Super Frost: Confessions of a Teenage Superhero
Chapter 16

Tom threw the first punch. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting him to be so aggressive. As soon as he threw his punch at me, I put my hands up and conjured two mini shields of ice in front of his fist. They both shattered. Tom may have had elasticity as his power, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t vulnerable. He looked at the back of his hand and saw that my ice had cut him. He was bleeding. His face went livid. I could see the redness in his skin. He took another swing at me, but Alice was there to retaliate by flying in and hitting him with the punch bowl, soaking his hair.

Now he was pissed. He came at Alice, fully intending to hurt my best friend, but that was when I remembered the ice daggers from training with Jeremy. My right hand made a dagger and I pointed it at his shoulder. His shoulder deflected it like a rubber band, but it distracted him. He came at me with another punch. I made his fist bounce off another shield of mine. Alice and I were on a roll in blocking him and backing him into a wall. One of the gym ropes hung from the ceiling, even though this was supposed to be a dance, so he used it to his advantage by stretching his arm, swinging himself around us and landing. He punched me in the back, hard. I could feel something go click and my muscles hurt. He humphed and smiled.

“Big mistake,” I growled, still bent over. I turned around to face him. “Make me bleed snow, that’s what you said?”

I put my arms out and told Alice with my mind to step back away from the windows. The wind howled so loudly, it broke the rest of the shards off the gym windows. The blizzard shook the room and pushed Tom back with a brutal force. He put his arms up to shield his face from the blast. When the tiny blizzard stopped, that was when everyone rushed in to join the fight.

Alice and I were getting beaten left and right by Tom and his goons. The people who were left in the gym were the popular kids teaming up against us, about five or ten of them, including the pouncing frog guy. But we did have some help from Glitch, Andy, and Pat, so we weren’t hilariously outnumbered. Also, there were some other kids who Glitch grabbed to safety outside the school, and they wanted to help us fight everyone off. Even Jean Harley, my power control teacher who chaperoned, came in screaming and fighting kids off with her baseball bat. When she was through fighting a couple off, she gave them little paper slips signing them up for detention. Go Miss Harley.

Alice dodged the frog guy whenever he tried to pin her. He jumped from each side of the wall, bouncing back and forth between the floor and the walls and climbing up them. He tried to catch her, but Alice was getting faster with her flight patterns. I think at one point, she said, “Wow, I think I’m getting good at this!”

As I punched a guy in a purple suit, I called, “Don’t get too cocky, Alice. Dr. Oz is not very lenient on teaching me how to fly with my frost powers, and neither is Miss Harley.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Miss Harley said from behind, baseball bat over her shoulder. Unlike most of the kids we were fighting off, she had chosen to wear a black catsuit to the dance, keeping the fight in its place. “I think the words you’re looking for are tough but fair.”

“That’s kind of what I was going for,” I said.

“Watch out,” Miss Harley said.

I whirled around and found the frog guy jumping up to pin me when I put my hands out and made a huge wall of ice, making him stick to the ice instead of me. Even his long tongue got stuck to the ice wall, where he jerked his head to try un-sticking his mouth from the cold, cold ice.

Alice looked over and exclaimed, “Holy crud! How are you doing that?”

“I have no idea how I’m doing this, but I sort of thought about making some kind of ice force field,” I said.

“That’s really cool,” Alice said. “Whatever you do, don’t stop!”

I then punched the wall of ice with a frosted cold fist as the ice wall shattered. The frog kid tumbled to the ground, rolling around, until he was on his back. He tried to get back on all fours, but then Miss Harley came over and knocked him out with her baseball bat, followed by giving him another slip for detention.

