by Lisa Yee
To Dennis S.,
a great editor and secret super hero
Copyright © 2018 DC Comics.
DC SUPER HERO GIRLS and all related characters and elements © & TM DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
WB SHIELD: TM & © WBEI. (s18)
RHUS39931
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Yee, Lisa, author.
Title: Bumblebee at Super Hero High / by Lisa Yee.
Description: New York : Random House, [2018] | Series: DC Super Hero girls
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001882 | ISBN 978-1-5247-6926-0 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6927-7 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6928-4 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Comics & Graphic Novels / Media Tie-In. | JUVENILE FICTION / Comics & Graphic Novels / Superheroes. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.
Classification: LCC PZ7.Y3638 Bu 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781524769284
v5.3.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Two
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part Three
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
About the Author
The green kangaroo refused to stop hopping. Instead, he kept photobombing Harley Quinn while she was videoing herself being videoed by a teen reporter from Metropolis High, as bystanders videoed both of them with their phones.
“You’ve been named Super Hero High’s Super Hero of the Month,” said Lois Lane. “During a crucial battle, you even turned off your cameras, which meant your popular web show, Harley’s Quinntessentials, was off the air. Then, while your web empire went dark, you captured the evil Mad Hatter without anyone watching! What’s next for Harley Quinn?”
Harley, who had suddenly done a handstand, was upside down when she replied, “What’s next is whatever’s new!”
“Over here!” the green kangaroo called out while waving from the sidelines. “Look at me!”
“Stop that,” Bumblebee whispered. Beast Boy could be so annoying sometimes. “Shhhh!”
While most of her friends were inside Capes & Cowls Café enjoying the towering “Congrats, Harley!” cake that shot sprinkles from the top, Bumblebee was outside watching the interview with interest. Harley looked totally confident. Super Hero High’s class clown was a natural super hero who basked in the attention, unlike Bumblebee, who wasn’t nearly as comfortable with the spotlight that sometimes came with saving the world.
Beast Boy would not stop hopping. “Calm down,” Bumblebee told him again. “This is about Harley, not you.”
“Aw, you’re no fun,” Beast Boy grumbled as he morphed back into a furry green teen with pointy ears and purple high-tops. Not able to keep a sour face for long, he poked Bumblebee and said, “Hey, buzzzzzz, wanna play freeze tag?”
Before Bumblebee could say “No, thank you,” Frost sauntered past and used her powers to freeze Beast Boy in place. Just then, Bumblebee’s phone rang. The familiar “Flight of the Bumblebee” ringtone signaled her mother calling.
“Hey, Mom, what’s up?” Bumblebee stepped away so as not to disturb Harley’s interview. “What’s that? I’m having trouble hearing you. I thought you said ‘bad news.’ ”
“I did,” Ms. Andrena-Beecher said. Her normally warm and comforting voice trembled. “Oh, honey, first I want you to know that your father and I are safe. His arm is broken, but we’re fine. The damage, though, was pretty bad—”
“The damage? What damage?” Bumblebee’s heart began to race. “Mom, what happened?”
“The tree…the crash…house destroyed…,” her mother tried to explain.
Bumblebee began to gasp for air. Supergirl, who had wandered out of the café carrying a plate of cake, rushed over. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Harley glanced at the commotion and cut off her interview with Lois Lane. “Bumblebee?” she said, bounding over to her friend. “WHOA and WOWZA! You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
By then Bumblebee was picturing the worst. She always got high marks in creative writing at school—but now her imagination was in overdrive.
Beast Boy, who was standing closest to Bumblebee, threw his hands up in the air defensively. “Not my fault!” he insisted. “I think she just got some bad news.” He reached out and relieved Supergirl of the cake she was still holding.
Bumblebee nodded. Before Beast Boy could take a bite of cake, she flew away, leaving her friends worrying and wondering what had just happened.
Most bees can fly fifteen to twenty miles per hour, max. But Karen “Bumblebee” Andrena-Beecher wasn’t most bees. Her last name came from her mother, Andria Andrena, and her father, Rob Beecher, but Karen’s nickname was all her own.
Karen had always loved technology and science, almost as much as she loved pretending to be a super hero. On her fifth birthday, Mr. and Ms. Andrena-Beecher had given their daughter her first engineering kit. In no time, she created a set of girl-sized bee wings that oscillated, rather than rotated, to create an aerodynamic force for maximum airspeed. Needless to say, her parents were more than a little surprised to find their five-year-old daughter hovering in the air on homemade bee wings. After they finished applauding, Mr. Andrena-Beecher reached for his camera and Ms. Andrena-Beecher said, “Honey, don’t get too close to the ceiling fan.”
