s filmed on his phone.
Which is what it is.
We spend a lot of time talking about the film and how we can make it better, and the other day we were talking about how we could maybe make it like a joke MCU superhero film and come up with a funny superhero to be the main character. Archie started to tell us who the worst superheroes of all time were and we looked one of them up on the computers – Doorman.
‘Basically,’ Archie told us, ‘if the rest of his team need to get inside a locked building REAL FAST , he can stand against the wall and turn himself into a door and they can run through it.’
‘That is way too specific,’ said Grace.
‘Yeah,’ said Maximal. ‘ “Doorman! Quick! Grunge and The Purple Dipstick are attacking! You’ve got to help us!” ’
‘Nope.’ Grace did a dorky voice for Doorman. ‘Sorry. I only do doors. I don’t do fighting.’
‘When would you ever get to use a superpower like that?’ Maximal asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said, and we acted out a scene.
It went like this: I was Super Dude, Grace was Doorman and Maximal was Aqua Boy.
SUPER DUDE : Hey, guys, we’ve got to hurry to the Amazon rainforest to rescue the survivors of a plane crash.
DOORMAN: OK ! Wait a moment. I’ll just get my door suit on.
SUPER DUDE : Er, that’s OK, Doorman, we won’t be needing you.
DOORMAN : What? Why not?
SUPER DUDE : There aren’t, like, you know, that many walls in the jungle.
DOORMAN : Oh . . .
AQUA BOY : Guys? We’ll have to stop off in the Gulf of Mexico on the way – there’re some people in a boat being attacked by sharks.
DOORMAN : I’m on it! I’ll get my . . . Oh, never mind . . .
‘I think,’ said Archie, ‘that whoever came up with the idea of Doorman must have gone to an office block one day, seen the doorman and thought, Hey, that sounds like Batman, or Spider-Man, or Iron Man . . . ’
‘Yeah,’ said Maximal. ‘I wonder what other superheroes he came up with. You could have a whole team of these guys – Post Man, Bin Man, Milk Man . . .’
‘Milk Man. Yeah,’ said Archie. ‘He turns into milk! Might be useful if the superheroes ran out or the milk in the fridge had gone off.’
‘Or if they needed some cheese for a snack,’ said Grace. ‘They could curdle a bit of milk and make their own.’
‘They’d need to have a superhero who could curdle milk, though,’ I said. ‘He could be called “The Curdler!” ’
‘The Curdler! Cool. Who else could there be?’ said Grace. ‘What about Foot Man? Or Frog-Man?’
‘Actually, there was a superhero called Frog-Man,’ said Archie. ‘His father was a supervillain called Leap-Frog.’
‘No!’ ‘Argh!’
‘Rubbish!’
‘What other crap superheroes have there been?’ Grace asked.
And that’s how we came up with our list of The Worst Superheroes of all time.
STAN’S * LIST OF THE TOP 10 WORST SUPERHEROES
1. Arm Fall Off Boy (I’ll tell you about him in a minute).
2. Doorman (also Frog-Man, Bin Man, Milk Man, Post Man, Stick Man).
3. Squirrel Girl (half girl, half squirrel).
4. Color Kid (he can change the colours of things. Useful, yeah?).
5. Bouncing Boy (he basically just turns into a big ball and bounces around).
6. Cypher (he can translate things).
* I’m Stan, by the way. I should have said earlier.
7. Matter-Eater Lad (he can eat things like iron bars).
8. The Curdler (who isn’t even real).
9. Robin (sorry, Robin. I’ve always thought you were a bit rubbish).
10. Dogwelder (he welds dogs to people’s faces . . . He’s an actual thing).
So Arm Fall Off Boy. Basically when he got into trouble he could pull off one of his arms and use it like a club. If someone asked you what superpower you’d like, you’d have to be pretty dumb to say, ‘I’d like to be able to pull off one of my arms and hit people with it.’ I kind of think, you know, it’d be more useful to be able to pull your arm off and it turns into a grenade launcher or a samurai sword.
But writing this list got me thinking about whether any superheroes are actually that great when you think about them. For instance, like I said earlier, as a shy kid I always used to think that the power to turn invisible whenever you wanted would be great.
But would it? Really?
You might think it would get you out of lots of tricky situations and you could sneak about and find out what people were saying about you, but would that actually be so great? What if they were saying horrible things about you?
‘To be honest with you, I think Stan’s an idiot.’
