Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero

The next day, I was at Falcon High School.

It wasn’t as crowded as Generic, but there were a whole lot of superheroes coming to school here. My first class of the day, according to my new schedule, was power control, whatever that was. So I headed inside with no expectations.

The classroom for where I was supposed to be had no desks or chairs. It was a great big empty room with no windows, but had steps going up to the back of the room. It was almost as if I was in a choir class, except there was no place to sit. The walls were black and the room was lit by a single lamp on the ceiling, hot white sparks flying from the light fixture and dispersing immediately in the air. At the bottom of the steps, there was a huge empty space with nothing in the way for what looked like a practice area, using different instruments of torture all laid out on a yoga mat sitting on the floor: nun chucks, knives, daggers, even sticks.

Already, I was intimidated. But I had to go in and find a seat on the steps with the other students. I found an empty spot next to a short kid with glasses. He looked a little shorter than me, and I’m pretty short, only he kept his curly brown hair. And he was pretty shaken up when I sat next to him.

“I-I’m G-G-Glitch,” he said. He held out his hand to shake mine, but his hand looked shaken enough.

I shook his hand back. “Nice to meet you.” It was strange, shaking another person’s hand, since I have never done that before. With all the other kids in my primary school, it was a hug if you were their friend or a punch if you were a bully. “Are you ok?” I said. “You sound a little… shaken up.”

“I-I h-have a s-s-stammer,” he said. “And I c-c-can be n-nervous around other p-people.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “I’m Violet, by the way.”

“V-Violet is a n-nice n-name,” Glitch said. “W-What’s y-your p-p-power?”

“Freezing things,” I said. “And reading people’s minds. I wish I could fly, though, if I learn how to control it.”

“I-I-I’m s-sure you will,” he said. “I-I c-can t-t-teleport. T-That’s w-why t-t-they call me G-Glitch.”

“Teleporting sounds cool,” I said.

The door slammed. Everyone got quiet. I looked at the front of the classroom and in walked a woman with short blood-red hair and an oval face with tan skin. She was dressed head to toe in a black jumpsuit, covering her feet, legs, and arms, and black gloves to cover her hands. Behind her was the other instructor, a man with dark hair and glasses, and kind of scrawny looking. Maybe it was all a facade to what his power really was. He probably got bigger and brawnier when he powered up, but of that I couldn’t be sure. He was wearing a lab coat over regular clothes.

“Hello, class,” the woman in the jumpsuit said. She folded her hands in front of her. “I’m Jean Harley and I will be instructing power control for today. First, I’m going to need a woman by the name of Violet Harris up here.”

Shocked, I stood up and trembled as I got up to the front of the room.

She smiled and held out her hand to me. “Don’t be shy, come up here.”

I said nothing but went up to the front of the class and stopped when I stood next to her. Then she said to the classroom, “This is Violet Harris and she’s a new student here at Falcon High.” She turned to me. “Now, Violet, as I do with at least every student here, I’d like to ask you to show us your power.”

“Really? In front of everyone?” I said.

“Don’t be shy, just power up,” she said.

“Uh, ok.” So I did. I took off my gloves and held my hands out to the wall. Slowly, a little bit of frost formed on a spot on the wall. Then it started to grow into ice crystals. I started to get tired after a while, so I stopped and put my gloves back on.

“Impressive,” said Ms. Harley. “A little bit of frost bite. Can you do anything else with your power?”

“Well, I can also hear people’s thoughts.” I said.

“Telepathy? Ever fused the two of them together?”

She began circling me like a vulture.

“Uhh… Well, I uh… never thought of that, I only just got here.”

She stopped in front of me. “Well, let’s just try. Go ahead and hear what I’m thinking right now. Try entering my mind; it shouldn’t be that hard.”

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. All eyes were on me. I wanted to shake the pressure right off, but it seemed to just pile back on me with the whispering from the other students.

“Quiet your mind,” a man told me from behind.

I opened my eyes and turned to find the same man in the lab coat who entered with Ms. Harley.