“Look at me!” Karen cried out gleefully. “I’m just like the super heroes!”
As Karen grew older, she moved from plastic gears to metal ones, from flashlight batteries to mega electrical chargers. She studied robotics and chemistry and engineeri
ng. Sure, she occasionally blew things up in the Bee Tree Lab, as she had dubbed her tree house. But explosions—or “slight miscalculations,” as she liked to call them—were all part of the “learning process,” Karen would tell her parents. And she was plenty safe in her lab. She had designed it herself and then built it with her mother, an architect famous for her ecofriendly tiny houses.
Her father, a photographer, would ride the hydraulic lift Karen had constructed to get to the lab, which towered two stories above their house. He would bring his daughter cameras to fix, ask for help updating the software on his computer, and solicit advice on jump-starting the electric car she had saved from the junkyard and given him on Father’s Day.
It was in the Bee Tree Lab that Karen first bonded with the friendly bees who had set up a hive on one of the top branches. Their constant buzz was sweet music to her ears. Karen loved nothing more than to listen to them as she snacked on crisp apple slices dipped in sweet golden honey while she experimented with her tech. One slow day, while talking to the bees, one accidentally stung her. Instead of getting upset, Karen merely removed the stinger to study it.
The tiny stinger had a huge effect. It was as if the sting had jolted her brain into high gear. Immediately, she harkened back to when she had first created her bee wings. Bees. They weren’t the question. They were the answer! Later that week, Karen developed a technology that would change the course of her life forever.
* * *
As Bumblebee soared past the tall buildings of downtown Metropolis, several office workers looked out their skyscraper windows and waved. Thanks to Harley’s Quinntessentials, everyone knew who Bumblebee and her high school super-hero friends were. How could they not? Harley’s web channel was a worldwide phenomenon, and her hidden cameras, which often caught Super Hero High students messing up, were huge hits. But there were also the Save the Day segments, in which Harley documented her friends risking their lives in lifesaving rescues. Because of this, many Supers had their own fan clubs, like the Wonders, devoted to all things Wonder Woman, and the FashioniStars, who followed everything Star Sapphire did and wore. Plus there were BTWs, aka Batgirl Tech Wizards. And then there were the Honey Bees, a group of fans who adored Bumblebee.
The office workers were waving and jumping up and down at the sight of Bumblebee soaring past. She tried to smile, but it was almost impossible when worry was propelling her. Thanks to her super-secret self-made technology, Bumblebee was able to fly and project powerful sonic blasts. Her enhanced strength was often underestimated, given her cheery demeanor, sparkly big brown eyes, and ever-present smile. But Bumblebee’s best weapon was her ability to shrink on command. Few noticed her when she was the size of an insect, and unlike Giganta, the villain who towered over buildings and was never known to make a stealth entrance, a bee-sized Bumblebee could catch evildoers off guard.
Bumblebee pressed a button on her yellow super-suit top and shrank down. Her ultralight black leggings and yellow boots gave her an aerodynamic boost. All that was on Bumblebee’s mind was that she needed to get home as soon as possible.
Bumblebee soared over neighborhood landmarks, like Shealy’s Corner Market, where she bought Gooey Honey Crunch candy. She looked down at the park where, when she was a toddler, she used to lie on her stomach across the swings, feet and arms extended as if she were flying. But as Bumblebee approached her street, she slowed.
In shock, she flew circles around her house—or at least, where her house had once stood. Below, in a smoldering heap, was what was left of the yellow two-story structure with white-shuttered windows. Off to the side, holding hands, were Mr. and Ms. Andrena-Beecher, talking to EMTs and police.
Bumblebee took a deep breath before landing and turning human-sized. “Mom? Dad?” She gathered them in a loving—and rather strong—embrace.
“Whoa! Ouch. Watch the arm,” her father said, attempting to sound jolly.
Bumblebee stepped back and noticed his left arm tucked into a sling. “What happened?” she asked.
“It was a freak accident,” Ms. Andrena-Beecher struggled to explain. “The police think termites got to the tree and then the tree fell…”
“…on the house,” Mr. Andrena-Beecher continued. “And it cut through some electrical wires, setting it on fire and causing some of your tech to explode.”
