Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

Friday night came sooner than I expected. I told my parents I was going over to Mylana’s after dinner, and that I wouldn’t be long. I was only going to be at Fiona’s party for about ten minutes, I hoped. I had the address in my phone, using the GPS to tell me how to walk there from Mylana’s house where my parents dropped me. I was sure I would get home in one piece after all this.

But when Mylana and I arrived at the party, all hell was loose. Disco lights were shining all over the place, like a nightclub. Someone set up a stereo sound system hooked up to an iPod, playing loud hip hop music on a playlist. There were couples making out in the living room, some guys setting up a beer can wall by the stairs, and a guy was climbing the wall like Spiderman before he jumped off and fell on the beer can wall, smashing the cans to pieces. People cheered.

I looked at Mylana and said, “We’re only going to be here for a short time before the cops bust the party, ok?”

“Are you kidding me?” Mylana said. “This party is off the hook! We’re staying all night!”

“Yeah, well, I promised mom and dad I’d be home in about an hour or two,” I said. “So I’m leaving in about ten to twenty minutes.”

“Are you crazy?” she said. “Fiona invited you to an exclusive party for us freshmen and you want to go home? Why? You’re finally getting popular!”

“Popularity isn’t everything,” I said. “I’m only here to do one job, and that’s to tell Tom I’m not going to the dance with him.”

Someone skateboarded past us through the hall, jumping through the doorway and almost running into us. “Whatever, I’m staying,” Mylana said, and she went to the kitchen to grab a drink.

Fiona’s house was pretty huge. Her parents must have been loaded. The house itself wasn’t anything like mine, for my house was kind of small and cramped with practically a piece of paper for a wall between my brother’s room and mine. Fiona’s house on the other hand was twice as big, like one of those big farm houses in the middle of a rural town. They had a swimming pool in the back, where people were diving into and throwing all kinds of junk into it. I was pretty sure someone might have vomited in that pool, to be honest, and it needed to be thoroughly cleaned. I loved swimming, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to go swimming in a stranger’s pool, especially since I didn’t have a bathing suit. I wasn’t sure I had a bathing suit that still fit me. The kitchen had a rack for bottles of wine and a wine fridge where they kept champagne and other wines, but I was surprised nobody touched that. There was also a great big plastic cooler on the table, filled with ice and bottles of beer. There were also some bottles of hard liquor, like whiskey and vodka, on the kitchen counter, next to the two liter bottles of soda to mix them with. Upstairs, I was pretty sure Fiona had her bedroom, her parents’ bedrooms, and some guest rooms for whenever they had company over, but they were probably taken by romantic couples wanting some privacy.

I really did not like this, especially if these people were about to trash the place with their party.

A puff of smoke flowed into my eyes. It stunk of sweet smelling vapor. I coughed. Someone was smoking out of one of those electrical vaporizers. I waved my hand in front of my face as I made my way through the lounge, where a whole bunch of people were smoking their vapes. I knew a vape was pretty good at helping people quit smoking cigarettes, but this was ridiculous. It reeked worse than a bar back when it was ok to smoke indoors at restaurants a long time ago. Though it was currently illegal to smoke indoors, I could still smell the smoke in the walls of places that were starting to become smoke free. Some people were still smoking cigarettes, and some people were smoking cigars from the case over by the table next to the bookshelf. Either way, I hated the smell, I almost choked.

Some of the kids were shooting pool at the pool table there, having a good time while smoking and drinking their beers and cocktails. I did not like this scene and thankfully, Tom wasn’t there anyway, so I left. When I turned around, Fiona was right there, smiling at me and wearing a frilly purple and black dress. She took my hand.

“Hey, you made it!” she chimed. “Come on, let me introduce you to everybody!”

As she pulled me away from the lounge and towards the non-smoking area in the living room, I said, “Maybe you can point me in the right direction of a certain guy I’m looking for?”

“Why would you need to see a certain guy?” Fiona said, spinning around to me. “There are plenty of cute guys you could go for! There are even some guys in college who are here! College guys are awesome, and they’re legal to drink!”