“That’s Clinton Osborne, he’ll be your flight instructor. He will teach you how to use your freezing powers to fly.”

“But I can’t fly,” I said.

“Not yet,” Mr. Osborne said. “We’re going to show you how, if you can control your powers. That’s the whole point in this class. Control. Now, just quiet and clear your mind. Concentrate on entering Ms. Harley’s thoughts. Let your mind wander.”

I closed my eyes again. I tried to clear my mind and let all the whispering voices quiet down. At that moment, I heard one voice, Jean Harley’s, and I was immediately transported into one of her memories.

Metrocosma was dark, cold, and rainy in the memory. I could make out my dad through the grit and steam coming off the streets. He was in his green Giga Man tights and stomping towards a woman in brown pigtails. Harley was wearing a red and black catsuit with matching striped cape. She also carried a baseball bat in her hands and had that crazed look on her face. She gave my dad a wink and smiled.

“I used to be your father’s enemy,” I heard Harley say overhead as I watched my dad fight the woman in the memory. “I was a super villain. But those days are over now.”

“You know I can’t hit girls,” my dad said in the memory while deflecting Harley’s bat swings. “I’d rather not hurt you in front of my wife or even more so, your daughter.”

For a moment, Harley stopped her bat in mid air and looked behind her. A little girl about eight years old in pink galoshes and a Minnie Mouse umbrella was just outside the apartment complex closest to them.

“Mommy?” the little girl cooed. “Mommy, why are you trying to hurt Giga Man?”

The smile on Harley’s face faded into a look of remorse and fear. She turned around to face my dad and said, “No, please, don’t make me go to prison. She’s all I have. She has no father. Don’t make her go to foster care, please. I’ll do anything.”

Instead, my dad took his hand off her bat and folded his arms. “That is something you’ll have to deal with on your own,” he said. “You should have thought of that before you became evil. I can’t help you.”

Harley dropped her bat, fell on her knees and wept. “No, please! Anything! Don’t take away my kid!”

But by then, the police arrived and arrested Harley.

And at that moment, I opened my eyes and saw another wooden bat coming at my face.

I ducked out of the way and before I realized I was hovering above the floor, I fell and hit the ground like a cat, landing on all fours. People in the audience laughed, except Glitch and a few others. Harley held her baseball bat straight up on the floor in front of me while Clinton Osborne held out his hand.

“Come on, get up,” he said.

I took his hand and stood. “I have no idea where that came from,” I said.

“Consider this your first lesson,” Harley said. “If you want to learn to fly using your powers, you also have to know how to block attacks so that you don’t get impaled by your villains.”

“What Miss Harley is trying to say is you need to establish a calm medium in your brain before you can win in battle class,” Osborne said, folding his arms. He turned to the rest of the class. “You will all need to know this before you go on to battle class, if you are to succeed in defeating your villains, whether you’re at school, or your out saving the world.”

Harley turned to me and said, “You can now take your seat, Violet.”

As I put on my gloves again and went back to my seat, I felt a pretty bad feeling that this was going to be the most embarrassing school year of my life.

I’ve always wanted to see what having a boyfriend would be like.

When I was in middle school, I’ve had a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the 21st century, even though I still wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening in the show, but I did get to see parts of it, thanks to dad. And then Ben decided to play the role of the superhero, Doctor Strange, for Marvel Studios. That’s when the obsession really started. I loved his blue suit, his big red cape known as the ‘cloak of levitation’, and his beautiful British accent that he hid so well in the movie. In my room, I made a big collage of Benedict Cumberbatch in his finest shows and films, with a big portrait of him as Doctor Strange in the center, his arms stretched out and flinging golden bolts of light as a whip. Sigh.

But when I looked to the high school boys at Generic, none of them interested me at all. Then I started attending Falcon High School, which introduced a whole different scale of the male sex.

That’s when I found Tom Larkin, the hottest guy at Falcon.

