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doesn’t know there’s a training program for sidekicks being run out of the basement of a neighborhood middle school. “Your identity is your most important possession,” Mr. Masters is constantly reminding us. Of course we don’t own magic watches, so maybe he’s right.
    Though it has the same cement walls as the rest of the school, the Highview basement looks more like something out of a science-fiction film. Filled with the kind of technology that would make FBI agents drool, with monitors and tracking devices and lasers and satellite imaging equipment, all state of the art, and all for a group of kids barely in their teens. A basement I have been coming to for about a year now. Ever since I promised to uphold the Code.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 1.   A SIDEKICK MUST ALWAYS USE HIS POWERS IN THE SERVICE OF JUSTICE AND HONOR, TO DEFEND THE GREATER GOOD AND TO HELP THOSE IN NEED .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 2.   A SIDEKICK MUST NEVER SAY OR DO ANYTHING TO COMPROMISE HIS SUPER’S SECRETS OR HIS OWN .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 3.   A SIDEKICK MUST NOT ENDANGER THE LIVES OF INNOCENTS AND SHOULD NEVER TAKE A LIFE SO LONG AS THERE IS ANY OTHER RECOURSE .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â 4.   A SIDEKICK IS SWORN TO ACCOMPANY HIS SUPER IN ALL ACTS OF HEROISM, TO PROTECT HIS SUPER WHEN THE OCCASION ARISES, TO WALK THE PATH THAT HIS SUPER SETS FORTH, AND TO TRUST IN HIS SUPER ABOVE ALL ELSE.
    The Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct. That’s it hanging on the back wall, engraved in stone and illuminated by a single fluorescent light. The four simple rules we all promised to play by when we joined. Our shalts and shalt nots. Like the Girl Scout motto or the Pledge of Allegiance or the four or five commandments from the Bible that people still pay attention to. The thing has been around for ages. I read the last one again to myself as I enter the room. Above all else . Even above a swimming pool full of acid, apparently.
    Compared to the Code, the H.E.R.O. program is pretty new. In the past, Supers who were interested in taking on an apprentice usually went out and found one themselves. A traveling circus, an orphanage that mysteriously burns down, a bus full of tweens that takes a wrong turn and plows into a toxic waste dump—all prime opportunities for recruiting a sidekick. But over time, Supers started complaining that sidekicks took too much time to train and ended up being more trouble than they were worth. Like the Sparrow, who accidentally hit “accelerate” rather than “override” on the conveyor his Super was chained to at the meat processing plant, sending Nighthawk to a too-early retirement. Or Velocigirl, who ran away from her first fight so fast that the resulting sonic boom caused Mr. Molecular to lose his balance and fall right into the clutches of Professor Von Callous. In fact, there was a whole string of incidents involving rookie sidekicks who couldn’t cut it. Hence the need, Mr. Masters said, for apprenticeship programs to help us learn to control our powers and acquire a few of the more rudimentary skills—basic tumbling, self-defense, mind control resistance—so that when we eventually did pair up with our Supers, we wouldn’t always lead them into traps.
    I’m not quite there yet. Jenna is. Maybe Eric. Gavin, I guess, except he’s only been working with his Super for a month or so. The truth is, we aren’t ready for the front lines. Unlike our mentors, we aren’t supposed to be chasing down the bad guys. Our job is to learn: to master our powers, to follow orders, to work as a team.
    And to keep a secret.
    Someday, Mr. Masters says, the time will come when each of us will stand back-to-back with his or her Super, twin beacons of light in the darkness, providing the great fuzzy comforter of justice that the ordinary citizens of the world snuggle up with at night. We will fight side by side against the forces of evil,