by J. S. Puller
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Everything will go back to normal tomorrow.”
He ran his hand along the length of my hair. Jealously, Selina hopped up into his lap. He petted her too. “If you say so, Janey.”
And we lapsed into the comfortable silence that always came with watching police dogs go running through an obstacle course.
The return to routine lulled me back from the brink of frustration. This was how it was supposed to be. Each day the same as the last, time marching slowly on. It wasn’t exciting, but it was safe. It was comfortable. And, in my ignorance, I thought it was right. It had never occurred to me that human beings were born with the innate desire to go faster and forward. I was happy where I was. Why hurtle headlong into the abyss where the future waited?
Looking back, I should have known better. About a great many things, of course, but most of all about Captain Superlative and her ambitions. You can’t really go back to normal after being hit by a tsunami. The landscape is never quite the same again. That’s just how it works.
But you know what they say about hindsight and all.
When I woke up the next day, I had completely forgotten about Captain Superlative. Maybe I had willfully forgotten about her, determined to have everything go back to the way it was. I don’t know. At any rate, she was the farthest thing from my mind that morning.
My dad dropped me off at the circle drive in front of the school, like always. I smiled and waved at him as he drove off, before heading inside. It had snowed a little the night before and the pavement was coated in a thin dusting of flakes, so my Blue Shoes were extra squeaky—everyone’s were. The hallways were a symphony of squeaks and squawks.
Paige was one of the few students who moved silently, in her old, beat-up sneakers.
She passed me by, head down, face framed by a curtain of braids with little silver and gold bands around them, carrying her books in her arms, like always. Singled out by silence, she was an easy target to spot. “Nice shoes, Paige,” Dagmar said, appearing out of a cluster of girls around the trophy case. She positioned herself directly in Paige’s path. Paige tried to veer to one side, but the book on top of her stack slid over. In trying to compensate, shifting in the opposite direction, she overcorrected and lost her balance altogether. Her books came toppling down, landing with a clatter as her shoulder hit the wall.
Dagmar towered over Paige, looking especially pleased. “You know, I think we should send you as a gift to the Kohn soccer team. It would guarantee they never won anything.”
The hallway echoed with agreement from the moths.
Just the typical beginning to a typical morning. Dagmar planted her fists on her waist, almost daring Paige to say anything back. But I knew she wouldn’t. She never did. Paige’s head was ducked low. I noticed that her eyes were fixed on a specific point, on Dagmar’s left wrist.
There was a mark there; a fresh bruise, all purple and pink.
It didn’t escape Dagmar’s attention that Paige was looking. It was only a split second, but I could see it in her hawkish eyes. I thought she might say something, but one of the girls from the group of moths called out, “Come on, Dagmar. You said you’d help me with my math homework.” Dagmar let out a huff and bumped Paige’s arm as she blazed by. Not hard enough to hurt Paige. It was just a warning. That Dagmar could hurt her.
Like that, it was over.
Dagmar walked off—probably to do her friend’s homework for her, given how protective she was of the soccer team. Paige rubbed the side of her arm. She glanced around, her eyes gazing at me and a few others before she knelt down to start collecting her books and papers, now damp with melted and dirty snow. The warning bell rang, picking up the pace of the hallway’s ebb and flow. Kids swirled past Paige in a flurry of squeaky shoes and self-absorbed importance. Someone kicked one of her books. Someone else stepped on her math worksheet. Another crunched down on her pencil. Her graphing calculator skidded into the wall, causing the little flap over the battery compartment to pop open.
Somehow, the word ostracism crept back into my mind.
Oddball.
Outlander.
Outsider.
Outcast.
I was about to turn away and head off to class, thinking nothing more of the encounter, when the hallway began to thunder with the sound of stomping, racing feet going faster than the code of conduct would allow.
“Hellooooooooo, citizen!”
