by J. S. Puller
She coughed into her fist. “Mortarboards?”
“Yeah!”
“Brilliant, Janey!” She grinned. Selina hopped back up on the bed, tentatively sniffing at Captain Superlative, like she wasn’t sure if she was ready to forgive her or not. Captain Superlative held a palm out to her, letting her sniff it.
“Do you think we have time for that?” I asked.
“Sure. It’s a million years until Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s only a week or two, at this point.”
Wow. What had happened to January? It had just flown away from me.
“I’ll tell you what,” Captain Superlative said, running her fingers along the fur between Selina’s ears. “I’ll take charge of all the glitter and stickers and names. That way you can focus on just the drawing part.”
“All right. Sounds good to me.” And way better than drawing kissy lips and flowers.
“That’s because we’re a great team!”
“The best team,” I said with a laugh.
“There’s no better team in the history of the universe.”
“Except for Batman and Robin,” my dad said from the other side of the door.
That made us laugh. A lot. We were seized with fits so wild and uncontrolled that Selina gave up on waiting for us to calm down and indignantly jumped from the bed to my desk with narrowed green eyes. The look on her face made us laugh harder. We collapsed into the paper hearts, which scattered like autumn leaves. We might have laughed for the rest of time, except for the fact that our frail human bodies needed to breathe. Before too long, we were both exhausted, coughing and gasping to catch our breaths.
“Can I tell you something funny?” I asked her, shifting my weight to lie down across the head of my bed.
“Sure.” She flopped over the foot, a few more hearts fluttering to the ground. Selina forgot all about us, chasing after a heart and disappearing under my bed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I am right now.”
“Good,” she said, starting to cough again. “Life.” Each word was a struggle, coming out like a wheeze. “Is. Too short. To be sad. All. The time.”
“And anything less than superlative,” I reminded her. I’d never forgotten that somehow. Those incredible, powerful words. When I closed my eyes, I could still see her in the living room that night, changing the way I looked at everything, urging me to be superlative.
“That too.”
I stared up at the ceiling. “Superlative,” I said softly, enjoying the way the word felt in my mouth.
“Sensational,” Captain Superlative said.
Oh, challenge accepted. “Superb,” I countered.
“Supreme.”
“Spectacular.”
She faltered. And then said, “Super-de-duper!”
I shot up ramrod straight. “That is not a word!”
“Is too,” she replied, giving me a sly grin as she sat up.
“It is not!”
“It is now!”
“Don’t argue with the superhero,” my dad said from the other side of the door.
“Stop listening in, Dad!”
“He’s right,” Captain Superlative said, thrusting out her chin.
I grabbed a handful of the paper hearts to my side and threw them at her. They didn’t quite have the same impact as a snowball. They drifted around her, spinning and twirling. One or two landed in her wig. A few fell on her arms and chest. One managed to land almost perfectly over her actual heart. I found myself thinking…That’s what Captain Superlative is. Forgetting the mask and the cape and the wig and the catchphrase and all that other stuff…Captain Superlative is love.
But just as the thought formed in my head, she let out a peal of laughter. “This means war!” She grabbed a handful of hearts and threw them back at me. Not one to be bombarded or outdone, I started throwing them back, and between the two of us, we made a pretty fantastic mess.
A superlative mess, you might even say.
I guess wars are always messy. But this was a special kind of war. A wonderful kind of war. A war fought with love.
It felt so easy. All these little things that I’d thought were meaningless? They all added up. They really did. And the more I noticed people I could stop to help, the more I noticed something else.
I generally met up with Captain Superlative in the library, between fourth and fifth period. I got there first on Monday and went inside to our usual table to wait for her. Another big test was coming up—this time in Math—so we were going to hand out mints, I assumed. I perched myself on the corner of the table, staring out at the wall of glass that overlooked the hallway. Kids were going back and forth. In the last few weeks, a lot of the girls and even some of the boys had started wearing red high-top sneakers, just like Captain Superlative. There were two major camps now, one for red high-tops, the other for Blue Shoes. When Tyler made a joke about combining the two and wearing purple high-tops, a tiny third camp popped up. It was a little bit like the end of The Sneetches. No one could keep track of what was “in” or “out” anymore. And, really, no one seemed to care too much. Especially without Dagmar to dictate policy.
She’d been suspiciously quiet as of late.
Among the sea of bobbing heads, I spotted Paige, carrying her books like always. She really needed a bag. I grabbed a felt-tip marker and I made a note to myself on the back of my hand to go through the hall closet and see if I could find one of my old ones for her. Predictably, one of her books fell off the stack in front of her. I started to slide off the table, eager to run out and pick it up for her, but someone else beat me to it.
It wasn’t Captain Superlative.
Tyler was passing Paige, going the other way. He stopped and smiled at her, leaning over to pick up the book and a couple sheets of paper.
It was like watching a movie. An old silent movie that was all faces and no words.
He seemed to ask her if she was okay.
Paige was startled, flustered that the most popular boy in school was talking to her, let alone helping her.
