by Zoe Quinn
“Howie must have felt awful,” said Mom.
“He did at first,” said Dad. “But it turns out that back when Morrison was a rookie, he had a handcuff mishap his first day on the job. Cuffed himself to the steering wheel of a squad car, I think it was.”
I'd finished my second taco and was reaching for a third shell.
“Looks like you worked up an appetite with all that pencil sorting,” Mom observed.
“I guess I did,” I said, heaping olives and jalapeño peppers into the shell. “And you know something? I can't wait to do it again tomorrow!”
I locked my bedroom door.
I never had to do that before I became a superhero, but I couldn't take a chance on Mom or Dad popping in to say goodnight while I was flipping through the scrapbook.
I plunked the large album in front of me on my bed and opened it. On the first page was an inscription in gold ink:
Cool. I'd never read anything with the word writ in it before!
Feeling curious and important, I turned the page and found an elaborate diagram: the Zip family tree.
I studied it for several minutes, suddenly ravenous for information about my Super roots. I already knew that my grandpa Zack's grandmother, Zelda (also known, according to a notation in the diagram, as Hero Zephyr), was a superhero. Zelda s uncle Zeke (aka Hero Zinger) was a hero, as was her cousin Zita. Some of my relatives had married into other Super clans; others, like Grandpa, had married Ordinaries.
I scanned the page until I came to the place where Grandpa had carefully filled in my name—Zoe Alexandra Richards—and my birth date. By counting upward through the branches of the tree, I determined that I was a sixth-generation hero.
And so was Zander.
My breath caught in my throat as I slid my finger across the page and saw that, although no one had ever so much as mentioned it before, I actually had a distant cousin who was twelve years old like me. In fact, according to the record, we'd been born only a few days apart.
His name was Alexander Richards, but he was called Zander. (Apparently my family takes the whole Z, thing very seriously.) I wondered why Grandpa Zack hadn't mentioned Zander to me. I kind of liked knowing I had a cousin my own age out there somewhere who was going through the same weird and wonderful experience I was. I made a mental note to ask Grandpa about it as soon as he and Gran returned from vacation. But Zander, being a “Gen 11” like me, was part of the Zip present, and this paper I had to write was supposed to be about the past, so I figured I could leave my questions about this Zander kid for a later date and turned the page.
The Supernews—
February 13, 1964
SWEETBRIAR—A great disaster
was averted today when Hero
Zip successfully disarmed
a missile launched by
supervillain N-Cina-Ray-Tor.
The mission was originally
assigned to Hero Gumption.
Gumption? The. word was sort of familiar, but I had to stop and think about its meaning. Then I remembered—we'd had it on a vocabulary test a few weeks earlier. Gumption: boldness; spunk; guts. I went back to the article.
Gumption was recently given
control of our latest
interatmospheric aircraft.
The craft is outfitted with
double-intensified turbo
power-boosters and state-
of-the-art stealth capabilities.
That last part sounded oddly familiar. I kept on reading:
Unfortunately, as the craft
lifted off, a flock of geese
flew directly into the flight
path. Gumption was forced to
land the craft before
reaching cruising altitude.
Luckily, Gumption's current
trainee, Apprentice Hero
Maximus, exhibited good
judgment and quick thinking
and contacted Zip, thus
turning the mission over to
him. Acting with customary
bravery and speed, Zip was
able to halt the missile's
progress and deflect it into
outer space. At present,
N-Cina-Ray-Tor remains at
large, but Zip will continue
his pursuit of the criminal.
This valiant achievement
marks Zip's forty-ninth
rescue this year, which gives
him a career total of 1,784
successful missions, the
highest tally of all time!
I flipped to the next page and was not surprised to see a news clipping that included a photo of Zip apprehending N-Cina-Ray-Tor. The arrest, according to the headline, took place only one day after my grandpa had saved the earth from this bad guy's missile.