‘Yeah, and he’s invisible as well.’
‘Yeah, the stupid invisible idiot.’
Maybe if invisibility was combined with a superpower that made people only say nice things about you, it’d be better. Yes, that’d be a good superpower. It’d be a lot more useful than something like, I don’t know, being able to set things on fire, like The Human Torch. So why has nobody ever thought of it before?
I guess superheroes have to be exciting. And they need to do exciting things, like defeat supervillains. And set things on fire.
They can’t just wander around listening to people saying how nice they are.
So let’s have a look at the most popular superheroes and see if they’re actually any good. Because, when you think about it, a lot of superpowers wouldn’t actually be that useful in real life, would they? Like turning into a human torch. How many times have you thought, Wow, I wish I could set my whole body on fire and use the flames to burn things ?
Honestly, if you really want to light a candle, or something, you can just use a match. You don’t need to set your whole body on fire. And risk burning your house down. So I’m not going to put ‘setting things on fire’ on my list.
I guess most people’s list would look something like this . . .
(Those of you that know me will know I like to make lists. It stops me from getting stressed.)
STAN’S TOP 10 MOST POPULAR SUPERPOWERS
1. Invisibility.
2. Flying.
3. Super strength.
4. X-ray vision.
5. Invulnerability (that’s just a fancy way of saying you can’t be hurt or damaged).
6. Regeneration (that’s just a fancy way of saying you can heal your wounds like Wolverine and grow back any bits of you that get knocked off).
7. Teleportation (look, I found these words on the internet. Don’t blame me if they’re all really long and complicated. Teleportation just means you can instantly travel from one place to another).
8. Super speed (I don’t need to explain that one, do I?).
9. Time travel (or that one).
10. Telepathy (OK , that’s mind-reading).
So let’s start with telepathy: reading people’s minds. I reckon it has the same problem as invisibility. Most of the time I’m really glad I don’t know what people are thinking. Being able to read people’s minds would be like spending every hour of every day on social media. Just all day long KNOWING WHAT PEOPLE ARE THINKING .
‘To be honest with you, I think Stan’s an idiot.’
‘Yeah and he can read your mind.’
‘Yeah, the stupid invisible, telepathic idiot.’
‘And he can’t even set his whole body on fire.’
‘Pfff. Loser.’
Nightmare.
And what about super speed? How would you not crash into things? I don’t even like going too fast on a bike. You know that thing when you go downhill and end up totally out of control? I don’t like that. At all. I keep my brakes on all the way.
Imagine being able to run super fast. Nobody would be able to get out of your way in time. And you’d get all bugs in your teeth – at, like, 200 miles an hour!
The same with being able to fly. All that whizzing around like a plane – how would you not fly into trees? And birds? And power lines?
OK , if you were invulnerable, like Wolverine, you might be all right, but you’re still going to cause power cuts all over town. You’d be really unpopular.
‘Hey, have you seen Stan?’
‘No. How could I? He’s invisible. And even if he wasn’t, we still wouldn’t be able to see him because he’s just snapped all the power lines and we can’t turn on the lights.’
‘That’s just typical of Stan, the stupid invisible, mindreading, super-fast flying idiot.’
And, just like super speed, you’d get bugs splatting into your face all the time, at, like, 200 miles an hour.
You might think I’m a bit obsessed with bugs splatting into your face at, like, 200 miles an hour, but I once rode a bicycle into the middle of a swarm of killer bees (or they may have been killer flying beetles of some sort. I didn’t stick around to find out). It was like being shot in the face with 1,000 paintball pellets. I imagine, anyway, because I’ve never been shot in the face with 1,000 paintball pellets. You’d have heard about it. Or seen it on YouTube: ‘Worst Paintball Fails of All Time’.
But it hurt all the same.
And I wasn’t even going at, like, 200 miles an hour. I was probably only going about, like, 8 miles an hour.
Or slower.
So I guess, when you think about it, lots of superpowers are a bit crap. (What about the guy who just has a bow and arrow? What’s that all about? Since when was having a bow and arrow a superpower?)
And going small! Like Ant-Man. What use is that? Could you really fight crime that way? I mean, what
could a totally tiny person do to, I don’t know, stop a bank robbery or something?
‘Hey, Ant-Man, those bad guys wearing clown masks are going into the bank with rocket launchers and bazookas! What are we gonna do?’
‘Leave it to me – I’m going to go really, really small!’
