Copyright © 2016 by Princess Jones
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Super Model
(Super Secret #1)
Princess Jones
For both my fathers, David and Donald
the next book in this series is avalable October 2016
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Prologue
“Hello?”
I peeked down the hallway that stretched out before me. Typical office building stuff. A few doors on either side with numbers but no names. And of course there was no answer to my question because there was no one around to answer it.
Still, I called out again. “Where am I? Is anyone here?”
Not only did I not know where I was, I had no idea how I had gotten there. I knocked on the office door nearest me but there was no answer. I tried the knob but it was locked. I repeated the process with two more doors. No luck.
“How do I get out of here?” I called out again, but it was half-hearted. Somehow I knew I was all alone.
Ding!
I turned in the direction of the elevator at the other end of the hallway, its doors sliding open with a soft swoosh. I started moving before I made any decisions to do it. By the time my thoughts caught up with my feet, I’d decided that that I was going down to the ground floor and I’d figure out where to go from there.
When I went to push the ground floor button I realized I had been holding something the entire time. “What the. . My left hand had a bunch of papers and the other held a book—a hefty one. But I hadn’t felt the weight of it until I actually looked down and saw it.
As the elevator doors swooshed closed, I opened the cover to the title page. Big block letters sprawled across the title page said: How to Be a Superhero.
And that’s when it got all dark and I couldn’t see anything at all.
* * * * *
I woke up sweating and gasping for breath. By the time I realized I was in my bed instead of an elevator, my breathing had slowed down to normal speed. I’d had vivid dreams like this before but never that particular one. The ones that seemed the most real always made my mouth the driest.
I climbed down from my loft bed, padded out of my room and into our little kitchen.
As I poured myself a cold glass of water and gulped it down, I couldn’t help but feel the words How to Be a Superhero burned into the walls of my mind. I didn’t know if those words scared or excited me. Maybe both.
And there was only one person I wanted to talk about it with. Too bad he was dead.
I returned the water pitcher to the fridge and put the glass in the sink. I was just about back in my room when I heard the muffled noises coming from the other room. I glanced toward the bedroom door right next to mine and listened to a sound I’d heard many times before. I’d decided to let her be and go to sleep. Then my bare foot hit the squeaky floorboard. “Penny?”
“I needed water. I’m going to bed now.”
“Good. You have school in the morning. And you should get there early to sign up for that test.”
That last part made me roll my eyes in the dark, feeling brave because I knew she couldn’t see me. “I know. I’m going.”
“Good night, Penny.”
“Good night, Mom.” I went into my room, climbed into my loft bed, and went to sleep.
Chapter 1
The next morning came faster that I would have liked but I dutifully silenced the alarm on my phone and climbed out of bed anyway. The quiet apartment told me I was alone but I expected that. I threw on my blue and white plaid school uniform and a pair of sneakers. It was ugly but I didn’t hate it. It made getting ready in the mornings easy.
As I brushed my teeth and washed my face, my reflection stared back at me. Dark brown eyes that looked just as tired as I felt. Light brown skin. Big ears like my father. I had his smile, too, but I hadn’t used it much in the last few months. Under the circumstances, it was a tossup whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. I didn’t think I could take seeing his smile these days.
Small. Plain. Those were the two words I’d use to describe what I was looking at.
I only had a few more minutes to get ready. Working with what I had, I ran a brush through my long dark hair—hair I got from my mother—and twisted it into a lazy braid. I shrugged at my reflection in the mirror. That’ll have to do. Grabbing my backpack from my bedroom floor, I headed out the back door, down the stairs to the diner.
Poco was Mom’s other baby. We’d lived over the little diner for as long as I could remember. Mom liked the setup because it made her commute almost nonexistent. She would wake up at the crack of dawn and make her way downstairs to start preparing her plátanos fritos for the morning crowd. She said that whenever anyone else did them, they were either undercooked or soggy.
Ray, the line cook, would join her an hour later to fire up the kitchen. By 6:30, the doors opened and a steady stream of customers poured in until the big bang of the lunch rush. After that, the night cook Marty took over for Ray and one of the revolving door of college girls who waitressed there would take over for Mom.
She was already in full work mode by the time I pushed opened the door from the stairs to the diner. She flitted from table to table, taking orders, clearing plates, and shouting commands to anyone who would listen. She was in her element here.
I scooted into my regular seat at the counter just as Mom placed a plate of eggs and bacon down in front of me. “Coma, niña, coma,” she scolded in Spanish as she dropped a kiss on my head. Mom was from El Salvador and Spanish often crept into her English conversations. I followed orders and scarfed down my breakfast while the diner moved at rush hour pace around me. Mom looked like the ringmaster of it all, passing out the eggshell blue menus with Poco in gold lettering to new customers while cashing out those on their way out.
