by Shannon Hale
MMV20
you are hopeless. squirrel girl is going to straight up destroy you64
The connection dropped. Lizard Brain pushed the keyboard away, feeling grumpier than he usually permitted himself. He checked his pockets and discovered a single Mento. Strawberry—his least favorite. He threw the Mento at the screen.
“Up yours, Em Em Vee Twenty, whoever you are,” he said. “No squirrel can destroy me. No girl can destroy me. And definitely no squirrel girl. FOR I AM LIZARD BRAIN! AND I AM MONSTROUS!”
Barry cleared his throat, standing in the doorway. Lizard Brain spun around, a new smile pasted to his face.
“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” Barry said. “But your Hot Pockets are ready.”
Lizard Brain’s fake smile widened into a gleeful grin. De-musking always made him hungry. And how he loved a good Hot Pocket.
ANA SOFÍA
The avengers really can’t come?
SQUIRREL GIRL
They’re all in space. Fighting Thanos
ANA SOFÍA
D-day is tomorrow
SQUIRREL GIRL
Yeah and no avengers to save the day. Dude what should we do?
ANA SOFÍA
I don’t know. ur squirrel girl
SQUIRREL GIRL
Yes I am. I am squirrel girl. i am the hero that says not today evildoers. Not in my neighborhood. You may have terrifying evil plans for tomorrow morning but too bad so sad not gonna happen cuz i will stop you tonight!
so there!
ANA SOFÍA
YES!!!
Tho for real I don’t think hydra is something either of us can just take on
SQUIRREL GIRL
But space. Thanos.
ANA SOFÍA
This is hydra
SQUIRREL GIRL
I know
ANA SOFÍA
I’m not sure we can just fight hydra
SQUIRREL GIRL
I know
But what else can we do?
ANA SOFÍA
Fight hydra I guess. Should I contact the squirrel scouts
SQUIRREL GIRL
No
ANA SOFÍA
This is hydra
SQUIRREL GIRL
Yeah this is hydra. They’re not ready for hydra
ANA SOFÍA
We’re not ready for hydra
SQUIRREL GIRL
Omgosh we’re so not ready for hydra but we’re so doing this anyway you are the best ever
ANA SOFÍA
I’ll ask my dad if I can meet you at the mall
SQUIRREL GIRL
Yeah. I’m nervous. But I’ll meet you at the mall in 20. If I can get permission
ANA SOFÍA
Me too. If I can get permission
Doreen slipped her secret secure Squirrel Girl phone into her skirt pocket and walked into the kitchen. Or moseyed, really. Strolled. Meandered. Sooo casual and calm, nothing whatsoever squirrelly about her at all.65
“So, hey there, parental units,” Doreen said, still über-casual. “Whatcha doing?”
Dor and Maureen were putting together a puzzle of a kitten and a puppy playing together in a box of yarn.
“Why? What’s going on?” asked Maureen.
“Hmm? What?” said Doreen. “Nothing. A puzzle, huh? Well, it’s not squirrels, but still pretty cute.”
Maureen’s eyes narrowed. Dor’s mouth twitched.
“In all my years, Maureen,” he said, “I never thought our daughter would start to lie to us.”
“I know, Dor, I know,” said Maureen. “To us, of all parents! After all, we’re so understanding. And reasonable.”
“And adorable,” said Dor.
Doreen plopped down into a chair, elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. She had been planning to lie but hadn’t even gotten that far yet. Dang it all, she was terrible at this.
“So Tippy-Toe and Ana Sofía figured out that an evil organization is behind the mall and they’re planning on doing something awful on opening day, so someone should probably go stop them.”
“Tonight?” asked Maureen.
“Well, yeah,” said Doreen. “I mean, it’s not a school night.”
“What evil organization?” asked Dor.
“Hmmda,” Doreen mumbled.
“What was that, angel?” asked Maureen.
“Hydra,” Doreen whispered.
Maureen jumped to her feet. “Hydra? Am I to understand that you are asking permission to go out after bedtime to singlehandedly fight the most destructive, heartless, hateful, bigoted, sinister world-spanning organization in human history?”
