The Super Awful Superheroes of Classroom 13

by Honest Lee

  “Holy guacamole, that was fast!” Fatima said. “You have to be the fastest person in the world.”

  “That’sthecoolestthingever!” Teo said. He’d never been a fan of actual exercise, but being the fastest boy alive? Pretty cool. He wanted to see just how fast he could go. “I’mgoingtorunaroundtheworld!” he told Fatima.

  “Talk slower so I can understand you!” Fatima said.

  “I’m going to run around the world,” Teo said slowly. “See you later!” Teo vanished in a blur.

  As he ran around the world, Teo visited the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, the Kremlin in Russia, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Rio de Janeiro beaches in Brazil, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, Big Ben in England, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

  When he arrived back in Classroom 13, he asked Fatima, “How long have I been gone?”

  She looked at her watch. “Seven minutes!”

  Teo really was the fastest boy alive.

  “Teo, please have a seat,” Ms. Linda said. “You may have superpowers, but you are not excused from class.”

  Teo stared at the clock. It said 2:37. After what felt like hours and hours and hours, it still said 2:37.

  “Why is time moving so slowly?” he asked Fatima.

  “Well, now that you’re super-fast, every second will seem like days,” Fatima explained. “Time moves slower when you’re super-fast.”

  Dramatically, Teo shouted, “Noooooooooooo!”

  Have you ever wanted to know what other people are thinking? I promise—you really don’t.

  Ava, Preeya, and Zoey used to be best friends. But lately, Preeya and Zoey had been ignoring Ava. Preeya and Zoey even made weird faces at Ava. The worst part for Ava was that she didn’t know why. When Ava was struck by lightning, all she wanted was to know what they were whispering about.

  And now she had the power to read people’s minds.

  The first thing Ava did with her new power was peek inside her friends’ heads. They were furious with Ava for not inviting them to her birthday party.

  “I didn’t have a birthday party!” Ava explained. “I was sick.”

  “Really?” Zoey said. She and Preeya weren’t mad at Ava anymore. They were all friends again. Yay!

  (Yes, I know. Their situation seems silly, but hurt feelings can make people act irrational.)

  Only now Ava knew exactly what everyone was thinking.

  At first, Ava used her gift to help her fellow classmates. She helped Chloe remember where she’d left her favorite coat. She helped William remember his grandparents’ birthdays. She even helped Ms. Linda remember where she’d put her keys—under the potted plant on her porch.

  But as time went on, Ava couldn’t help but hear everything that the boys in class were thinking. All Mark thought about was corn chips. (Odd.) All Liam thought about was farts. (Yuck.) And all Dev and Teo and Triple J thought about were the horrible and violent video games they loved to play. (So gross.)

  Boys are weird, Ava thought. She did not like hearing their thoughts. So she tried to pay attention to only the girls in class.

  But theirs weren’t much better. All Olivia thought about was good grades. (Strange.) All Isabella thought about was horse poop. (Nasty.) And all Preeya and Zoey thought about was how dumb Ava’s new haircut was. (So mean!)

  Girls are just as bad as boys, Ava thought. She stormed over to Preeya and Zoey and yelled, “I love my haircut! I don’t care what you think!”

  “Ms. Linda!” Zoey called, raising her hand. “Ava is reading our minds without our permission!”

  “Ava, please stop, or I’ll have to give you detention,” Ms. Linda said.

  Ava no longer liked her power. In fact, she hated it. You might think hearing other people’s thoughts is a super superpower, but it is not. It’s awful. Can you imagine having other people’s thoughts in your own head? After a while, you may not know whose thoughts are whose—including yours.

  Every day, Mason walked home after school. Today, he wondered what his superpower was. He thought it would be cool to make milk. Then he remembered that’s why he had a pet cow.

  Mason tried to remember what he had been thinking about when the lightning struck. He couldn’t remember. He wondered if he would grow tiger fur, or shoot fireworks out of his fingers, or turn into a fly and fly away. None of that happened. Instead, he vanished!

  One second he was in front of the school—the next second, he was in front of his house. Naked!

