Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

The morning after I got kicked out of Falcon High, I thought I had a breakthrough. I may not have gotten into the school my parents wanted me to attend, but I might have found a way to get in without having any powers.

Dr. Stephen Strange lost his doctoring abilities in a car accident where he lost the control of his hands. But when he went to Nepal, he not only gained control of his hands again, he also learned the special powers in the mystic arts to protect the world from evil.

Bruce Wayne suffered the loss of his parents and a fear of bats until he learned martial arts and combat and later still developed his own weapons and a cool car. He never had any superpowers when he eventually became Batman; he could kick some thieving butt anytime he wanted. I guess that’s why I always liked Batman more than Iron Man. If you took away Iron Man’s suit, Tony Stark would be just another whiny, rich celebrity with nothing to keep him from getting bruises all over his face.

Sadly, I didn’t suffer the same fate as the mighty Bruce Wayne, alias Batman, or Doctor Strange. My dad is Giga Man, the brawniest, fittest superhero with super strength and the power to leap over buildings and save people from destruction. My mom is Silent Wave, who has the power to read minds, become invisible, deploy forcefields, and kick bad guys into shape with her hand-to-hand combat. She’s also a therapist when she’s not kicking crime and dad is a computer tech consultant. My little brother Tony, who’s seven, has already developed my dad’s super strength, but I have failed to get a hold of any of my parents’ powers, not even my mother’s invisibility.

I can’t even begin to tell you how I wanted to be invisible. Some stupid kids called me insulting names such as “Little Miss Muffet” because my boobs didn’t come in until my fourteenth birthday. Plus, I haven’t gotten my period yet, even though I’m fourteen, and I was a fat kid in elementary school. I’m in my freshman year of high school, now, well, it would have been my freshman year at Falcon High, but the gym teacher there examining me and asking what my power was gave me a whole lot of smack. But I still can’t hide from my ridiculous brother who keeps calling me birth defect or hiding from any of the boys that gave me trouble all the way up through eighth grade.

“What’s your name?” he bellowed, towering over me. He was at least seven feet tall with long legs and x-ray vision. I could not compete with him since I was so short and demure compared to him.

“Jennifer,” I said, sitting back on the examination table. “Jennifer Harris.”

“It says here your name is Violet,” he said in his low voice.

“Yes it does, but I prefer the name Jennifer, long story,” I said.

He stared at my chart, flipping a couple pages here and there before looking down at me. “What’s your power?”

“Uhh…” I looked around at my surroundings. We were in Falcon High’s gym, which looked like a coliseum for battles or the Hunger Games, but divided into little sections of green curtains and examination tables like a triage in a hospital. There was no escaping this part of the application process, even if I had the sight to see my way through all the fixtures for this event. But it was this one gym teacher who had the x-ray vision, not me. So I said, “Could you give me a minute?”

“Listen, girlie,” he said, bending down to glare at me in the face at eye level. “I didn’t stay here for the weekend during the summer to wait around for you to get it together. Just shut up and power up so I can place you in the right class.”

I stammered. “Well, I uh… That’s the thing… I uh…” I whispered to him, “I don’t know what my power is.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know your powers?”

“Well, if you must know, my aunt on my mother’s side had the power to freeze stuff, but she preferred to not use her powers to defend human life. She decided to use her abilities to restore the ozone layer and save the polar bears. She’s always been the philanthropist, you know. So even if I had her powers, which I don’t, I probably wouldn’t show you what I would do with them unless I wanted to save the planet from global warming.”

“So let me get this straight, you won’t show me your powers just because you don’t want to?” said the giant gym teacher.

“No, I want to show you my powers,” I said. Then in a lower, quieter voice, I added, “I just don’t have any powers.”

“What did you say?” said the gym teacher.

“I said…”

Suddenly, the kid powering up next to me shook the whole floor. Everything vibrated, even the bleachers and the banners in front of me. For a second, I thought there was an earthquake, but then I remembered this was New Jersey, which only got damages from hurricanes, not earthquakes. That was California. The second the seismic activity stopped, someone on the opposite end of my quarters began forming tons of rocks that built up through the curtains and shoved against my table. Then a huge boulder came through and nearly crushed me and the teacher.

