by Tess Sharpe
“Pumpkin stealing,” Karen said. “We don’t know why.”
Before the super hero girls could continue discussing what Giganta and Harley Quinn were up to, the owner of the pumpkin patch came hurrying up to them.
“Super hero girls, I can’t even begin to thank you,” PawPaw told them. “You kept us all safe and saved my pumpkin patch.”
“That is our sworn duty,” Wonder Woman told him. “We are happy to help. But your thanks should rightfully go to my two friends here.” She gestured valiantly at Karen and Kara.
“Bumblegirl really deserves all the credit,” Kara said. “I would’ve been just as squashed without her.”
Karen’s stomach flipped at the compliment. “You would’ve figured something out,” she said.
“Let me give you pumpkins as a thank-you!” PawPaw said, giving each of the heroes their choice of pumpkins. The villains might have gotten away, but Kara and Karen had foiled their plans, avoided getting tickled by the goats, and gotten some free pumpkins. So all in all, this was not bad for a day of super hero work!
Carving pumpkins was sticky, tricky work. Babs stuck her tongue between her teeth as she tried to get the perfect bat symbol carved into her pumpkin.
“Look!” Diana declared, placing her pumpkin on her head. Diana had carved her pumpkin into a mighty battle helmet. Jessica had explained to Diana the tradition of carving faces or other designs into the pumpkins, but the Amazon princess had wanted to march to the beat of her own drum.
“Errr…it looks very fearsome, Diana,” Karen said, putting the finishing touches on the bumblebee she had carved into her pumpkin. The stripes weren’t as tidy as she would’ve liked, but it still looked good.
“Don’t forget to save all the pumpkin seeds for me,” Jessica reminded her friends. She had carved a beautiful sun on her pumpkin.
“Are we going to eat them?” Kara asked.
“I am definitely going to plant some next year,” Jessica declared. “Then we can carve pumpkins that we grew ourselves!”
“I could always use a supply of pumpkins,” Zee said. She had carved a traditional smiling jack o’ lantern face into her pumpkin, but she had added a magician's top hat and wand to give it some flair.
“I think you should probably stay away from mixing pumpkins and magic for a while,” Babs pointed out.
“It’s the science that messed it all up,” Zee insisted.
“Does that mean you’ve figured out a way to switch us back?” Kara asked eagerly.
“We have some hypotheses,” Jessica said. “Soon we’ll know all the elements that were in the pink foam. We already know what went into Zee’s spell. It’s the pink foam that’s the mystery.”
“But once we know what’s in it, we can create an antidote,” Karen said, sighing in relief.
“That’s the idea,” Babs said. “I wonder what was in that pink foam.”
“It could’ve just been lab soap,” Kara said.
Zee shook her head. “With the way it reacted? It was something different. Maybe just a strange concoction from the random chemicals that got mixed. Too bad we cleaned it up before realizing we were going to need a sample.”
“Maybe it’s alien pond slime!” Babs giggled.
“Bigfoot tears,” Jessica said, joining in the fun.
“Shark boogers!” Karen suggested.
“Ewww!” Babs laughed. “Sharks don’t have boogers.”
“What happens when they sneeze, then?” Karen asked.
Diana tapped her pumpkin helmet, thinking. “By great Poseidon, I do not know,” she confessed. “My mother would know. She is wise in the ways of battle, leadership, and marine life.”
“All I know is that I’ll be glad when we’re switched back,” Karen said.
“The longer we stay like this, the weirder it gets,” Kara agreed. “I miss rocking out.”
“I never want to sleep-fly again!” Karen said. “And my parents are so mad about how messy my room is now. I was never messy before. My workshop looks like it exploded. And the other night, I snuck out late and went moshing at the Lazarus Pit. Moshing! Me! And I loved it!”
“What about me?” Kara asked over her pumpkin. “I want to color-code my closet and keep everything neat. I almost volunteered to clean test tubes after chemistry class for fun! The thing that I was doing in detention!”
“Cleanliness is very important in the lab!” Karen, Jessica, and Babs said in unison.
Kara shook her head. “No one should think cleaning out a test tube is fun.”
“But soon, Jessica and Zee will be able to create an antidote,” Diana said. She wanted to give her friends comfort and support, like any strong leader would.
“What happens if Giganta shows up again before that?” Karen asked. “I’m no Supergirl, even with her powers!”
Kara frowned. “You did an amazing job at the pumpkin patch. I’m no Bumblebee, either. You’re way better in the suit than I am. Did you see how wobbly I was? It was like I’d never flown a day in my life!”
But Karen shrugged Kara’s insistence and compliment off. “I just want to go back to not being very important,” she said. “Some of us aren’t good at being center stage.” She sighed when her phone buzzed. “That’s my mom. I have to go home and clean my room. Ugh.”
After Karen left, Diana looked into the faces of her teammates and friends. She solemnly removed her pumpkin helmet from her head. “It breaks my warrior’s spirit to think that Karen Beecher does not feel like she is one of the vital hearts of this team.”
“Karen is so important. How do we make her feel like she is?” Babs asked. Her eyes lit up. “We could beam a holograph of a bee in a heart into the night sky!”