  “Yikes!” he screamed. He ran inside and locked the door. He looked out the window to see if anyone had seen him. “How did I get home?” he wondered out loud. He didn’t remember walking home. He also didn’t remember taking off his clothes.

  Mason knew he wasn’t the smartest kid around, so he guessed that he’d just forgotten walking home and getting naked. “Oh well,” he said. He got dressed and went to bed. (Yes, it was still afternoon, but like I said, Mason wasn’t the smartest kid around.)

  In the middle of the night, Mason had a dream that he visited the pyramids of Egypt. Several tourists looked at him and said, “That little boy is naked!”

  Mason woke up and said, “What a horrible dream!” But the odd part? There was sand in his bed.

  The next morning, Mason got dressed for school. He had some toast and was thinking about what he would (or wouldn’t) learn in school that day. And suddenly he was there—in Classroom 13. Once again, he was naked.

  “Why does this keep happening to me?” he screamed. Luckily, it was early, so no one was at school yet. He grabbed a coat from the lost and found, put it on, then ran home.

  “Mom, I keep disappearing and reappearing somewhere else,” Mason said.

  “Of course you do, dear,” she said, sipping her coffee slowly. She was not a morning person.

  Mason walked very slowly to school. He watched each footstep, making sure not to think about other places. When he got to school, he grabbed Fatima and yelled, “I don’t like my superpower! It makes me naked!”

  “Hold on,” Fatima said. “Start at the beginning and tell me everything.” So Mason did. Fatima knew what his power was. “So cool! You’re a teleporter!”

  “Is that like a telephone?” Mason asked. “Or a telescope?”

  “No, a teleporter means you travel from one place to another instantly. You don’t need a car or a plane or a boat. You just think about somewhere and you’re there!”

  Mason thought about Hawaii. Instantly, he was there on a Hawaiian beach. He was also naked. “Ack!” he screamed. Then he teleported back to Classroom 13. He was still naked.

  Fatima picked up his clothes and handed them to him. “It seems that when you teleport, you can only teleport yourself. That means you can’t teleport with a friend, or with your cow, or even with clothes. You can travel anywhere—just naked.”

  “That’s a crummy superpower,” Mason said.

  “No, the power is super cool,” Fatima noted. “It’s the naked thing that’s super crummy.”

  “How do I turn it off?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t think you can,” Fatima said. “You just have to learn how to control it.”

  For the next few hours, Mason tried to control his thoughts: He tried not to think about other places.

  (I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the more I try not to think about something, the more I think about it. For instance, if I told you, “Don’t think about strawberries,” what would you think about?

  Exactly! You think about strawberries. Now stop thinking about strawberries and get back to Mason’s story.)

  By lunchtime, Mason was so stressed out about not teleporting, he lost his appetite. Instead of eating, all he could think about was teleporting somewhere, naked, and getting in trouble. “You have to stop thinking about it,” Triple J said. “Otherwise you’ll end up somewhere bad. Like the principal’s office.”

  As soon as Triple J said it, Mason thought of Principal Pumpernickel’
s office. Instantly, there he was, sitting on the principal’s desk. Naked.

  “Mason Mathers Marshall! What do you think you’re doing?!” Principal Pumpernickel shouted.

  “It wasn’t me!” Mason protested. “It’s my superpower! I can’t help it!”

  “Your superpower is being naked and putting your butt on my desk? That doesn’t make any sense!” the principal barked. Mr. Pumpernickel gave Mason his jacket to cover up. “Consider yourself in deep, deep, deep trouble, Mr. Marshall. I am calling your mother. You’ll be in detention for the rest of your days!”

  “Crummiest superpower ever,” Mason muttered to himself.

  Mason thought his trouble was over. When he went home, he was so upset, he’d lost his appetite. Mason never skipped dessert, but tonight he did. Instead, he kept drinking water. Eventually, all he could think about was peeing, and he really had to go. He excused himself and ran to the bathroom.

  As he started to go, he immediately felt relaxed—so relaxed that he closed his eyes and let his mind drift. A random thought popped into his head—what if he got into trouble with the police?

