Captain Superlative

by J. S. Puller

  Caitlyn! The big C! Suddenly it made perfect sense. Maybe the C didn’t stand for Captain Superlative after all. Maybe it was for Caitlyn?

  Beneath each kid’s picture was a list of the clubs, teams, and groups they belonged to. Caitlyn Li’s list was as long as mine. Which is to say, she didn’t seem to belong to any clubs. That was no help, although I guess it explained why no one had identified her yet, as far as I knew.

  Underneath the list of clubs, each student had a quote. Caitlyn Li’s read, Have a great summer.

  That explained nothing at all.

  But what had I been expecting? “Captain Superlative is here to make all troubles disappear?” That didn’t seem likely.

  Letting out a slow breath, I started to flip through the back pages of the yearbook, the ones that had candid photos of students just being students. Caitlyn Li popped up once or twice. But if I hadn’t been looking for her, I doubt I would have noticed her. In fact, the first few times I stumbled on a picture of her, I realized a minute later it wasn’t her at all. I kept hoping to find something, some small bit of information that would crack the code. That would explain why Caitlyn Li just decided, one day, that she was going to be Captain Superlative. But there was nothing. Just like my dad said, she was an ordinary person. An anonymous student. Like me. Another face in the crowd, sitting in the cafeteria, hanging out on the school lawn.

  There was nothing superlative about her at all.

  My stomach growled. I’d wasted my lunch period looking through a yearbook and come up with nothing but a possible name. Two kinds of hunger warred inside of me. Angry about both of them, I slammed the yearbook shut, setting it on the floor to one side, far away, like I didn’t even want to touch it.

  “I know you were following me yesterday.”

  The voice interrupted my sulk so abruptly that I gasped, coughing on my own breath. I looked up, turning my head left and then right. The aisle was deserted. But I knew who it was. I knew her voice.

  I knew Captain Superlative was there.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said. Because that was how you were supposed to respond to things like that.

  “Don’t lie, Jane.” The voice was coming from behind me. On the other side of the bookshelf. I could just sense her presence somewhere behind my shoulder. “That’s not the kind of person you are.”

  That made me angrier. “How do you know what kind of person I am?” It came out snappish and demanding. “How do you even know my name?” Especially, I realized resentfully, when I had been struggling so much to come up with hers.

  “It’s my job to know these things, citizen,” she said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  I thought I heard a shrug. “I made it my job. Just like you suddenly made it your job to investigate me.”

  A flush rose along my cheeks and down the back of my neck. As much as I wanted to deny it, I had followed her. And now I was trying to find her in the yearbook. Maybe I’d gone overboard. “I wasn’t…” I couldn’t come up with an appropriate denial. “I didn’t…”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Even if it was meant to put me at ease, it didn’t. “You don’t?” I asked. “Aren’t superheroes supposed to guard their secret identities?” It was something my dad would say.

  Captain Superlative laughed softly. “Why would I do anything I’m supposed to do?”

  Good point.

  “Besides,” she continued, “you’re not a very good stalker, you know. I knew what you were doing from the beginning.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I was curious. I wanted to see how far you’d go.” She paused for a moment, then added, “You didn’t follow me into the hospital.”

  Just when I thought the conversation couldn’t get any more uncomfortable, she went and brought my monster into it. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your business,” I said hotly, gripping the star-shaped charm on my necklace.

  “Are you afraid of hospitals?”

  “I said it was none of your business.” It was a tone my dad wouldn’t appreciate, but I didn’t care. Maybe I’d crossed some lines, following her, looking for her. But it wasn’t the same.

  To my surprise, she backed down. “All right, all right.”

  “I just don’t like them, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Silence followed. I wondered how she’d gotten in without me hearing her. And I wondered if she’d slipped away again, like rainwater leaking in between the cracks of an old roof. But I could somehow still feel her presence behind me. It was a force, an energy. Something I wasn’t at all used to feeling. “You’re not like the other students here, Jane,” she said.

