Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero
Chapter 5

Some clouded voices rang in my ears when I came to for a moment.

“Violet? Violet? Can you hear me?”

Another panicked voice came in, Alice’s. “Jen? Jennifer, what happened? I just heard…”

The school nurse’s voice was next. “Everyone, please get back! She needs a doctor.”

“Jennifer, can you hear me?” Alice continued. “Say something!”

“I’m expelled again, aren’t I?” I moaned. “And I have freezer burn on my hands. Is that bad?”

“Violet, it’s the school nurse,” the nurse said. “I’m calling the local hospital. They’ll be on their way to take care of you. You’re not going to be expelled.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said a far off female voice.

In that instant, the nurse asked, “Excuse me, but who are you?” before I blacked out again.

I woke again to the smell of disinfectant and the sounds of the hum of a heart monitor and the rest of a hospital. I stirred, squeezing my eyelids tightly before blinking and looking around. The sunlight beamed through the window on my left; there was one bed next to me on the right giving me the notion that this was not a private room even with the door closed. On television above me was some lame soap opera I had no interest in before the channel flipped to the Fuse channel playing an Arctic Monkeys music marathon.

Just then, a young nurse in pink scrubs came in through the door to my bedside to check my IV. “Morning, sunshine,” she said. “You’ve been out for a while.”

I tried to form words that came out as, “Wha-wha-what happened?”

“From what I could gather, you froze your teacher,” the nurse said, brushing some of her brown hair back and snickering. “Don’t worry, we’re thawing him out right now.”

For a second, I thought I heard the heart monitor in sync with the drum beats of “Do I Wanna Know?” playing in the video on TV. I felt more concerned about my parents more than ever. I sat up and said, “Could you do me a favor and don’t tell my parents? Just don’t tell them…”

“I’m afraid it’s already been done,” said the nurse with a smile. “Your mom and dad are waiting downstairs in the main office being debriefed on the whole situation. You’ll see them as soon as you’re discharged.”

I still remained confused as to what brought me here, more exactly where I was. I had a pretty good feeling I killed Mr. Kent with full body frostbite and I would soon go to jail for killing a teacher. Worst of all, I’d be separated from the two friends I already made in the first week of school, and I’d probably be grounded as soon as I got home if I didn’t get arrested already, then again I had no handcuffs on my bed. But when I looked at the vital signs monitor screen to see how I was doing, I noticed two things: My temperature was slightly above a hundred degrees, telling me I still had a fever, and my hand temperature was at twenty five degrees Celsius. I looked down at my hands and noticed there were foil mittens on them, trying to warm them up. That’s when it hit me.

I have superpowers.

Another thing I noticed was something cotton between my butt and my underwear. I wanted to look, hoping I didn’t wet myself at all when I fainted, but when the nurse saw me struggling to see my underwear, she stopped me. “Hey, relax! It’s ok, you’re fine and you didn’t pee yourself when you were unconscious.”

“I didn’t?” I asked. “So why am I wearing diapers?”

The nurse laughed again. “It’s not a diaper, it’s a pad. You’ve got your period.”

“No. You’re kidding.”

She nodded and showed me my jeans that I wore to school which were draped on the chair across from my bed. “You basically had a little accident when you came in here, so I cleaned them up as best I could so you wouldn’t be so embarrassed when you leave here.”

I looked at the area where the crotch was on the inside of the pants. It was a slapdash effort at best, for the brown stain was still there despite the soap residue remaining on the pants. I blinked before she put them back on the chair again.

“I take it this is your first time here?” said the nurse.

“Yeah, I’ve never had my period before until now. They told me about getting it when I was ten, but I went through middle school being called Little Miss Muffet and other childish…”

“No, I mean, is this your first time here in the hospital wing?”

I realized I’d just embarrassed myself again. “I’m sorry, yes, I’ve never been in here before. Where am I, exactly?”