  The sound of pee splashing in the toilet changed to the sound of pee splashing on a policeman’s boot. When Mason opened his eyes, he was no longer at home. He was in a police station, peeing on the police chief’s boot. Once again, Mason was naked.

  The police threw him in jail.

  “You’re in big trouble!” they shouted. But without an ID, they had no way to identify Mason. (Though he wasn’t very smart, Mason was smart enough not to tell them his name.)

  Don’t worry. Mason wasn’t in jail for very long. Unfortunately for the cops, no jail cell could hold Mason. Of course, neither could clothes.

  * You might think I forgot to write Chloe’s chapter—but I didn’t. You see, Chloe got the power of invisibility. So that’s how I wrote the chapter—invisibly. You’re welcome.

  What happens to a superhero when they’re super sick? Ask Santiago.

  Santiago had the worst cold. All he wanted was to warm up. And now… well, he’s actually burning up. Like, for real. As in, he burned a hole in the desk just sitting there. (I don’t own a thermometer, but he’s got to be running three thousand degrees hotter than most kids.)

  You see, the super cloud that gave everyone in Classroom 13 superpowers had given Santiago pyro -powers—which meant he could make and control fire.

  As cool hot as that sounds, it didn’t do much for Santiago’s horrible cold. Instead of sneezing snot out of his nose, he sneeze-blasted fireballs straight through his box of tissues.

  “Extra-strength tissue?!” Santiago said, reading the Kleenex box label. “S’NOT!”

  Every time Santiago sneezed, something in the 13th Classroom caught on fire. Ms. Linda (and the local fire department) was getting tired of putting out the little fires. “Young man, I am happy you felt well enough to come to school today, but I am calling your mother. I must insist she take you home,” Ms. Linda said.

  But Santiago didn’t want to miss school. Every time Santiago missed a day of class in Classroom 13, something unlucky or disastrous or terrible happened. And he didn’t want to miss anything—be it super or awful! Especially not when everyone had superpowers.

  “Hold on, Ms. Linda,” Santiago said. “There must be some way for me to control my powers. Let me try something.…” He held his breath and sat perfectly still. Slowly, his flames died down.

  “There,” he said breathlessly. “I just won’t breathe. No more fire. You won’t even know I’m… I’m…”

  But as we all know, you can’t hold in a sneeze.

  “Aa-aa-AA-CHOOOOO!!!” Santiago sneezed such a huge fireball, it punched a hole right through the 13th Classroom’s wall.

  “I’m sorry, Santiago. You are sick,” Ms. Linda said. “You must go home.”

  Santiago’s mom drove to school and picked him up—then took him to the fire department. They put him in a fireproof suit. While all his classmates and friends were out and about using their superpowers in the real world, Santiago was forced to return home and miss out on all the fun. Again.

  His mom brought him a bowl of chicken soup. He tasted it. “It’s cold!”

  “So heat it up,” his mom said.

  Santiago took off his fireproof gloves and boiled the soup in his blazing hands. He hated being sick. It made him steaming angry.

  You might be wondering: “Where’s Yuna?”

  Or: “What’s her superpower?”

  Or: “What’s her story?”

  Or (most likely): “Wah! I need a nap!” Ignore that. That was me wondering that. What were we talking about? Oh, yes: Yuna!

  I know all about Yuna, but she said I could only tell you in Morse code:

  Fatima had been jotting down notes about all of her classmates. She approached Jayden Jason James—aka Triple J, aka the Most Popular Kid in Class—and asked, “So what’s your power?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “Try to do something,” Fatima suggested.

  Triple J felt sudden strength in his muscles. With one swift chop, he broke his desk in half. When he jump-kicked, he flew into the air. When he punched, he hit with the force of a thousand ninja warriors inside his fist.

  “I’ve got super kung fu!” Triple J said.

  “Actually, that’s karate,” Fatima said.

  Triple J shrugged. “Whatever.”

