Captain Superlative!: Chapters 12–17

Oh, sure, I’d signed on to this crusade under the velvety cover of a dark Friday night, but in the clear light of day, there was an opportunity before me to back out.

I gave Captain Superlative a skeptical look, though. “Isn’t it a little late for these? The test is today.”
“It’s never too late!” she said.

Shrugging, I took my stack and started to hand out the guides. For a few minutes, it was surprisingly uneventful, anticlimactic. Even a little boring.
Then I heard it.
Dagmar’s voice seared through the morning buzz.

Shrugging, I took my stack and started to hand out the guides. For a few minutes, it was surprisingly uneventful, anticlimactic. Even a little boring.
Then I heard it.
Dagmar’s voice seared through the morning buzz.

The aristocratic sneer on her face was exaggerated by the bright red of her lipstick.

“That’s not true,” Captain Superlative said. “Really, it’s just that you don’t want our help. And that’s okay. You’re a straight-A student. You’ll probably ace the test. But if anyone else wants a guide, they’re more than welcome to have one.”
I’m not sure who was more thrown by Captain Superlative’s placid reply—me or April or Dagmar.

A chorus of follow-up thank-yous sounded off. Yesterday’s test had been brutal, and a lot of the trick questions had been in the study guide. Who could remember that the ancient Athenian marketplace was called an agora?

“Janey, the Greek goddess of social studies.”
“I don’t know about that....”
“Are you kidding? Without you, I would have said Feta Cheese was the name of the temple at the top of the Acropolis.”

“We complement each other nicely,” she said as we left one table of grateful kids studying for a quiz.

I found myself feeling giddy with excitement when I told my dad about my adventures.

“Not that superheroes should expect rewards,” he warned me as we got into the car.
“I know, Dad.”
“They’re not in it for the money or the product endorsements.”

Captain Superlative came loping over to us from another table, where she’d been helping some sixth graders with math.

I hadn’t realized how much goodwill Captain Superlative had built in the school so quickly.

She puffed out her chest a little, eyes gleaming underneath her mask. “Yeah. Because you know that you can’t pick up more than me before we get to your apartment.”
I immediately knew what she was doing. And I wasn’t about to let her goad me into it. “I have longer arms,” I replied with a dismissive shrug. “I can hold more stuff.”

She lurched forward for an abandoned coffee cup with the name Mark written on the side.

The wind swept my hair back from my face, exposing my neck and shoulders. With every step, I felt myself becoming lighter. The world had relinquished its hold on me, and I knew that any second I’d be in the stratosphere, bound for the stars.

He and Captain Superlative struck up an animated conversation about their favorite superheroes (my dad liked Batman, Captain Superlative liked Hawkgirl, but they both agreed that Spider-Man was terrific).

“I could start you off easy?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about peaceful?”
“Peaceful...pleasant?”
“That’s a good one!” I said, giving her a grin. “Then I would say something like pacifying.”

As I started to draw a silhouette of a cupid with a bow and arrow, I watched Captain Superlative work.

That made us laugh. A lot. We were seized with fits so wild and uncontrolled that Selina gave up on waiting for us to calm down and indignantly jumped from the bed to my desk with narrowed green eyes.

“This means war!” She grabbed a handful of hearts and threw them back at me. Not one to be bombarded or outdone, I started throwing them back, and between the two of us, we made a pretty fantastic mess.

Paige was startled, flustered that the most popular boy in school was talking to her, let alone helping her.
Tyler was blissfully oblivious to her astonishment.

Paige glanced down at them, a little bit self-conscious. “They’re my sister’s,” she said, muttering to the earth.
“Well, your sister has great taste.”

I opened the door for Kevin, who was finally out of the wheelchair and wobbling on crutches. “Be careful!” I called after him, eyeing the icy walkway nervously.
Two sixth graders scurried over, flanking Kevin’s sides, their hands ready to catch him if he slipped.

Almost as an afterthought, I called, “Have a good afternoon, citizens!” It felt like something Captain Superlative would have said. Although she would have made it sound better.

But she hadn’t made it Tuesday. Or Monday. “That doesn’t sound like her,” I said, the creep of unease rising in my chest.
“No?”
“Not really.”
“No rest for the righteous, huh?”
“Something like that.”

I was always asking to hang out after school. She was always deflecting my question with one excuse or another. She was busy. She had a headache. She had to be “somewhere.”

I stood at the spot where the sidewalk met the driveway, staring up at the small, squat redbrick home. There were two windows over the garage. The curtains—an inexplicable neon shade of green—were drawn. I knew that Captain Superlative was in that room.

The Li house was all straight lines and even spaces, from the way the art was hung on the walls to the arrangement of the furniture. She led me through a living room with carefully placed furniture to an immaculately clean kitchen—one that smelled faintly of ginger.

I didn’t like tea, but I managed to swallow it down, scalding my tongue a little.

Larger-than-life superheroes stood with their hands on their hips, their chests open and exposed, their chins raised in defiance.

Outside of the yearbook pictures and the photo album, it was the first time I’d seen Caitlyn Li’s face. She didn’t exactly look like the pictures. Her face was gaunt, the lines of her cheeks curving inward slightly, giving her cheekbones an angular quality.

“Tell you what?” Her voice was wary. As well it should have been.
“You know what.”
I half expected her to squirm and claim she had no idea. People did that sometimes. It was to be expected. But what she said was even more infuriating. “It just didn’t come up.”

“Tell you what?” Her voice was wary. As well it should have been.
“You know what.”
I half expected her to squirm and claim she had no idea. People did that sometimes. It was to be expected. But what she said was even more infuriating. “It just didn’t come up.”

“You should have told me!” I made a futile, useless gesture, as though I wanted to hit something. But there was nothing to hit.
“Well, I’m sorry.”

I kicked one of the comic books on the floor, glaring at it.

I was nine years old again, trying to understand what my life was without my mother. Nothing felt right. As if I had to relearn how to do everything, to compensate for that lost presence.
She’s gone.
It was happening again. Captain Superlative would leave another void.

And it was all her fault. It was the sick, twisted legacy she’d cursed me with, without my realizing it. The isolation I’d once feared from my mother’s death was going to be Caitlyn Li’s doing instead.
When she left me.

Caitlyn leaned back against her pillows, looking incredibly serene, if not a little pink in the face. “Who are you, Janey?” she asked me.

I had been alone before. Alone and invisible. But things were different now.
I hated different.
Defective.
Deranged.
Doomed.