Wonder Guy Read Online Free Page A

and debris swirled along his path. As it was, he made it down the alley before taking a single breath. He grinned. He hadn’t felt so foolishly proud of himself since he caught the dodge ball at a crucial moment in a middle school game, winning for his side.
    No time to savor the feeling. He put on his brakes, but stopping proved trickier than anticipated.
    Oh crap! His momentum carried Greg past his feet and sent him tumbling into a somersault. Asphalt, garages, dumpsters and fenced yards seemed to whirl around him until he slid to rest, breathless and flat on his back, where the alley joined the cross street. He’d have skinned himself to the bone on the gravel and crumbling asphalt if his costume and gloves hadn’t proved so resistant to damage. The Hanson’s ginger cat, Max, looked down at him from between the slats of their fenced yard, clearly not impressed with Greg’s athletic prowess.
    “Like you’d do better your first time out,” he told the sole witness to his fall, as embarrassed as if Max might spread the story. For a moment he lay still and gathered his rattled bones and rattled thoughts.
    Brushing himself off, he rose to his feet by careful stages. He looked around to check out the cross street before going further. Not much traffic. Good. The fewer witnesses or obstacles, the better.
    Greg darted down the road. Kind of fun, the wind in his face, the world spinning by so fast he might achieve escape velocity, outrun the wind or chase down his dreams. Pounding rock ‘n roll played on his mental radio. Exhilarated, he ran circles around a squirrel daring to cross the street. He’d probably busted all the land speed records for a man on foot, without even pushing himself. He’d come a mile in no more than a few seconds. Maybe that really would impress Gloria.
    He stopped again, taking care to decelerate gradually as he reached Lyndale Avenue, where he stood for a moment and looked up and down the street. Long past rush hour, the few cars on the road moved at a steady clip. A young woman walked her standard poodle around a corner, leaving no pedestrians in sight. He may as well go all out, see what was capable of at full throttle.
    Greg ran down the deserted bike lane at first, but, as he pressed for his top speed, it seemed as if everything moving around him stood still. He ran rings around a cyclist and must have been only a blur to the helmeted rider, like being invisible, like the world belonged to him to do with as he wished–a heady rush of power.
    A child dropped a fast food wrapper out the rear window of a family sedan. Littering constituted criminal activity, all right. A chance to apply his superpowers for the greater good. Greg snatched up the crumpled scrap and popped it back in through the passenger window onto the lap of the man seated there and made it halfway down the next block before anyone would have had time to notice his passing.
    Ahead, off to the side of the road, under one of the maples lining every street, he spotted movement, a cat twisting in midair. An open-mouthed teenaged girl stood nearby, alarm widening her eyes. Never fear, citizens, Speedy-Greg to the rescue!
    Greg hardly paused as he scooped the animal deftly out of the air and deposited it gently on its feet, then ran off before teen or cat reacted. The small act left him with a warm glow. Maybe the cat would have landed on its feet regardless of his intervention, but he’d made sure of its safe landing, and made the day that much better for the teen and the cat alike.
    Buildings, cars and people became a blur as he rushed on. He rolled the world away under his pounding-along-at-blurring-speed feet. It had only been a couple minutes since he’d left the alley and he’d already crossed 494 into Richfield.
    Amazingly, he wasn’t even breathing hard, but he needed some goggles and his jaw burned from the wind. At this rate, he’d be in Burnsville in another couple minutes. Fascinating. His perceptions must have sped