“Shove it back!” gym teacher shouted.

The moment the boulder was right up against my nose, I said, “Are you insane?”

The rocks stopped coming, but the gym teacher wouldn’t stop yelling at me. “But what about your dad? Wouldn’t he give you his strength, if you have his genes?”

“I don’t care what genes I have!” I said. “I can’t pound any rocks like my dad does! Nor can I read minds like my mother!”

“So you can turn invisible and make force fields?” said giant gym teacher man.

“No! I can’t!”

“Then what’s your power?”

I sighed. “I don’t have one.”

The tall guy rolled his eyes and looked down on me, shaking his head. “Harris. Violet Harris. You poor thing. CIVILIAN!”

His booming voice on the word civilian shook the rest of the room so much that it almost shattered the glass windows. But it didn’t happen. I thought it would for a second. Either way, everyone heard it. As soon as I left, people were snickering around me almost as if they were gossiping again that I was never going to set foot on their grounds ever again. But everyone shut up when I saw this one kid with shaggy blond hair parting the crowd and giving me a cold stare. His hazel eyes bore into me as he walked by and strode to his motorbike in the parking lot. I had no idea who he was, but something told me he was another person who hated me, just like the rest of the school.

But all of that was about to change when I got up this morning. Over the past month of July, I’ve tried and tried to develop my own maneuvering contraptions to make me do things that were equal to superhuman capabilities. I thought flying was out of the question, since I couldn’t do it in my room, nor could I do it outside for the neighbors to see me. I tried building up my upper arm strength by going to my dad’s local gym. (Rosie, who’s a good friend of my dad’s, loves it when I walk in. She calls me his ‘little byte’.) But I still need to maybe come up with a super suit or some type of super glove that would mimic dad’s abilities. Mimicking mom’s abilities was tricky, since I couldn’t read minds nor could I make a forcefield to save my life.

So, I decided to borrow a couple of fire extinguishers that dad had hidden in the basement (my dad has at least a hundred of these, thanks to his deal with the fire department) and made my own fire extinguishing pumps, attached to my arms.

If this didn’t work out, I could always enter it into the science fair.

In the comfort of my own bedroom, I aimed the fire hydrants at the stack of teen magazines my mom gave me for every Christmas and birthday since I was in sixth grade. I always hated those things as much as I hated the celebrities featured in them, particularly One Direction and Demi Lovato. I blame Demi for ruining one of my favorite Fall Out Boy songs, which is why I can’t listen to the radio anymore. I figured I could easily aim it at something flammable, especially since it was paper and I didn’t mind ruining it. I didn’t have a lighter or a match to set it on fire; after all, I didn’t want to accidentally set the whole room on fire. I had already pulled the pins on both extinguishers, so there needed no preparation for those things strapped to my arms. They were ridiculously heavy, though.

I attached a button to both of my hands, which when pressed set off the levers to release the noxious fumes that would smother the magazines in front of me. My CD player continued to play Walk the Moon on the stereo. I took a deep breath in and fired the tanks. But the force was so strong that I couldn’t hold both of them steady; the force knocked me over and the fumes went everywhere all over the walls. The magazines became frosted over, but so did my dresser, a little, or maybe a lot.

I released the buttons as the fire extinguishers fell out of their ropes with a clank. Gah! One of them stubbed me on my toe. I hopped on one foot until I fell onto my bed. That was when mom heard me.

“Violet? Are you all right in there?”

I struggled to get my robe on and stashed the fire extinguishers under my bed with the others. I would soon put them all back as soon as my parents were out of the house sometime this weekend. I figured the city of Metrocosma was going to give them the key to the city and hold a party in their honor for contributing their efforts to save the city from mass destruction. Mom has been talking about this party for months now.

The song on my stereo played on. Walk the Moon’s second album was so much better than their first, especially with the song playing now, “Sidekick”, merging superhero terms with falling in love.

“Violet?” mom called again. “Sweetie?”