Captain Superlative appeared, rushing down the hall like the waters of a flash flood, her arms held up and her fingers straight and tightly pressed together to slice through the air as she flew.
She was back. It twisted my stomach a little to see her in all of her kitchen-gloved glory. She stood out in all the wrong ways. And she was unapologetic about it.
What kind of person would do that?
Captain Superlative zipped to Paige, kids jumping out of her way. “It looks like you could use some help!”
Flustered, Paige looked up. “Well, I…”
She didn’t seem to know how to finish her sentence. But it didn’t seem to matter all that much. Suddenly Captain Superlative was down on her hands and knees, sweeping up Paige’s books. A few kids stopped to watch with me. Including Tyler Jeffries. The corner of his lip curled up. I wondered what he was thinking, and I stared at him until he turned to catch my eye. I shyly looked back at the scene.
Captain Superlative offered Paige her neatly stacked things. “There you go, citizen! And don’t lose this one.” She tapped the fingertips of her glove on a sheet of lined paper at the top of the pile, covered in Paige’s scrawling handwriting. “It’s a new song, isn’t it?”
Song?
“Yeah,” Paige said, accepting the stack like some kind of a gift, instead of her schoolwork. “It…is. It’s not finished yet. I just…can’t think of a good title.”
“Well, what’s it about?”
“It’s for my brother, Tyrone. It’s about his little cars and how he has to clean them up when he’s done playing.”
“Matchbox Madness,” I thought silently. Or “Hot Wheels Havoc.”
“If it’s for your brother, why don’t you name it after him? That way he’ll know that it’s special!” Captain Superlative said. “How about ‘Tyrone’s Toys’?”
A slow smile crept over Paige’s face. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think I like that. Thank you!”
“No need, citizen! That’s what Captain Superlative is here to do!”
“I’m—”
“Paige McCoy!” Captain Superlative interrupted, grinning fiercely. “I know who you are!”
And with that, she raised her arms and flew away again.
Those of us watching—at least a dozen kids—didn’t seem quite sure what to do. It felt like a play that had ended suddenly—no curtain call, no round of applause. Just a quick stop that left us all with whiplash and confusion. Tyler was the one who came back to life first. “Huh,” he said, glancing over at one of his friends with that crooked little smile. “How about that?”
“Jealous someone’s hogging the spotlight, great one?” the friend asked, giving Tyler a dramatic bow.
Tyler shook his head. “Nah. I think she’s cool.”
The hallway immediately echoed with girls agreeing:
“Cool.”
“Yeah, cool.”
“Totally cool.”
The second bell rang. Life resumed. I was the only one who remained frozen, watching the scene play out again in my mind amid the swirling of the dust. For a moment, I felt a shiver run through me. Like when I was little and my dad would tease me, dropping ice cubes down the back of my collar during our family trips to the park. My body actually shook. I grabbed the charm on my necklace. So she’d picked up Paige’s things and known her name. That was no big deal. Anyone could do that.
And yet…Tyler Jeffries called it cool.
That made her worth noticing, didn’t it?
The day seemed, in many ways, like a
ny other day. In social studies, Ms. Hinton talked about the ancient Greeks and their habits—applauding to silence something they didn’t like, playing throwing games with the dregs of their drinks, burning bones as offerings to gods they didn’t actually believe in—and praising Dagmar for her insightful questions. I passed through language-arts class staring at Tyler Jeffries, along with every other girl in the class. We ran laps in gym, slowing to a walk when Coach McCullough’s back was turned and our sides ached. The creations we turned out in shop class were horrible and lopsided. Things smelled bad in science lab.
But it wasn’t like any other day.
The changes were subtle. You could only really notice them in the spaces in between, in the hallways, in the passing periods when life was organized chaos and we were free from the watchful eyes of our teachers.
I was at my locker, getting my math homework. There was a little mirror on the inside of the door, a giveaway my dad had gotten at a veterinary conference, with print that read Vetoquinol Laxatone: For Cats with Hairballs in the lower right-hand corner. I stopped to look at myself—nothing special, just a typical girl with typical brown hair and typical brown eyes. Completely normal.