It was my second day at my new school when I laid eyes on him. He was on his back lifting weights in gym class, lifting his arms up and down towards his big chest. But instead of bending his elbows and stretching them straight out, he let his arms stretch at least several feet above his head before bending his elbows back and retracting his hands. I could see his power plain as day: elasticity. He could stretch his arms like a rubber band, like Elastigirl in The Incredibles, but as a guy. And he looked like Flynn Rider from Tangled, if he had Mr. Fantastic’s abilities in Fantastic Four. (The one with Ioan Gruffudd from ABC’s Forever as Reed Richards, not the one with the tiny kids playing the Four) Tall, dark hair, brown eyes, and those muscles. I could have stared at him all day, if I wanted to.

I sat there on the sidelines just watching him, not knowing I had a smile on my face. I also heard from the girl next to me that he was dating the hottest girl in school, Fiona Dangerous, who had the ability to turn invisible, just like my mom. Already, I had competition and I didn’t like it. There was no way I’d compete with her and I knew he was the guy who could never be mine.

I wanted a Steve Rogers, like Captain America, only he wouldn’t outlive me by sleeping for seven decades and waking up in 21st century New York. I wanted to be somebody’s Peggy Carter. But the moment I looked at Tom Larkin, I knew it was going to be over before it even started.

As I stood there by my locker before lunchtime, Glitch shut his locker and said, “If you w-want Tom L-Larkin, you can g-g-give me F-Fiona Dangerous.”

“Sorry, what?” I said.

He pulled his book bag over his shoulder. “I s-said you c-can have T-Tom if you l-let me have F-Fiona. S-She’s the girl I w-want, if you’ll g-g-give her to me.”

I scoffed. “Oh please. You’re not serious, are you? I want to at least be as skinny as she is.”

“N-N-No you don’t,” Glitch said.

“She’s a supermodel,” I continued. “I’m nothing compared to her. She’s obviously the prettier one and the more popular one, so why can’t I be just like her?”

“M-Maybe s-she’s g-got something else to her,” Glitch said.

His other nerd friend Andy Stark came over and said, “Trust me, you don’t want to be Fiona Dangerous. Her family’s got a bad rep. I hear her dad got sent to prison by your own mom. I can’t even tell you how bad it got that her dad got his ass kicked by a girl, not just any girl, your mom. Just don’t mention that.”

Andy was a short guy with dark hair and hazel eyes. He kind of resembled Glitch in a way, but he was slightly taller and didn’t have a stammer. He always wore polo shirts or button down shirts to school and never dressed down in jeans and a t shirt; he was always wearing khaki pants. Glitch also told me that his parents were loaded. I also kind of figured that Iron Man was his uncle or something, but apparently, that wasn’t true. He also packed his computer with him and took it everywhere with him to and from class, and on his screen saver, he liked to have pictures of slutty redheads and some NASCAR driver named Danica.

“I won’t,” I said, and shut my locker closed.

The next thing I knew, Tom was standing behind me, tapping me on the shoulder. I stood back in amazement when I turned around and saw him for the first time up close.

“Uh, hi,” I said. I waved at him. How could I have been so dorky, just waving at him?

“Hey, you must be the new girl here at school,” he said. “I’m Tom. Student body president.”

“Violet Harris, no title,” I said. I clutched hard at my binder, which I had doodled on and stuck pictures of Chris Evans and Benedict Cumberbatch in their best superhero uniforms. That’s basically what we innocent teenage girls do in this instance, even civilian teenage girls, in a situation where we’re threatened by hot guys stalking us. We get all shy and stupid. We have no idea what it is we’re doing when we’re with the boys we like that we often screw up our language.

After that long pause, Tom said, “So, you like Benedict Cumberbatch, huh? Doctor Stephen Strange, right?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” I said.

“Your binder,” he said. “I saw you in class with Miss Harley. She certainly packs a wallop, right?”

I chuckled. “Yeah. I tend to have a hard time controlling my powers so I can fly like how Mr. Osborne’s trying to show me.”

“You have Mr. Oz? Pfft, he’s a pushover. You know he’s in love with Principal Rushman?”