‘Great . . . Wait a minute. What? Ant-Man . . . AntMan, where did you go?’
(Tiny voice.) ‘I’m down here. Just give me half an hour and I’ll make it over to the bank doors, then with my tiny powers I’ll slip underneath and then I’ll . . . then I’ll . . . erm . . .’
‘You’ll just get trod on.’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
If being small was a useful skill we’d have Molecule Man (or Woman, of course) or perhaps Germ Man (or Woman). He could get up bad guys’ noses and give them flu or something. Then they’d feel really poorly for a few days and not be up for going out and robbing a bank.
Even the cool superpowers, like the ones I put on my list, when are you ever really going to be able to use them? In your actual real day-to-day life? Have you ever seen anyone robbing a bank for instance? Or smashing up a skyscraper? Have you really got to fly around your local town all day and night waiting to spot a crime happening so you can go whizzing in and sort it out? And what if you get it wrong and beat up the wrong guys?
We talked about this a lot in LC and Maximal had some very interesting things to say about superheroes and science.
OK , so what would I put on a list of actual, useful superpowers?
STAN’S LIST OF 10 ACTUAL, USEFUL SUPERPOWERS HE’D ACTUALLY LIKE TO HAVE AND THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE USEFUL IN REAL LIFE
1. Super-speed homework skills. Get it all done in less than 1 millisecond.
2. Not being shy.
3. Top football skills.
4. Controlling the weather so it’s always sunny when you want it. And it only rains when you’re asleep (I think this is called elemental control).
5. The power to turn bullies into chickens, or rabbits, or kittens (safer than beating them up with super strength, because if you did that you’d be kicked out of school). I think this power might be called transmogrification.
6. The power of heavy sarcasm.
7. Time travel (I took this from my other list because I reckon it would actually be a useful power).
8. The power to get all the vitamins and minerals and fibre you need from just eating Nutella.
9. Making up good jokes and saying funny things at the right time. So that everyone laughs and likes me.
10. Basically just making everybody like me.
You’re probably beginning to wonder why I’m going on so much about superheroes. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because right now I’m sitting in a hard chair in a long corridor with a bunch of other boys waiting to audition to play a superhero in a TV series. OK ?
Whaaaaaaaat?
You’re joking me! For real?
I bet you weren’t expecting that! I certainly wasn’t. By the way, if you don’t know what an audition is (and before this all happened to me I was never exactly sure what one was to be perfectly honest with you), it’s when somebody writes a play, or a TV show, or a film, or whatever, and they need to try the actors out to see
which ones would be best for the part. You have to learn some lines from a scene and act it out.
In front of a room full of strangers . . .
Who are all judging you . . .
And I can tell you, for someone like me, who doesn’t like people looking at them. And judging them. And talking about them. Or even just thinking about them. This is about the worst thing that could happen in the world.
But don’t worry! (All right. You probably weren’t worrying. You were probably just looking forward to all the awful embarrassing things that might happen to me, so you could have a good laugh.) If you’re a nice person, who doesn’t want to laugh at me – I repeat, don’t worry! I’ve come up with a very sneaky plan for how to deal with this mega-stressful situation.
You see, the main thing is: I really don’t want to play a superhero in a TV show. It’s the last thing I want to do. I’m only here because my mum made me come. She thinks it would be ‘really exciting’ and would help to ‘bring me out of myself’.
When you think about it, that sounds like a weird kind of a superpower, doesn’t it? The ability to bring yourself out of yourself. Instead of having to go into a phone box and change, like Superman, you’d just open your mouth wide and the superhero would come out of
it, like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. Maybe that’s what Mum thinks is going to happen if I get this part. I’ll open my mouth wide and Super Stan will come out. Super Stan, who can deal with anything and stand up to anyone. Super Stan, who isn’t shy and doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. The question is: how come a shy little nerd like Stan ended up auditioning to play a superhero in a TV series?
Well, this is how it all began . . .
26 REASONS NOT TO BE A SUPERHERO (ON
TV)
Reason 1: You don’t get to actually fly
In the summer I went on holiday with a friend called Felix. His family is much richer than mine and they own a house in Italy. I went without my family – and it was pretty stressful, to be honest. Although, by the end I really enjoyed it and I made a new friend called Jess. Who’s a girl. She’s maybe even my girlfriend. I’m not really sure how all that girlfriend/boyfriend stuff works. I’ve never had a girlfriend before. Do you have to keep updating it? Refreshing it or whatever? It’s quite
complicated. Especially as I haven’t actually seen her since the summer. We’ve spoken on the phone a couple of times, and she sends me photographs so I can remember what she looks like. I really like her, and I think she likes me. But how do you have a girlfriend who lives a hundred miles away?
