Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

Classes at Generic High School were especially boring. My history teacher didn’t seem all that nice, for he kept tapping students with his yardstick to keep them awake. I on the other hand didn’t fall asleep in his class. I just kept my head down the whole time, taking notes and doing normal student things in his class. The other civilian classes were not too exciting either. There was biology, English—where we talked about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet most of the time, Gym class—which ended up being just running around the track all day, Geometry, and Spanish class which was more bland than caliente.

Alice happened to be in my biology class, so she turned out to be a pretty good lab partner. Though she was smart and everything, I still wanted to see my old friend Mylana, who had been friends with me since the start of middle school. I didn’t see her at school all day because she was busy at superhero school all this time. She told me about her powers when I was eleven where one of the boys from special ed was getting bullied by some goons and I tried to stand up to them when they all laughed at me. That was when Mylana took action. Out the corner of my eye, she got down on all fours and started shrinking. Into what, I wasn’t sure. But then one of the goon bullies yelled, “Ow!” and found that something bit him on the leg. When I looked down, there was Mylana, in the form of a rat, sitting on his shoelaces and wiggling her tail. The bullies all screamed and ran for their lives when Mylana grew out of her rat form and stood next to me. She high fived me when the whole hallway was empty.

It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen her do.

So about a week later when I came home from school for dinner, I found Mylana standing at my doorstep with her books tucked under her arm. This time, her hair had been dyed green, as she liked to change her hair color like Ramona Flowers from the Scott Pilgrim books. Her hair almost matched and brought her eyes out of her bronze skin, which she hated. And she was just as short as I was, which kind of made it awesome for us. Neither of us could ever get the hang of monkey bars or the cartwheel since we both had such little upper arm strength.

“Hey, girl, how’s superhero school?” I said when I walked up the steps. “I didn’t know you were coming to see me.”

“Superhero school is lame, especially since you’re not there,” Mylana said. “I tried to call you, but I keep getting your brother, who keeps saying, ‘She’s not interested.’”

“Ugh! I could kill that little twerp,” I said.

“How’s civilian school treating you?” Mylana said.

“Bor-ring,” I said. “Everyone in my history class falls asleep first period. All my teachers are lame and there isn’t a single guy in my freshman class who’s cute enough or dateable.”

“Maybe I should introduce you to Tom Larkin. He’s so the hottest guy on my campus.”

“I don’t date superheroes, remember? I have no powers! Remember Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex?”

“I know, but you don’t have to continue living like this. Have you told your parents the news yet?”

“What news?”

“That you’re like Hercules when he got his strength taken away?”

I scoffed. “No, for your information, I did not tell them. Who really wants to tell Giga Man and Silent Wave, two of the biggest superheroes in the world, that their daughter has no powers? Besides, if I really were Will Stronghold, I would still be attending superhero school regardless if I had powers or not. But no, they had to send me to another school. It’s like I’ve gotten expelled or something.”

“Don’t say that,” Mylana said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Just because you have no powers doesn’t mean that they’re going to be disappointed. Your brother’s got your dad’s strength, right?”

“Yeah… So what are you saying?”

Mylana took her hand away and clutched her books. “They’ll only be half disappointed. And it doesn’t matter what you become, if you’re a hero or a villain, or a sidekick or a lowly citizen. And look at the bright side, you’ve definitely got better curves than I do since I’m clearly the fat one, so you can definitely get a super hot boyfriend, especially if he’s anything like Captain America.”

“But I don’t want to be as stupid as Lois Lane! You remember the Christopher Reeve Superman; Lois was the one always getting in trouble and Superman was always there to save her life over and over again. I’m sick and tired of that. I want to do things for mankind. I want to help the city of Metrocosma. I…” I sighed again and wished aloud. “I want to fly.”

“So have you been working on that fire extinguisher contraption again?” Mylana asked, her smile growing. She laughed.

I chuckled and shoved her. “Don’t do that to me!”

“Falcon High’s not that great anyway,” Mylana said. “I’m in sidekick class. Trust me, you’re not missing much.”

“Missing what?” dad said from behind us. He was in his button down suit this time, pretending to hide that superhero visage he held tightly under his clothes. “Ah, Mylana, you’re here. It’s been a while since we last saw you. How is Falcon treating you?”