“Yeah, well, I don’t really want to drink at all until I’m 21,” I said. “You can rely on me being here for ten minutes, before the cops arrive to bust the party.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Come on, Violet! Take it all in! My parents are never at home, anyway. Besides, you’re popular, Violet! You’re one of the most hottest girls in school! Why would you want to throw that away?”

“There are more things to life other than partying,” I said. “I’m looking for a guy named Tom, have you seen him?”

“You mean the guy people have been saying was my ex boyfriend?” she said. “He wasn’t even my boyfriend to begin with. I thought I didn’t invite him because he’s trying to win the title of prom king our senior year. That is, if we did have a prom.”

“You guys don’t have a prom?” I said. “No superhero prom at all?!”

“That’s correct. We never had a superhero prom, or just a regular high school prom at all.”

“That sucks!”

“I know.” She brushed a piece of her dyed hair out of her face. “I’ve been trying to get the student body to start a prom, but they won’t listen to me. They’d rather listen to Tom.”

“Why? You’re the most popular girl in school. They should listen to you.”

The guy with the iPod played a thumping song that got everyone jumping to it in the living room. It started to get crowded and hard to concentrate. “I know I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but,” Fiona started to tell me. Then someone started jumping around us, bouncing his knees next to us.

“Yeah, Fiona!” the guy shouted. “Hottest girl in school with another hot chick! Yeah!”

More guys started jumping in and dancing around us, but Fiona seized my arm and found a hole to break us away from the circle of stupid drunk guys. She dragged me until we were outside, safe out of harm’s way over by the pool where some guys were jumping in with inflatable guitars and seahorses. It was a little quieter out there than in the house, so at least we could breathe out there.

“Ok, look, Tom and I weren’t really a couple,” Fiona began. “That was just his way of getting closer to you.”

“Why does he want to get closer to me?” I asked.

“Because he has a plan for when the September Ball gets here,” she said. “This is just one of his things that he’s arranged with me and some other guys to get you to come here. I don’t know why he’s being secretive about what’s about to happen at the dance, but apparently, it has to do with the student council.”

“Wait, you mean he’s president of the student body because he’s trying to get to me?” I said.

“For some reason, yes,” Fiona said. “Basically, since my parents are never at home, he’s using my house party as a way to bring you here, and to get closer to you. It’s a distraction from everybody at school to what he really wants to do with you tonight. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I have to tell you… don’t get too close to him.”

“Why?”

Fiona opened her mouth to tell me something, maybe about this sinister plan that Tom had going on at school, but then a voice called out and said, “Violet! You made it!”

I turned around to find Tom, completely shirtless and wearing nothing but jeans and Chuck Taylors. He looked hot without his shirt, those abs looking ripped like an Abercrombie model. All of Fiona’s warnings faded away when I saw him. “I thought you weren’t coming to this party,” he said.

“Well, Fiona kind of invited me,” I said with a smile. “So what are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. “But I guess you’ve already answered my question. Do you want to go swimming?”

“Actually, I didn’t know there was going to be a pool,” I said. “I didn’t bring my bathing suit.”

“That’s ok. I didn’t bring mine either.”

I stared at him, practically drooling at him. He was coming on to me and I knew it. But then I had to come back to earth and wipe that grin off my face when Fiona said, “Well, I guess I’ll leave you two alone for right now.”

“Yeah, good idea, Fiona,” Tom said. When Fiona left, he turned back to me. “You know what, forget the swimming. I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” I said.

He looked around over his shoulders. Chaos was pretty much everywhere. And there was probably no place for us to talk alone in one of the bedrooms upstairs in the house. So he said, “Actually, I was wondering if there was someplace away from all of this where we could be alone.”

I took a moment to think about it, then I said, “I know just the place.”