I was fighting back like freezing cold liquid nitrogen instead of fire. Some of the other kids were doing well also. Then again, I wasn’t so crazy about how mature these kids were behaving for this big brawl. One kid picked up the cake from the food table and bashed it on a couple of twins. The two of them fell flat on the floor and the kid who took them out bent over, wiped one of their faces with his finger, and ate the cake crumbs and icing from that guy’s face. “Mmm, the cake is never a lie,” I heard him say. One other girl was doing some kind of Jujitsu or some kind of martial art when someone behind her whapped her on the head with the spoon for the punch. Then she high fived the other girl who faced the wench. Then there was a couple standing back to back against each other while being cornered by their enemies towards the wall. At that moment, the guy roundhouse kicked his opponent, jumped up the wall, landed in front of the girl, and tasered her opponent with the electricity in his hand against the guy’s neck. The girl turned around to him as he faced her, and in a second, they were on the floor, making out like they were about to have sex in the gym. Ew.

To be fair, I really couldn’t tell who was on my side anymore.

Then in the middle of the huge tussle, I was faced with Mylana. She was in a gorgeous slinky emerald dress with her dark hair pulled up in a perfect updo. I wiped blood from my lips. She strode to me as I growled, “You betrayed me.”

“Hey, I was starting to give you a chance,” she said. “You could join me and be one of the sidekicks. I was starting to get kind of lonely in sidekick class until Tom showed up and told me that I could seek vengeance like he did if I joined him. And since I knew you, he thought that you could be persuaded, and I could get you to come over to this side, if you wanted.”

“But you were my friend,” I said. “I trusted you! And now the guy I love is going to die! What would you do if I joined you anyway? Would you still murder Jeremy?”

“Oh, come on!” Mylana said. “Jeremy isn’t all that anyway! Besides, why would you want to be with a guy who would melt you? Do you even know what he would do to your powers if you guys had babies? Seriously, think about it. Fire and ice don’t go well together.”

“That’s what you think,” I said. “Fire and ice make steam. Steam that burns.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said. And without using her powers, she punched me. I ducked out of the way and grabbed her arm. Then she quickly bent down, taking me with her, morphed into a rat and bit me on the wrist. I yelped in pain and flicked her away, my wrist still bleeding from the minor bite. Then she morphed back into human form again, in her green dress and started running for the door. Pushing past the other battles between everyone else, I ran after her and called out to Glitch telepathically.

Glitch, I need you and Andy to get to the boiler room and start shutting everything down, I said. Get Jeremy out of there while you’re at it. He can’t move the titanium cords tying him down and he’s suffocating. And try to bring the school down slowly. We don’t want too much damage.

“Got it, moving out,” Glitch shouted, then disappeared right away. I searched for Andy’s thoughts to tell him what was going on, but then I found out he was already in the boiler room trying to power down the whole thing. I just hoped that there wouldn’t be too much of a problem between them and Tom’s two guards Wanda and Jordan, protecting anyone from going in and ruining their plan.

Just then, some kid nearly knocked me to the ground with a metal arm. The rest of her body was flesh, but she had the power to morph her body into a metal case. She bounced on her toes and tried to fight me, not pulling her punches as I ducked and made smaller ice shields to stop her from hitting me.

“Come on and fight back, slut!” she cried.

That was the second that Fiona Dangerous came to us and ended our fight. I guess she was one of the only students who wanted to stay behind. Either that, or she wanted to fight me herself. But what ended up happening was just as the girl was about to punch me again, her metal arm began to bend the other direction, starting at the middle of the lower arm. Her wrist twisted and bent all the way back. The girl screamed at the sight. Fiona was warping her metal arm. When the girl started running, I looked at Fiona in shock.

“Did you just save my life?” I said.

“Part of being a hero,” Fiona said. “We need to protect each other.”

“That was amazing,” I said. “Thank you. I can’t believe you’re turning against Tom right now.”

“You’re welcome, and I’ve been under Tom’s thumb for way too long,” she said. “I’m glad to be rid of his power. Now go get Mylana before she takes off.”

So I hovered above the huge battle in the gym and flew out the double doors toward the entrance to the gym, catching up to my ex-friend.