Just as I finished my last bit of egg, Mom swooped in and took my plate away from me. “Vamonos! You want to get to your counselor and get signed up for the SHSAT.” She pronounced it like “she sat.” SHSAT stood for “Specialized High School Admissions Test,” but to Mom it meant “a good future for my daughter.”
“Mom.” I groaned at both her bringing up the test again and her pronunciation of it. “I told you that I’m not sure if I’m taking it.”
“But you have to take it if you want to go to a good high school. And you need that to go to a good college. And you need to go to a good college to have a good life. I don’t understand why you don’t understand this.”
“I do understand. I just don’t know what I’m going to be doing next year.” Or in life, ever, I added inside.
“But if you make up your mind after the test, you will miss it. They only give it once a year. And you only have a month! A month is nothing.”
“All you ever do is fuss at her,” yelled Ray through the ticket window separating the kitchen from the front of the restaurant. “Give the kid some time to breathe. Sheesh!” He punctuated the last word by placing two plates of eggs and pancakes in the window and hitting the little bell that always sat there. “Order up!”
Mom picked up the plates and ran them over to table two throwing a, “Mind your own business, Ray,” over her shoulder as she did.
I just shook my head at them. This was m
ild for a Friday morning. Mom had been singing the same song for a while now. This was my last year in junior high and I would automatically go to the neighborhood high school if I didn’t do anything else besides pass my regular classes. But if I wanted to get into a private school or one of the many specialty schools in the city, I’d have to take the SHSAT and do well.
I shotgunned my orange juice before pulling on my coat, hat, and gloves. “Bye, Mom.” She was taking an order at a table now, her pencil making quick movements on her order pad. But she looked up and gave me a quick smile before turning back to the business at hand.
The B24 bus stop was right on the corner of Forty-sixth St and Forty-seventh Ave, directly in front of the diner. I’d have to transfer to the Q32 and that would drop me off at my school.
I stood there for a moment before turning back to Poco. Through the big picture glass window that lined the front of the diner I could see Mom in her bright blue apron moving from customer to customer. When she turned to the kitchen window to scold Ray for something, I saw my chance. Keeping an eye on Mom’s position, I turned and walked in the exact opposite direction of my school.
Because I wasn’t signing up for any test.
* * * * *
My dad was a Superhero.
I don’t mean that in the sappy he’s-a-good-dad way. I mean it in the real-crime-fighting-took-an-oath way. In the movies or on TV, superheroes live alone or only get together with the others for the big blockbuster movies.
But my dad was just a regular guy. He ran the diner every single day. I could still see him in the kitchen, his dark skin glistening with sweat from the grill’s heat. There, my dad was just a really good line cook who always seemed to know how many burgers he’d need before the customers actually ordered. He usually knew where the best parking space in our small Queens neighborhood would be. And he always found my hiding places when we played hide and seek.
And then one day early last year I had a dream that the bus I rode every day to school crashed into a bus stop and killed two people. It was a really vivid dream, too. I could see the blood. I could hear the screaming. I woke up crying with my nose full of the burnt smell of the bus’s tires.
That night, my parents let me sleep in the bed with them, even though I hadn’t done that since I was a little kid. The next morning, I could still see the crash in my head. I was still queasy at breakfast so Mom let me stay home from school. That night, I think we all went white in unison when the news showed that the Q32 had crashed, killing two people.
The next day, Dad drove me to school himself. During the ride, he told me that my dream was special. And he knew that because sometimes he could see what was going to happen, too. He told me he was a Super, a member of a network of people who work to keep back the chaos that humans create for themselves. He thought I was one, too.
That wasn’t the last conversation we had about the whole thing. We talked about it a lot over the next few weeks. He told me that he loved working at the diner with my mom but his real calling was working for the Super Council. He used his visions to prevent bad things from happening in the world. That’s what being a Super is all about.
I’m not gonna lie—the whole thing freaked me out at first. It was a lot for a twelve-year-old to process. And even now that I was thirteen, it still kinda freaked me out. But talking about the little secret we had really brought us closer. He told me that the next step was going to the Academy so I could learn to use my powers.
There was only one problem. I never had another vision again.
* * * * *
When Dad first told me his secret, he told me that the first rule was that we don’t talk about being Supers. And the second rule is that we really don’t talk about being Supers with Mom.
I didn’t like lying to Mom but some things she didn’t need to know. She’d just be worried. Lying was really the lesser of the two evils.
Last September, Dad was behind the grill when he just grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. I was in my usual spot at the counter but Mom saw him first. She dropped the full plates she was carrying and ran to him. I was too shocked to move. He died before the ambulance even got to the diner.
I still couldn’t believe it happened. It felt like something that happened to someone else, even though I could perfectly picture him on the floor of the kitchen. Four months later, I continued to make every excuse in the world not to ever go in the diner kitchen again.