“I will train with Karen and bond with her as true sisters in arms and justice,” Diana decided. “To train alongside her is to bind us in sisterhood for eternity.”
“I think Karen could use a break,” Jessica said. “I’d take her on a friends’ day out. We’d go to the botanical gardens, go to that new vegetarian cafe we’ve both been wanting to try, and maybe go to the library. Karen loves the library.”
“I think the best thing I can do is figure out how to switch them back,” Zee said.
“What are you thinking, Kara?” Diana asked, curious that her normally brash friend was offering no ideas.
“I’m not sure it matters what I’m thinking,” Kara said. “I think it matters what I’m feeling. I feel unsure. It makes me wonder if Karen feels like this a lot of the time. And it makes me wonder…maybe it’s good to feel like this sometimes. I never thought about it before. Being Supergirl means that I’m super-strong and not much can hurt me. I kind of barrel through life.”
“You have confidence,” Jessica said. “That’s an admirable thing. But it’s also something that can be hard to grow, even in the best soil.”
Kara nodded in agreement.
“We all have fears,” Diana said. “What matters is that we fight our fears just like we fight our foes.”
“As a team!” Babs said.
“As a team,” chorused the other girls, reaching out and grasping one another’s hands in the kind of warrior spirit that would make the warriors of Themyscira proud.
Now that each super hero girl had a plan to make Karen feel like a vital part of their team, they got to work making it happen.
First, Diana invited Karen to train with her. Diana was most interested in a sport that Harleen had mentioned: gymnastics. There were entire buildings full of things to bounce and flip off of! An acrobatic warrior’s dream training ground. Karen had agreed to go to the trampoline park with Diana. It had sounded like a lot of fun. But what was supposed to be a fun training session turned into a disaster when Karen kept launching herself off the trampoline so hard she had to keep flying herself into the foam pit for safety! And more than a few time
s she overshot her target and smashed into the padded walls. Luckily, there were so many people bouncing and twisting in the air that no one noticed Karen doing a little unplanned flying.
“I am sorry that our training session was not as enjoyable as I had hoped,” Diana said as the two of them made their way downtown to meet Jessica for lunch.
“It was fun,” Karen insisted. “All my mistakes were actually helping me get used to Kara’s powers.”
“Hi, you two!” Jessica waved when they arrived at the restaurant they had agreed to meet at. “How was your training session?”
“Karen Beecher proved herself a noble and aerodynamic warrior,” Diana said.
“Super-strength and trampolines are a bad mix,” Karen said. Her mouth twisted. “It’s not just the powers. Having a whole new personality is no joke. I keep doing things I would never have even dreamed of before.”
“Bad things?” Jessica asked as they were seated and handed menus.
Karen shook her head. “No, of course not. Kara may be a grade A rebel, but she has a heart of gold. I just keep doing things differently than I normally would. And that makes me wonder: Is Kara’s way better than mine? She confronts people like Doris. I just wanted to keep quiet.”
“We must all follow the beat of our own battle drum,” Diana said. “Many, including my own mother, tried to keep me from competing in the Tournament of Athena and Aphrodite. But I had to follow what my heart was saying and face the Twenty-One Challenges to become the warrior I was meant to be.”
“But what if what I’m meant to be is quiet and kind of shy?” Karen asked.
“Even the quietest bee possesses a mighty sting to protect the hive,” Diana said. Her encouragement made Karen smile as the server came over to take their order.
The girls asked for double of everything. Food was important for growing super heroes, especially after a battle or training session. As they finished eating and paid, Jessica asked the owner all sorts of questions about how she grew her own herbs and seasonings in a garden behind the restaurant. Before they left, the owner gave her a little pot that held a basil plant. If Jessica cared for it properly, she would be able to season her vegetarian meals with it.
“It was so nice of her to give you that,” Karen said.
“I can’t wait to put it in a bigger pot to allow the roots space to wiggle their toes,” Jessica said.
Karen giggled at the idea of plant roots having toes and Diana joined in with her.
“What are you goody-goodies laughing about?”
Karen whirled around, her stomach twisting when she saw that it was Doris.
“We are laughing as we enjoy the day and gifts of friendship,” Diana said, like she didn’t see the angry look on Doris’s face.
“You shouldn’t be so happy, since you got all of us detention,” Doris said, right to Karen. She smiled in a mean way, like she expected Karen to start apologizing any second. And maybe last week, Karen would have done that, even though it was Doris’s fault.
But Karen wasn’t sorry. Doris deserved detention! Karen had felt bad when she noticed Doris frantically reading before their science test. She hadn’t studied at all—or at least enough. But that didn’t give her the right to cheat off Karen’s test. Cheaters shouldn’t win, but Karen had almost let her win. She had only wanted Kara to drop it because it was easier.
But sometimes the easy thing wasn’t the right thing. Sometimes the right thing was really hard. Sometimes it was scary. That was when doing the right thing was the most important, Karen was starting to realize.
“If you’re feeling so bad about detention, maybe you should stop cheating off people’s tests.”
