Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

Every day, there’s a song that starts playing in my head in the morning when I get ready for school. When I started Generic High School, the first song that popped into my head was “All Star”. For some reason the first verse of the hand on a girl’s forehead giving an L for loser was on repeat.

As the Smash Mouth song played in my head, walking through the double doors of my new school was like walking in through the doors of a crowded mall food court. I remember how the movie Sky High started, where Will Stronghold doesn’t have any powers but ends up going to superhero high school anyway. He gets stuck in sidekick class with his nerdy friends until one day at lunch, he gets his father’s super strength and goes into hero class. I wish it could have been that easy, because finding new friends and a boyfriend in Generic was pretty much impossible.

I tried taking in the scenery, but with the crowds moving in from all sides, it was hard to see over the masses of people. Kids were moving this way and that; even a girl held her binder in the air over her head as she waded through the traffic. I didn’t know if my arms and legs could move through all of that; my bag of binders that my parents gave me was light but it weighed me down like a ton. But as I stood there, the crowds started moving against me. People were pushing and shoving me out of the way, some of them shouting, “Move, bitch!” I never felt so alone in my life.

Then someone pushed me to the ground and yelled, “Move it, dumb whore!” I looked up to see who it was, but people were coming from all sides and soon they would all step on me. Even some girl stepped on my hair and pulled out a chunk of it. I squealed with pain.

Finally, at long last, someone reached out with a hand in my face. “Get up,” he said.

I took his hand and stood as he pulled me away from the crowd. We were somewhere outside the school library, away from the heavy crowd where a scrawny girl with blond hair and glasses stood while holding a textbook about emergency medicine.

I sighed and looked up at the boy who took my hand. “Thanks for saving me,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I’m guessing you’re not used to high school.”

“Yeah, my parents and I just moved here and I’m a freshman.”

“It’s cool. I’m Steve, and this is Alice,” he said.

The girl named Alice stuck out a bony hand and smiled. Her teeth were perfectly straight like she had braces years ago. “Hi, you must be the new girl.”

“Yeah, I’m Jennifer,” I said.

“So how come we haven’t seen you until now?” she said.

“I was going to go to a different school, but they didn’t accept me,” I said.

“Was it a magnet school?” Steve said.

I thought about it for a moment, but I figured I wouldn’t tell them right away about my family. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

The TV station cut to the news channel where people were watching the morning show being aired live from Metrocosma, and my mom was standing there in her black spandex Silent Wave suit on stage, talking to the anchors there about the efforts she and her husband made to help protect the city and everyone there. Behind them on stage was a band that I didn’t recognize because I really didn’t pay attention to new music very much, except for maybe Walk the Moon. I mostly preferred older music from childhood and before I was born. I guess I was a little stuck in the past or born in the wrong decade, if you know what I mean. The anchors were telling my mom right there that the band behind them wanted to know if my mom could sing a song, but my mom blushed and said she wasn’t much of a singer and she would rather not subject the people to hearing her voice. So she shook their hands and left the stage. For a moment, I wondered if she knew what they were all thinking, since she was a mind reader.

But when I looked away from the screen a moment before my mom left the stage, Alice looked at me, then back at the screen, then back at me. I think she figured me out then and there.

“Hang on, that was Silent Wave, right?” Alice said.

“I think so, yeah,” I said.

“Is she like your older sister or something?” she asked. “You two look an awful lot like twins or something.”

“Actually, she’s much older than she looks,” I said, hanging my head down. Then I said in a lower voice, “She’s my mother.”

“What did you say?” Alice said.

I rolled my eyes and repeated, “She’s my mother. I didn’t mean to tell you, since I’m some kind of freak not having any powers.”

“Wait, you’re not Giga Man and Silent Wave’s daughter, are you?” said Steve.

I rolled my eyes. “I am.”

“Do they know?” Alice asked.

“Sorry what?” I said.

“Do your parents know you’re just a plain civilian and that you didn’t make it into superhuman school?”

“I haven’t told them yet,” I said. “Unless by some power where Benedict Cumberbatch shows me how to manipulate reality with his mind using magic, I pretty much will stay just an average boring person.”

“You love Doctor Strange,” Alice said in a sing-song voice.

“Yes I do,” I said with pride.

“No chance of turning invisible?” said Steve.

“Nope,” I said.

“No super strength?” said Alice.

“Not even close,” I said. “My little brother has my dad’s super strength, so there’s no chance I could inherit that either. He’s a pain in the ass.”

“Well, either way, you have to tell your parents that you’ve got no powers. But hey, have you at least tried to make something to give you powers, like flight or firepower?”

I laughed. “I tried something like that, but I ended up dropping one of my dad’s fire extinguishers on my foot.”

As soon as Alice laughed, the morning bell rang and we all headed to class.

History class with Mr. Kent was up on the top floor of the school. The room looked the same as with any classroom with blackboards, wipe off boards, classroom posters, and the teacher’s desk covered with papers and a Folgers coffee tin full of wipe off markers, pens, and pencils. There was one poster on the side wall with “We the People” stamped on it, and there were some posters on the wooden cabinet on the other end of the classroom, the posters showing graphic images of stars and billowing gases taken by the Hubble Telescope. Those images were the only things in the room that I liked about history class. This guy loved astronomy other than the American Constitution.

Mr. Kent shut the door when everyone got settled in and went to the front of the classroom behind his desk. “Morning, class,” he said in a droning voice. “I trust all of you have enjoyed your summer, but now it’s time to get back down to business.”