Filled with pride, I closed the book. Maybe writing this essay wouldn't be such a drag after all. It might be fun—not to mention informative—to learn about my legacy. And I'd already learned one extremely cool thing: not only is my grandfather Sweetbriar's premier dry cleaner, he was also one awesome superhero in his day!
THE rest of the week went smoothly, if uneventfully. I reported for work at Electra's and was given loads of jobs to do, like stacking paper and making sure she had enough pencils in each color. She'd sit at her desk and draw and write and tell me things about ink quality and printer deadlines while I checked her ideas against old issues to be sure the action was consistent. I even caught a mistake—she was drawing one of Lightning Girl's archenemies, the glamorous Claw-dette, with red polished claws, but when the previous episode had ended, Claw-dette had just gotten a French manicure.
Mornings at school were hectic. It felt as if the teachers were trying to squeeze in as many classes as they could before our early departure. Everything seemed to be moving at top speed—which wasn't such a big deal for me, of course. On Friday morning, Emily and I blew past each other in the hallway.
“Hi,” I said, rushing toward my locker while several other sixth graders hurried by.
“Hi.” She was practically jogging in the direction of the science lab. “Hey, let's meet at the Burger Barn for lunch today, after school, before work-study.”
“Sounds good.”
“Invite Howie and Josh, too. I'll ask Caitlin.”
“Okay.”
“See ya,” she called, disappearing around the corner.
I opened my locker, searching for my history book. Mr. Diaz poked his head out of his classroom and smiled at me. “Time's a-wasting, Zoe,” he joked. “Pick up the pace! Can't you go any faster?”
I pulled out my history book and smiled back at him. “I'll try,” I said. But inside I was laughing. If you only knew, Mr. Diaz. If you only knew!
I was the first one to get to the Burger Barn after school.
Guess how!
Okay, so it was risky using my superspeed in broad daylight, but it had been a while since I'd cut loose, and I really needed to flex my supermuscles! I couldn't afford to get rusty, could I? I was careful to keep to the quieter roads and woodsy lots to avoid being seen.
When Emily arrived, I noticed that she was wearing one of the great outfits I'd helped pick out for her—a little plaid skirt in hot pink and lime green with a green crocheted shrug over a white T-shirt. We'd been in such a rush when I'd seen her at school that it hadn't registered. She really did look like a magazine editor! I, on the other hand, was wearing old blue jeans and a sweatshirt with a tear in the elbow. Emily slid into the booth and eyed my getup.
“So I guess Electra Allbright prefers a casual work environment, huh?”
“I'm going to be scrubbing out ink bottles this afternoon,” I explained. “You look great. What's on your work schedule for the day?”
Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. “I'm going to be sitting in on a big meeting. Harriet—she's my mentor—is interviewing Rachel Anne Donovan. Rachel Anne Donovan! Can you believe it?”
I had to think for
a minute to remember who exactly Rachel Anne Donovan was. I knew I'd heard her name from Emily a million times, and if she was being interviewed by Go, Girl! she was most likely some big shot in the fashion industry—I just couldn't recall exactly what she was famous for. Was she a supermodel? A makeup artist? An A-list photographer?
“Who's Rachel Anne Donovan?” asked Josh, who was just joining us in the booth. I silently thanked him for asking the question so I didn't have to.
“She's only the most awesome handbag designer on the whole entire planet!” Emily gushed.
Now I remembered. R.A.D. BAGS—that was Rachel Anne Donovan's brand name. Emily thought they're just too chic for words and had been begging her parents for months to buy her one, but even the smallest bag in the R.A.D. line cost major bucks. Mrs. Huang had told Emily that she wasn't about to shell out two hundred and eighty dollars for a purse that was only big enough to hold two tissues and a tube of lip gloss. I had to admit, I couldn't blame her.
Josh took a seat beside me in the booth. “That's great, Em.”