Just as I caught up with her and Mylana was going for the exit to the school, my dad in his Giga Man suit came smashing in through the top window of the school lobby entrance and made his big entrance. Mom walked through the door right behind him in her silver Silent Wave suit. Mylana stopped suddenly when mom hit her with a force field and pinned her to the floor. Telepathically, I said, Thanks, mom. She’s working for Tom and the bad guys at this school. Real troublemaker, she betrayed me.

“No problem, Vi,” mom said out loud.

Dad went to Mylana, pulled her up and held a fist in her face. “Make a move and my wife will throw you to the ground again,” he said.

“Sorry, Mr. Harris,” Mylana whimpered. “Please forgive me.”

Then dad honked her nose and said, “Got your nose, loser!”

Mylana rolled her eyes. I turned around and saw Tom standing behind me. He stretched out his long elastic arm and tried to hit me with his fist. Instead, I put up my hand and made an ice shield to block his fist and push him out of the way. He recoiled his arm and let out an, “Ow!” and started massaging his hand.

Then I said, “You know, liquid nitrogen makes rubber brittle. I don’t think you want to suffer that fate.”

Tom made a run for it. I started running after him. He was heading straight for the turbines where Jeremy was trapped in a vortex, taking away his oxygen. No oxygen, no flame, but also, no air to breathe. Any longer and Tom was going to kill him. Glitch was already in there and I didn’t want another fight to ensue. If Tom wanted to kill Glitch and Jeremy, he had to go through me. Problem was, I didn’t know how to stop him. I was out of ideas. I could have used my hands to freeze him long enough, but that would kill him. Using telepathy was not going to immobilize him either. I had to think fast.

Then Superman came to my mind, for some reason. With his strong breath, he could put out a skyscraper on fire. It was worth a try. So I inhaled deeply and forced air out as if blowing out birthday candles. It worked. Tom went zooming against the wall with my ice breath. His long arms and legs were spread out on the wall like someone squashed him. I held him there for as long as I could, but I was running out of air. I channeled my telepathy to Glitch, saying, “I can’t hold him for very long. You need to get Jeremy out of there now.”

“Working on it,” Glitch said back to me. “It’s kind of hard when you’ve got these turbines going; it makes it difficult to see where I’m going.”

I don’t care, I said telepathically. Get him out before Tom kills us both!

As Tom’s limbs started icing over, even some white frost growing on his eyebrows, Glitch had his hands full, fighting off both Jordan and Wanda. Jordan ran too fast for Glitch to catch him and Wanda was hurling electricity at his face whenever he teleported. But apparently, Andy had given him a helmet to wear that could deflect any attacks from other super beings. Andy was a master at making gadgets and things to stop bad guys. I hoped he wouldn’t take too long to get here; we needed him now.

When I was almost out of air, Tom said over the wind of my breath, “This… isn’t… over… yet, frost breath. I… will… end you soon! And… you’re running out of air!”

See if you can stop me, jackass, I told him telepathically.

I finally ran out of breath and sucked in air to catch my breath. Tom turned his head with a big crack and said, “You will be dead, bitch!”

Andy came up from behind me and said, “Finally, I get to use these bad boys.” He pulled out two pistols and kissed one of them before he pointed it at Jordan. He aimed and fired it in his direction, and the screeching sound waves knocked him off his feet, sending him to the floor. Wanda also lost her coordination and yelped in pain, putting her hands to her ears. Glitch teleported out of the way and got to the console to disable the settings on the turbines. I just hoped this worked.

Just as Tom slowly got closer to me with the snaps of his legs, Andy pointed the other pistol at him and said, “If you get any closer to Violet, I will use this. And trust me, you don’t want to know what this does.”

Tom stopped dead in his tracks and put his hands up with the cracking of his elbows.

As Glitch made the adjustments to the turbines, I channeled to my mother. Mom, how is the school looking? I called.

Give us a minute, mom said telepathically.

Better hurry, because Jeremy is dying and we’re getting higher every second, I said back. Glitch is already fixing the turbines right now, so better hurry.

