by J. S. Puller
Uncomfortable silence followed, until my dad cleared his throat. “Say hello to your guest, Janey.” It was the same tone of voice he’d used when I was six and had to be goaded into giving Aunt Stephanie a kiss on the cheek.
“Hello,” I said.
“We have important work to do,” Captain Superlative said. “Your sidekick training needs to begin.”
I looked over at my dad, desperate to get him to share in the joke and show that he understood my plight. Instead, his grin just got broader, pleased as could be. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said.
I started talking immediately, before I even knew what it was I wanted to say. “I really don’t think tonight is a good night.” Words came tumbling out. “I mean, I have a lot of math homework. And I need to finish reading chapter nine of Number the Stars. And there’s a science lab due next week. And I have that big social-studies test coming up on Monday. And I really should be studying for—”
“I made you a study guide!” Captain Superlative said, pulling a folded-up packet of papers out of her coat pocket.
“She made you a study guide,” my dad said, beaming at me.
Captain Superlative thrust it at me, leaving me no choice but to take it. It was the same as the one April had shown Dagmar, with the red staple in the corner. The question about ostracism was right up at the top. “Oh,” I said, staring at it.
“It’s a Friday night,” my dad said. “Have some fun for once in your life. Get out of your routine. You’re in a rut, Janey.”
“Oh, it’ll be super-fun!” Captain Superlative said.
“I think I’ll just go put the laundry away,” my dad said, walking over to pick up the pile beside me on the table.
Quickly, I dropped the study guide and reached out to grab one of the pillowcases. “You know it’s my turn to change the beds.”
“I think I can handle it tonight.” My dad put his hand over mine, prying my grip loose.
Captain Superlative saluted my dad. “Thank you, citizen.”
He saluted right back. “You’re most welcome, Captain.” He dropped the neatly folded sheets in the laundry basket, hefting it up on his hip. As he started to go, he paused and looked back over his shoulder at her. “Tell me something.”
“Yes?”
“Do superheroes like brownies?”
She grinned. “We do!”
“Well, then. How about I go whip up a batch of my triple-fudge-chunk brownies?” My favorites. The ones that Dad only made for special occasions—birthdays and holidays and celebrations.
Tonight wasn’t a special occasion. There was nothing to celebrate.
“That would be wonderful!” Captain Superlative said. She didn’t understand. These were special brownies. “Thank you, Dr. Silverman!”
“Of course,” my dad said. “Anything to do my part for the cause. And please, call me Robert. I only make my patients and Janey call me Dr. Silverman.”
“Your patients are dogs and cats, Dad,” I said.
Captain Superlative, however, found the joke hilarious. “Really?” she asked, laughing.
“Really,” he said.
“All right.” She looked at me. “And should I call you Janey?” she asked me.
“That’s her name,” Dad said.
“Then that’s what I’ll call you,” she said to me. Back to my dad. “Thanks, Robert.”
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said.
And with that, my dad sauntered out of the room, whistling the same old song he’d been humming before.
The Captain and I were alone.
“We have so much work to do!” Captain Superlative was already wiggling out of her downy coat, revealing the cape, swimsuit, and tights underneath.
“I think you have the wrong idea about me,” I said. It came out more like a plea than anything else.
“Nonsense!” She dumped her backpack on the floor and knelt beside it, yanking open the zipper. A pile of comic books came slipping out, the glossy covers sliding all over the carpet. I recognized some of the titles from my dad’s collection: Hawkgirl and Batman and Wonder Woman.
“Captain Sup…” I stopped. If I didn’t want to be a part of this game, why was I even playing it? “Caitlyn.”
“Captain Superlative!”
“Whatever. I’m not really interested in being a superhero. I don’t think I’m in a ‘superhero’ kind of place.”
She laughed. “That’s why you’re only a sidekick.” She picked up one of her comics, which had a statuesque woman and a younger girl dressed in similar costumes on the cover. She thrust it into my hands and jabbed at the girl, presumably the sidekick, with one finger. “You’ll have to work your way up to hero, Janey.”