Anyway, sorry, that’s not what I was meant to be telling you about. I was telling you about the holiday and how I got the audition. The house in Italy was full of Felix’s family friends, including an actress called Livia Channing. She was a bit weird but mostly OK . She plays the mother of the main character in Strange Academy, that TV show about teenage wizards (the one that isn’t Harry Potter). Livia thought I was a big fan of the show, even though I’ve never watched it.
So a few weeks ago, as a treat, she asked me and Felix if we wanted to see her filming some of the show. I reminded Felix I wasn’t really a fan of Strange Academy . He said that wasn’t the point – he wasn’t a big fan either.
‘So why do you want to go, then?’
‘Come on, Stan,’ he said. ‘You know what a good actor I am. If we go to see the filming at the studio, maybe they’ll spot me and give me a part and I’ll become a star.’
I thought that was highly unlikely, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I told him he should go by himself.
‘I would,’ he said, ‘but Livia wants it to be the two of us. For some reason she really likes you.’
Felix loves acting and drama and is always trying to get the main part in school plays. I think he mainly just likes showing off in front of people. I’m not sure this makes him the great actor he thinks he is.
Mum and Dad said I really should go as well. They said it’d be interesting to see how a television programme is made.
So I talked about it with the guys at LC club, and Grace said that my mum and dad were right, and it would be really good research for the film that we’re making.
‘You could learn all about filming and see how a real TV show is made.’
So, to keep everybody happy, I said I’d go. And, of course, I was quite interested. I’d never done anything like that before.
Felix’s mum took us on a Saturday. The studios were in some big buildings outside London that look like warehouses. And, yes, it was quite exciting. There were proper security gates, with proper security guards in uniforms who checked our names on a list and gave us passes to hang round our necks. Then an assistant turned up in an electric golf buggy thing and drove us to the building where they were filming Livia’s show. On the way we passed all these other studios. There were bits of
scenery outside some of them. We saw what looked like a castle all in pieces. And there were lots of props as well, which is what they call all the bits and pieces they use for filming. There were some chariots, a really cool tank, and at one point we passed a group of actors dressed up as knights sitting outside a studio drinking coffee, looking at their phones and smoking.
When we got to the studio where Livia was filming there was even more security and we had to sign lots of forms that said we weren’t going to tell anyone about anything we saw. (It’s OK . I can tell you about it now.)
Then, when we went inside, it was AMAZING . They’d built this huge fantasy cave inside the studio with rocks and bits of old ruined arches and pillars and stuff. There was even a waterfall running into a pool.
And it was all fake!
If you went round the back, you could see it was all made out of plastic foam and wood and other random stuff.
When we met Livia she showed us the script they were going to be filming. She told us that in the morning they were doing some stunts, and in the afternoon she was going to be acting in a scene where she’s been kidnapped by the main villain. You know he’s a villain because he’s got a load of Xs and Vs and Zs in his name. He’s called Zaygar Vortemaxx. (He’s a bit lame, to be honest.) It’s a kids’ show, so he can’t do anything that bad.
So, anyway, Livia’s character has been taken to Zaygar’s secret cave where he’s keeping a whole load of kids prisoner and holding them hostage. In the end Livia helps them all escape (well, not Livia, the character she plays – Mrs Tucker). She has her big hero moment. But they weren’t filming that bit on the day we were there. They were just going to be filming a scene when Livia makes this long boring speech to all the kids. The speech was all about togetherness and being brave and what an amazing bunch of kids they are and how love will conquer all. The sort of speech that your head teacher gives at the beginning of term and then you never see her again.
So in the morning we sat out of the way on these fold-up chairs behind the cameras. Livia whispered to us about what was going on. It was an action scene and they had three stunt guys on ropes that went up over pulleys dangling from two cranes. And they had these other really big stunt guys holding on to the other ends of the ropes and standing on the back of the crane trucks. When they said ‘ACTION ’, explosions went off and the really big guys holding the ropes jumped off the trucks so that the stunties on the other ends of the ropes flew way up into the air and swung back, so that they hit the fake rock wall. It was really cool.
The first time . . .