“I’m busy as ever,” she said.

Mom came up from behind him and said, “Hey, do you want to join us all for dinner?”

Before I knew it, dinner was on the table and Mylana and I came downstairs to join mom and dad. My brother always ate at the little kiddie table next to our table when Mylana came over while the adults ate with us. Dinner was dad’s corned beef brisket with steamed potatoes and purple carrots, which my brother picked at. He wasn’t as much into corned beef and potatoes as I was. Sometimes, I wondered if my brother was playing coroner with his food by dissecting it like that.

My mother caught my brother’s dinner dissection and said, “Alex, stop making incisions on your food and eat it. You’re not a surgeon.”

“So how was school, Violet?” dad asked before I could take another forkful of bright red beef.

“Fine,” I said.

I tried to take another bite of beef until dad asked me another question. “Well, tell me about it. How are your teachers?”

“Nothing to report,” I said.

Dad interrupted me again before the fork even reached my mouth. “How can there be nothing to report? You’re going to my school! There’s got to be something you can talk about. What about battle class? How fun is that?”

“I’m not in battle class,” I said, letting my forkful of beef hover over my plate.

Dad didn’t want me to eat unless he got something out of me. “Well, you should be! We’re paying them to let you go there. It’s not like you’ve gone into sidekick class or you’ve got no powers.”

“Well, maybe that’s just it, dad,” I said. “Maybe I’m not in the hero class at all and I’m not playing ‘Capture the Villain’ in gym class.”

“Maybe I should give them a call and tell them what I think.” He then left the table and picked up the phone.

“No, dad, don’t do that!” I yelped.

“Why can’t I find out what’s happening at my daughter’s school?” dad said.

“Because I don’t want to talk about it!” I yelled. I threw my fork down and left the table, storming off to my room.

I flopped on my bed upstairs when my mom found me. She came to my side and patted me on the back.

“Honey, go easy on your father,” mom said. “He’s had a rather hard day, really.”

“It’s still my fault that I got into this,” I said. “I just didn’t want to tell him how school’s going.”

“Why? Is it that bad?” mom said. “Are you being bullied? Are you having trouble with the other kids?”

“If I had trouble with other kids, Mylana would know. But she’s not in any of my classes.”

“I know, it’s because she’s in sidekick class and you’re in heroes, right?”

I turned up at her. “No, I’m not even in the hero class either!”

I bit my tongue at mentioning that.

“Then what class are you in?”

“I’m not going to Falcon High School, mom!” I shouted. I sat up and faced her while she remained kneeling at the edge of the bed. She looked at me like she didn’t believe me. “I’m going to Generic High School. I’m a civilian.”

“What? That’s impossible!” mom said.

I sighed. “I don’t have any powers. I got kicked out of Falcon for not having any.”

“Kicked out?” mom said. “No one gets kicked out unless you do something against the rules. You’re probably just a late bloomer. That’s what it is.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “I may never be invisible like you or never have super strength like dad or my brother. I might just be another boring person pushing paper and not doing anything to save the world.”

“That’s not true. You could be a doctor. Doctors save people. Firefighters save people all the time. So do police officers, they’re there for protection. You can do anything and still save the world, even though you don’t have powers.”

“Even as a paper pusher?” I said. “I know I don’t have enough talents and I’m no good at biology. I don’t have the stamina for being a doctor or a firefighter or police. I don’t think I could do it. What if I’m doomed to be a useless secretary? What if I just end up making coffee every day for people or pumping gas at a gas station for the rest of my life? Those people don’t do any good for the real people who save the world. I don’t want to be that girl.”

“And you won’t be,” mom said. “No matter what, you’re my little superhero. Someday you’ll be there to help someone. You don’t have to do the same thing forever if you don’t want to. Please believe me.”

She brushed my hair back behind my ear with her fingers. I knew she was going to tell dad anyway and he’d be upset enough to get a second opinion from Falcon to make me go there again. But mom gave me a hug, which always made me feel better. I was glad to have someone like mom around.

So when she left, I had a few minutes alone to myself as I put on Orianthi on my stereo. It was hard to believe that a girl from Australia could win the world over with her guitar licks making her a female Eddie Van Halen. If only I could be like that, than just a useless person like how her man talked about her in “According to You”.