“No one told you?” the nurse quipped, pressing some buttons on the heating mitten machine below the monitor. She turned to me and brightly added, “You’re at Falcon High School, home of the Birds!”

I shook my head. Maybe I was hearing things. It had to be a dream. But the IV was definitely stuck in my arm and I could feel the accelerating warmth in my fingers again. “Ok, I think I’m hearing things or hallucinating because of whatever drugs I’m on, so please don’t tell me anymore,” I said. “This is too much to take in; I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You’re not losing your mind,” said the same voice I heard just before I blacked out. When she came to my bed, I at last could put the voice to a face. She looked pretty young, her brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, her cheekbones high and accented with nude blush, and she wore a black pinstripe pantsuit with a red silk blouse and long honey brown overcoat. She looked like a much younger, thinner, unmarried master’s degree holding career woman version of The Good Wife.

When she approached me, she said to the nurse, “Thank you, Gretchen, you can leave us please.” And the nurse left, shutting the door behind her. “Miss Harris, I’d like to shake your hand, but for the situation’s sake, I’ll cut to the chase,” she said, turning her attention to me. “My name is Amanda Rushman, and I’m the principal here at Falcon High. I know you must be curious as to how you got here and what chain of events has led us to this, but I must ask you to put all of that aside. The fact of the matter is your powers have kicked in late…”

“Tell me about it, like I don’t already know,” I added, dripping with sarcasm.

The principal did not look amused. “They’ve kicked in late,” she continued. “And this is actually the first time the board of directors and I have come to a brief meeting to discuss what to do about someone like you in your case. Under normal circumstances, students’ powers are not accustomed to come in during the first or even the second semester of school. But since you are a very special case now that we’ve identified your abilities, we would like to start over with resubmitting your application and accepting you as a student here at Falcon High School.”

I sat there, my blank dumbfounded face on, thinking she was lying. The principal of the superhero school now begged me to come to her school. This was unreal.

Words finally came up. “You know, I have a hard time believing you guys want to accept me to your school after I washed out and you kicked me to the curb.”

“I believe that was the gym teacher’s fault in part,” said Amanda Rushman, principal. “You will be happy to know that we will all do a better job making amends.”

“Still,” I continued. “I have some friends at Generic High School and I’d really like to stay with them there.”

“You’ll have to see them after school, then,” the principal told me. “And you’re not allowed to speak with them about anything that happens here at this school. You cannot study with them, you cannot discuss school activities with them, and you must treat them as you would average citizens of this city for they will never develop special abilities.”

“Can I still take regular classes like English and science? I kind of want to have the same education as everyone else.”

“We have a library and many other classes you can take that are part of the school’s curriculum. We have basic English and math classes as well as the modern languages and education on controlling your powers. We can sign you up for classes as early as tomorrow, whenever you’re feeling better.”

The television cut to a commercial before the station switched again to a vintage Paul Walker Fast and the Furious movie, probably one of the later good ones before he died. I still felt that dizzying feeling that I had to jump out of school again to go to a different school and leave my important friends Steve and Alice behind. Mylana would be at this new school, sure, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized she would be my only friend at this school. When my parents and I moved to Sharkton, I had to get used to the terrible wiles of being the “new kid.” I had to start over with new people, new friends, new everything when it came to changing schools while entering the sixth grade. And yes, it was just like that book I read that year: Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You.

I did not want to start something like that all over again, especially since it had been three years since we moved. So I asked, “Can I just go to Falcon part time and still continue going to school at Generic?”

The principal named Amanda gave me a sad look and said, “I’m sorry, Violet, but I’ve done all I can to fight for you to have a normal life. You can’t go back to Generic High School; you now have a reputation there. We don’t have a choice but to get you to a school where you can learn how to control your powers and use them for good.”

“You mean I don’t have a choice?” I corrected.

“Falcon High is one of the best schools in the country for superheroes, and you qualify for the best program we have here. It is challenging, but I think you will excel and make a name for yourself as one of our best students, considering both of your parents went to school here.”