The second time it was still pretty cool because I was watching what all the other people were doing – the
guys letting off the explosions, the stuntmen jumping and pulling, the head stuntman making sure everybody was safe, the cameras following the action, the director watching it all on a row of monitors (these are just TV screens that show what the cameras are filming. Same as computer monitors). Everybody busy, everybody with something to do.
The third time it went wrong. Two of the stunt performers got tangled up together. and it took ages to get everything ready to go again.
Livia whispered that filming was a bit like that – you had to keep doing everything over and over again until everybody got it right.
‘Sometimes the camera’s out of focus, sometimes a stunt person might fly out of shot, or the director wants them to go higher or lower, or faster or slower. They’re also filming it at different speeds, so that they can have it in slow motion if they want.’
I asked what they were going to do about the ropes, because you could clearly see them.
‘They’ll paint them out,’ she explained.
‘How?’
‘Some poor minion will sit in the dark for hours at a computer and remove the ropes from every frame. Like Photoshop. Or when you’re touching up a photo on your phone and removing spots or something.’
No way you could do that on my rubbish phone.
The fourth time, the stunt went well. Then they moved the cameras to film the stunt from a different angle. Two hours later they were still filming the same thing, and, to tell you the truth, it had got quite boring. Felix was playing a game on his phone.
But at last they finished shooting the stunt and it was lunchtime. Livia said that they’d get everything ready for her big scene after lunch and we went to her trailer. A trailer is just a sort of caravan. Livia’s one had a little kitchen area with a fridge and a cooker, as well as a toilet and a shower, and a living-room area to sit in. She said there was a bed there as well that she could pull out, and sometimes if it was a long day and she was tired, she had a snooze in the afternoon.
They asked us what we wanted to eat and somebody called a ‘runner’ brought us some lunch (a runner is just a sort of servant – they don’t actually run everywhere). I asked for the chicken curry with rice, which I quite like. I used to be really fussy about food. I still am, to be honest, but I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be. If it’s strange food with people I don’t know, I get stressed. Curry’s all right, though, as long as it’s not too spicy. This one wasn’t too spicy at all and I ate all of it. There were even poppadoms and naan bread.
After we’d eaten, Livia said she had to go and talk to somebody, and we watched her outside the trailer having a long chat with one of the assistants. Felix’s
mum made some phone calls while Felix and I talked about football. Well, it was mainly Felix talking. I joined in a bit but I’m not such a big football fan as him. So I pretended I knew what I was talking about. I have to do a lot of pretending with Felix.
When I went on holiday with him, I had to pretend to everybody that we were best friends. It was a bit of a lie. There are people at school I like better and he doesn’t hang out with me much.
When Livia came back in, she had a big grin on her face, like she had an amazing secret to tell us.
Which she did.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you, boys,’ she said. ‘I’ve talked to production and they said you could be extras in the scene.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
Felix groaned. ‘Everyone knows what an extra is,’ he said. ‘They’re the people you see in the background, behind the stars. If there’s, like, a crowd of people or something.’
‘We’re supposed to call them “supporting artists”,’ said Livia. ‘But most people still call them “extras”. So how about it? Won’t that be fun? Pretty amazing, yeah?’
I said ‘yeah’, but I wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the background of a scene. I just wanted to stay out of the way and watch.
Felix was super excited, though. ‘See what I said,
Stan! I told you. The director will spot me and ask me to come back and I’ll probably be in lots of scenes.’
‘Who knows . . . ?’ said Livia. Which even I knew meant: that probably won’t happen.
So, anyway, we ended up in this big sort of tent where there were loads of costumes hanging on rails. The costumes we were given weren’t that cool because we were playing two of the children who’d been captured, so we were just wearing kind of rags and tatters really. Felix was still excited about it all, though. I mean, why wouldn’t he be? He was dressing up and putting on a costume, which he loved doing. There were other kids in there too, who were extras, but they mostly ignored us. One or two of them even gave us dirty looks. I guess they knew we weren’t proper extras like them. We hadn’t practised and trained and worked at it. We weren’t pros. We didn’t belong here. We were just two spoilt kids getting a treat. They didn’t really need to give us those dirty looks. At least they were all getting paid to be here. Not me and Felix. We were working for free.
Later I got talking to a couple of the kids – a boy and a girl who were keeping apart from the others, like we were. It turned out they weren’t getting paid either. They’d won a competition to be in a scene in the show. It seemed to me that the people making the show were getting lots of kids to work for them for nothing.
