• I was raised by superheroes. I didn’t know when I was a kid, of course. I thought all moms could seem to be everywhere at once and be across the house in seconds, and I thought all dads could pick up the refrigerator in case a jellybean rolled under it. But then was that period when you’re around eight and you’re at your friend’s house every Friday for a sleepover, and when I learned that my best friend’s parents couldn’t do those things, I wondered why. Then I went to my other friend’s house, and it turned out her dad couldn’t move the kitchen table without help either, and that got me thinking-what if it was my parents, not theirs, that were weird?
    Like most eight-year-olds that get struck with ideas like those while at a friend’s house, by the time we had decided on a movie to watch, I had completely forgotten about what I thought of their friend’s parents when it comes to the matter of moving tables and over ground. The thoughts stayed in the back of my head for the next several years.
    Over the next several years, though, was when my mom started acting really weird. It was the kind of weird that makes you wonder whether the person is feeling all right, but are too freaked out by the change to ask them. She was clearly disturbed by something, but she wasn’t sharing anything with me, which was odd, too. Usually when she had a problem she asked advice from me and my dad at dinner. But after that weird change, she never talked about the annoying people at work or the paper she had to write or anything like that. She also seemed a lot more annoyed at me, which, of course, got me wondering whether I was the one that was making her act strangely. She was tense all the time, as if she was a volcano expected to blow over at any minute. Then, after a long time of the strange behavior, the volcano erupted. It was the year I turned fourteen, and I came home all happy because it was my birthday and it had been a good day overall. Just as I put my key in the door, my mom yanked it open and stormed off to her car, carrying her suitcase and looking very annoyed at something.
    “Mom, where are you going?” I asked, startled.
    “Away from here,” was her sharp reply as she strode haughtily down the walk, carrying her suitcase in one hand and a duffel bag in the other.
    “Why? What’s wrong with life here?” I wondered.
    “It’s not the life, it’s the people,” she replied in an annoyed tone, going back up the walk to get the rest of her belongings.
    This confused me slightly. I could see the disappointment in her face when she looked at me, but I couldn’t see what was so horrible about me. “Why?” I asked blankly, for want of a better question.
    “I feel too confined,” she explained shortly. That was helpful. Not.
    “Why do you feel confined?”
    “I have power. I’m not allowed to use it. End of story.”
    “But why are you leaving me and dad here?” I followed her back down to the car as she carried some more stuff.
    “It’s because of you that I’m leaving,” she told me, turning and facing me properly for the first time that day. Her words stung. Even though I knew that she didn’t like me, I didn’t see anything wrong with me.
    “Because of…..me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why are you leaving because of me? Am I really that bad of a daughter?”
    “It’s not that you’re a bad daughter,” she explained in a tone that indicated that it had everything to do with that. “It’s just that….well, like I said, I have power and I’m not able to use it here.”
    “Are you leaving because I don’t have power, too?” I wondered. The thought was a mere whim, but for all I knew, that could be the actual reason she was so annoyed.
    She sighed, a long, miserable, when-is-this-child-going-to-get-a-brain type sigh.
    “Listen, Jackie,” she said in a voice that clearly said that she still wanted me alive against her better judgment. “Have you ever been in the room off the garage?”
    “No,” I said, startled. Of all the things to think of asking at this particular moment, why did my mom pick rooms off garages in generic homes? “I thought I wasn’t allowed in there.”
    “Well, it’s not a matter of permission if you can go into a room in your own house,” my mom said testily. She clearly wasn’t enjoying the fact that not everyone in the world is as quick-witted as she was. “Anyway, if you want to know what’s really going on, have a look in there. Your dad’s got quite a collection of…stuff in there that you might want to take a look at. I don’t want to be around when he catches you snooping, though. I’ll bet you’d have figured it out eventually, but I’m not going to wait around forever for…things to happen that might not happen at all. That’s another reason I’m leaving. Goodbye.”
    With that, she slammed the trunk closed and got in the front seat, slamming the car door behind her. I stood and stared after my mother, wondering what in the world had gotten into my mother’s brain. Leaving because of me. The room off the garage. The room off the garage? Until that moment, I hadn’t known the garage even had a door other than the door that led inside. I walked towards the front door very slowly, thinking about what had just happened, and not wholly accepting the fact that my mom had just left for what was most likely going to be a very long time, unless something dramatic happened to bring her back, which wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
    When I got inside, even though I don’t consciously remember opening the door or setting down my backpack, I decided to find out what exactly was in the room off the garage and why mom thought I should go see it. Dad wouldn’t be back for ages-it was Friday, and I could get home early because I had two free classes at the end of the day-a scheduled free period and then homeroom, where we never really did anything anyway and were allowed to leave early if we wanted-so I had time to look. So that’s what I did.
    I proceeded downstairs and through the door of the laundry room to the garage. When I got there I stopped. Where was this alleged room?
    I looked around. A couple of bikes, some recycling bins, and one of the trash cans that you took down to the curb every Wednesday were all I saw. No door. No opening. No nothing except for the piles of crud that had accumulated over the years.
    My eyes went back to the bikes in the corner, and as my eyes traveled left, there was a door that was very hard to see from this angle. I guess I had never paid attention to it because my purple mountain bike that I never rode was leaning against it. I went over and moved my bike out of the way and opened the door.

