Captain Superlative

by J. S. Puller

  An idea started to form in my head. More like an image. “We’ll stop you,” I said.

  “That’s right!”

  It was brilliant. Simple and elegant. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Probably because I’d never had to try. “We’ll be there,” I said. “In the hallways, in the auditorium…”

  “At every soccer game,” Captain Superlative added.

  “At lunch.”

  “In gym class.”

  “Everywhere.” I grinned. “And I’ll bet you really don’t want everyone in the school to see you walking around with two babysitters.”

  I think Dagmar got the same image in her head that I had. It was the ultimate fall from grace—from popular, from cool—to have the lowest of the low following you around school. Kids who weren’t popular—they usually got the message. They stayed away from Dagmar, they lived in fear. But the second that way of things broke down, what would Dagmar be left with?

  The two of us.

  “Freaks,” she said with a sneer. “Only a little nothing would need freaks for protection.” She glared at Paige. “You’re nothing.”

  But that was all she could do. That and turn around, stalking away in a huff.

  The second she was gone, my insides turned to jelly. I slumped against the trophy case, quivering. It had all happened so fast. I was feeling too much at once to feel anything at all. Except for confused. It was very easy for me to feel very confused about what had just taken place.

  Paige, on the other hand, looked delighted. “Thank you, Captain Superlative!” she said, dropping her textbook and throwing her arms around Captain Superlative’s shoulders. They hugged. Just like any two ordinary girls on an ordinary day in an ordinary school. With her back to me, with her mask partly hidden by Paige’s head, Captain Superlative could have been anyone.

  Well. Anyone in a bright blue wig.

  When they pulled apart, Captain Superlative put a hand on Paige’s shoulder. “Think nothing of it, citizen.”

  And then they were both looking at me.

  “You too, Jane,” Paige said, a bit shy. “I never thought that…”

  The way she trailed off made me uncomfortable. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Paige shook her head. “Just, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  By this point, Captain Superlative had collected all of Paige’s books. She handed them off and Paige smiled prettily at me, before turning around and hurrying away for choir practice.

  There was something different in the way she walked. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Just the expression on her face—and the fact that I could see her face at all.

  I felt Captain Superlative’s eyes on me and I turned to look at her. She was grinning, the mask raised slightly on her forehead. “What?” I asked, squirming from one foot to the other.

  “That was an incredible thing you did, Jane.”

  I shrugged. “Dagmar crossed a line.”

  “A line?” the Captain asked.

  “She shouldn’t have hit Paige. It was wrong.”

  “What she’s been doing to Paige has always been wrong.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Is there a difference between pain you can see and pain you can’t see?”

  “I…”

  She shook her head. “Don’t worry. We’ll work on it. The point is that you stood up to her. Finally.”

  “Finally?”

  “I’ve been waiting for this day.” She clapped her hands together in front of her chest. “Oh, Jane. I was so hoping it would be you. I was so sure it would be when you followed me!”

  “What? Me?” It felt like a hand was closing over my throat, cutting off my air. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.” She walked over to me, planting a firm hand on my shoulder before I could slip away. “Jane.” She said the name with a hushed reverence. “You are going to be my sidekick.”

  “What?!”

  “Every good superhero needs one.”

  I pulled away from her, sliding along the wall and circling around so I could feel the open hallway at my back. “I am not a sidekick!” I said. My voice was rising into a whine.

  “Not yet! But today, without even realizing it, you took your first steps into sidekick-dom. Oh, Jane, I’m so happy!”

  I thought I was free and clear, but she was surprisingly fast. Captain Superlative threw her arms around me, pulling me into a tight embrace against her chest. For someone so little, she had a powerful hold. And she smelled like toasted almonds. It reminded me of an old bottle of my mother’s perfume that my dad kept on the nightstand in his room. Sweet, but not cloying. Sort of light. Warm.

  “No,” I said, weakened by the memory, pulling out of her arms. “No. I’m not…I don’t…”

  If she heard my protestations, she ignored them. “I can’t wait to start your training!”

  “No!” I put more force into my voice as the scent faded. “You don’t get it. I’m not like you!”

  Captain Superlative grinned. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jane.”

  “What?” I gripped my necklace.

  “You are! You are like me! You’re exactly like me! We start your training tonight!”

  “No!” I was practically screaming, but on a Friday afternoon, there were very few people left in the school to hear. And evidently, no one seemed to care. “No, no, no! Absolutely not!”

  “You think you’re afraid. But trust me, Jane, you’re now the second-bravest person in the school. And I’ll bet, with just a little bit of time and practice, you’ll be just as brave as me! Superlative brave!” She seemed so completely, bewilderingly proud as she looked at me. But in a flash, she turned around, raising her arms over her head again, prepared to take flight. “Captain Superlative is here to make all troubles disappear!” she shouted.

  And off she zoomed.

  I didn’t know which was worse: the flood or the fire. But either way, I was in a lot of trouble.