Once we were dressed, we went into a make-up tent where they messed up our hair and put fake dirt on our faces. While they were doing that, Felix’s mum had to fill in a load of forms to allow us to do the acting. Well, they called it acting. As far as I could see we’d just be stood at the back of the crowd, listening to Livia make her speech and trying not to bump into the fake rocks.
And then we were herded on to the set. It felt weird being in the scene instead of sitting quietly at the back in the dark watching. People were running around organizing things, telling us where to stand and what to do, while they set up the lights and the cameras.
At last we were ready to go.
The first shot was a wide shot – that meant the camera filmed the whole scene, with everyone in it – including Livia doing her speech. It took three or four goes before they were happy with the set-up. They kept moving us around, getting us to stand in certain places, telling us how to react. I figured the best thing to do was to just keep out of the way, listen to the speech and act as if I really was a kid trapped in a dungeon and Livia had come to set us free. It made it a bit easier and less boring.
I was standing next to Felix, and he was doing his showing-off thing. Putting his hands to his cheeks in a sort of ‘omigod!’ way, like that emoji, and calling out ‘yeah’ and ‘cool’ during the speech. Until someone came over and told him to keep quiet. But after that he kept
waving his arms around and jiggling about trying to get noticed. And, again, the assistant told him to just stand there and listen.
After we’d done a couple of takes (which just means filming a shot), the director and some of the people working with him went into a huddle by the monitors. The next thing I knew, the assistants came back over and started moving us around again, pulling some kids to the front, pushing others to the back. I was moved away from Felix, off to one side, and saw that he’d been put in the shadows behind everyone else.
I was right on the edge now. Which was perfect. I was much less likely to be seen. And so I carried on listening and watching Livia closely, not thinking about anything else. When they were happy with the big wide shot, they moved the camera in for a closer shot of Livia, which most of us weren’t in, so we were allowed to go and sit down outside.
Felix was a bit grumpy. And he took it out on me, like he always does. He made fun of my costume and hair, trying to get the other kids to laugh at me. Luckily they didn’t join in. They weren’t that interested. I tried not to let it get to me and ignored him.
When we went back inside, the crew were ready to shoot the reactions of the different bunches of kids. It looked like I’d got away with it, being out on the edge, not really part of any group. But then – gah! – the
director came over and said he wanted to do a close-up of me.
‘Why? What do you want me to do?’ I said.
‘Exactly what you’ve been doing,’ he said. ‘Stand still and listen.’
I figured the best thing was to ignore the cameras and everyone looking at me. Try to forget that I was Stan and just be a kid who’d been captured by a villain. He was a lame villain, sure, but it would still be scary being trapped in his cave.
OK . I was this kid. In this cave. And Livia was setting me free. So I just listened and right before the end, when she said her big line (‘I’ll get you out of here! We’ll fly over the rainbow into the sunlight like fabulous unicorns!’), I gave a little sad smile, like I wanted to believe her but didn’t really know if she could do it. I mean, would you trust anyone to set you free if they said a lame line like that? So it wasn’t acting at all.
They filmed me for a minute or so and then that was that. Phew. Not so bad really.
They took the camera away and one of the assistants said thank you. The filming had taken a long time and we broke for tea. ‘Broke’ is another film word I learnt. It just means that they stopped. There were biscuits, cakes and brownies, Coke and fruit and crisps, anything you wanted. Even Haribo, chocolate and lollies. We all stuffed our faces. Felix wasn’t talking to
me at all now and kept barging me out of the way to get to the cakes.
It was obvious what the problem was. He wanted to be the one the director had noticed, not me. When they told us we had to go back on to the set, he finally said something to me.
‘Are you going to stop showing off now, Stan? It’s just typical of you. You pretend to be all shy, but really you just want to be the centre of attention.’
‘It wasn’t my idea,’ I said, trying to stay friendly. ‘I wish they’d chosen you, instead of me.’
‘They only chose you because they felt sorry for you,’ he said. ‘When we actually see the finished scene, when it goes out on the TV, there won’t be any shots of you – they’ll show my shot, with my group of kids. We were all really acting.’
Acting like goons, I thought. They’d all been making really exaggerated faces, looking at each other, nudging each other and mouthing things like ‘wow’ and ‘cool’. In fact, it looked like they were making fun of Livia. I figured the director had put them all together so that they didn’t mess up any of the other shots.