Relax, darling, mom said. We’ll fix this together. I’ve got Principal Rushman with me right now. We can make this work, don’t worry.

The turbines started slowing. Then the school immediately started falling. I hoped we wouldn’t start feeling weightless as the school fell down to the impending doom of wiping out the city, but it didn’t feel that way. It actually felt as easy as a smooth, slow elevator ride. I looked into my mother’s mind and saw her standing at the edge of the parking lot, putting a force field around the school structure, and Principal Rushman was at her side, making it dive gracefully back into place off the coast of the city. Up until now, I didn’t know our principal’s powers. Now I realized where she got them from. She could make objects, no matter what size, fly or float. She was kind of like Jeremy in a way, and she was pretty awesome. She could also fly, because she was hovering just below the school as the whole building and parking lot was descending over the water.

See, mom said. Nothing to worry about.

Suddenly, something was calling me back to reality around me. No wonder Miss Harley told me to keep an eye on things to stop unfriendly attacks. When my eyes flashed open, Tom had his brittle hands on Tom’s pistol and he was about to snap the other sonic pistol out of his other hand or do something worse. So I iced up my fist and punched him in the face. Tom went zooming into the wall of the hallway with a huge cracking sound. He was knocked out cold as his frozen, brittle body slumped to the floor.

When Andy put down his pistol, turning it off, Wanda and Jordan were completely immobilized on the ground. Glitch was messing with the controls, trying to replace a better way to stop everything, but the turbines were still moving inside the container with Jeremy still inside. Jeremy was unconscious. I wanted to scream. “Andy, why are the turbines still moving?” I said.

“M-malfunctioning,” Glitch said. “I-I’m trying t-to fix it.”

He tried multiple different things, but nothing. “Dammit,” Glitch said. Then I saw it. There was a heat blaster from dad’s secret office making everything overheated and making the turbines go haywire. I pulled it out of the main control panel as the panel powered down. The turbines in Jeremy’s chamber were self sustaining now. It was impervious with the controls knocked out. Not good.

Andy followed me in and said, “We’ll have to stop it manually. Glitch, can you get in there and pull him out?”

“I-I don’t know,” Glitch said. “I-I’ve never gone into a t-tiny space like that.”

“Just give it a try,” Andy said, getting down on his knees and removing the case inside the turbine container where he exposed the wires. “Violet, can you stop the turbines from moving?”

“I’ve never done that,” I said. “But I’ve always wanted to. You think this will work?”

“I have faith in you,” he said. “Go for it.”

So I put my hands into the wires and started freezing them over. I hoped they wouldn’t electrocute me as I did this. The wires started snapping off in my hands. I looked up. Glitch breathed heavily as the turbines started to slow. He bent his knees and closed his eyes. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyelids tightly to concentrate.

“Glitch!” he yelled.

He vanished and went into the container. I kept freezing the wires until something happened. Please work, I said to myself. Oh god, please work.

At long last, the wires gave up and out. The turbines whirred to a stop. I had frozen and broken off the wires and Glitch had Jeremy safe in his arms. I ran to them as he put him on the floor, checking for vitals. He took his pulse. He checked for breathing. He sat back, shell-shocked.

I knelt down next to Glitch as he breathed a heavy sigh. “Is he ok?”

Glitch looked at me, trembling. For most of the night, he never stammered like he did since the day I met him. But here, he was stammering worse now. “V-v-v-v-vi… o-olet… I… I’m… s-s-so… s-s-s-so…”

Jeremy didn’t move or even speak. This was wrong. I felt his hands—no heat. His flame power was completely snuffed out in the vortex. “What happened?” I probed.