Hearing someone other than my dad say “Janey” struck me for a second. It sent a small shiver up my spine. “It’s just not my thing,” I said, trying to ignore the feeling.
I attempted to shove the comic book back into her hands, but she pushed it away. “Okay. What is your thing?” she asked.
The question gave me pause. My thing? My thing? I didn’t really have a thing. Dagmar was a soccer player and Tyler was a drama kid and Captain Superlative ran around like a cartoon character, and, apparently, Paige wrote beautiful songs. Me? I just kind of drifted. I was just the air.
But that wasn’t the point!
I shook my head fiercely, angry at her for getting me sidetracked and angry at myself for letting her do it. “I don’t want to—”
“We’ll begin with the easy stuff. Let’s talk about door opening.”
It was bad enough she was here and wasn’t listening to me. But now she was just patronizing me. I felt my skin crawl. “I know how to open doors,” I said, my teeth grinding together.
“Brilliant! You’re already ahead of the curve.”
“They’re just doors.”
“Not just doors!” She grabbed one comic book after another, opening to pages of monsters and demons and supervillains in brightly colored spandex, with maniacal grins and elaborate devices and thought bubbles with jagged, sharp edges. “Monsters! Giant beasts! Great obstacles that must be defeated in the most superheroical of fashions! Biff! Pow! Whack!”
She threw a few air punches.
I could feel the frustration bubbling inside of me. It was ready to explode, to come out like a geyser. But when it did, I surprised myself. And I surprised her. Because the eruption took the form of a question:
“Why do you do it?”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Captain Superlative caught off guard. Even with her mask on, she seemed startled by the question, looking up from the colorful pages. “What?”
“Why do you do these things? Why are you running around in a cape and tights? It isn’t normal.”
For a second, she stared at me. Silence hung thickly between us. Then she started to wander around the room, examining the bookcase with my baby footprints and the starry landscape I’d painted years ago. Her gaze fell on the picture of my parents, and for some reason, I was afraid that she would touch it. But Captain Superlative was respectful. It was almost like she was bowing her head to them. I was ready to stomp my foot and demand an answer. “That’s a question that’s been bothering you for a while, hasn’t it?” she finally said, her back to me.
I gripped my necklace. “Yeah.”
“I thought so.” Her gaze fell on the comic book my dad had shown me a few days ago, with the star-covered hero, resting up on the shelf. “Sweet pants! Is this a first edition?” She reached out like she was going to grab it, but then pulled back her hand, fingers twitching with desire.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, working my thumb over the blue bead in the charm. I should have asked in the library, I thought. I should have worked up the nerve then. Maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation here. “Why?” I asked again. “Why are you always helping people?”
“I’ll bet you can figure it out.”
I hated it
when people did that, when they answered a question by challenging me to answer it myself. She reminded me of a teacher, nudging me to solve a word problem. And the most annoying part of it was that I found myself going along with it and thinking out loud, like I was really trying to piece together the puzzle. “People can open their own doors,” I said, staring at the big C on her cape.
“Yes, I know.”
“And find their own way through the school.”
“Sure, eventually.”
“So why are you doing these things?”
“Well, they are nice things to do, for one thing,” she said. “And superheroes are almost always nice.”
“Yeah. But these things are so…”
“Small?”
“Yeah. It’s not really what superheroes do.” There weren’t comic books of guys in tights helping little old ladies cross a street. Or opening a door for strangers. Not that I knew of any cartoony time bombs in Deerwood Park that needed deactivating in the nick of time. Although I was sure she’d be there to cut the red wire, or whatever.
Captain Superlative laughed, turning around to face me again. She trotted over to the recliner, sitting on the very edge of the seat, leaning in so that our faces were only inches apart. “Why would you think there’s a difference between the big things and the small things?”