“It’s just one tiny branch of Hydra, not like all of it ever,” Doreen said. “It’s not that late, and it’s not even a school night.66 And I’m not trying to defeat them alone. Go ahead, ask me, ‘You and what army?’”
“She’ll say ‘My squirrel army,’” Dor whispered.
“Yes, I guessed,” said Maureen. She sighed.
“Dang it, when am I going to get to use that line?” said Doreen.
“You’re fourteen—” her father started.
“And so I’m too young to take on Hydra even if I do have the proportional strength, speed, and agility of a squirrel?”
Her parents nodded.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” said Doreen. “But there’s no one else. Like, everyone is literally in space fighting Thanos. And they didn’t ask me to go to space to fight Thanos because, you know, I’m only fourteen, and I’m only Squirrel Girl….”
“Hey now,” said her father, “you’re not only Squirrel Girl. You’ve never been only Squirrel Girl. You’re also Doreen Allene Green, and that’s someone to be proud of!”
Doreen nodded, and she tried to just let it go, but what he’d said made her chest feel all squeezed and her chin all quivered and her legs all noodle-loose, and she sat down hard in a chair.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Know what? What don’t you know?”
Now Doreen’s nose felt all sniffled. “Lately, it’s easier to be Squirrel Girl than to be…Doreen Allene Green.” And then she sniffed some more, and her eyes felt hot. She took a breath, and the promise she’d made Ana Sofía about talking stuff out made the words inside all hot and liquidy and they just poured out of her.
“School’s not going so great with all the homework and no time to do it with all the Super Heroing, and there’s a teacher that’s always annoyed with me even though she’s the one with a secret and illegal barnyard in her basement, and I am part of a group of friends who love Squirrel Girl but kinda overlook Doreen, and Ana Sofía is awesome of course, but it seemed like she was pulling back lately from our friendship and I think I super hurt her feelings without even realizing it by never-minding her, so how do I know how to not, like, permanently damage a best-friendship when I do bad stuff without even realizing, and I think we worked that out, but you know me with friends that don’t last unless they’re small and furry and, I don’t know, like, I feel better and do better when I’ve got my tail out and I’m talking criminals out of criming or, you know, punching them, and I don’t feel fourteen then, I only feel fourteen when I’m Doreen and Doreen doesn’t know what in the heck she’s doing!”67
She cried some. And she felt her parents put their hands on her shoulders, on her head.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Maureen said. “We don’t know what we’re doing either.”
“Well, yeah,” said Doreen.
They laughed, and Dor cut into the butter pecan cake he’d baked earlier without knowing how much they’d need it now.
“You know you’re doing great, right?” said her father, his mouth full of cake. “You know nobody knows what they’re doing and we’re all just figuring out how to be us as we go along.”
“So it’s okay that I have no idea how to defeat Hydra so I should just go jump in and figure it out as I go?”
Her parents sighed again.
“Too soon?” said Doreen.
>
“We worry,” said Maureen. “There’s no parenting manual for this, no How to Be a Good Parent to a Super Hero in Twelve Easy Steps—”
“Ooh, maybe I should write that,” said Dor.
It was Doreen’s turn to sigh. “There’s no How to Be a Super Hero When You’re Fourteen either. But there’s no one else. Someone once said with great power comes great accessibility—no wait, that doesn’t sound right. Trust me, it was a good phrase and, like, really inspiring. Anyway, I’ve got to try. Being Squirrel Girl is the only thing that really makes sense right now. And what if I did nothing and people got hurt tomorrow or even died?”
Her parents exchanged looks. That was a good sign. All this practice talking criminals out of criming had increased her persuasive conversation skills in everyday life!
“I’ll be careful, okay?” said Doreen.
“Middle school years are weird,” said Maureen. “I was terrified anyone would notice me, and yet I wore a tiger-ears headband every day for, like, a year.”
“I formed a rock band,” said Dor. “None of us knew how to play our instruments. We didn’t realize that until we were onstage in the school talent show.”
“But it gets better,” said Maureen. “Please be careful and come home safe so that you can see that it does get better.”