  That night, Triple J put his superhero costume together. He went to the local mall and bought a karate gi (that’s the name for the uniform in Japanese). Then he tied a headband around his forehead. He also renamed himself Jay-Fu. Jay-Fu planned to fight crime and protect the people in his neighborhood.

  The only problem? Jay-Fu lived in a really nice, safe community.

  Instead of chasing down villains on rooftops, Jay-Fu chased cats out of trees. Instead of stopping armored car heists, Jay-Fu fixed flat tires. Instead of battling bat monsters and boogeymen, Jay-Fu battled being bored.

  The fact was, his neighborhood didn’t need a superpowered hero.

  Jay-Fu skulked back to his house feeling useless. His mom was making dinner—spaghetti and meatballs. Jay-Fu was about to toss his gi in the trash when he saw she needed help.

  “I can’t get this jar of sauce open!” his mom said. “Pasta night will be ruined!”

  With the mysterious Ancient Spinning Palm technique, Jay-Fu opened the pasta sauce jar with ease.

  A smile blossomed on his mom’s face. She cried, “Jayden, you’re my hero!”

  Jay-Fu took an honorable bow. “You may thank my powerful kung fu.”

  “Actually, that was karate,” she said. Then his mom sat him down and gave him a long talk about the differences between martial arts. Not even a superpowered kung-fu karate hero can stand against a mother’s lecture.

  Preeya felt like no one ever listened to her. In class, she talked and talked and talked, and Ms. Linda was always saying things like, “Preeya, please be quiet during my lesson,” or, “Preeya, no talking during tests.”

  It was the same at home. Her brother always said, “Preeya, quit talking during my TV shows.” Her dad always said, “Preeya, hush. I’m on a work call.” Her older sister—who she shared a room with—always said, “Preeya, I’m doing my homework. Shhhh.” Why didn’t anyone ever listen to Preeya?!

  Of course, once she got her powers, they didn’t have a choice. If people thought she was loud before (which they did), nothing could prepare them for her new superpowerful voice.

  “What’s wrong with my voice?” she asked. But it was so LOUD, it blew out the classroom windows. Every eye in Classroom 13 was on Preeya—including all eight of Dev’s spider eyes.

  “No more talking, Preeya!” Ms. Linda said. “You’ll wreck the school!”

  Preeya clapped her hands over her mouth. When she got home, she didn’t say anything. She watched TV with her family, but she was too scared to speak. But at dinner, her mom asked, “How was school today, dear?”

 
Preeya shook her head.

  “Don’t be rude, Preeya. Answer your mother,” her dad said.

  “It was weird,” she said. Her voice was so powerful, it knocked over the kitchen table and blasted her family out of their chairs.

  “What is going on?!” her father shouted. “Preeya, explain this instant!”

  Preeya shook her head.

  “If you don’t tell us, you’re grounded!” her mother insisted.

  Not wanting trouble, she answered, “I got superpowers.” Her voice exploded the fridge and the dishwasher.

  “You are grounded, young lady!” her mother shouted.

  “But you made me speak!” Preeya yelled. Her yell was even more powerful—it blasted a hole in their kitchen wall.

  “Not another word!” her father growled. Preeya was furious. Even with superpowers, no one wanted to listen to her.

  Of course, if she were a super-villain, they would have to listen. Preeya smiled mischievously.…

  Mark was unbearably handsome. Everyone in Classroom 13 thought so (even the 13th Classroom agreed). So when everyone got superpowers, everyone was curious what superpowers Mark would get.

  At the time of the lightning strike, Mark was thinking of one thing: salty corn chips. He loved salt and he loved corn chips. He could eat them day and night. He could eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He liked them plain, or with yogurt, or with cheese—as long as they were salty.

  So what powers did he get? Well, he got the power to control corn chips.

  What does that mean? Well, if you control metal, it’s like you have magnet powers: You can move metal in the air, and bend metal, and make metal do whatever you want. Mark’s powers worked the same way: He could move corn chips in the air, and bend corn chips (which would break), and make corn chips do whatever he wanted.

  Mostly, he made corn chips fly into his mouth.