I pulled away, uncomfortable with the closeness, with the intimacy of the question. Looking to one side, I saw Selina poke her little black face through the doorway, letting out a gentle, inquisitive mew. “Because there is a difference. That’s why they’re called ‘big’ and ‘small’ in the first place. Not everything is a…a…”—my hand fluttered in her direction—“superlative!”
Supreme.
Sensational.
Special.
To her credit, she didn’t press forward. She let me have my space, but not my opinion. “It’s all the same.” She flopped back against the soft, puffy seat of the recliner, her legs straightening out and dangling above the ground, the hair of her wig fanning out around her face like a blue halo. “Good is good. And good is a habit. You have to get into it. And sometimes, the best way to do that is with the little stuff. Holding a door open for someone who can’t. Or pointing the way to the cafeteria to a new kid who’s lost on the first day.”
At first, I was ready to call that kindergarten logic. But then, so was learning the letters of the alphabet before you learned how to spell words. “I guess that sort of makes sense.”
“And once you get into the habit, then you can start on the bigger, better, bestest things,” Captain Superlative continued. “Like standing up to Dagmar Hagen when she’s picking on someone.” She paused for a second, curling her hand up into a fist and coughing into it. “You’re a prodigy, Janey.” She sounded proud, if not a little wheezy. “You jumped right into the deep end. Without even knowing it.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll bet you get that from your father. He seems like a super-duper, first-rate sort of guy.”
The corners of my lips twitched, just slightly. She’d only been in his presence five minutes, at most. But she was sharp. “Yeah. He’s great. I mean, ever since my mother died, he’s always been there.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” She sat up straight again on the edge of the seat. “‘Always been there.’ That’s what heroes do! It must run in the family!”
The more I listened to her, the more I wanted to like her. It wasn’t so much the things she said as the way she said them. I’d never met anyone so sure, so confident. Like she didn’t even know how to hesitate. But she was wrong to be confident about me. I knew it. “Look.” I genuinely felt sorry to disappoint her. “What I did with Dagmar was a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“I don’t know what her problem with Paige was—”
“No one knows what her problem with Paige is,” Captain Superlative said. “Although I’ll bet her problem with Paige isn’t really with Paige at all.”
I had no idea what that meant. “It wasn’t my place to interfere.”
Her frown pulled down the edges of her mask. Selina jumped up onto the arm of the recliner beside Captain Superlative, rubbing the top of her head against her arm. “I don’t understand,” she said, absently stroking the velvety fur between Selina’s ears.
“I had no right to tell Dagmar how to behave.” I gripped the edges of the comic book in my hands, my fingers turning white. “I should have minded my own business.”
Same as everyone else.
Captain Superlative set her elbow on the arm of the chair, resting her chin on her knuckles. Selina shoved her head under Captain Superlative’s arm, rubbing up against her belly and purring. I don’t think I’d ever seen her quite so desperate to get someone’s attention. She usually ran away when Dad had visitors. We wouldn’t see her again for hours, until she crept out of the shadows for something to eat.
“But what would have happened to Paige?” Captain Superlative asked, giving Selina the affection she demanded.
“I…”
What would have happened to Paige? Vignettes appeared in my mind each time I blinked. I saw Paige getting shoved headfirst into a locker. I saw Paige getting kicked with the squeaky plastic of Dagmar’s Blue Shoes. Paige curled up in tears on the floor. Or huddling in a corner of the bathroom, hugging her books to her chest, her beauty hidden by welts or bruises or swollen eyes, silently praying for the earth to open up and swallow her.
Captain Superlative seemed to be reading my mind. A dark look crossed the part of her face that I could see. It felt like despair. “That’s the problem with the world. Everyone seems to think that doing a good deed is someone else’s job. It doesn’t matter so much for the little things, maybe. No one’s life is going to change if someone else opens the door for them. But when you start to get into the bigger things…well. If everyone said it wasn’t their place to stand up to Dagmar, then nobody would stand up to her at all. And people like Paige?” She shook her head solemnly. “They wouldn’t have a chance.”