  It felt like a compliment, even if it was an insult. “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “I think you want to be, but you’re not. There’s something about you that’s just a little different. Where does that come from?”

  “I’m the same as everyone else,” I said, my voice rising above acceptable library levels.

  “But—”

  “I’m just the same.”

  I heard her sigh on the other side of the shelf. “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Is that why you aren’t in any clubs? You don’t want to stand out?”

  “Can we please stop talking about me?” I paused. “And it’s not like you should talk. I don’t think you’ve ever been in a club either.”

  She laughed. “True.” I could sense her hand on the bookshelf. “So what else have you dug up?”

  The question gave me whiplash. “What?”

  “What else have you dug up on me? So far.”

  I looked down at the yearbook. Was she playing some kind of game with me? Was there a joke I didn’t understand? I thought about Caitlyn Li’s eyes again, gleaming with their secret. It was her, wasn’t it? “Your name is Caitlyn Li.”

  “Well done!” Captain Superlative said, sounding genuinely pleased. “You’ve found me out!”

  “And you weren’t in any school clubs.”

  “That’s right! I didn’t like standing out back then.”

  Back then? Well, she certainly did now. I shrugged, up against the shelf, wondering if she could feel my movement on her side of the books. “That’s all.”

  “Not what you were looking for?”

  “No.” Not even a little bit.

  “If you want to know something, you could always ask.”

  An open invitation. Not an opportunity that came along every day. Which meant that my throat went dry and my mind suddenly felt like clumsy fingers, fumbling and grasping, but unable to grab hold of a thought. “Ask?” I repeated it numbly, overwhelmed by too many possibilities.

  “Yes. You could say, ‘Captain Superlative, I have a question for you.’ And then you could ask your question.”

  “And if I did? What would happen?”

  “I’d answer it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Oh.” So why couldn’t I come up with the question, the thing I really, really wanted to know?

  “So-o-o?” she said, drawing out the word into three syllables.

  “So…”

  “Is there something you’d like to ask me?”

  “I—”

  “Captain Superlative,” she said, prompting.

  “Do I have to say ‘Captain Superlative’?” The air quotes were implied, since she couldn’t see me.

  “Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  That was just annoying. All the same, I sighed and tried to pull together the threads of my thoughts. “Captain Superlative…”

  What was wrong with me?

  “Yes?” she asked encouragingly.

  It all coalesced into a single word: Why? But that made no sense. It meant too much, it was too big. And I was frustrated that I couldn’t collect my thoughts. She’d laugh at me, anyone would. Better to keep those thoughts to myself. Better not to be that girl,
whatever that girl meant at any given time.

  “Where’d you get the cape?” I asked dully, picking up the yearbook and pulling myself to my feet.

  “That’s not what you really want to ask me,” she said, sounding like a disappointed teacher.

  “Stop acting like you know everything about me!”

  I didn’t even know everything about me. Not yet.

  “What’s your question, Jane?”

  “Nothing! Never mind!”

  I stomped along the bookshelves, which felt unnatural considering how hard I usually tried not to make noise. When I came around the side, I expected to see her there, hands on her hips, cape awkwardly draped over her shoulders.

  But she wasn’t there. There was only an emptiness where her presence had been. The library was deserted again, just me and my frustration.

  Fury.

  Fixation.

  Fascination.

  There was something unpleasant clawing around inside of me. It was an untouchable something, which was the worst kind of something imaginable. It was a feeling. Yes. A feeling that filled my chest to the brink of suffocating me by the end of the day. A feeling I couldn’t exactly name. I guess you could say I felt unhappy. But I didn’t know why I was unhappy. Something was bothering me, but it wasn’t a thing I could change or ignore or even complain about. It just sort of sat on me, pushing the air out of my lungs.

  I was drowning in it.

  And nobody noticed.

