Captain Superlative

by J. S. Puller

  Paige’s lips twisted slightly. “I sang that for you, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I forgot about that.” Paige paused a moment. “The first song I ever wrote,” she told me, jutting her chin in her sister’s direction, “was about her last boyfriend. Benny. He was a junior and he was in love with his car.”

  I grinned, popping the cap on the pink marker and reaching for the red. “You’re kidding me.”

  Paige shook her head. “Dead serious. And it was an ugly car. An ’82 Citroën BX.”

  I didn’t know anything about cars, but from the way Paige said it, it had to be pretty hideous. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yup.”

  “How’d the song go?”

  She closed her eyes, humming for a second before she broke into a pretty little tune that reminded me of birdsong:

  And he told me he loved her,

  I thought it was weird.

  She didn’t have a rear bumper.

  She only went in second gear.

  But when he said her name

  His eyes lit up like stars.

  So how could I complain?

  My sister’s boyfriend loves a car!

  The two of us lit up. Paige’s sister shot us more than a few dirty looks, but that only made it feel funnier somehow.

  “I wish I had sisters,” I said when I finally calmed down enough to wipe the tears away from my eyes.

  Paige wrinkled her nose. “If you had four, you’d think differently. Try waiting for hours just to get into the bathroom. I think there’s some kind of weird rule that says once you start high school, you need to spend at least five hours a day in there.”

  I laughed, uncapping the red marker to shade the inner parts of the hibiscus petals. “Maybe.”

  “I’m just glad they’re all in high school. Wouldn’t want them anywhere near me during the school day.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Paige paused. And that same knowing look from before returned to her eyes. “Dagmar’s an only child too,” she said. She jerked her thumb over one shoulder, toward the wall. “Her family lives in the apartment next to ours.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Somehow, I’d gotten it into my mind that surely Dagmar lived in a mansion. With glass elevators and gold-plated toothbrushes. And a moat. Filled with alligators.

  She nodded. “Her mom and mine used to be real good friends when I was little.”

  “Used to be?”

  “Paige!” Little Tyrone appeared in the doorway, barreling into the room and jumping up on the bed behind Paige. Quickly, I lifted the marker, pointing the tip up so I wouldn’t smear the flower. Tyrone had an orange plastic dinosaur toy in one fist and a Ping-Pong paddle in the other. “The demon is coming. He’s going to attack the fort. Get ready!”

  I grinned, remembering my own games of make-believe, hunting after demons and dragons and such. Sometimes, April and I would throw sheets over our heads and grab butterfly nets, going hunting for aliens in the basement. But Paige got serious, drawing Tyrone’s arms over her shoulders from behind and giving him a gentle hug. “You know what I think?” she said, leaning her head back to look up at her little brother.

  “What?”

  “I think you should go ask Mom if you can watch cartoons.”

  He let out an indignant huff. “But I already watched cartoons.”

  “You tell her I said it was all right.”

  Tyrone debated it for a moment, but then nodded. “Okay.” And with that, he hopped off of her bed, racing out of the room and making strange airplane sounds.

  “He’s so cute,” I said.

  Paige sighed, looking out the door after him. “Yeah,” she said, pressing her lips together.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Paige didn’t answer. As it turned out, she didn’t have to. The answer spoke for itself.

  From the other side of Paige’s wall, I heard a door open then slam shut. There was a voice. Deep and scratchy. Like the bellow of a furnace. “Look at this place! Dagmar!” it roared. “Get in here right now!”

  “Here we go again,” Paige’s sister said.

  “Don’t you talk to her that way!” a second voice shouted back, this one high and shrieky.

  Wide-eyed, I looked from the wall to Paige to the sister and back to Paige again. “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Dagmar’s parents,” Paige said.

  Paige’s sister rolled her eyes. “The demon’s attacking the fort. Again.” She stuck in her earbuds and turned up her music so loud that I could hear it across the room.

  I heard a third voice on the other side of the wall. One that I knew. Dagmar. “Hi, Daddy. I was going to clean it up. I just got back from practice.”

  It was funny. Not funny ha-ha. Funny strange. I knew it was Dagmar. I recognized the sound of her voice, the pitch and the tone. But at the same time, it was like I was hearing an entirely different person. The person I was hearing was meek. Was small.

  Was afraid.

  The Dagmar Hagen I knew inspired fear, she didn’t feel it.

  No. The voice was un-Dagmar.

  Her father roared again. “There’s mud all over the place!” There was something wrong about the way his words came out. They were slurred and erratic.

  “I’ll get the carpet cleaner,” the un-Dagmar said. “Right now.”

  “You bet you will. You and your useless soccer shoes.”

  “Are you listening to me? I said, don’t talk to her that way!” Dagmar’s mother said.

  “Shut up!” her father replied. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  “Oh, you will, will you? You’ll ‘deal’ with me?”

  The un-Dagmar’s voice had gotten so faint I could barely hear it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Useless sport with a useless team.”

  “Daddy…”

  “You are useless, Dagmar! You’re nothing. Wasting your time with all this. Wasting my time and my good money. And my good carpet. I’ve never seen anything so useless in my life. Like mother, like daughter. You’re nothing!”