Natural.
Neutral.
Nonentity.
Over my shoulder, I noticed another typical girl like me. I’d never seen her before. New kid. Probably fresh from the fort.
Her forehead was furrowed up as she stared fixedly at the school map in her hands. Lost, I figured. The school was kind of confusing. The running joke was that the architects had built it with eight different wings branching out from the front entrance, in the shape of an octopus, because it rained so often. They wanted the school to be able to swim if Deerwood Park ever flooded.
I heard Captain Superlative before I saw her, accompanied by the pounding of her sneakers, arms raised as if her small body was flying again. She rushed over to the new girl’s side, coming to a stop with her hands on her hips. “You look like you’re in need of a rescue, citizen!”
The girl clearly didn’t know what to make of Captain Superlative. It probably wasn’t the kind of new-school welcome she was used to getting. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, like a goldfish. “Um…I…uh…looking for the cafeteria?” she said.
Captain Superlative beamed at her, putting a hand on her shoulder and turning her to face the other way. “Second door to the right, citizen!”
I frowned a little. I’d kind of figured that Captain Superlative had to be a new kid too. But now I wasn’t so sure. She knew Paige’s name and she knew her way around the school, as if she’d been here forever.
“Thanks,” the girl said, smiling. “My name’s Nicole.”
“Nice to meet you, Nicole.”
“You too, uh…?”
“Captain Superlative!”
“Captain Superlative.”
“Have a great lunch! It’s taco day!” Captain Superlative said, giving the girl’s shoulder a squeeze.
The girl headed down the hall. She paused once, glancing over her shoulder to wave at Captain Superlative, then continued, disappearing into the cafeteria. There was the slightest bounce in her step.
Captain Superlative turned again. For a second, I thought she could see me watching her reflection. She looked like she was about to say something else, but the bell rang.
Raising her arms, she flew off.
It was after my lunch period that I caught my next glimpse of Captain Superlative. I was taking my tray to the garbage can. The tacos at our school were not that impressive. My dad’s were better and I was thinking that I’d probably ask him to make them for dinner. My lunch was more or less untouched. I had convinced myself the meat was cat food. As I tossed it, I saw Kevin Marks leaving the cafeteria. Kevin was one of Tyler’s friends. He’d been cast to play Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast until he broke his femur while goofing off on the auditorium stage, back in November. The recovery had been slow. He was in a wheelchair now and still not quite used to it.
He rolled up to the glass cafeteria doors. Normally, they were propped open, but someone had kicked the doorstop and they were shut. There was a large metal button beside them that was supposed to make them swing open automatically. He tried to wheel up as close to the button as he could, reaching out to push it. But he couldn’t reach. The angle of his wheels left him just an inch too far back. His fingertips could just barely brush against the metal, his face turning pink from the effort. He tried a few different arrangements, clumsily fumbling with his wheelchair, catching his fingers in the spokes as he struggled to figure it out.
From out of nowhere, Captain Superlative came racing to the other side of the door. “Right this way, citizen,” she said, pulling it open, gesturing grandly for Kevin to pass.
“Puzzled” couldn’t begin to describe the look on his face. Kevin’s jaw just hung open a moment or two before he snapped it shut. “Thanks,” he finally said, stuttering a little bit.
As he wheeled himself through the door, Captain Superlative reached behind him and grabbed one of the handles with her free hand to help expertly guide the chair as it turned. “Have a good day, Kevin!” she said. “May no more villainous doors get in your way!”
Decisively, she kicked the doorstop back into place, giving it a firm nod, as if to say, Ha! So there!
Several kids in the hall stopped to watch Captain Superlative. It gave me another shudder, just seeing it. But she smiled and waved before taking off in the opposite direction. Better her than me, I supposed. I’d die from some of the looks of confusion she was getting.