She knocked on my door. I scrambled to the door and opened it behind me. My mom stood there with her hands on her hips like Wonder Woman, looking down at me with suspicious eyes, like I was the villain with something to hide.

“Sorry, mom,” I said. “Just warming up my powers, that’s all.”

“Good, that’s great,” mom said. “You do want to get a head start now that you’re attending my school.”

I chuckled. Easy for you to say. My brother only looked at me and laughed before mom went downstairs. Then I looked at him and said, “What’s so funny?”

“Big sis got no powers,” he said in a sing-song fashion.

“Shut up,” I growled.

“Well, you’re not going to super school!” he said. “I’m only saying it cause it’s true!”

“I said shut up, you little pest!” I growled again.

“You’re going to Generic with the dumb kids!”

“Enough, little brat! I’ll pound you!”

“With what? I’ll just punch it in your face! I can do that, you know, and you can’t!”

“All right chuckleheads,” dad called. “That’s enough. Get down here, breakfast is ready.”

We went downstairs for breakfast, which typically consisted of deli ham, banana, and wheat toast with juice. Mom was a total health nut, so she only bought food that was free of preservatives and low in fat. I just stuck to chocolate Cheerios for breakfast rather than just preservative free, low fat ham slices.

Dad was already dressed in his bright green Giga Man suit, but mom pulled him aside and said, “Dear, shouldn’t you get ready for work rather than saving the world? There are people in tech support who need saving too.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re right,” said dad, giving her a kiss. “What was I thinking in putting on this old thing?”

I placed the cereal box in front of my face to hide from dad. But then he grabbed it and said, “So what was that noise I heard upstairs? It sounded like there was a fire.”

“I’m fine, dad,” I said. I could have sworn my brother said under his breath, “Big sis is going to civilian school with the dummies!” But I ignored him.

“I know you’re fine, but I’m wondering if there was a fire, why didn’t the fire alarm go off? I could have handled it myself.”

“Honey, don’t worry yourself about it,” mom said, getting a glass of orange juice from the fridge. She patted him on the shoulder. “She was experimenting with her new powers so she can be ready for school.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry if you feel weird or upset about it. I know I was supposed to inherit mom’s powers, but somehow I got my aunt’s power to freeze stuff.”

“Don’t be ashamed of that, honey,” mom said. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of when you inherit anyone’s powers. You’re our daughter and that’s what matters.”

“Well, if you say so,” I said. My brother giggled. I threw my spoon at his face, but missed, so I grabbed another spoon from the table. I still wondered if dad fooled around with my mom’s sister and that’s how they got me. That never happened, though. I would have loved to have lived with my aunt Betsy, for she was the coolest person in my family with her comic book library, her movie and vinyl collections, and the way she saved the scientists in Antarctica one time last year.

Mom and dad sat down with their meals as my brother picked at his ham. “So, are you excited for your first day at Falcon?” said dad.

“I can walk you to the bust stop, if you like,” mom said.

“No, I don’t need anyone to walk me to the bus stop, mom,” I said.

“Oh, honey, don’t you remember your first day of kindergarten when you wouldn’t let go of my arm?”

“You had a pretty strong grip,” dad said.

“Mom! Dad!” I moaned. “I’m fourteen. I’m not a baby anymore.”

“Well, we won’t always be there to look after you,” dad said with a somber look on his face. “Who knows when I’ll be crushed to death with a robot hammer when I’m too old to go on.”

“It’s not going to happen,” mom said. “Not while I’m still breathing.”

“You’re too sweet, honey.” Then dad gave her a kiss. I could have sworn my brother looked the other way and went, “Ugh, yuck!” I guess that’s how seven-year-old boys are. They just don’t understand.

“So when do you start school?” dad said at last.

I knew that part already, which was the only truth I could tell them. I felt sick and awful about it, knowing I’d disappoint them anyway, even if they never found out that their daughter had no powers. Even if I did have them, I’d flunk out of school anyway. My family’s too perfect for me.

So I said, “Next Monday.”

I gave up on trying to make it into Falcon my first day of civilian school. There was no way I’d ever make it in.