“J-j-j-j… Jeremy’s… n-n-n-not… b-b-breathing,” Glitch hesitated. “I… I d-d-don’t think h-h-he… I d-don’t th-think he…”

I held my ear over his neck to listen for his windpipe. Nothing. I used my two fingers and pressed them against his neck to feel for a heartbeat, just like Alice showed me. His skin was already going cold and worst of all, no pulse. Fucking Tom and his vortex plan to suffocate him. Throwing those angry thoughts aside, I focused on getting Jeremy breathing again. I ripped open his shirt and pressed my hands on his chest. I pushed down, one, two, three four, five. Nothing happened. I pushed again, one, two, three, four, five. He still didn’t cough or make some reflex proving he was still alive. One, two, three, four, five… one, two, three, four, five…

Tears rolled down my face. Andy, Pat, Alice, and Glitch watched from behind, standing around knowing there was nothing else to be done. He couldn’t be dead now. Jeremy was stronger than that. Jeremy wouldn’t die… not on me. But I guess for that moment, that was the feeling all heroes feel when they tried to save everyone’s lives, but in the end someone died because the hero had to sacrifice something. Just like Spiderman lost Gwen Stacy. Just like Lois Lane mourning for the death of Superman. Just like the way I felt now. Only this was bigger than that… I just missed my real chance at something bigger than myself, and I was too stupid to see it. So I started sobbing, repeating over and over again: I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I wanted to be there and I’m too late. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. A goddamn fool.

Then amidst my faint sobbing, Fiona found me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Vi, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You just didn’t make it at the right time.”

I sniffed. “I should have been.”

“Come on, don’t make it hard on yourself,” she said, rubbing my back and trying to lighten me up. I had a hard time believing her. For a quiet moment, no one said anything, until Fiona spoke up. “Didn’t Miss Harley say you were trying to channel telepathy?”

I looked up at her. “Yes?”

“Didn’t she try to show you how to merge both frost and telepathy together?” she reminded.

Confused, I asked her, “What are you suggesting?”

“It might be the only way to save his life,” Fiona said. “Think about it.”

I hardly believed that my frost could bring life. By the winter solstice, everything died. The leaves shriveled, the animals hibernated or flew south, the weather grew colder, days became darker, and nothing ever moved, especially in a blanket of snow and ice. But then my thoughts from school kept flooding in. Mr. Oz said it was possible to fly with my powers, given I knew control like Miss Harley tried to show me. Crow told us in his psychology class that sometimes in dire needs, all it took was for a hero to muster his energy through peace and serenity within the mind to generate more strength in his power. And most of all, Octa said that a harnessed power of a particular force of matter and mind, like frost and telepathy, was possible to either decimate a villain or destructive machine, or revive someone mortally wounded.

For the first time, I finally got the message. Peace, serenity, mind and matter… I wasn’t sure how much it would hurt, but I didn’t even let that register. I placed both hands over the sides of his head as my hands frosted over in ice particles. I touched his hair and closed my eyes. Deep breath in. I thought of everything that calmed me in thinking about them: fish tanks, soap bubbles, the sunrise, the sunset, dancing, the untamed silence of the woods and the park, hot showers, cloud cover after the rain, “Cleo’s Mood” from Junior Walker and the All Stars, and the silent moment after waking up in the morning. At last I found peace. But one thing remained missing. I had to channel that energy with my mind to bring Jeremy back.

Then I found it. I didn’t speak, but I did give him a message. Hey, loser on the other side… I’m giving you another chance. But I will only make you come back if you still want me, if you’ll have me. Promise me you’ll wake up this time… for I cannot imagine my world without you. Wake up… Come back to me…

What I didn’t notice around me was that an icy force field shielded the two of us and everyone had backed away. My lips were on his, my breath filling his lungs with air, hoping I wouldn’t freeze his respiratory tract. I kept praying I hope this works, please God make it work.

When I pulled away from him, the field evaporated. Jeremy still didn’t move, but I proceeded to wait. No one said anything. The only sound came from the wind outside as mom and the principal gently let the school descend to the water again. I held his hand. Still nothing.

“Did it work?” Andy spat.

“Shut up, man!” Pat sniped, pushing him back with his arm.

Defeat weighed down on me like a ton. “No, it didn’t work. I guess it’s over.”