By the end of the day, everyone had a Captain Superlative story or two. I caught snatches of conversation as I drifted along:
“Did you hear? She wore the costume in class!”
“No!”
“I know. It’s totally against the dress code.”
“Ms. Esrick even called her Captain Superlative.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope! She said, ‘Thanks for helping Mitchell with his assignment, Captain Superlative.’”
“It can’t possibly say that on the class list.”
“The teachers are in on it.”
“It’s got to be Rachael, right? She’s still upset about not getting to play Belle.”
“No, Rachael’s family just shipped out.”
“Huh.”
“And Captain Superlative helped Claudia with her vocab worksheet. You know how much Rachael hated Claudia.”
Before my last period, I spotted her one more time. It was definitely the weirdest incident yet. By then, I’d started looking out for her whenever someone dropped something or needed help. Like a game. No one seemed to be in need, though, so she caught me completely by surprise.
We were lined up outside of the auditorium, where we took Drama, my least favorite class and one I definitely wouldn’t have taken if it weren’t required. I was in the class with Dagmar. And April, of course. Anywhere Dagmar went, April followed. She’d been that way back when we were friends too. It was like she just couldn’t exist alone. The two of them were whispering behind their hands just ahead of me in line. Dagmar had her cell phone out. The light of the screen splashed over her face, giving her a greenish-yellow glow. I could have listened to them if I’d wanted to. But I’d heard it all before.
And then Captain Superlative sidled up to Dagmar without warning.
“Helloooooooo, Dagmar!”
Half surprised, half mortified, Dagmar turned around to face her, clumsily hiding her phone behind her back. Everyone stopped and watched.
Dagmar’s expression cooled. She put on the face of someone who could not be rattled, someone who was above everything. Her eyes flicked up and down, the way they usually did when she was looking for a target. Dagmar had a knack for finding one little flaw or imperfection on a person and blowing it wildly out of proportion until it became who you were. You had a zit and you were Pizza Face for the rest of your life. You were too tall and she miraculously al
ways managed to cut your head out of frame when taking a group picture. A stuffy nose and you were suddenly Stuffy the Clown. But what could she say about someone who was so openly peculiar, literally wearing her otherness like a uniform? Nothing, it seemed. “What do you want?” she asked lazily, playing with a piece of her golden hair when she came up empty.
Captain Superlative smiled at her. The top part of the mask shifted up a little, so I could tell that the smile went all the way to her eyes. “I just wanted to let you know that you’re looking very pretty today!”
This was followed by another one of those dead silences that Captain Superlative was quickly becoming very good at creating.
I had to admit, though, she was right. Dagmar was wearing her hair up in a high ponytail with curls cascading down her shoulders like lava. She had on a very bold, very stylish red sweater and designer jeans, the kind she wore when she wasn’t in her soccer uniform. Plus her Blue Shoes. Everything about her was flawless.
Faultless.
Fanciful.
Fantastic.
Except for that bruise on her wrist, which, I noticed with a little surprise, she’d tried to cover up with some makeup.
“What?” Dagmar’s snappish tone of voice was less glamorous than her appearance.
“That sweater, it really brings out the color of your eyes,” Captain Superlative said cheerfully.
There was no way to even guess how Dagmar would respond. I’m not sure she even knew how, but she was spared by the sound of the bell.
Like always, Captain Superlative raised her arms over her head and prepared to take flight. “Time for gym class! More people to save! Captain Superlative is here to make all troubles disappear!”
And she was gone.
The door to the auditorium opened. We started to file inside.
“I can’t stand her,” Dagmar said in a low hiss, a voice only meant to be heard by April.
“I know,” April said, ever the loyal sidekick.
Dagmar slipped her phone into her back pocket, pulling down her sweater to hide it with expert precision. “All day today, it’s been nothing but ‘Captain Superlative this’ and ‘Captain Superlative that.’”