Tyler was blissfully oblivious to her astonishment. He said something. I was an expert at watching his lips, and I’m pretty sure it was her name.
She clearly couldn’t believe that he knew it.
He set the book back on top of her stack. And then he asked her something about what was written on her paper.
One of her songs, no doubt. Paige looked bashful, the way she always did when her songs came up.
Tyler returned the pages to her. He turned to one side, saw me—and waved.
It was maybe thirty seconds, at most. But it was also a new lifetime. Paige watched Tyler walk away, unsure if it had happened. But it had. We were both witnesses. She saw me through the glass and mouthed, Tyler Jeffries!
I smiled.
We were making a difference. We really were making a difference.
On the Tuesday before the Valentine’s Day dance, another impossible thing happened. Between sixth and seventh period, I went looking for Paige. I’d dug out one of my old book bags. It wasn’t anything special. It was kind of plain and green. But I figured it would be better than having to lug around her books in her arms. It would leave her less vulnerable too. Plus, green was her favorite color. I was sure Captain Superlative would approve. My dad certainly did. He dubbed me “Super J” and insisted that we go out to Sunset Ridge to brush up on my “swordplay” skills, using two old and yellowing plastic baseball bats.
I spotted her coming out of the girls’ bathroom and was about to make my way over, but suddenly someone else shouted, “Paige!”
It was April. She came down the hall, a red comet in her soccer uniform and red sneakers, silky blond hair streaming behind her. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her talk to Paige before. I couldn’t even remember her looking at Paige.
“Hey, Paige,” she said.
“Hi.” Paige’s reply was tentative, testing the waters.
If April noticed, she cer
tainly didn’t show it. “I love those jeans!” she said. “They’re so cute.”
Paige’s jeans seemed like jeans to me. They were a pale, faded blue, hugging her hips and fraying a little bit around her heels. Nothing special. But then again, I’d never really had much of an interest in clothes. April, on the other hand, had been an expert in clothing since our days of playing dress-up in the basement of my old house. It was only because of her that I knew not to wear brown pants with a blue purse.
Paige glanced down at them, a little bit self-conscious. “They’re my sister’s,” she said, muttering to the earth.
“Well, your sister has great taste.”
This wasn’t the way the scene was supposed to play out. April was deviating from the script. The popular girl didn’t compliment the outsider. But then, the popular girl didn’t wear red high-tops either. Paige looked up with a timid smile. “She does?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
April smoothed her hair back behind her ear. “Heading to Gym?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll walk with you.” And she reached out, taking a couple of books off of Paige’s pile. She didn’t throw them to the ground or spit on them. She didn’t kick them. She didn’t rip up any of Paige’s assignments. “Let me give you a hand,” she said instead, tucking them under her arm.
“Thank you!”
“Sure.” And suddenly the two of them were walking away, following the flow of kids to the gym. “So where did your sister get those jeans?”
“I’m not sure, really.”
Had April changed? Or had I misjudged her? Had I been the one to cut her out of my life after third grade? Had I lost sight of who she was, assuming that her loyalty to Dagmar defined her? It was something to think about. But either way, she was being surprisingly nice to Paige now.
And that’s what it was all adding up to. What the Captain did? Other kids started to do. As I watched it all happening, swirling around me like some kind of cyclone of change, I failed to notice something else that was happening.
On Wednesday afternoon, I manned the front doors—now decorated with pink and red hearts for the Valentine’s Day dance—after school. By myself. It was the middle of the week and Captain Superlative had been strangely absent. It was a school. Kids missed class sometimes. But three days in a row were making me uneasy. I’d gotten so used to our routines that it felt like something was missing every time I arrived and she didn’t.
Like I was facing down a villain (or door) by myself.
I was just a sidekick. I wasn’t ready for more than that yet.
I opened the door for Ms. Hinton, who was carrying a box filled with papers. “Thank you, Jane,” she said, offering me a smile. “Great job on that test, by the way. I’m very proud of you.” I’d gotten a solid A—my first ever in her class—thanks to the study guides. Quite the turnaround for an average B student.
Once she was outside, unsteadily making her way across the crunching snow, I closed the doors with a soft “Kablam!” and became aware of laughing.
On the other side of the entry hall, a group of kids from the school play were standing in a huddle, like football players making plans. Tyler was there, at the center of it all. His friends were snickering, one of them nudging him in the ribs with an elbow while another whacked him on the shoulder with a winter cap.
They kept looking at me.
I did my best to ignore it. I opened the door for Kevin, who was finally out of the wheelchair and wobbling on crutches. “Be careful!” I called after him, eyeing the icy walkway nervously.
Two sixth graders scurried over, flanking Kevin’s sides, their hands ready to catch him if he slipped. They yapped at him and followed along like eager puppies.
I smiled in satisfaction and closed the door, nearly walking right into Tyler, who appeared behind me.
“Whoa!”
“Hey, Janey.”
A couple of his friends started laughing again. One of them—the eighth-grade girl cast as Mrs. Potts—gave a kid in the chorus a wink.