I knew this secret hideaway that wasn’t too far from Fiona’s house. Every now and then, my dad would take me and my brother there to hide from evildoers whenever something bad happened and we were too young to stay in the house alone while our parents fought in the battles. It was my dad’s secret headquarters, where he kept his special computers and his Giga Man outfits protected from the world. There was also a very cool car down there in the secret garage out back, but since Alex was born, my dad rarely drove it. I supposed he’d give it to me as a 16th birthday present when it was my time to save the world. It looked like a silver Aston Martin roadster, like the ones Daniel Craig drove in the James Bond movies, but it was also part Batmobile with the fins coming out of it. It went from zero to sixty five in three seconds flat. My dad was very proud of it. The place was very spacious with computer screens everywhere. And I knew the cameras were turned off so we were completely alone right there.

“Wow,” Tom said when I showed him inside and we both climbed down the underground ladder. “So this is your dad’s secret hideout?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” I said. “This is where my dad gets all his missions. It’s his command center, for the most part. And this is where he hides me and my brother in case something bad should happen.”

“This is awesome,” he said. Then he went to one of the swivel chairs, sat in it, and spun around. He then rolled the chair to me, pushing off from the control board. He grabbed me by the hand and forced me to sit on his lap. I let out a yelp and laughed.

He looked me in the eyes and said, “I think you’re awesome.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I guess it comes from loads of practice over the years. But if you really knew my parents, they’re even cooler than me.”

“Oh yeah? Giga Man and Silent Wave? They’re the guys I met at that restaurant we went to, right?”

“Exactly. They’re like the most awesome parents ever. But you know, I’m never going to be as cool as them, let alone my Aunt Betsy, who saves the environment from global warming.”

He gave me a smoldering look and said, “No way, I think you’d be even more amazing than your parents ever will be. You practically don’t need them as much as you need me. You could even drop out of school and learn to be a hero on your own instead of relying on teachers. You can control your powers real easy.”

Taken aback, I looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, well, I like Falcon High. It’s a good school, and I’m still adjusting to having my powers. I got my powers only a couple weeks ago when I was going to a civilian school. I thought I would never get my powers and end up like Mary Jane Watson, or one of those normal damsels in distress. That’s why I want to stay. I want to learn to fly.”

He shrugged and said, “I can teach you to fly. That’s a no brainer. You’ll be flying once I show you.”

“Really?” I said. “How so?”

He smiled that sexy grin at me. “Like this…”

He kissed me right then and I felt myself giving in. It felt like I was melting in front of him as I kissed him back. I guess this was what it was like to be falling in love. I felt myself getting excited when he started putting his tongue in my mouth. Woah. What a feeling. I put my arms around him as he put his hands in my hair, and I was lost in his gentle kisses.

He pulled away and whispered, “You are so beautiful.”

As soon as we were kissing again, I could have sworn I heard something or someone come in. I had my eyes closed, so I didn’t see who it was. Then I heard a voice. I could have sworn I knew who that voice was coming from, but I didn’t know.

All I knew was I heard it say, “I can’t believe she fell for it. Everything’s going according to plan! Ha ha ha ha ha…”

So I stopped kissing him and said, “Did you hear something?”

He gave me a weird look. “No. Why?”

“I thought I heard someone say, ‘I can’t believe she fell for it.’”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “I didn’t hear anything like that. Are you sure?”

“I’m positive I thought I heard someone say that,” I said.

“You’re probably hearing things,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you do know about my powers, right?”

“I know that you can freeze stuff, yeah,” he said. “Is there something else I don’t know?”

“I can also hear thoughts,” I said.

He looked at me with a slightly timid expression. “You’re telepathic?”

“Yeah, that one time in battle class when Jeremy was choking me, I told him to stop using my thoughts. In my head, I practically screamed at him to let me go, and he heard me.”

“Wow, impressive,” he said. “I didn’t know you had that much power in you.”

“I didn’t know I could do that either,” I said. “I thought it was just hearing people’s thoughts and memories while I was in class the day I got my powers. But then I started learning how to control it.”

“That’s cool.”