  I looked up to see Paige mouthing the words along with him. You’re nothing!

  “You shut your mouth!” her mother said.

  “Don’t you get involved,” her father said. “You’re encouraging her.”

  “Well, someone has to.”

  “I’m out of here,” the un-Dagmar said.

  “Don’t you walk out on me when I’m talking to you!”

  Their voices grew muffled as they moved to another part of the room, away from the wall their apartment shared with Paige’s bedroom. More snarling and threatening. More indistinct remarks and asides. I found myself pressing up against the wall, trying to hear. And then wishing I hadn’t when I heard what I heard. A cry from the un-Dagmar and then the unmistakable sound of a slap. Skin meeting skin. Paige lowered her eyes, withdrawing into herself as it went on and on and on. It ended with the slamming of a door and a rattling of the wall.

  I kept hearing that slam over and over again.

  Suddenly, something took hold of me. Snapping the cap back on the marker, I stood up and crossed through the room.

  “Janey? Where are you going?”

  I didn’t answer. I kept walking. Paige scrambled to her feet behind me, following me through the little living room and out into the hallway of the apartment building.

  Dagmar was there, just like I expected her to be.

  Well. It was the un-Dagmar, really.

  She was crumpled against the wall of the hallway, curled up into herself, crying. Her mascara was running down the sides of her face in long black streaks. Her soccer uniform was rumpled up. There was a pink blotch on her cheek, just beginning to swell. And she was cradling something against her belly. It was pinkish-purple and white, with long, furry…

  Ears?

  A rabbit?

  It was a stuffed bunny. With a hard, jewel-bright magenta nose and a fuzzy white belly. Its eyes were enormous and blue. Well, its eye. Singul
ar. It only had one. From the looks of it, the other had been ripped out, leaving behind a hastily patched rip, some cotton stuffing poking out.

  The un-Dagmar wasn’t a queen. Not anymore.

  On the other side of the wall, her parents were still arguing.

  “I won’t be treated this way in my own home!” her father said.

  “Then get out! Just get out!” her mother shot back. “You like it better at the bar anyway.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Maybe I’ll go farther than that!”

  “Try it!”

  “And what’ll you do?”

  “Take you for every penny you have, that’s what!”

  “So you can spoil Dagmar.”

  “So I can watch you suffer!”

  Between the two of them going at it and the dim light of the hallway, it was a second or two before Dagmar realized Paige and I were there. When she saw us, I could almost hear the sound of her hardened mask clamping down into place. In a sweep, she was up on her feet, backing away from us, hiding the stuffed animal behind her back.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  It was a good question. I found myself looking back to Paige, still hovering near the doorway of her own apartment. She shook her head. I turned back to Dagmar. Her nose was swollen and red, the dull light making her upper lip glisten with snot.

  Is something wrong, Dagmar?

  The words came back to me from some tiny corner of my memory. The day that Caitlyn first stopped Dagmar from picking on Paige. The words that had seemed so ridiculous to me at the time. How could anything be wrong when you were Dagmar Hagen? That was what I’d asked myself.

  Now I knew.

  “Is something wrong, Dagmar?” I asked softly.

  Dagmar paused, and I could tell she was struggling with the peculiar predicament. Obviously, she wasn’t okay. We could all see her crying. And the fact that we’d come out of Paige’s apartment clearly meant that we’d heard everything. That we were still hearing everything. But I knew she didn’t want to admit to it. It was only that she couldn’t think of an easy answer that we wouldn’t all know was a lie.

  She settled with deflection. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just…”

  “You just what?”

  I faltered.

  “Did you want to come laugh?” She gestured to the door behind her. “Enjoy the show?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe feel better about yourself?”

  “No!”

  “Leave me alone, freak!”

  “I just—”

  She tilted her face forward, eyes bulging. “Just what?”

  “I’m sorry.” A pause. “And, if you need to talk to someone or something, I could listen.”

  I don’t think it was the response she’d been expecting. Dagmar pulled back, folding her arms around her middle, the rabbit pressed against her stomach. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Are you lying?” I asked, echoing my dad’s words.

  Dagmar was silent for a moment. I almost thought she was going to say yes, but then she shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” It was Paige who spoke up, taking a hesitant half step out of her doorway.

  Dagmar nodded, sniffling. “Just leave me alone.”

  Paige and I looked at each other. What else could we do? “Okay,” I said, feeling like that was the wrong answer.

  Using the sleeve of her uniform, she wiped the tears and runny mascara from her eyes. A second swipe smeared the snot from under her nose. “You say anything about this and you’re dead. You hear me? You’re dead!”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Good.” She nodded once, then her eyes darted to Paige, just over my shoulder. “And you,” she said. “You better not try anything again.”

  Again?

  “I won’t,” Paige said, for what I was suddenly sure was not the first time. “You know I won’t.”

  “You and your nosy family.”

  Finally, I understood.