I shook my head and giggled. “No.”

“Who else do you have?”

“Kendrick Stane, Nicolas Vanko, and Francis Killian.”

“Ooh, Vanko’s the one with the Slavic accent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He likes to ask really hard questions and some of his textbook answers to test questions come from the footnotes.”

“Ok.”

“And go easy on Stane, he tends to have a bad back, especially when he’s talking about advanced math formulas. And Killian, he lets you sit anywhere, so make sure you get a seat in the back because he spits when he talks about evolution.”

“Hey, thanks. You know, this is my first time here at Falcon High School and I don’t know much about all this superhero stuff, so maybe you can help me.”

“Well, I might be busy with other things because I’m a senior and I have things to do as president of the senior class. So, I’ll rain check later, all right?”

“Great.”

Then he touched my hip, almost like pinching it, which made me go gooey all over. All I could do was just smile and blush over him. I giggled for a second until I caught Glitch and Andy staring at me.

“What?” I said. “He was only giving me some advice.”

“You were flirting with him,” Andy said.

“So?”

“You know he’s in a relationship with someone much skinnier and more popular than you are.”

“I can dream, can’t I?”

Then I turned around and saw that same guy again. The guy who sat next to me in the hospital room of the school. He stared down at me with a cold glance, his eyes boring into me like fire. I could have sworn his hands were creating steam, sizzling into the air in front of me. Already, I knew this guy was danger as he walked away.

I turned and watched him walk away as I said to Andy, “Who’s that?”

“Jeremy Russel, most dangerous guy at Falcon,” Andy said. “He means nothing but trouble. Sadly, he doesn’t have any real friends except for the known ‘villains’ in P.E. class with Peter Alexander. They call him Remy for short. Like Remy Zero.”

“I t-t-think he l-likes you,” said Glitch.

“What?” I said. “If anything, with the way he looked at me, I think he hates me.”

“That’s another thing,” Andy said. “Glitch is never wrong.”

“What? When it comes to boys?” I said.

“Sort of, yeah.”

“Not unless I use my powers to track his thoughts.”

“You can’t use your powers outside class.”

“Watch me.”

I originally wanted to sit on my own, distancing myself from the other hero students when Andy waved at me.

“Hey, Violet! Over here!”

Their table was stationed in between the nerds and the empty table where Jeremy Russel sat. It seemed to me that he didn’t have a lot of friends at lunch, which gave me the impression that he wasn’t very well-liked. Not everybody loves a villain, unless you’re like Mylana, who loves Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad.

When I sat down, I noticed Andy’s table had grown. It was him, Glitch, and a guy named Pat on one side, and a few other nerds on the other side of the table.

“So wait, is this the nerd table?” I said.

“Not really,” Andy said. “This is the awesome table full of awesome people. This is Richter, by the way. His real name’s Pat, but everyone calls him Richter.”

Pat/ Richter held out his hand to shake mine. He was wearing those geeky black framed glasses that did not go with his outfit of jeans and a black leather jacket. He was also overweight, like Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy before he lost all that weight for the Save Rock and Roll album. Only Pat/ Richter didn’t wear a hat and he had very curly black hair.

“I just go by Pat,” he said. “Richter is just a nickname of what I can do.”

“What, a nickname for your superpower?” I said.

“Sort of,” he said. “I can control seismic activity and create earthquakes.”

“Well that’s pretty cool.”

“Actually, it’s not that great because it only works if I get really angry.”

“Have you learned to control it yet,” I asked. “So that you can still get the same result without getting mad?”

“Not yet, anyway,” he said. “I’m a freshman like you, but this is my second year here. They held me back a year because my dad got deployed in the military, so I really couldn’t stay the rest of my first year. I had to move in with my grandparents for a while in Pennsylvania.”

“Yeah, we’re not the most popular crowd,” Andy said. “We’re kind of the dorks of the place.”

“What’s wrong with dorks?” I said. “Some of the best mad scientists who turned into superheroes were dorks.”