He wore a pantsuit, unusual for high school teachers. Most of the teachers I buzzed past wore simple polo shirts or button down shirts with khaki pants. This guy wore a suit with a polka dot bow tie. I thought this look was pretty handsome, but this guy had white hair that was starting to go bald and he already had some lines on his face. He must have been at least in his sixties and was on his way to retirement. Even the bow tie aged him, unlike the dear Doctor of time and space that my brother loved to watch. In all my years, I still never understood the meaning of Doctor Who. Why did the Doctor have to change his face all the time and why were the women always running in different directions from him after traveling with him? I didn’t get it.

Mr. Kent droned on still. “Human beings are making messes of themselves. No matter what is being thrown at them, they keep putting it off like they don’t care. Donald Trump is feeding the government lies and soon our democracy will come to an end. Whomever becomes president after him will have to be the leading custodian of society, and it looks like our current president is sinking to a new low. The greenhouse gases are overflowing and making our ozone smaller. People in Africa are getting hungrier and are still fighting each other in wars, causing displacement and loss of culture. The Native American population is dwindling, and soon there will be none of their kind left standing in their respective reservations. Their cultures and their ways will cease to exist now that the American population has overrun them. And why haven’t we come up with a surefire cure for cancer?”

Already, I could have sworn the whole classroom was asleep at that point. Everyone just sort of propped their heads by their hands and elbows on the desks and let their eyes droop lower and lower. One kid fell asleep during his little speech that Mr. Kent took a yardstick and poked him in the head with it. Everyone laughed when he jumped up, startled by the poking. After that, Mr. Kent finally said, “Let’s continue with the torture,” and continued to roll call.

“Dickenson, Trent Edward?” he called.

“Here,” a brawny guy spat. He looked like the sort of thug you tended to get into a fight with.

“Emerson, Gwen Tricia?” he called again.

“Here,” said a blond girl with a beach delivered sun tan. She looked a little perky while twirling her hair and smacking some gum.

“Harris, Violet Jennifer?”

“Just Jennifer,” I said. “Present.”

He looked up and stared at me, then gave a half smile.

“Yeah, sorry, but I like to go by my middle name better,” I said. I hated it when people called me by my first name. But it still felt awkward that I said that out loud.

“Aren’t you Giga Man’s daughter?” Mr. Kent asked, raising an eyebrow.

I smiled and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s my dad. Dylan Harris.”

“Huh, and you’re here. Learning about the Antebellum South and the three Amendments President Lincoln signed to the Constitution. Already a celebrity, I imagine.”

Some of the kids laughed as I sat back in my chair. This wasn’t going so well.

When he was calling everyone’s name, however, I thought I heard some girls snickering to themselves. The girl next to me was passing a note to a friend sitting in front of her when I heard her say, “Since when do superheroes send their deadbeat kids to Generic? This Jenny person shouldn’t even be here.”

I caught this statement and turned my head to her. “What did you say?” I whispered.

She looked at me with a ‘you’re creeping me out’ look on her face. “Me?” she said. “I didn’t say anything.”

This was strange enough. I thought perhaps she was lying to me about that, and maybe she was talking to her friends in front of her instead of insulting me face to face. So instead, I let her off the hook and said, “Ohhh kay.”

As soon as I turned my head around, the girl started speaking again. I could hear her say something like, What the hell is her problem? She looks like she can just control what I’m thinking like her mom can do. That’s just stupid. Like she would ever try to control what I’m thinking.

My muscles tensed as I heard more words flying out of her.

Yeah, like her parents could actually save the world. We really don’t need superheroes anyway. Who needs them? Her Giga dad is just dumb and useless.

For insulting my family like that, I exploded. And when I say explode, I mean raise my voice.

“Why don’t you tell them yourself instead of insulting me like that!” I snapped. “I can hear the lies coming out of your mouth!”

The whole class was hushed. All eyes were staring at us when the girl next to me said, “What the hell is wrong with you? I told you, I didn’t say anything!”

“Miss Harris, Miss Caitlyn, do you have anything to say before I continue roll call?”

I turned to Mr. Kent who asked us both that question. I realized the whole class was staring at me when I turned my attention around to the teacher. I stammered. I quietly cursed in my head. So I said, “No, I’m sorry. It’s just I thought I heard someone being rude, but I guess I didn’t.”

“Very well then,” Mr. Kent sighed and continued with the names on his clipboard. “Graves, Tyrell.”

As I settled back down in my seat, I heard someone else say, “Schizo maniac, that one.”

Another person whispered, “She’s crazy. She must be.”

Instead of listening to them, I put my fingers in my ears and tried to drown them out.

After class, I opened my new assigned locker to rearrange my things, including some magnets and pictures I wanted to slap on the inside of there. When I put my mirror in the center of the door to check my face, I found there was something different about my eyes. I peered in my reflection a little closer to see what it was because I couldn’t believe what color they were. They were usually a grayish or turquoise blue, but now they were purple. A very light shade of purple. For a while, I wondered if this was because I had been exposed to the purple Infinity Stone from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. When Peter Quill placed the Infinity Stone in his hand after snatching it from Ronan, his eyes turned deep violet. And the rest of his body was being torn apart into purple pieces until Gamora shouted, “Take my hand!” But this was different. Nothing had affected me at all. I wasn’t exposed to toxic waste or gamma radiation on the way to school. I was completely normal, since I had no powers.

I shrugged it off and closed my locker door when someone buzzed past me and said, “Crazy Jenny! Ha, ha, ha!”

Maybe I was losing my mind.