I didn’t hear another single thing coming from his mind, but it bothered me that the thought of things going according to plan was probably coming from him. It worried me. I hoped I was wrong about it all and it was enough to give me another headache.

But then Tom brought me back when he said, “I know. You probably need to go home and sleep on it. This is too much to take in.”

“Yeah, really good idea, thank you,” I said in relief.

“So, you can find your way home, yeah?” he said. “This is your dad’s secret place, right? And your house isn’t too far away from home, is it?”

You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. I assumed he was going to take me home! Be a gentleman for once!

“I really don’t want to miss the party anyway,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

I was stunned. He’d rather go to the party and stay than help me get home. What a jerk! “Nope, I’ll be fine on my own,” I said. “Hopefully I can find Mylana and bring her home.”

“I’ve got it covered,” he said. “I’ll get her home myself. You go take care of yourself and get home safe.”

Oh, it’s ok to take Mylana home, but you won’t take care of me?! You’re pathetic!

We both got up from the chair as I followed him to the ladder. “Well, goodnight,” he said. And he went up the ladder and went back to the party, while I looked around dad’s lair and made sure someone didn’t take anything. Honestly, I was kind of glad Tom was gone, because then my plan became perfectly clear. Tom was pathetic as a boyfriend. He was popular, sure, but he wasn’t good enough for someone. No wonder Fiona never dated him. But I still wanted to know why they had to lie to everyone at school for being a couple. There had to be something going on at school I didn’t know about. I had to find out somehow.

And then I realized something awful. I didn’t get that sick feeling in my stomach around Tom Larkin at all. I only got that feeling when I was with Jeremy. Along with the stomach thing, my heart pounded whenever I saw him. Other times, I felt like myself when I was around him, and he appreciated me for being the girl who used to be a civilian until I got my powers. He also liked that I wasn’t like my aunt at all, for I defended myself and I was very careful about using my powers around him in battle class. He liked the fact that my aunt originally meant no harm when she inadvertently killed his dad in school.

I didn’t love Tom at all. I loved Jeremy.

And he practically hated me for trusting Tom Larkin.

I couldn’t wait to get home to fix all of this. Then again, it was very late at night and I’ll bet my parents were really mad at me for staying out too late.

As I walked home, the night was very peaceful. It was a good thing I knew my way back home, because dad showed me a few times how to get back home from his lair. I was a little scared what my parents were going to think when I got home that night. Then again, they were probably home sleeping and I could just sneak in, go to bed, and just explain to them that I was out with Mylana until morning, like a sleep over.

But when I got home, my parents were there waiting for me, sitting at the kitchen table with their arms crossed. They both got up and looked at me with dark, aggravated expressions.

“It’s almost one in the morning,” dad said, drumming his fingers against his arm. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I told you I was out at Mylana’s,” I said. “I just lost track of time and I realized I was out too late. I’m really tired and I need to go to bed.”

“You were never at her house that late, unless it was a sleepover,” mom said. “What happened?”

“I stayed out a little too long and I fell asleep while studying,” I lied. “I promised I’d be back by ten or eleven, but I fell asleep at her place and I forgot to call. So I came right home.”

My mom gave me a cold stare. I could almost feel her slipping into my head when she did that. Then with her mind, she said, You’re lying to me. Don’t you dare lie to your own mother.

I’m sorry, I said telepathically.

“Where were you, really?” mom said aloud.

I put my head down and confessed. “Mylana took me to this party at a girl’s house.” I looked up at them and nearly yelled the truth at them. “But I was only there a few hours! I came straight home, I didn’t drink or smoke anything there! I’m completely sober, I promise!”

My mom came over and sniffed my clothes. “You smell like tobacco smoke.”

“Because I went into a part of Fiona’s house where they were smoking! I didn’t try anything, I swear! Look!”

I turned out my pockets and showed them that my jean pockets were empty. I had absolutely no lighters, matches, or cigarettes I took from the party. Then I said, “If I had started a smoking habit, I would still be coughing and you know that! You know I hate the smell of smoke, tobacco or vapes, I hate them both.”