They hugged. They ate cake.68
And then Doreen Green put on the hoodie with the little ears. She laced up her sneakers. She fluffed out her tail. And she ran.
There were no security guards at the mall. That was the first thing. The parking lot was empty. The lights were off. The GRAND OPENING banner hung from two ropes over the front doors, twisting in the wind and slapping against the concrete front with an eerie whump whump. But if this was a brand-new mall full of merchandise, why weren’t there any guards?
Because they’re not worried about break-ins, Ana Sofía thought. Maybe because there is no merchandise, and it’s all a hoax. Or maybe because they have other forms of security.
She hid behind a bush on the empty lot next door and waited for Squirrel Girl to find her. Somehow, she always found her—by smell, she presumed. Ana Sofía was lucky to have made it there at all. Gracias a Dios her mom was working tonight. Her mom held pretty tightly to Mexican cultural norms about curfews and protecting daughters. Before Doreen, Ana Sofía had rarely been permitted to even go to a friend’s house. Her dad on the other hand was second-generation Mexican American and was generally more lax. She knew her mom just wanted to protect her, and she generally preferred staying in and playing on her laptop anyway, but the maternal protectiveness was really inconvenient when she was needed to take down a Hydra cell operating out of the local mall.
Guilt gnawed her. She hadn’t lied to her dad about her plans, but she had been vague about needing to “meet up with Doreen for a project.” She really, really had to try to not get killed or she’d be in so much trouble.
Ana Sofía felt the ground vibrate behind her. She whipped around. Squirrel Girl had just jumped down from a tree and now stood there, fists on hips, outlined in silver moonlight. In bushes and trees behind her, the leaves trembled.
“So you think you can take down Hydra, huh?” Ana Sofía said. “You and what army?”
“This one,” Squirrel Girl signed. The shivers in the shadows leaned forward, dozens of blinkless squirrel eyes reflecting back the city lights. Then more and more, a hundred, two hundred, the tree’s boughs bending beneath the weight of them, the night’s shadows ragged with their shapes, the breeze carried by their breath.
Squirrel Girl doubled over, laughing quietly and saying something, most likely thanking Ana Sofía for setting up the awesome line. And then she hugged her. Hugs were not Ana Sofía’s favorite thing, but Squirrel Girl was in her top five, so she didn’t hate it.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
And then without a word they set off across the dark parking lot. Two girls, two hundred squirrels. Tippy-Toe was there, of course, her pink bow a slash of gray-purple in the night. She loped off in front, the five other squirrels from last night surrounding her, running in sync. The rest of the squirrels followed en masse, flowing behind them like a great black fuzzy river.
The mall doors were locked, of course. Squirrel Girl pulled on one. Then she pulled harder. And then it was open, dead bolts curved like bendy straws.
It was moments like these when Ana Sofía remembered that, whoa, her best friend Doreen was a legit Super Hero. She smiled at her and signed, “Good job, Squirrel Girl.”
Squirrel Girl made the signs for “shy” and “embarrassed,” but her posture was straight, her eyes sparkling, and she looked ready to tear down the mall by hand.
They entered the giant cube of a building, the dark rodent bodies surging around their feet.
It smelled like a mall. A smell Ana Sofía couldn’t place exactly—not just paint and wood and electricity, but some other unique odor. Maybe malls sprayed bottles of Genuine Mall Scent so they could all smell the same.
Note: Malls are eerie after hours. Avoid entering dark, empty malls in the future.
It looked like a typical mall. The dim emergency lights cast dull orange shadows over the center court, the still water fountain, the escalator frozen in the moment. The storefronts were closed, the names on their signs familiar—sort of: Off Topic, Clot Dog on a Stick, Trick-fil-A…
Something was not quite right.
“This place isn’t…quite right,” Ana Sofía said. She hoped she said it softly, but whispering wasn’t her strongest skill. Anyway, it was hard to sneak into a place quietly after you’ve torn the steel doors off their hinges.
The squirrels took the lead, and soon they were at that door. The impossible door. The hack-proof door. The squirrel-proof door. The solid some-kind-of-rare-and-impossible-metal door.