Still, I thought, they’d done my bit and I’d be out of the way again, so Felix could calm down. But when we came back after tea, the director took me to one side and asked me my name. I told him I was called Stan and explained that I was only there because of Livia. He told
me his name was David. He was being super nice to me. The way people are when they’ve got some bad news for you or something. I expected he’d come to tell me I was a bit rubbish and didn’t want me in the scene any more. But instead he told me that he wanted me to try saying a line.
What?
Woah.
Panic!
‘What do you mean?’ I spluttered, looking around desperately for some way to escape. Maybe I could pretend to faint? This was like a waking nightmare. One of those dreams where you’re in a school play and you haven’t learnt the lines . . .
‘It’s no biggie,’ said David. ‘We just think that one of the kids needs to say something. It seems weird that you’re all just stood there like muppets. We’re going to try out a couple of you with some lines. Is that OK ?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not an actor. And I haven’t learnt any lines.’
He smiled. ‘Well, that’s probably because we haven’t written any.’
‘What do you want me to say, then?’
‘OK . So Mrs Tucker’s just told you she’s going to rescue you all and not to be scared. What do you think you’d say?’
‘I’d say . . . I don’t know . . . Maybe I’d say “Can you really do it? Are we really getting out of here?” Something like that.’
‘Cool. Yeah, say something like that. Whatever seems real. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.’ He smiled at me again. ‘No harm in trying, Stan.’
‘How do you want me to say it?’
‘Exactly like you just said it to me then. Keep it natural. Try not to act.’
‘OK . . .’ I said feebly. ‘I’ll try.’ This was not going the way I wanted it to. I wanted to stay hidden so nobody would notice me and now they wanted me to say a line. I knew my voice would go all squeaky and shaky like it always does if I have to say something in class. Because I’m Stan! Shy Stan.
And then I thought, Actually – no – I’m not Stan. I’m this kid who’s been captured. This other kid.
I went over to the director who was talking to one of his assistants.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, my voice a little trembly. ‘What’s the name of my character?’
David laughed. ‘It doesn’t matter, Stan.’
‘It matters to me,’ I said. ‘I want to be this character. I don’t want to be me.’
‘OK ,’ he said. ‘We’ll call you Ed. How’s that?’
‘Ed?’ I said. ‘OK . I’m Ed.’
I walked away. Now I really wasn’t Stan. That would make it much easier. I’d be Ed, the captured kid. And as we waited, I made up a whole story for myself. What school I was at, and what my family was like, anything to not be me. I knew it probably wouldn’t make any difference to how I said the line, but it helped me not to feel too self-conscious.
So when they’d set up the cameras on me again and it was time to do my line I said some words – I can’t remember exactly what I said – and I was happy it didn’t sound like me. They only did it once. One take. So I thought it must have been rubbish and they weren’t going to bother trying again. But at the end of the day, when we were getting ready to go home, the director came to find me and Felix and said he wanted to thank me.
‘I’m sorry my line was rubbish,’ I said, staring at my shoes.
‘Why’d you say that?’ he said. ‘It was fine.’
‘So why did you only do it once?’ I asked. ‘Everything else you did over and over.’
David smiled at me. ‘Because you got it right first time.’
I didn’t know what to say that. So I didn’t say anything.
‘What about me?’ said Felix, and David gave a little chuckle.
‘You were a lot of fun, my friend,’ he said. ‘You’re quite a character, aren’t you?’
As we were going over to the car, Livia came rushing up and gave me and Felix a hug each. ‘Wasn’t that great?’ she said with a big smile, her eyes really wide.
‘Yeah!’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. Felix just shrugged and grunted.
‘And wasn’t it great seeing what I do for a living? Wasn’t it cool?’
‘Just great,’ Felix said, and he got into the car and left us to it.
‘So what do you think?’ Livia went on. ‘Am I a superstar or not?’
‘You’re great,’ I said, copying her and Felix. ‘Ah, thank you, Stan,’ she said. ‘You’re the sweetest.’ Then she gripped hold of my shoulder and looked right into my eyes. ‘Hey, Stan, have you still got your girlfriend? Are you still seeing the lovely Jess?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You know . . .’
‘All the ladies love Stan the Man.’
I did a fake laugh. ‘I’d better go. They’re waiting for me.’
‘OK , babe.’
On the way home in the car, Felix was being super mean and rude to me again, saying that everyone had been laughing at me and when I said my lines I sounded like a zombie chipmunk, and in the end his mum told him off.