I felt like something was squeezing the air out of my chest, my throat. It wasn’t an accusation, I knew that. But it still was, in a way. “She could tell a teacher,” I said softly, practically croaking. Somehow, putting the responsibility back on Paige felt like an escape, a way to avoid looking at what I’d done. Or rather, what I mostly hadn’t done up until today.
“But she doesn’t.”
“It’s a teacher’s job to stop these things from happening,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, “but the problem is, Dagmar is clever.”
“Clever?”
“If a teacher sees her picking on Paige in a classroom, of course that teacher is going to do something. Like you said, that’s part of the job. But Dagmar chooses her opportunities carefully.”
I knew. Somehow I’d always known. “The hallways.”
“The most dangerous part of the school.”
“There’s no teacher in charge there.”
“Exactly. Being in the hallways is like being in a black hole or the Bermuda Triangle. And not only does Dagmar choose the opportunities carefully, but she chooses her victims carefully too. Paige, for example, never says anything to anyone. And since she doesn’t, and nobody else does, all those horrible things Dagmar does just get blown away in the wind.”
Lost in the air. I was the air. I stood up, uncomfortable in my own skin again. I’d seen Dagmar at it more times than I could count. I’d taken it for granted as much as breathing. It was a part of life, a fact. A certainty.
Again, Captain Superlative gave me my space, watching me from her perch on the recliner, Selina puddled in her lap. “It doesn’t help that all the teachers love Dagmar,” she added. “It makes it feel almost impossible to tell the truth about her.” Her voice grew subdued, quiet. Normal, really. And sad. “There’s nothing worse in the world than realizing that no one can help you.”
I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. She’d gone somewhere else, somewhere inside, I think. But in th
e next minute, she was back again, the confidence bolstering her tone once more. “Well. Not anymore. The world needs more people like us, Janey. People who are willing to get into the habit of doing good things instead of just breezing by.”
I stopped by the bookcase, looking at my mother in her wedding dress. “I never really thought about it before.”
“I know. Most people don’t.”
“But you do?” I asked, turning to her.
She coughed again, before nodding. “Yes.”
“Why?” The whys were becoming easier, even if hearing the answers wasn’t easy at all.
But Captain Superlative shrugged. “I just do. It’s who I am.” With that, she picked up Selina and bounced up from the chair, making her way over to me. She was probably about three inches shorter than me, but she felt enormous. Or maybe I was just feeling very, very small at the moment. “What do you say, Janey? Do you want to change the world?”
I frowned, biting down on my lower lip. “I’m not sure that it’s me.”
“And you’re not sure that it’s not you either!” she said. “You don’t know until you try. Try something, Janey! Try something!”
I thought about my own picture in the yearbook. No clubs or activities listed. I thought about how surprising it was to have someone come to visit me. And I thought about the look on Paige’s face today when someone had come to her rescue in the hallway. When we’d saved her. “It did feel kind of good, making Dagmar stop.”
“Life is too short to be anything less than superlative. C’mon, Janey. Give it a shot.”
“I…”
“Your kitty wants you to join me. Listen to her.” She held up Selina, bouncing her a little bit. “Join the quest!” she said, speaking in a ridiculous kitty-cat voice. “I want you to hang out with Captain Superlative.”
Selina tolerated it surprisingly well.
“Say yes.” She returned to her normal voice. “Come on. Say yes. Be superlative!”
Air didn’t say yes or no. Air just existed. But maybe it was time for me to try something different. I found myself looking down at the comic book in my hands. The mighty lady and her loyal and eager sidekick were so confident, so carefree. So happy. They were running, the wind blowing their hair back, powerful muscles carrying them who-knew-where, on toward adventure. Forward. Maybe, just maybe, I could be something like that, feel something like that.