But when I put my head in my hands, Jeremy coughed and sputtered. I turned to see him leaning over, gasping. His first word when he saw me: “Violet?”

I almost jumped. “Jeremy?”

After a long pause from staring at me, he said, “Did I ever tell you I have a thing for platinum blondes?”

Oh, that was one more thing I didn’t see when I saved his life. I was no longer a brunette. With my combined powers together to breathe life back into him, my hair went from a few streaks of Rogue’s hair to complete Storm from X-Men. Bye-bye brown locks, hello washed over pure diamond white hair.

To hear him say that made me outraged. Flirting at a time like this! “I’m not a blonde, you idiot, my hair is a little white… No, I don’t care! I thought you died on me! Don’t you dare do that to me again or I swear to god, I’ll kill you!”

“Well, you can’t kill me now… not when my girl still owes me a dance.”

“How dare you!” I shouted for him quoting my favorite super guy, my baby Steve. But as I tried to slap him across the face, he caught my wrist in mid air and pushed it aside. Next thing I knew, he was kissing me. It came as a shock at first, but when we looked at each other, all that anger melted away.

“You are a hero,” he whispered. “You’re my hero. So don’t even think for a second you can’t take that heat.”

“I’m sure I can,” I said back to him. “And you’re my hero too.”

The second he heard that come out of me, we were kissing again and the everyone broke out in screams. Pat kept shouting, “About freaking time!” Fiona started pushing my friends away, saying, “Everyone, move along! Nobody look! Nothing to see!” And Andy, being the jerkoff that he was, called out to Jeremy, “Does she have another friend I could date? Maybe a girl nemesis, since that’s the theme here?”

We broke our lip lock and shouted back at Andy, “Shut up, you Stark!”

In the end, high school turned out to be pretty boring. My ex-boyfriend Tom, who became my new nemesis, was placed under special attention by the principal and some of the police of the school. Same with the rest of his gang, even Mylana. It was kind of like going to Juvie for them; no one really found the reason in putting them on trial as adults, like they did with the kids who caused all those school shootings in the past.

My rival, Fiona Dangerous, actually became one of the greatest friends I ever had. We go on excursions to the mall and we hang out at some cool places. She even took me to laser tag, which beats battle class any day. She’s dating this new guy and invited Jeremy and me for a double date. I had no idea those two guys could hit it off so well, just like how it amazes me that Fiona and I are best friends.

And as you know already, my old nemesis became my boyfriend. Jeremy and I did get a chance to see Magic! in concert. It was pretty special for us. Turned out to be the best first date I ever had. Our song is “Red Dress”. When Nasri and his band played that song, Remy twirled me around and pulled me in to dance, just like at the September Ball. We had a pretty good time at the dance after our make-out session, even though I told him that I wasn’t really dressed for a big formal dance.

But then he told me to, “Think about it, Elsa.” Then out of nowhere, it started to snow around me, just me. I looked up, wondering if there was a cloud over my head, but there wasn’t. And all of a sudden, the snow turned into bright sparks that covered my Avengers pajamas, and when they dispersed, the pajamas had turned into a blue and white silk gown with a halter strap and snowflakes on the skirt.

Remy backed off as I looked down and touched my new dress my powers gave me.

“Wow,” he said. “You look hot.”

I looked up at him. “This was a mistake. I didn’t mean to-”

He came over and hushed me with a kiss. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Totally,” I said. And we left the room and joined everyone else at the dance.

So that’s how I figured out that my favorite comic book franchise’s plot was flawed. In my version, Steve Rogers didn’t die in the end, he got the girl. And let’s be honest, Queen Elsa of Arendelle needs a man like Captain America. And if I were to give this superhero tale a happy ending, wrap it in a bow or whatever, I’d let both of them get their way. After all, that’s what happened with me.

I finally found my Steve Rogers… to be with me ’til the end of the line. And then for however many days of saving the world after that.

Hey, I’m only a freshman!