  I understood Dagmar Hagen. It wasn’t that I could forgive her for what she’d done to Paige in the past, but I could see why, at last, she’d pick Paige. Paige, who was sweet and kind and had never done anything to hurt her. It wasn’t about what Paige was, it was about what Paige knew. When you had a secret, you had to silence the person who knew your secret.

  It was a strangely intimate relationship, between the bully and the bullied. I’d never realized it before.

  More than that, I saw why Dagmar felt the need to be large and in charge at school. She had to be in control of one small part of her life, because she clearly had no control over the rest of it. It was just like the stories my dad would sometimes tell me about people kicking animals. His office would often see cats and dogs that people had abused, just so they could feel like they weren’t quite so powerless.

  It was like I was looking into Dagmar’s soul.

  “Good,” she said again. She’d gotten the answer she wanted, but Dagmar still looked ready to explode. Her parents had moved their fight deeper into the apartment, leaving the hallway eerily quiet. She breathed heavily, eyes sweeping back and forth between us for a second, her arms shaking as she hugged her stuffed rabbit. I wondered if she could read my mind, see herself the way I was seeing her for the first time. “Well, what are you still doing out here?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just wanted to know—”

  “Get out!”

  “What?

  “Go away.”

  I felt Paige’s hand on my shoulder, pulling me back in the direction of her apartment. “C’mon, Janey.”

  “But.”

  “C’mon.”

  Surrendering, I started to let Paige pull me back inside. Just as we were about to cross the threshold, though, I pulled away from her, going back over to Dagmar in three easy strides.

  And I gave her a hug.

  I can’t say what I expected, exactly. I’d never imagined ever hugging Dagmar Hagen. But to my surprise, my skin didn’t blister, crack, and peel. My sleeves didn’t catch on fire. Dagmar was human; made of flesh and bone. Same as me and Paige and Caitlyn. I felt her muscles tense for half a second before she actually relaxed. She didn’t hug me back or anything like that. But she didn’t hurt me either. She just stood there.

  Like she was accepting what I had to give.

  After a moment, I pulled away from her. “You’re not nothing,” I whispered.

  The two of us locked eyes. She snuffled again, burying her face in the sleeve of her uniform, but as she did, I could have sworn I heard her mutter, “Thank you.”

  The door shut behind Paige with a click and she turned the lock before flopping against it, looking shaken. On the other side, muffled by a sleeve and a stuffed rabbit, we could sort of hear Dagmar crying again.

  “I didn’t know,” I said quietly. About her parents. About her dad. About her life. About the very vulnerable and frightened girl who lived in Dagmar Hagen’s bruised skin.

  Paige shook her head. “No one does. No one except us.”

  Suddenly I remembered a day in the cafeteria, what felt like ages ago. When I made the choice to sit down with Paige. That song she’d been singing, “The Girl Next Door”…

  The demons are people

  And the people are demons

  And the scales of justice

  Will never be even

  Paige had not only known, but she’d been struggling with what she’d known for a long time, letting it peek out in song, like the stuffing of Dagmar’s bunny peeking out from the missing eye. “And that’s why she hates you,” I said.

  “She hates my whole family.” Paige sighed. “My mom once called the police about it.”

  “And they didn’t do anything?”

  “Dagmar swore up and down the street that all the bruises were from soccer practice.”

  “And the police believed th
at?”

  “The reporting officer was April’s dad. He’s seen how hard Dagmar plays on the field.”

  I started to nod. And then something came crashing down on me. “You brought me here on purpose. Tonight. You wanted me to hear that. You’ve known all along and you needed me to know.”

  “Yeah,” Paige admitted. “I think so.”

  “Have you done this before? To other people?”

  “No. Never.” She struggled, a line forming between her eyes as she tried to figure out what it was she wanted to say. “I never thought anyone else needed to understand Dagmar. The way I do. Not until what happened. What she did to you today.”

  I felt like a dog in a kennel, trapped in too small a space. I needed to move. I started to pace back and forth across the entryway to Paige’s apartment, flexing my fingers at my sides. I could hear Tyrone’s cartoons in the next room, drowning out the sounds from the rest of the building. Covering up the yelling and the fighting and the hitting and the crying. “We have to do something.”

  “What?”

  What? I struggled, trying to come up with the answer. “There has to be something.” I hadn’t realized how used to being a person of action I had become. “Something.” But this time holding doors open and offering free mints wasn’t going to work. Nor was I in a position to put myself between a victim and a bully. Not when the bully was a full-grown man.

  What would Caitlyn do?

  I had no idea.

  “We can’t just stand by and let it happen.”

  But that was what I’d always done. Stood by and let things happen. I’d spent my whole life as the constant bystander.

  “There’s nothing we can do, Janey,” Paige said.

  “Then I’ll find someone who can do something.”

  She opened her mouth. And for a second, I thought she was going to point out once more that I was obviously powerless. Instead, she nodded. “Okay.”

  Well. That was…easy. I nodded too. “Good.”

  “With you on my side, it just might work.”

  “You think?”

  “You are so different, Janey,” she said. “From before, I mean.”

  “I guess.”

  “You know where that comes from?”