“Somebody reads too many comic books,” Andy said.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’ve seen one or two Marvel and DC movies but I’ve never read those things.”

“Who’s your favorite?” Pat said.

“Doctor Strange,” I said.

“You love Benedict Cumberbatch, not the character,” Andy said.

“No! Strange is awesome,” I said in my defense. “I love his powers in the mystic arts and how he gets kind of cocky.”

“He’s an arrogant rich asshole who becomes a hero,” Andy said.

“No he’s not! If anything, he learns from his mistakes when The Ancient One dies and he finally decides to become an Avenger than continue being a doctor. If anything, he’s a little like Steve Rogers.”

“Bullshit!” Andy shouted. “Captain America is like Batman but with super strength and immortality.”

“And he can’t get drunk,” Pat said.

“Yeah, exactly,” Andy said, agreeing with him. “Cap is just a goodie two shoes soldier who’s got no brains.”

Now I’d had enough. “Oh please, Captain America knows his best tactics and he’s the leader of the Avengers anyway, that is, until he kicked Iron Man’s ass and left his shield behind. Whatever. Why? Why do we have to diss our favorite heroes when we’re about to become them ourselves?”

“Well, first thing you’ve got to learn is,” a voice behind me said. “You’ve got to throw away everything you know about heroes and villains, especially when they’re made fictional.”

I turned around to face Jeremy, who had overheard our heated comic hero conversation. His face was cleaner than the last time I saw him, not even a scar from the fight. His blond hair was parted down the middle and kind of shaggy at the top, but cut like someone in the Air Force. He wore a cut up Ramones tank that showed some muscle on his arms. But his eyes almost seared with fire. I didn’t know whether to ice him or let him hit me.

I gave a nervous chuckle, turning my head up to look him anywhere but the eyes. “Oh hi, Jeremy, or Remy, can I call you Remy?”

“Friends call me Remy,” he said. “You are not a friend.”

“Ok, Jeremy then,” I said. “Uhh, do you mind if I get back to my lunch? I’m kind of hungry and I really don’t want any trouble.”

“I don’t like you,” he growled. “Just so we’re clear with you and your little friends here.”

“Well, uh, hard to argue with that,” I said, still nervous. “I’m not a hating person and I don’t want to fight, really. So, can we just call the whole thing off? I’m terrified of you, if I can be honest here.”

“You should be,” he said, slapping my hand away when I tried to shake hands with him.

“Then what do I do to end this resentment?” I said, taking my hand back and tucking it under my arm. “I don’t want anyone here to hate me.”

“Battle class,” he said.

I whimpered. “Are you sure? You’ll need someone to be on your team to defeat me and whomever I pick. You sure you don’t want to settle this over a game of Fluxx or Star Munchkin?”

“Battle class,” he said in a lower, harder voice. I was worried I probably wet myself a bit.

I backed up and backed off. “Ok, battle class it is. I’ll see you after lunch. But, uh… can I ask why you want to challenge me?”

He grunted. “You’re frost girl, same person whose aunt killed my father.”

“Woah, woah, wait a minute! My aunt Betsy didn’t kill anyone! Even if she did, she didn’t mean to!”

“V-v-v-v-violet, it’s true,” Glitch said. “Sh-sh-she k-killed him.”

“All because in battle class, she couldn’t control her frost,” Andy said. “Just before Jeremy was born, she tried to stop his dad so she could win. But not only did she snuff out his firepower, she froze him. She tried to save his life, but instead, she froze his heart. So he died in her arms and his girlfriend dropped out of school when Jeremy was born.”

“He’s been in foster care ever since he was five,” Pat said.

Oh crap, I thought. I think I said it out loud too. That’s why my aunt was such a humanitarian. She didn’t want to hurt anyone saving the world. That’s why she’d rather go save the whales or the polar bears than save people from villains and destruction. I knew then that Jeremy was my new enemy.

“Get ready for the burn,” Jeremy said before he left.

When I called Alice and told her everything, she said, “Either he wants to kill you, or he’s too nervous to ask you out.”