Dan Philip Gordon
Husband, Father, Friend
“Hi Dad.” I pulled off one my gloves with my teeth and ran my fingers along the engraved words. The cold stone burned my skin but I lingered anyway. This was the only way I could ever communicate with my father again. I’d tried praying. Or picturing him on my own. But the only way that felt like I was actually talking to him was to come to Mount Zion cemetery. And that was yet another thing I couldn’t tell Mom. She worried every time I didn’t finish my dinner or sniffled a bit. She would probably have me in therapy if she knew I was visiting Dad’s grave to chitchat.
“I can’t stay long today. I have a math test and an oral book report in English class. Why do teachers even assign this stuff? Reading the book was no problem. But is standing in front of the class telling people about it really necessary?”
I paused as if he was going to answer me. But I wasn’t a little kid. I knew that my dad wasn’t there. Still this was the last place on earth he’d been and it made me feel better to come here.
“And Mom is still on my case about school next year. It just kills me that I could be going to Super school instead. I could be learning actual useful stuff. But instead I have to play dodgeball in gym. Not that I blame you,” I quickly backtracked. “It’s not your fault you weren’t around to finish what you started. But I really wish you had been.”
“I had that dream again last night. It was so real but I don’t know if it’s one of those dreams, you know? I know you always said to look for the signs but I haven’t seen any.”
I glanced at my phone and noticed it was getting late. “I have to go, Dad. But I’ll be back soon.” I patted the gravestone and headed to the nearest bus stop.
Chapter 3
“So, who should we hear from today? Hmm?”
My English teacher, Mrs. Beauman, looked us over from the front of the classroom. No one answered her but groans erupted from several places in the room. We had been giving oral book reports all week with a group of kids going each day. It was the last day of reports so I knew I’d have to go but I was hoping to go last.
Please don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me. Please don’t pick me, I prayed in my head.
Her eyes flitted over the room and finally landed on me. “Penny. You’re up.”
Ugh. But I made my way to the front, trying to avoid tripping in the process. I didn’t need to give them any more reasons to laugh at me. Once in the front, I cleared my throat a bit but it turned into a cough that lasted just two or three seconds too long. Mrs. Beauman had to come over and hit me on the back a couple of times before it ended.
“Gross.” It came from somewhere in the back of the room and was followed by a bunch of laughter. It wasn’t much more than a murmur but I heard it. I couldn’t identify who said it but that didn’t matter. All of my confidence slipped away.
Mrs. Beauman was already concerned. “Penny, you good? Do you need a glass of water or something?”
“Um, no, um, I think I’m OK.” Her face told me that she didn’t believe me, but she told me to start anyway.
I took a deep breath and began. “The book I read was The Hero and The Crown by Robin McKinley. It’s the story of a young unwanted princess, Aerin, who finds her purpose by teaching herself to be a warrior and eventually—”
I never finished the sentence.
My mouth moved but nothing came out. All of the air evaporated from the room, and I gasped for breath. The classroom fell away and I was suddenly surrounded by i
nky blackness. I couldn’t hear or see anything. This must be what it’s like to be dead, skittered across my mind, leaving a dirty trail behind it.
A flash of blinding light exploded and when it was gone I could see again. I wasn’t in the classroom anymore. I stood on a sidewalk in front of a building I didn’t recognize. Cars and people passed me on the street, not realizing that I wasn’t supposed to be there.
I looked down at my clothes. I was still wearing my school uniform. But how did I get from school to this place? And if I didn’t get back to school, what would happen to my oral report? The thought of a failing grade made me break out in a cold sweat. I had to get back to school. I’d figure out the rest of this later.
I turned back to the building, searching for the street number on it. If I could figure out where I was, then I could get back to school. There was no building number but there was a directory for all of the apartments inside. There were nine or ten listings but the one at the top caught my eye:
Audrey Hart, Super
The name wasn’t familiar but it drew me for some reason. I had the sudden urge to go inside and knock on her door. I reached for the doorknob but never made contact. I was back in darkness again.
“Penny? Penny? Can you hear me?” Mrs. Beauman’s voice—a full octave higher than usual—penetrated the black. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on flat on my back with my teacher and half of the kids in the class standing over me. Each of their faces featured its own emotion—concern, fear, and completely freaked out. They were all waiting for me to say something.
My head was pounding. The cold tile floor of the classroom was hard against my back. And the word “Audrey” throbbed in my mind. I licked my lips and forced myself to say something. “I. . . I. . . think I need to go see the nurse.”
Chapter 4
“Why aren’t you answering me? Should I come pick you up? I’m getting worried.”
An hour after I woke up on the floor in English class, I was headed home with a note from the school nurse suggesting a panic attack. She told me to get some rest and avoid stress before calling my mother to tell her I was on the way home. Now Mom was calling and texting me in her own version of a panic attack. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet, so I just sent her a text.
Super Secret (Book 1): Super Model Page 1
