What Constitutes a Superpower

Bridget bit down hard on her thumbnail, feeling the hard keratin between her teeth as she studied the questions on the dull white paper in front of her. She was convinced the questions that decorated the page truly belonged in a book of spells written in an archaic and obsolete tongue. Each letter seemed to blur into its neighbor and cease to exist as a separate entity the longer Bridget stared at the pages. Letters flipped on themselves, turning faithful members of the alphabet into numbers and vise versa as if they were living and breathing entities. It was all so confusing. 

Remembering the necessary information to understand and answer a paragraph of gobbledygook the teacher came up with on a Microsoft word document seemed to be as hard as deciphering hieroglyphics, except the knowledge wasn’t separated by centuries from writer to student, it was only seconds between leaving the teachers hand and landing on Bridget’s desk. 

Bridget pressed a hand to her head, exchanging her thumbnail for the end of her pencil which was scarred with injuries of previous battles waged at this desk. Her head began to pound, brain seeming to throb against her skull in sets of three. The pattern of pain did nothing more than further distract her from the job at hand — finishing this math test. 

“Alright!” Her teacher clapped her hands together, startling Bridget a few inches up out of her seat. “Class is almost over, so bring up your tests to the front and put them in the folder corresponding to your hour.”

All around Bridget, students stood up and shuffled to the front, talking amongst themselves as they opened the folder and tossed the papers in an uneven stack on top of it. Bridget was last to the front, attempting to scrawl down a guess on the question she was working on using her hand as a desk. The most she could hope for at this point was half points for getting the process correct even if her answer was inevitably crossed out with a bright red pen. 

But no matter how much information she forgot on the day of the test, she would never forget the feeling of seeing the graded test slide over the desk and rest at her arms. The disappointment cut her skin, covering her with paper cuts only visible to her. The cuts leaked a vile, frigid liquid down her arms. Just the imagined smell of the liquid caused her nose to scrunch up into itself while all of her hairs stood on end. 

Bridget leaned forward, breathing out slowly, and covered the scarlet score with her elbow so that none of her classmates might see her paper. In the next few minutes, Bridget finagled the test into her backpack without her classmates grabbing it from her hand and asking for her score. The only reason they asked to see her grades was to use them as validation — to prove she did just as bad as them or to confirm they were higher in the class ranks than they thought. 

Unlike her peers, Bridget didn’t want to comfort herself with other people’s scores, so instead, she pushed the test from her mind and took out the book she was reading. 

The dialogue drowned the barrage of voices surrounding her, dragging her into the world of fantasy and dragons and the impossible reality that a hero can overcome insurmountable odds and achieve their happily-ever-after at the end of their adventure. Every description was so vivid that Bridget swore she could smell the lavender flowing in the breeze next to the heroes who were frantically whispering about their next move under the cover of darkness. Bridget could see the small lantern flickering next to the love interest’s elbow, casting shadows across their drawn features as they realized they might have to sacrifice themselves for the hero to win. 

Unfortunately, once the action started, Bridget’s fingers caressed the last page, and the book was over just as quickly as it started. 

Bridget sighed and shut the book, ending the 200-page story that only lasted her two class periods. She had hoped that its length would carry out for at least a school day, but it was to no avail. Ever since she was a child, Bridget had been able to read exceptionally well, surpassing most of her grade in reading skills. But where her literature grades flourished like a spindly vine wrapping around as many trees as it could find, her math scores shriveled, drained of nutrients and any room to grow. 

“It’s your superpower, Bridget!” Her sister would say whenever Bridget complained of her math and reading trade-off, smile as bright and luminescent as the stars spread across the Milkyway and eyes full of hope, like a flower in bloom. “No one, not a single person in my senior class, can read as fast as you. Do you realize how fast you go through information and process it?”

The corner of Bridget’s mouth pulled down into a frown as she looked up to her sister. “What good does reading fast do if I can’t retain the information for tests? I can read the entire textbook, but I can’t memorize the content. A superpower is supposed to outweigh the negatives.”

However, her sister never let Bridget talk down to herself so she would retort, “did superman master all of his skills right away? No. He saw the bones of his teachers before he learned to fly in a straight line, Bridget. You have the power to do great things, you just need to learn how to use it to your advantage.”

“How does reading help me with math?” Bridget rubbed her index finger over her thumb, wincing ever so slightly as she touched the bitten cuticle’s tender skin. “Once numbers are involved, I can’t figure out what the word problems are saying.”

“So?” Her sister crinkled her nose, the everpresent smile widening even further. “If everyone passed math with a perfect score, it would be no big deal when people got close to a hundred percent. You should take pride in what you’re good at, and not fault yourself for what you don’t know yet.”

Bridget smiled as the school’s bell system rang throughout the hallways, signaling the end of class, and held back as the rest of her class ran out the door with their tests clutched in their hands. She took her time zipping up her backpack and made sure that none of her book’s pages were bent in odd angles, even if it meant sacrificing her test which had already been bent in half with the corner tearing after catching on a folder’s edge. The state of her test didn’t matter in the end. When she got home, she’d set it on fire with her pyrokinesis.