“I think he wants to kill me,” I told her. “Superhero high school is much different than civilian school. The bullies and archenemies here can really kill you.”

“Well, you know that guy on the bus who stuck gum in your hair that you had to use peanut butter to get it out?” Alice said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I had to use a load of shampoo to get the peanut butter mess out, and then he tried to do it again the next day. What about him?”

“He just told me to tell you he’s sorry and he wants to take you to a movie.”

“Bull!” I shouted on the phone. People stopped and stared at me for a moment before I smiled and retreated from my corner to head to class. Alice said something, but I didn’t hear her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s just one date!” Alice said. “Everyone at school worships you now. My school, anyway. All of a sudden, you got popular. You’re like the school hero now. All the guys, even the seniors, want to go out with you.”

Wow. That was quick. “That’s easy for you to say, but already I have enemies here. My aunt killed Jeremy’s dad by accident. He hates my family, and he hates me. You should have seen the look he gave me.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Just wait.”

“Tell that to my teacher at battle class when I’m dead.”

“That’s not going to happen. Couldn’t you at least tap into his mind and read his thoughts?”

“That’s the thing,” I said with a frown. “I tried to hear what he was thinking, but he was blocking me out. I never know what’s going on in his head.”

I hung up the phone and realized that if anything, our powers combined would make water or steam, since Glitch and Andy already told me about Jeremy’s powers. He could make all kinds of heated things, even things he could move with his mind, except titanium and things that were fireproof. Pat said Jeremy didn’t have enough strength to melt or heat titanium yet, but he was getting there.

Just as I was about to head to class, I ran into Principal Rushman again, who stood there staring down at me from her height. She looked like a super tall supermodel compared to me. The bad thing about this was, she caught me putting my cell phone away.

“Who were you just on the phone with?” she said.

“No one,” I said innocently, hiding my phone in my purse.

“You can’t fool me,” she said. “Is this person going to a different class than you or is this someone who doesn’t go to this campus?”

“Uh… I think it’s someone who’s looking to be an exchange student from uh… England?” That was all I could come up with.

“Oh really? What kind of powers do they have?”

I tried to think of something fast, but I couldn’t come up with anything smart to tell her. I was losing this fight with the principal so quickly.

Then Principal Rushman reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. She looked at my screen and saw the last person I had just contacted. The next thing she said was, “Are you sure this person goes to a school for people with special abilities?”

She held my phone out to me with the picture of Alice on it, with her phone number below it. I stammered. I had nothing else to say to her except, “Ok, she goes to Generic High. She’s one of the friends I made while I was there. But she doesn’t know I have powers, I swear. I didn’t tell anyone at that school.”

She held my phone closer to her. “I don’t think that’s what it sounded like,” she said. “It sounded like you were talking about your classes and how things were going for you at this school.”

“Basic school things,” I said. “I didn’t say anything specific about classes or people.”

She turned her head a little and looked at me in suspicion. Then she said, “I’m confiscating your phone and I will give it back to you after class is finished. But when you get home, you have to promise me that you will not speak to this person about this campus again. If I catch you on the phone on campus during school hours, or if for some reason I find that your conversations with civilians involve students or faculty at this school, I will have you suspended and perhaps ruled for expulsion. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” I said. And before the bell rang a second time, I turned around and went straight to class without stopping. It was a shame I had to lose my phone for the rest of the day, but I figured she wasn’t allowed to screen any of my calls or conversations while I was off campus. So, I just had to plan my meetings with Alice and Steven in secret. Well, I didn’t tell Steven about what happened with me at school, but I think he might have figured it out. Anyways, I couldn’t let anyone in on that.

But back to the battle class situation, I most likely had the disadvantage. I once saw a video of what happened to a block of ice when some scientists threw some hot lava on it. The lava on top of the ice oozed and crawled on the ice block in big hot bubbles of black and orange, because the ice was turning into steam, therefore making the “scrambled eggs from hell”.

I was the ice. He’s the lava.

I gave myself five minutes in battle class before I’d burn like the Salem witches.