“Thanks. And guess what else! The editors are even thinking of letting me write a fashion-for-middle-schoolers column when the project is over, kind of a ‘preteen at large’ contributing editor gig.”
I reached across the table to give her a high five. “Cool-litzer, here we come!”
Then I turned to Josh. “How's your job going?” I asked him.
“It's awesome. I'm doing lots of hands-on work with endangered insects.”
“That's gross,” said Caitlin, sidling up to the table, then softening her snippy comment with a broad smile. “Hi, everybody!”
Howie was right behind her, looking as though he had something terribly important on his mind. “Hey, guys.”
Caitlin sat down beside Emily, and Howie squeezed into the booth next to Josh, which meant Josh had to scoot down closer to me so that our shoulders touched. The waitress came and we all ordered burgers and sodas.
“How's police work, Howie?” Emily asked.
“EXCITING.”
We all waited for him to elaborate, but after a few moments, it became clear that he wasn't going to. I figured Howie thought his work required top-secret classification.
“How's the comic-book world?” Caitlin asked me when the waitress was gone. “Do you have to bring your own crayons, or does Electra Allbright let you use hers? Oh, let me guess— you've got a big lunch meeting with Superman, Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk tomorrow?”
Josh grinned at me. “Now, that's what I'd call a power lunch.”
“The comic-book world rocks! I'm learning a ton of fascinating stuff,” I told Caitlin firmly. “How's your job?”
Caitlin's cool look vanished and she looked away. “Fine,” she said.
Howie raised his eyebrows, and I could tell he knew something about Caitlin's job at the florist. The waitress returned and handed out our sodas, and there was a moment of confusion when Emily was given Josh's root beer by mistake. Caitlin looked glad of the distraction, but Howie wasn't about to let the topic drop.
“Aren't you going to tell them what happened?” he prompted.
Caitlin shot him a look that could have frozen the soda in his glass. “Of course I am,” she said. “Why wouldn't I? After all, it was just an honest mistake. It was kind of amusing, actually.”
“Hmmm.” Howie took a long sip of his cola. “I don't think Mr. Adamson thought it was amusing.”
“What mistake?” Emily asked. “Who's Mr. Adamson?”
Caitlin let out a long sigh, then forced a bright smile. “The Adamsons are regular customers at the flower shop. Yesterday, Mr. Adamson called and ordered an elaborate bouquet and asked that it be sent to his wife, with a card that said, ‘I love you more each day, Hugs and kisses, Melvin.’ Well, I took the order and prepared the arrangement and had it delivered to Mrs. Adamson.”
“So what was the problem?” Josh asked.
“The problem,” said Howie, “was that the phone call wasn't from Mr. Michael Adamson, it was from Mr. Melvin Abramson. So when Mr. Adamson got home and saw the mushy card his wife had gotten from some guy named Melvin, he was furious.
He thought his wife was dating another man!”
I gulped. Caitlin was studying the tabletop. She looked uncomfortable, but not especially sorry. In fact, she looked as if she was trying not to crack up.
“So what happened?” Emily asked.
Howie shook his head. “It was awful. Mrs. Adamson swore she didn't know anyone named Melvin, but Mr. Adamson said the flowers were proof that she was lying. Finally, they had to call my grandpa to get to the bottom of the mess. He figured out that Caitlin had gotten the names confused and sent the arrangement to the wrong wife. But to make matters worse, Mr. Abramson called to say that he was in the doghouse because his wife never received her birthday bouquet.”
“Adamson, Abramson,” Caitlin said offhandedly. “It could have happened to anyone.”
Sure it could, I thought. Except it had happened to her, and there was something about Caitlin Abbott that made me the teensiest bit suspicious.…
The waitress arrived with our burgers and we dug in, eating quickly because no one wanted to be late to work.
Especially me. Washing bottles may not sound like fancy work, but it was cool by me. I'd scrub at the sink in the workroom, and Electra would draw, and I'd get to hear more of her stories from the comics-writing world. For the world's biggest Electra Allbright fan (that's me, by the way), what could be better?