“Again, I don’t have a choice.”

Amanda sighed. “No, Violet. To be normal, you need to act normal, which means you need to learn to control your powers so you don’t hurt anyone not in imminent danger.”

“Jennifer,” I said, correcting her.

“Sorry?”

“My name is Jennifer.”

“It says on your file that Violet is your first name.”

“I know. I prefer my middle name more. Violet Jennifer Harris. Everyone calls me Jen. Idiots call me Violet. I hate my first name.”

She took a breath and touched my right hand encased in the foil glove now searing hot on the inside. She looked me in the eyes and said, “Why do you hate your first name?”

“Because of Roald Dahl,” I said smugly.

“Who?”

“He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I explained. “My parents named me after the most annoying character in that book, Violet Beauregard. She was the stupid girl who yapped away, chewed gum all the time, and got blown up into a beach ball and turned blue.”

“I think it’s a lovely name for you,” said the principal in a soft tone. “It matches the color of your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“Yeah, like right now, your eyes are the lightest shade of purple. Have a look.”

She moved stuff around in her purse and held up her hand mirror to my face. Since I couldn’t move my hands, I inched closer to the mirror for a glance. My eyes had turned from bright blue to a deeper lavender. I gasped when I saw my hair as well. I had grown a white streak in my brown hair, visible enough to make me look like the Bride of Frankenstein. Actually, it made me look like a scarier version of Rogue from the X-Men now that I think about it.

“What?” I panicked. “What the hey happened to my hair?”

“The doctor said that with your new powers, the frost in your hands turns your hair white,” said the principal.

“I look worse than my grandmother! I’m like the crypt keeper!”

Someone laughed from behind the curtain concealing the other bed. From the laughter’s tone, I could tell it was a boy laughing. Amanda rolled her eyes, threw the mirror back in her purse, and jerked back the curtain.

“Jeremy Russel, this is your last warning,” she growled. “Don’t make me tell you again to keep your thoughts and expressions to yourself.”

“Sorry, Miss Rushman,” Jeremy said before looking my way. When he caught my eyes, his smile faded into a sneer. I automatically recognized him as the dark kid who kept staring at me all the time. Here, he had a reddish bruise under his right eye from a possible fight, but I still remembered his face as he remembered mine.

He said two words I’d be branded with for the rest of the year. “Frost girl.”

“Jeremy, she’s had a very hard day,” the principal said, lowering her voice. “You start something and I will have to put you in the brig after school for a week.”

He faced her and returned coldly, “It was James who started it. You know that.”

“I don’t care who started it. There is a zero tolerance level for fighting outside of battle class. And even in battle class, fighting in the ring has restrictions. Please be aware of that the next time you pick a fight with someone.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he condescended.

“Very well.” The principal turned back to me and added, “Your parents will be up here momentarily, Jennifer. I suggest you keep the gloves on until you return home today. Doctor Hathaway will be up here to check everything before signing your release. Then when you’re feeling better, you can come back to our school and meet with your counselor, who will sign you up for classes. Agreed?”

“Fine, whatever,” I said. For a moment, I realized that maybe my name would be better suited as a hero’s name, especially since I did not want anything or anyone from Generic to haunt me. After all, the last thing I wanted was starting a new school with the current gossip that I froze a non-super human teacher during class.

So I stopped Principal Rushman by saying, “Violet.”

“Sorry?” she said, turning away from the door.

“I figured I should start fresh tomorrow. Clean slate, different school, new name. Call me Violet.”

The principal beamed with a classic starlet grin. “Ok, Violet. Take care of yourself, feel better.”

“Thanks, will do,” I replied as she turned the handle and left the room, closing the door again. I looked back at the TV screen at the screeching cars and explosions, making the headache slowly come back. I turned to Jeremy and asked, “Hey, do you mind changing the channel or turning down the volume? I still have a little bit of a headache.”

Without lifting a finger, Jeremy turned up the volume. Not with a remote, with his mind.

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