  I told the story to my dad that night as we folded the bedsheets, still warm from the dryer. Every excruciating detail, although I left out the part where Dagmar slapped Paige. I knew my dad, and I knew that if he heard anything like that, he’d be on the phone with the school in the blink of an eye. After we’d helped save Paige, I didn’t want to let Paige be destroyed. If Dagmar got called out, she’d lose favor with the teachers. And then she’d be even more convinced that Paige was trying to beat her for top of the class or something. Paige would never hear the end of it.

  And she’d already suffered plenty.

  “And then what happened?” Dad asked, drinking in every single word of the story with a hushed sense of awe.

  “And then we said we’d follow Dagmar around the school to make sure she never had the chance to pick on Paige,” I said. “I don’t think she liked the idea of having a superhero follow her like some kind of puppy.”

  “Of course not.” Dad chuckled. “What would people think?”

  I gave him a thin smile. At least he seemed to think the whole thing was funny. “Exactly.”

  “Bravo, Janey,” he said. “A-plus.” And he touched his ear.

  “Admiration?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Astonishment?”

  “Adoration.” I wrinkled my nose, not entirely convinced it was a real word. My dad laughed again. “I’m so proud of you, Janey.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “No, really, I am.”

  I picked up a rumpled sheet, holding a corner to him. He took it and we spread out across the living room, smoothing it like the surface of a frozen lake. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes,” I said, folding my end as he folded his. “You and Captain Superlative both are.”

  “Well, I think it was a fantastic thing you did. Standing up for Paige like that. You’ve been telling me for years how Dagmar’s been picking on her.
I always hoped that one day, you’d—”

  “I wish everyone would just forget about it.” I tried to say it bashfully, laughingly. Like it was no big deal. Just a little joke. A funny little story that would fade away soon enough.

  But it came out shrill. Maybe even somewhat panicked. The truth was that I was a little scared.

  I was a lot scared.

  My visions of Dagmar mistreating Paige had begun to change over the last few hours. I wasn’t seeing Paige’s face in them anymore. I was seeing my own. Now Dagmar was kicking my towel into the pool during summer camp. She was making fun of my jeans. She was throwing my training bra into the boys’ locker room. It had all happened so fast. Too fast. Only now was I really, truly allowing myself to realize what I’d done.

  And regret it.

  My dad glanced up at me under his bushy eyebrows. It was unusual for him to let me get away with interrupting without at least an arched brow. But for once, he didn’t seem up to scolding me. “I don’t think Paige will,” he finally said, softer and milder than usual.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’s it bothering you so much?”

  “It’s not bothering me,” I said. Maybe a little too quickly.

  “Janey.”

  I sighed. If I couldn’t talk about this with my dad, who could I talk about it with? No one, really. Maybe Selina, if she wasn’t hiding under a dresser somewhere. But really, she wasn’t great at giving advice, being a cat and all. “I’m just pretty sure Dagmar’s close to exploding over the whole thing,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “I see,” he said, walking over to me to take my corners of the sheet. “And you’re afraid of what she’ll do?”

  “Yeah. A little.”

  My dad finished folding the sheet by himself, adding it to the growing pile of linen on the coffee table. “Seems like you’ve lost some of that anonymity you loved so much, Janey.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But maybe you traded it in for something even better,” he said. “Something…superlative.”

  Oh, that word.

  I sat down on the corner of the coffee table, picking up one of the blue pillowcases and laying it out across my lap. I always folded them the same way. Left edge pulled over, then the right edge. Then fold it down the middle and set it on the pile, open ends all lined up and facing the same way. For some reason, though, my hands forgot the routine. They hovered above the sheet, until my dad reached over, pulling up on the left edge for me. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I felt like I was going to cry.

  For forgetting how to fold laundry?

  What was wrong with me?

  Dad sat down on the table next to me, wrapping his arm around my waist and squeezing me gently against his side. “Tell me something, though,” he said. “What did you mean when you said Captain Superlative was making too much of a big deal out of nothing?”

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so ridiculous,” I said, swallowing hard.

  “Janey?”

  “She says…she says she wants to make me her sidekick.”

  “Her sidekick?” Both bushy eyebrows went up.

  “Yeah.”

  He let out a loud belly laugh, so abrupt and sudden that it shook the framed wedding photograph and my inked baby footprints on the bookshelf. “Well, that’s wonderful!”

  I rolled my eyes. “I knew you’d say something like that.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  I looked up at him out of the corners of my eyes. “Shouldn’t you be concerned for my safety or something, like a normal parent?”

  “Nonsense. This is perfect. I always dreamed you’d grow up to be someone important. Either a superhero or vice president.”

  “Stop it,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  “I’m serious.”

  “She says she’s going to start training me.” I could only shake my head. “I wonder what that would involve.”

  “Oh, all the important things a superhero’s sidekick needs to know how to do, no doubt.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like…rescuing intrepid reporters.”

  “What?”

