Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

When I heard the dial tone and hung up the phone, I froze in terror. No, I didn’t freeze myself when I hung up, I kind of went catatonic. I was frightened. The whole school was in danger because my ex boyfriend had revealed himself to me. Tom Larkin was the real supervillain. I replayed that thought over and over again in my head, still stunned in disbelief. Tom was the bad guy. Tom was THE bad guy. No way. And worse, he was going to kill Jeremy. The guy who I had a crush on in the first place, he was going to die before I would get up the nerve to tell him my feelings. Things were looking pretty grim.

I heard Alice say, “Jen? Jen, are you ok? What’s wrong? What did Jeremy say? Is it something bad? What happened?”

I gave her back the phone and went outside of my house. I took some deep breaths to figure out the best thing to do in this situation. Honestly, I did not have a single plan coming to mind. I was also thinking that my parents would be home any minute now. I was grounded. I couldn’t leave home, especially not in my pajamas. I was thinking about going to bed early instead of going to the dance. But Jeremy and the rest of the kids at the ball were in danger. Tom probably had a terrible plan to destroy the entire school. This was not good. I couldn’t stay, but I also couldn’t go because I had no idea what my parents would do. I guess this was something every superhero faced.

Alice followed me out the door, still asking questions. “Jen, you’re scaring me,” she said. “What’s going on? Did he hurt you? Did he say something offensive?”

I finally got my voice back and said to her, “No, that wasn’t Jeremy on the phone. That was Tom.”

“What did he say?” she asked.

“Tom is going to kill Jeremy, for real,” I said. “I don’t know how, I don’t know what, but it sounds like he’s going to kill him, and then take over the school… It’s like he’s become my own villain right now.”

“He’s a villain?” Alice said in disbelief. “Your ex crush is now your villain, like a supervillain? Like Kaecilius was to Doctor Strange? Like Doctor Doom to Mr. Fantastic?”

I turned to her and said, “Like Doctor Doom and Mr. Fantastic had a son together and called him Elastro.”

“Wow. Do you know what you’re going to do about that? You know you’re grounded.”

“I know. And Tom gave me an hour to go see him at the school to fight him. I don’t know how to get there, let alone tell my parents about the whole situation.”

“Maybe you should call the Avengers to fix this.”

“I don’t think that’s going to help,” I said, pulling out my phone. I really hated to do this, but I needed to text my mother. She was the only one who would understand.

“So what are you going to do?” Alice said.

“Mom,” I said aloud while texting. “Something bad is about to happen at school. My ex boyfriend is planning to kill Jeremy, literally. And he’s about to do something awful at the ball tonight. I don’t know what, but it’s serious. Please do something to call for backup or stop this from getting bad. I’m going to try to get to school to take care of Tom before he destroys the place, and maybe the city with it. Bring dad as well. I know I’m grounded, but this is my chance to be a hero. Please send help. Love you.”

I hit send on the text message and with luck, it went through. I hope mom wasn’t tied up at the moment with fighting alien robots or something in the middle of the city. But she usually has her cell turned on so she could get messages or phone calls whenever she’s needed to save the world. Same with dad. I hoped she’d understand.

“So how are you going to get to school from here?” Alice said.

“I’m going to have to learn to fly,” I said.

“Fly?” Alice remarked, still not getting at how I would get to school in time to save everyone. “But you have frost abilities. You don’t know how to fly!”

“That’s true, but I really think I’m almost there,” I said. “My teacher Jean Harley has been trying to teach me to fly using my telepathy and my frost. I’ll bet you anything that Elsa the Snow Queen could fly using her frost abilities when she created that ice rink at the castle at the end of the movie Frozen. I just need to concentrate.”

“Concentrate on what?” Alice said.

“I need to focus on mind over matter,” I said. “I don’t know how that works, but I have to give it a try now. If this fails, then Jeremy and the rest of the school are good as dead.”

“So, there is no other way around it. That’s a pretty scary notion.”

“I know. That’s why I have to try now and hopefully, not give up.”

But I could feel the cold sweat on my feet underneath my socks and slippers. It didn’t feel like it was freezing on my skin. The frost was supposed to shoot through my heels and lift me higher. But I remained on the ground waiting for nothing. It was a pretty warm night too, for the cold months of autumn weren’t back yet. It still felt like summer this time of year.