“Hi,” I said, my eyebrows drawing together.
What was so funny?
Tyler took a glove out of his pocket, twisting it between his hands. “How are you today?” he asked.
Two eighth graders balancing a papier-mâché volcano came down the hall. I put a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, gently shoving him aside so I could open the door for them and they could pass without knocking into him. “I’m good,” I said, once they were through. Almost as an afterthought, I called, “Have a good afternoon, citizens!” It felt like something Captain Superlative would have said. Although she would have made it sound better.
Where was she?
Tyler moved back toward me, his knuckles beginning to turn white as he continued to wind the glove around his hands. “So I was thinking. And not with my stomach this time.”
“What?”
“You know, how you said—”
“Oh, right.”
“Thanks again, by the way. I actually pulled an A-minus on the test. And I only mentioned gyros once.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Anyway,” he said, looking to one side. “I wanted to ask you something about the Valentine’s Day da—”
“Listen,” I interrupted, my agitation getting the better of me. “Have you seen Captain Superlative?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in science class this morning.” The corners of his lips lifted up into another smile. “It would be hard to miss her, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would.”
He shrugged. “I mean, you know, she’s been sick. Guess she didn’t make it to school today.”
But she hadn’t made it Tuesday. Or Monday. “That doesn’t sound like her,” I said, the creep of unease rising in my chest.
“No?”
“Not really.”
“No rest for the righteous, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Behind him, Tyler’s friends started laughing again. A sixth-grade girl in the chorus touched the back of her hand to her forehead and slumped against the side of the boy playing Chip. “Yeah.” Tyler cast a sidelong glance at them and they all immediately shut up, snapping stiffly to attention like soldiers. “Well. So, anyway.” He turned back to me. “I wanted to ask you if you’d like to go—”
“Maybe I should stop by her house,” I said, more thinking out loud than actually talking to him.
“What?”
“Captain Superlative’s house.”
“Oh.” And then he chuckled a little. “I guess you would know where her secret base of operations is?”
“It’s really not that big a secret.”
It was pretty certain that everyone in the school, at this point, knew that Captain Superlative was Caitlyn Li. Or at least everyone in the seventh grade. But there was some kind of unspoken agreement that no one talked about it. Even the teachers liked calling her Captain Superlative. Sometimes just Captain.
And our principal, Dr. Wallace, was playing along too.
Tyler shrugged. “Yeah, but I like the mystery.”
“Yeah.” I nodded slightly. “Yeah, I think I’ll do that.”
“Do what?”
“Go to her house.”
“Oh,” Tyler said, taking a few steps back from the door. “You never give up, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Me neither.”
“Hey, Ty!” one of Tyler’s friends said. “We’re going to be late for rehearsal.”
“Yeah!” another one said. “Mr. Hoffman will make us drop and do fifty.”
I looked up at him in surprise. “Fifty? Fifty what? Push-ups?”
“Nah.” Tyler grinned. “Fifty jazz squares.”
“What?”
“Jazz squares.” He did a quick little dance step, his feet moving around the perimeter of an invisible square. The other kids in the play seemed to find this hilariou
s. “See?” He held out his hands to either side, fingers splayed and wiggling.
“Oh.”
“Come on, Twinkle Toes!” another kid from the play called, dropping to give Tyler a balletic curtsy. A couple of the others in the group hooted, copying him.
Tyler waved them off. “Listen,” he said to me. “I want to ask you about something, okay? Think you’ll have a few minutes to talk tomorrow?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
“Promise?”
“Sure. Sure.”
“Great.” A step back. “Well.” Another step back. “See you later, Janey.” He waved at me, turning around to rejoin his friends. One threw an arm over his shoulder. All of them seemed to be in hysterics again over something. I didn’t know what, but they continued to laugh and laugh as they followed him down the hall.
“Are you sure Hoffman cast him in the right part?” someone asked.
“Yeah,” another said. “Gaston isn’t supposed to strike out.”
“I thought you were a method actor, Ty.”
“Smooth going, lover boy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tyler said. “Just you wait.”
“On the edge of my seat, hot stuff.”
They were making fun of him. Tyler was taking it in stride, like always. And I barely noticed any of it.
When Tyler Jeffries had fallen from being the first thing on my mind, I can’t begin to guess. But he had, and now I was consumed with thoughts of Captain Superlative. If this had been a comic book, I would have supposed some villain had tied her to a rocket or the train tracks or a nuclear bomb. But this wasn’t a comic book. And I couldn’t imagine she was in any of those places. I didn’t know where she was at all.
That scared me.
In five weeks Captain Superlative had become my whole world, but I hadn’t been to the Li house since the day I followed her and her parents home from the hospital. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though. I was always asking to hang out after school. She was always deflecting my question with one excuse or another. She was busy. She had a headache. She had to be “somewhere.” When I asked her what she was doing, she smiled and said, “Supersecret superhero stuff. You’ll find out when you graduate from being a sidekick.”