  Business as usual in the hallways. Kids were going back and forth, rushing to their lockers, their friends, their afterschool clubs. Everything the way it always was, as if nothing was wrong. But something was wrong inside of me and I wanted something to be wrong with everyone else too.

  I wouldn’t feel so alone that way.

  I grabbed books from my locker, shoved them hard into my backpack, and made a beeline for the door. Just outside of the gym, I saw Paige slip out, books piled high in her arms. She actually looked like she was in a good mood. She was smiling—something she rarely did. She looked beautiful.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed her good spirits.

  Dagmar appeared from around the trophy case, like a supervillain popping out of a cloud of smoke, brimstone swirling around her. Without preamble—or evil laugh—she slammed her hand down on Paige’s books, sending them flying across the floor.

  It was a more vicious and physical attack than I was used to seeing. It shook me out of my self-pity.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “You know you can’t win, right?” Dagmar stared at Paige as if she were some kind of maggot or beetle.

  “Win?” Paige was bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to be top of the class this year. Not Jennie Li. Not Ben Wesson. And definitely not you.”

  Was Paige giving Dagmar a run for her money? News to me. But then, hadn’t Captain Superlative said that Paige was a straight-A student? I turned toward the display case, craning my neck so I could watch the reflection of the scene in the glass. At eye level with me, there was an old photograph of a dozen cheerleaders, smiling big at the camera in their matching red uniforms, pom-poms on their hips. Front and center was Dagmar’s mother, who looked like a mirror image of Dagmar herself, with her golden curls and her stunning figure. Only the eyes were different. They were warm brown, like a cocker spaniel’s. I didn’t think they would approve of what they were seeing.

  “It’s not a contest, Dagmar,” Paige said.

  “Of course it’s a contest. You know it and I know it. Everyone knows it. And I heard you talking to Mr. Collins about going for extra credit.”

  “That had nothing to do with—”

  “I’m going to be top of the class. You get it? You’re not taking that away from me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Get it?”

  They locked eyes for a moment. I thought Paige was going to fight back. She had a perturbed look to her. Instead, she knelt and started gathering her books. “I don’t want to fight with you, Dagmar,” she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

  Dagmar kicked Paige’s graphing calculator, sending it skittering across the hall and Paige crawling after it. She watched Paige scrambling, but without her usual air of satisfaction. Apparently, that just wasn’t enough. Dagmar tried kicking Paige’s social-studies book too. It landed at my feet. That wasn’t enough either.

  Dagmar folded her arms across her chest, a deep scowl wrinkling up her face, making it look like the craggy slope of a volcano. Her eyes fell on a stack of paper from Paige’s pile. “What’s this?”

  “Dagmar, that’s mine!”

  She scooped it up just before Paige could snatch it out from under her. “Your paper for Mr. Collins?”

  “Let me have that.”

  “Look at that.” Dagmar flipped through it to the last page. In the reflection, I could just see a large, green A-plus, circled in ink. I’d gotten mine back earlier in the day, with an unimpressive B-minus that wasn’t circled.

  “Give that back!”

  She didn’t give it back. No. Dagmar Hagen didn’t really seem to know the meaning of “subtle” today. She made her intentions quite clear, holding the paper up sideways, her fingertips gripping either end. When she ripped it apart, she moved slowly and deliberately, milking the noise of the tearing papers for everything she could. The students still in the hallway saw and heard what was happening. Most of them ducked their heads, shuffling off as quickly as possible. They created a silent vacuum, an empty space inhabited by only Paige and Dagmar. And the air that was me. I leaned over to pick up Paige’s book, some part of me hoping that when I rose again, it would all be over. Dagmar fanned herself with one half of Paige’s report. “Get it, Paige?”

  “I did get it,” Paige replied, looking down at the earth beneath her hands. “I got that A-plus. You’re just jealous.”