Mom backed away and said, “She’s telling the truth, dear.”

Dad then walked up to me and said, “Do you know how worried we were tonight? Do you have any idea? Mylana isn’t even home yet and her parents are throwing a shit fit. They thought she was staying at our house for the night. And do you know where we found you before you came home?”

I shook my head in terror.

“We found you kissing some punk in my secret office!” dad yelled. “MY OFFICE!”

“Honey, please don’t get angry at your daughter like that,” mom said, consoling him with a hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry, dear,” dad said, backing off. He stood back with his arms still crossed and said, “From now on, you are going to tell us where you’re going at all times.”

“Ok, I won’t lie to you again,” I said.

“Good,” dad said. “Because from right now, you’re grounded for two weeks.”

My eyes widened in shock. “What?!”

“You’re not allowed to go anywhere with Mylana or any of your new friends again without our express permission.”

I started panicking. “But the September Ball is next weekend! I promised someone I’d be there Friday night!”

“No, I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “You’re not going to that dance. You’re going to come straight home from school every night and you’re not leaving this house for anything else for two weeks. And your mother will make sure that you get home from school and stay home. If you sneak out of the house… I will find out.”

“Now, honey, I think you’re being a little too hard on her,” mom said. “You can’t just prevent her from going to the school dance, this is her first year at Falcon High! You’ve got to give her a chance at getting the full high school experience.”

“I’m still not letting her make out with some punk who can stretch himself like a rubber band,” dad snapped.

“I know, I know,” mom said quietly. “But you’ve got to go easy on her. I only have half a mind for her not to go to the dance. But I don’t think we should be too hard on her and keep her here the night of the ball. Don’t you want to see her get married when she’s grown up? To a nice boy? Maybe she has someone different in mind to go to the dance with, not the guy you saw kissing her on your surveillance camera.”

I sighed. “It’s ok, mom,” I said. “I’m not going anyway. I’m going to dump the guy anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” mom said.

“Well, the guy you saw me with, Tom Larkin, I kind of see why he wouldn’t be a good guy to go out with anyway,” I said. “He’s really popular, but I think I read his mind, and I think he’s got something nasty up his sleeve to hurt me or something. Also, there’s this other guy at school, and I think I may have hurt his feelings, so I’m guessing he hates me now. And I just realized he’s had a crush on me since my first day at Falcon. He actually used to be an enemy of mine, but now I get this sick feeling in my stomach when I’m around him that my heart flips over or something. I don’t know how to describe it. But anyway, even if I do ask him out to the September Ball, I know he’ll say no because he hates me now and he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Mom took a deep breath and put her hands down. “You said he had feelings for you?”

“Yes.”

“And you like him?”

“Kind of. I don’t really know what it is. The nurse called it falling in love, but I don’t believe her. I have no idea.”

In that second after those words came out of me, my mom went over and gave me a hug. I was shocked. My mom was hugging me. Then she pulled back and said, “You are falling in love, just with a different guy than the one you were with tonight. If you feel this way about him, you have to tell him how you feel. Tell him everything.”

“But mom, he doesn’t want to talk to me,” I said.

“I know, but guess what, you’re giving him time over the weekend to think, so the next time you see him, the ball is in your court. You have to apologize to him for what you did and tell him that you’ll make it up to him by going with him to the dance. It’s ok to be a little confused, but you can’t just keep yourself in the dark, always wondering what if. You need to talk to him and tell him the truth that you like him. Do it as soon as you see him in class on Monday.”

“That’s really good advice, mom, but I don’t think he’ll believe me.”

“Time heals. I’m sure he’ll believe you if he still has feelings for you. Don’t let him out of your sight and don’t let him get away.”

“That worked for you and dad, but I know it sure as hell won’t work for me. Besides, it’s the twenty first century. Times have changed since you guys were found in that lab. It’s not going to work for me.”

“Why not?” mom said.

I pushed past her and said, “Because you weren’t born with powers and I am.”