No, there was no way I would start thinking about the weather, or my body temperature. I had to stay focused. Mind and matter. Mind and matter. Calm. Calm. Stay focused. All I had to do was stay calm and focused. What time was it? How much time did I have left? Maybe I should look at my watch… No, that’s another distraction. Stay focused. I opened my eyes and looked down. I wasn’t moving anywhere. Crap.

Alice was standing in front of me when I groaned in agony. “Jennifer?” she said. “What are you trying to do?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to fly,” I said.

“You’re not really getting anywhere with that, are you?” she said.

I sighed and shrugged, slapping my arms and hands at my sides. “Nope, absolutely nowhere.”

“How exactly are you trying to fly, anyway?”

“Miss Harley has been trying to show me that with a little bit of peace in my mind, and if I try tapping into someone’s mind right now, my frost will give me the power to fly soon enough.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure. I think.”

“So… You just need to clear your mind and focus on harmony,” Alice said, taking my hand. “You need to be happy and at peace with yourself.”

“That’s it? You don’t think I need more training at school?”

“Not really,” she said. “You just need to think of something that makes you happy.”

“Like happy thoughts? Like Peter Pan?”

“No, confidence. What makes you you. You need to reign in that confidence and be happy with yourself. Remember that. You’re only strong to fight the bad guys or love someone, but only if you love yourself first. What’s the name of that song by the band Lifehouse?”

“I don’t know that band,” I admitted.

“They said in the song, ‘You’ve gotta love yourself before you can ever love me.’ That’s the truth. That’s all you need to know. You love Jeremy, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then use that to focus,” she said. “Think about him, and how badly you want to see him.”

So I shut my eyes again, put my hands at my sides, and relaxed. I let my mind wander. I tried to think hard about the boy I wanted. I remembered his face in exact detail, from his messed up blond hair to his strong upper body. I knew he wasn’t perfect, but I knew I had to save him. He was in danger. And the only one who was able to save him was me. Was I good enough for him, though? Damn right, I was. I didn’t want to get too carried away with this, you know, not to get cocky, but he was definitely on my mind as I concentrated on flying. I had a lot of love in my heart and I wouldn’t let some loser like Tom Larkin or any other villain take that away from me.

Then I looked down. I was several feet off the ground, hovering. The freezing sparks were coming out of my socked feet and my slippers were still lying on the ground as if they were tossed aside.

I laughed. I hooted. I shouted, “Holy crap, I’m FLYING! I DID IT!”

Then I looked up and saw Alice, floating at eye level. She was a little more panicked than I was. “What the…” she started to say as she glanced around in panic.

“Alice?” I said. “Are you flying?”

“What the heck is this?” she said. “What is happening? Is it Tom, is it someone doing this? Why am I floating in the air next to you?”

“I think it’s because you’re doing it yourself,” I said. “You’re making yourself fly.”

“I don’t believe it, I’m flying. I’m FLYING! YOU’RE flying! Oh my god!”

“Oh my god!”

“Holy crap, we’re both flying!”

“I don’t know how we did it!”

“I don’t know either! How did we do it?”

“Ok stop squealing,” I said, putting my hand up. “Calm down! Let’s figure this plan out first.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Alice said, crossing her arms while still hovering. “How do we do this? Do we just go straight to Falcon High, guns blazing?”

“Well, we don’t have guns,” I said. “But we do need a back up plan.”

We both thought about it for a moment, and then it came to me. “Oh, back up plan! I got it!” I said. “If I can stretch my brainpower a little, I think I can contact one of my friends at school telepathically, so I can tell them the plan.”

“You think that’ll work?” Alice said.

“It should,” I said. “I just need to get closer.”

“Well, we both can fly, so we can get there undetected, if we’re careful.”

“Yeah, it’s worth a try. But you know, if this fails, we’ll both be dead.”

Alice looked at me very grimly. “Oh, yeah. That’s not good. But only if we fail. Which is why we won’t.”

“Good that we’re on the same page,” I said. “Now, let’s get out of here.”