  He stood up, grabbing a corner of the pillowcase and whirling around, letting it unfold and flutter behind him. He tied it around his shoulders like a cape. Before I could even register surprise, he’d scooped me up in a fireman’s hold, his arm under my knees, and was running in tight circles around the coffee table, one fist punching into the air. Out of the side of his mouth, he made a whooshing noise. “Up we go!”

  I shrieked, holding on for dear life, my fingers digging into the back of his shirt. “Dad!”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Silverman. You’re safe with me!”

  “What are you doing?!”

  “Flying!”

  “Dad.”

  “Up into the stratosphere!”

  “Dad!”

  “Look! I can see our house from up here!”

  “Dad!”

  “What?”

  “She doesn’t know how to fly!”

  He stopped in his tracks, his heart racing in his chest against my arm. “Oh. Not a flying hero? Drat.”

  “Put me down!”

  He set me down on my feet, on top of the coffee table. “There are other skills to hone too, of course.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What else?”

  “Learning to knock the metal tab off of a can of pop with a bow and arrow, without spilling a drop! Just like in the movies.”

  “What?!”

  “You know.” He flexed his muscles before miming the graceful dance of pulling back the string of a bow. Out of the side of his mouth, he started humming a song I didn’t know, taking aim. And then he let loose a few make-believe arrows. “Zing! Zing! Kaboom! That one was an exploding arrow!”

  “Dad!”

  “Arrows against the school code of conduct? Never mind! There’s always sword training!” From his hip, he drew an imaginary sword, wielding it in a flowing arc over his head. “Right for might!”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “What? This is the money shot!” He let out a few hisses. “Listen to the screaming of the paparazzi! They’re going wild! They’re climbing over each other, trying to get my picture!”

  “Stop it!”

  “C’mon, Janey.” He held out his invisible sword, like he expected me to take it. “Join in. You’re going to need this training.”

  “Dad!”

  “Listen to them! They’re calling out your name!” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “‘Janey! Janey! Janey!’”

  I didn’t want anyone calling out my name. “Dad, seriously, stop.” My feet sucked against the glass as I sat back down on the edge of the coffee table. “I’m not going into training. I already told her that.”

  He finally dropped his arms and plopped down next to me again. The pillowcase fell off of his back. “Why not, Janey?”

  Because I didn’t want to. But I knew an answer like that wouldn’t land well. “She’ll probably just forget about it,” I said instead, reaching behind him to grab the pillowcase. I started to refold it. “She’s got to be working on some big new stunt to pull next week. She’s got to top herself. Can’t be easy.”

  “Do you think so?” he asked, draping his arm over my shoulders.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well. Maybe.” But then he leaned in close, resting his head against mine. “Or that might be wishful thinking, my dear.”

  “Maybe.”

  A sharp buzz from the intercom on the wall shot through our talk. Simultaneously, my dad and I put our fingers to our noses. “Not it!” I said, a second before he could.

  “Rats!” he said, snapping his fingers. “Defeated!”

  “You snooze, you lose.”

  Dad let out an exaggerated groan, stood up, and put both hands on the small of his back to stretch. “Oh well. Serves me right for tangling with a genuine superhero. In training.”

  “Dad
!”

  “I kid. I kid! Like a goat, I kid.” He let out a noise that I assumed he thought sounded vaguely like a goat. And then, as was expected of the loser, he trudged to the entryway to see who had buzzed.

  It was most likely Chad Goldstein, I thought. The kid who lived across the hallway and always forgot his keys. Dad was nice to him, let him back in the building when his parents were out for the night. Chad was, I guess, almost like a friend. We always smiled at each other in the stairwell, anyway. The perfect kind of friend. The kind that couldn’t betray me or turn his back on me.

  I was smiling again, the unpleasant feelings that had been eating at me throughout the day finally fading away as I reached out to fold another pillowcase, the same way I always folded pillowcases.

  I should have known.

  I really should have known. I’d been around Captain Superlative enough. I knew what she was. A riptide. Anyone and anything that came into her path immediately got pulled in. There was no escaping it.

  “Oh, Ja-aney!” my dad called from the little narrow entryway in a singsongy voice.

  “What?” I called back.

  “You have a visitor.”

  A visitor? Me? No one ever came over to visit me. Not unless it was for some group assignment or something. I spent five seconds trying to figure it out. It was in the sixth second that she appeared in the door to the living room, my dad standing behind her, grinning.

  “The Captain would like to see you.”

  “Hello!” she said, hands on her hips, chin raised, smiling wildly at me from behind her mask.

  Captain Superlative. In my home. My brain couldn’t exactly reconcile it. Seeing anyone here—other than me and Dad—was weird enough. But this? Calling her a fish out of water wouldn’t do. It was more like another story had just crashed into my book and the style of illustration was completely different. It was a surrealist drawing in the middle of my still life. She clashed with everything, the bright neon pink of her winter coat blinding against the calm and neutral colors of our walls, the energy she brought with her too powerful for our quiet lives.