“Karen—er, Bumblebee,” her mom went on, “honey, there’s not much left of the house or your lab.”
Bumblebee nodded as she surveyed the damage. Most of the house was gone, except for a few things the firefighters had been able to rescue, like a gold-framed photo her father had taken of her when she’d first begun perfecting her flight suit. While some kids had school pictures on the walls to commemorate each year of school, Bumblebee’s dad had taken an annual flight photo.
Ms. Andrena-Beecher hugged the photo tight. “We were lucky. This could have been much worse.”
* * *
Bumblebee studied the remains of her tech lab. It was a mess. Then again, it was always a mess. But this was a mess times a hundred. A broken triple-action motor controller here, a shattered ultrasonic range finder there, and rubble everywhere. She felt a queasy sensation in her stomach when she saw the original battery pack she had worked on for her first super suit. Half of it was melted, like a honeycomb candy bar left in the sun. The latest and far more sophisticated version of the battery wasn’t in much better shape. And her backup super suit was missing entirely—probably somewhere in the rubble.
Bumblebee recalled the day she’d finally gotten her super suit to work, years earlier. Her father had been frightened, and her mother had been wary when Karen began to shrink.
“She knows what she’s doing,” her mother said. Then she added, “Please tell me I’m right, Karen.”
Thrilled, their daughter flew around the room, buzzing over the tops of their heads, before turning back to her regular size. “I did it!” she said, her eyes shining.
Her mother reached for her father’s hand. “She did it,” she said.
Mr. Andrena-Beecher nodded. “I guess I know what this means,” he said solemnly.
Karen wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I’m on my way to becoming a super hero! So now, when I’m old enough, can I apply to Super Hero High?”
Her dad shook his head no; her mom nodded yes. “We’ll have to have some family meetings and discuss this, Karen,” Ms. Andrena-Beecher said.
“But you promised,” she reminded them. “Dad, you said, ‘Karen, if you can figure out how to shrink, you can do anything you want!’ ”
“Yes, but…” Her father stumbled over his words.
Karen hugged him. “I know,” she said, smiling. “You didn’t really think I could do it. But surprise!”
“Surprise indeed, Karen,” her mother said, beaming with pride.
“Bumblebee!” their young daughter replied in a moment of inspiration. “Mom, Dad, from now on my name is Bumblebee.”
“Bumblebee,” Ms. Andrena-Beecher said, brushing the thick, wavy brown hair off her only child’s face. There was a deep swatch of caramel color in it that looked like sunshine. “I’m so glad you weren’t in the Bee Tree Lab when this happened. You might have gotten hurt.”
Bumblebee tried not to laugh. Her parents were always worried about her. That was why she played down the danger of the battles she fought. “You know the news channels—they make things seem so much bigger than they really are,” Bumblebee would say. This was the strategy lots of Super Hero High students used with their families.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t around when the tree fell,” Bumblebee said. “I could have stopped it. I should have been here.”
It was rare for her to skip visiting her parents on Sunday; however, Bumblebee had planned to stay at school to work on an extra-credit project for Mr. Fox’s Weaponomics class. She had a 97 percent average in the class, and t
he extra credit would have brought her up to 99. Also, there was Harley’s Super Hero of the Month party.
“How?” Mr. Andrena-Beecher asked. “How could you have stopped it? It was nature taking its course.”
“The termites must have been working away at this tree for months. Something this big just doesn’t topple overnight,” Ms. Andrena-Beecher observed.
Bumblebee nodded. Still, she felt funny inside. After all, wasn’t she the super hero in the family? Wasn’t it her job to thwart disasters? Her parents could have been seriously hurt, or worse. Surely there was something she could have done. As Mr. and Ms. Andrena-Beecher talked with the neighbors, who showed up bearing cookies and thermoses of coffee, Bumblebee returned to what was left of her lab.
She picked up her poster of Mary Jackson, a trailblazing African American engineer who worked for NASA, and smoothed it out. Tape could fix that tear in Mary’s nose. Bumblebee rolled up the poster so that no more damage could be done. For the most part, her tech lab lay crushed and in pieces on the ground.
The police came over and began putting yellow and black caution tape around the scene, forcing her to back away. Besides, not much was left anyway. There were piles of wires and cables, melted metal and control panels. She saw some tech tools scattered about, but most were broken and could not be salvaged.