When I arrived at Electra's mansion, I found that she had left the front door unlocked for me. I let myself in and headed up to her attic studio, my backpack stuffed with Grandpa's huge scrapbook—thudding against my shoulder.
I entered the attic and found Electra frowning at a storyboard.
“Hi,” I said from the doorway.
“Hello, Zoe,” said Electra, not looking up. “Hope you didn't mind seeing yourself up—I'm experiencing a comic-book author's worst nightmare at the moment.”
“What's that?” I inquired.
Electra let out an exasperated huff. “Writer's block.” She frowned at the sketches in front of her, then glanced up at me with a grin. “I could use some input.”
I put my backpack on the floor beside the door and crossed the attic to her table. “Here's the problem,” she said. “Lightning Girl has been captured by the villain Riptide. Nasty guy …”
I nodded. “I remember him. He's the one who trained the killer sharks to breathe on land and set them loose in shopping malls all over America.”
“Right. Well, now he and Lightning Girl have crossed paths again and he's just sealed her into an airtight room. No windows, no vents, and the door is padlocked on the outside, so she can't fire a lightning bolt at it.”
“YIKES.”
“Indeed.” Electra tapped her pencil on the last two empty squares in the long sequence. “Riptide is filling the room with water. See? It's up to LG's knees already. But now that I've got her stuck in the room with the water gushing in … well, frankly, I'm having a hard time coming up with a solution to get her out.”
I could feel my heart racing with excitement, because (a) I'm such a big Lightning Girl fan and this is exactly the kind of suspense I live for, and (b) Electra was seriously asking for my input! She needed my help to figure out a way to rescue our hero!
“Any thoughts?” she asked, sounding a bit desperate.
“Well …” I studied the pencil sketches of Lightning Girl in her hero outfit that looked so much like mine, with the zippers and the hooks, and the supercool insignia, and the tool belt and …
“THE CAPE!”
Electra gave me a look that said “Go on,” so I did.
“It's got to be a new one—you'll have to go back and add a scene. Is that okay?”
“Of course.… Keep talking.…”
“Well, I know because I've read every Lightning Girl ever written that her cape is just made of your basic, ordinary indestructib
le fabric. But let's say somewhere in this book she decides she needs a more aerodynamic cape, and maybe a new color … how about here?” I pointed to a place near the beginning of the story.
“All right.” Electra made a notation on the storyboard. “And …?”
“And while she's at it, she asks the suit designer to upgrade the cape a little, give it some high-tech properties, like super-absorbency, which she knows has become all the rage among trendy superheroes. And the designer says, ‘Sure, I just got some superabsorbent fabric the other day, and the color would be divine on you.’”
“Yes!” Electra cried. “Yes, and if we put this scene in early enough, by the time Lightning Girl heads off on her mission to fight Riptide, she'll already have the new cape.”
“So when she's stuck in the room and the water starts gushing in, she can use the cape to sop it all up and save herself.”
“Wonderful!” said Electra, scribbling the image into the two empty blocks. “Zoe, this is brilliant. Frankly, I can't believe I forgot about superabsorbent capes—” She stopped short, her pencil pausing for just a second before it began moving again. “I mean, I can't believe I hadn't thought of superabsorbent fabric.
How lucky for me that you're so inventive!”
I smiled. “It just sort of came to me,” I fibbed. Of course, the fact of the matter was that I just happen to have a super-absorbent cape of my own, and it just happened to be stowed across the room in my backpack …
… which, just at that moment, started to make a whirring sound.
My backpack was whirring?
Well, that was new.
I thought I saw Electra's pencil pause again. I swallowed hard, expecting her to ask what the noise was and where it was coming from. But she didn't say a word; in fact, maybe she hadn't paused at all—maybe I'd only imagined it. She seemed to be so into her sketches of the cape that she didn't even hear the whir.