But an unopenable door was not The End, not in Ana Sofía’s mind. It was a problem. And problems have solutions.
“I have an idea…” Ana Sofía said, signing. She swallowed. She frowned. She wished she could take back the words.
“I’m not going to laugh,” Squirrel Girl signed back. “I promise.”
“Okay,” she said aloud. “Well…you seem to have the proportional abilities of a squirrel, right? I did some research. By some metrics the jaw muscle is the strongest muscle in the human body. Our bites can create two hundred pounds per square inch of pressure. Well, squirrel bites are capable of seven thousand pounds per square inch.” From the corner of her eye, she saw two squirrels high-five. “So…if squirrels can bite with seven thousand pounds of force, what would your proportional biting strength be?”
Squirrel Girl closed her eyes, as if calculating in her head. Her eyes popped open. “Wait, are you telling me to chew through this door?”
Ana Sofía felt her face go hot with embarrassment, but she said, “Squirrel Girl, I am telling you to chew through this door.”
Squirrel Girl seemed to need a moment to take this in. Then she whispered a word. Ana Sofía thought it was probably “Awesome.”
Squirrel Girl put her hands against the door, she opened her mouth, and…what happened next was unlike anything Ana Sofía had witnessed before. There was gnawing. There was chomping. There was nibbling. There was even climbing, as she maneuvered around to get the right angles. And by the time Squirrel Girl stood back up, there was a hole about two feet in diameter in the center of the door. And flecks of metal on her lips.
“That was hard-core,” Ana Sofía said.
Squirrel Girl wiped the metal off her mouth. And smiled.
“Squirrel power!” she said in ASL.
“Oh, dude, you broke a tooth!” Ana Sofía pointed to one of Squirrel Girl’s front teeth, which was broken off halfway to its root at a ragged angle.
“That’s okay, they grow back. Also, high five that I got you saying ‘dude.’”
Ana Sofía high-fived very reluctantly, but Squirrel Girl had just chewed through several inches of solid metal, so a little indulgent social
celebration wasn’t unthinkable.
Squirrels poured through the chewed-through hole. Squirrel Girl went next, her hips, thighs, and tail area barely squeezing through.
Ana Sofía paused before the hole. Behind her was the cavernous, dark mall. Her hearing aids buzzed, picking up indistinct sounds. Had Dog-Lord and Mistress Meow escaped S.H.I.E.L.D.’s pound and come back? Was it Hydra guards? Other things? She peered back into the dark, and it seemed to move. She peered through the hole Squirrel Girl had chewed open, which led into the underground lair of the most evilest organization on the planet.
See previous note about avoiding dark, empty malls. Add new note: best practice is always to stay with Squirrel Girl.
She took a deep breath. And she dropped through the hole.
There were narrow stairs, and then a narrow hallway lined with lockers. It even smelled like a middle school locker room. Squirrel Girl and the squirrels sniffed and scowled, no doubt in agreement.
“Tippy says there’s some kind of scanning machine down there at the end of the hall, and it shoots lasers if it doesn’t recognize you,” Squirrel Girl said. “So that’s probably the entrance to the rest of the underground base.”
“Right,” Ana Sofía said. She sat on the floor and pulled the laptop out of her backpack. She took a deep breath, typed and tapped and began to worm her way past security using the path she’d created last night. Eventually a field prompt came up, a way to insert names into the database of those people with approved access.
“This is the tricky part,” said Ana Sofía. “I need to input a name for everyone as we pass through the scanner so the system believes we’re authorized and doesn’t set off an intruder alert.”
“I love that you know how to do that and maybe can you teach me how you do it sometime when we’re not actively breaking into a Hydra secret base?”
Ana Sofía gave her a thumbs-up.
“I can type in the names if you want since I know everyone,” said Squirrel Girl.
Ana Sofía took a deep breath and handed over her laptop. Her precious laptop that she had earned by doing a year’s worth of chores for the extended family. Her laptop was not just a toy or a tool, it was often her primary means of interacting with the world. Handing it over felt like tipping backward in a trust fall, and her heart beat painfully, but she did it.