“Mr. Kincaid didn’t put me in detention for cheating,” Doris insisted.
Karen shot her a totally unimpressed look. She even gave her head a little defiant roll. It was a gesture she’d seen Kara make dozens of times—especially when she was getting ready for a fight. “Next time you try to cheat off me, I won’t need my friend to stand up for me. I’ll tell the teacher myself.”
Doris rolled her eyes and stalked away.
“Well done, Karen.” Diana clapped her on the back. “You are right, you have no need for Kara to stand up for you. You do it very well on your own.”
Karen smiled. She had stood up for herself, hadn’t she? “I guess I have more of Kara’s personality in me right now than I thought.”
Diana clasped both of Karen’s shoulders, looking down at her seriously. “No, Karen Beecher,” she said. “That was all you.”
Karen wanted to believe her. She wanted to be that cool and strong. But she wondered if she only knew how to be bold when she had Supergirl’s personality and powers. She and Kara were so different. She was learning that more and more every day. But she was also learning that it wasn’t a bad thing. Their differences made them stronger. As girls, as heroes, and as teammates.
The next day, when Kara got to school, Zee excitedly pulled her into the locker room. Karen and Jessica were waiting for her there.
“Jessica and I solved it!” Zee declared, pulling a vial of blue liquid from her jacket with a flourish. “This is the antidote.”
“How does it work?” Karen and Kara asked in unison.
“We apply it to your heads, and Zee does her thing,” Jessica explained, making a wand-waving motion with her hand.
Karen looked at Kara, who gave her a shrug. “We gotta try something.”
She was right. Jessica took the vial from Zee and tipped the liquid onto Kara’s head, then Karen’s. Zee took out her wand and waved it. “Hctiws pu!”
For just a moment, the air felt electric. Karen let out a surprised squeak, and Kara could sense the difference in herself instantly. She clenched her fist, feeling the power rush through her veins. Karen opened her eyes and smiled slowly as Kara sprang joyfully into the air, floating a few inches off the ground before she settled back down.
“How do you both feel?” Jessica asked.
“Back to normal,” Karen said, her shoulders slumping a little. She didn’t know how to feel about that. Being as bold as Kara had had its moments.
“I feel like myself again,” Kara said, smoothing back her choppy hair with her hand. “In fact, I think I’ll be doing some moshing tonight.” She shot Karen a sly look. “Want to join me, Karen?”
Karen shook her head as the bell rang. “We’re going to be late for class! Hurry!”
All the girls laughed—Kara the loudest—and followed Karen to their first class.
By the time detention rolled around at the end of the day, Kara was strutting around school like she always had. Karen had spent lunch reorganizing her locker because it had become a mess in the few days she had had Kara’s personality! She was ready and eager to clean up the lab, even if it meant facing Doris without the extra boost of Kara attitude.
The lab was in disarray again. The freshman biology class was studying fungus this week. There were bits of mushroom, lichen, and all sorts of moldy-smelling things on the floor. Karen shuddered as her foot went squish on something as she stepped farther into the dirty lab. Diana handed out brooms while Babs scrubbed the marble tabletops.
Jessica crouched down to collect all the mushrooms from the floor. “Did you know that fungus is its own biological kingdom of organisms?”
“Does that mean there’s a Queen Mushroom?” Kara joked.
“I want to be Mushroom Queen!” Zee declared. “Imagine the outfits! Mushrooms are also excellent for spells, like pumpkins.”
“No more mixing plants and spells!” Karen scolded. But she smiled at Zee to show her she wasn’t actually mad.
“Hey, where’s Doris?” Kara asked suddenly.
The girls looked around. They had assumed Doris was just late, but it was nearly fifteen minutes into detention. That wasn’t just late.
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“Did she skip detention?” Karen asked, scandalized. “Mr. Kincaid is going to be so angry!”
“It’s nothing for us to worry about,” Kara assured her. “It’s her choice. Let’s get back to work.”
The girls returned to their jobs. Babs finished cleaning the lab tables, while Kara and Diana swept the floor free of fungus. Karen brought all the lab equipment to the sink to wash. Jessica set the mushrooms she collected to the side and began to prepare a mop bucket. The girls tackled the detention assignment with the same teamwork they used as super heroes. Soon the lab was so clean no one would ever believe that freshman biology had even had class that day.
“We did it!” Karen cheered.
But just as the girls began to put the finishing touches on the lab, a shadow fell across the room. Crash! A huge pumpkin came soaring through the window and splattered all over the just-cleaned lab tables and floor!
“We’re under attack!” Babs shrieked.
Diana charged toward the window, fearless in the face of flying pumpkins. “It’s Giganta and Harley Quinn,” she said.
Kara hurried to Diana’s side and peered out the smashed window. Harley Quinn was standing behind a crossbow-like machine, while Giganta was looming over a giant pile of pumpkins.
“They’ve got a pumpkin launcher!” Kara shouted. “And a whole lot of squash to squash!”
As pumpkins went flying through the air and into the lab, the super hero girls dashed across the hallway and into the janitor’s closet to transform. The commotion was sure to cause a scene, even though school was out for the day.