  “No one’s jealous of you, Paige. You’re nothing. Nobody wants a hobo loser dad,” Dagmar said, tossing the ragged paper down at Paige’s hunched shoulders.

  Paige ignored the remains of her report. She crawled back over to the rest of her things, pulling them carelessly into her arms. Her hands shook. She stood, eyes rising to meet Dagmar’s gaze. “I have to get to choir,” she said. “Get out of my way.”

  And then Dagmar crossed a line.

  For as long as I could remember, she’d mocked and humiliated Paige, scattered her things, taken cheap shots at her shoes. Insulted her. Posted humiliating pictures online. The same routine, with subtle variations and deviations.

  I’d never seen her hit Paige before.

  It happened so fast. Paige was veering around Dagmar, toward the open hallway. Dagmar pulled back her hand and slapped Paige across the face. The noise was the most incredible part of it. I could hear it echoing through the hall. For half a second, it was the only sound in the world. And then Paige let out a cry of pain and stumbled into the wall, dropping her things again.

  “Dagmar!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Knock it off, Dagmar.”

  But that last part wasn’t Paige. It was me. I had spoken. I didn’t realize I was opening my mouth until the words were out. My shock was mirrored, first in Paige’s eyes and then in Dagmar’s, as she turned to look at me over her shoulder, standing beside the picture of her mother, Paige’s book trembling in my hands.

  I wondered if Dagmar had ever seen my face. We’d been in school together since we were very, very little, but I wasn’t sure she’d seen me before. Really seen me. There was no question she saw me now, though.

  Heard me too.

  “What did you say to me?” she asked.

  I suppose I could have gotten away clean. I could have said, Nothing. I didn’t say anything. I could have backed down, hidden my face like Paige. Apologized. Fled. Run away, praying it would all be forgotten. Most kids would have done the same in my situation. In fact, I could only think of one other person in the school who wou
ld have done what I ended up doing.

  “I said, knock it off.”

  Dagmar’s pretty pink lips puckered. Paige was immediately forgotten. Now the golden demon only had eyes for me. “Excuse you,” she said. “When did this become your business?”

  I didn’t have an answer. So I didn’t answer. I crossed over to Paige, handing her back her social-studies book. “Here,” I said to her.

  Paige took it from me. “Thanks.”

  “I’m talking to you,” Dagmar said with a snarl.

  “Whatever, Dagmar.” It was the best I could do. “Just…stop.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Why can’t you just leave Paige alone? You’re always harassing her. Just…knock it off, already. We’re all getting sick of it.” I made a broad, sweeping gesture, as if there were a dozen other students in the hallway.

  “So you’re going to stand up for the loser too?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but someone beat me to the punch.

  “Yes. She is.”

  Once again, she’d crept in unnoticed. Captain Superlative. Like a true superhero, she’d arrived just in time. I felt her behind my shoulder before I saw her, hands on her hips, chin raised to that magnificent and proud angle. Her eyes glittered with a secret—and when she looked at me, we shared it.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been a part of a “we” in school.

  Dagmar’s head whipped from side to side, her eyes looking back and forth between the two of us. “So, there are two freaks now.”

  Somehow it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I imagined freak feeling like a knife in my chest. But I barely felt it. I almost didn’t hear it, actually. “Dagmar,” I said, “you are incredibly mean sometimes.” Understatement of the century. “Just stop. Stop picking on Paige.”

  Dagmar’s upper lip pulled back from her teeth, and she growled. “Or what?”

  “Or we’ll stop you,” Captain Superlative said simply.

  “How?”

  My stomach flopped.

  How? How could we stop a wildfire? I looked over at Captain Superlative. Surely she’d just realized that she’d bitten off more than she could chew—and brought me along for the ride. But the Captain remained calm. “Every time you go near Paige, we’ll be there. Maybe you’ll think you can sneak an insult in, but you’ll be wrong. We’ll be watching you, Dagmar. And if you even breathe in her direction the wrong way, if you even think about it…”