    Inside was a room, just as Mom had said there would be. But, of all the things I expected to be inside, I hadn't expected this.
    As far as I knew, my dad had never been a big fan of mementos and talismans and things like that. So the fact that my mom had said, “Your DAD has got quite a collection,” was just as surprising as what he had been collecting.
    Dad had a huge collection of newspaper clippings. As I walked farther into the room, a whole new side of my father opened up to me. That wasn’t only because of the fact that he had collected this many clippings over the years, but also the pictures on the clippings. It was amazing. Hundreds of little bits of news and headline articles were around the room. All the pictures showed the same guy-a tall, majestic superhero in a suit with black sleeves and a bright purple body, with a black mask that covered his eyes and part of his nose and stayed on without one of those annoying little elastic straps in the back. But why did my mom want me to see this?
    I looked further. POWERFUL SAVE read a headline over the superhero with a girl in his arms who had fainted in the glory of being touched by someone this famous, by the looks of it. SHOW OF FORCE read another, with a picture of the superhero waving and grinning and holding what looked like a robot’s head under one arm. Why did my mom want me to see a bunch of pictures of some famous superhero from bygone days? I could only find the date on the headline articles, because the smaller pictures and stories seemed to come from the middle of the paper, but they all seemed to be at least twenty years old.
    I inspected an article titled The Powerful Hero. It looked like a biography, but I couldn’t be sure.

    Of the many superheroes saving the world today, none is more renowned or respected as Power. Power, who can lift objects many times his own weight, is one of the leading villain-fighters in our community and, it is arguable, in the world. He is best known for the capture of Madrigal, the mad scientist who lures people of authority and importance to sleep by singing a very beautiful lullaby and for the imprisonment of Yin and Yang, the super villain duo that can replicate themselves at will.
    Of course, Power could not have taken down Yin and Yang, or many of his very numerous opponents, without considerable help. Before her retirement from the superhero business in 1986, Power’s longtime friend and sidekick, Force (force fields), completed a very impressive duo. In fact, some argue that Force and Power were the best duo that ever lived. Many who are arguing against them say that it was either Yin and Yang, or Power and his next teammate, Runner (super speed), who banded together with Force just before her retirement, along with the hard-to-hit Dodge. However, that remains to be seen.

    The article ended there. I stared at the words, amazed. Superheroes actually existed. But as I inspected the recurring grin of the many photos, I started to recognize the look in Power’s eyes. It resembled my father, in the rare times he smiled. Power’s eyes were exactly the same shape, too.
    Was it possible that my father was this legendary superhero?
    I decided that it was possible. I also decided that, even though it was possible, that didn’t mean it was true.
    But, despite myself, I started thinking that, if my dad had some powers, then my mom must have had some, too. The conversation in the driveway supported that theory. I looked around the photos again. I decided that my mother was either Force or Runner. I was thinking she was Runner, because in the pictures where they were side-by-side, Force was almost as tall as my dad, whereas my mom only came up to his shoulder, like Runner did in the photos.
    I heard a sound behind me, and I realized that although my mom had basically said that it would be okay if I was in here, my dad might say different. I quickly folded up the article I had read and shoved it into my pocket and I hurried out.

    That night, however, I began feeling rather strange. I was sure I hadn’t eaten anything weird at all, except for my dad’s lame attempt at making hot dogs (they had been burnt to a crisp and after a bite each we mutually agreed to order Chinese instead). It wasn’t the stomach-achey type strange, though, it was more of a tingling that went on all over my body. It started at around eleven that night, in my fingers. I was reading a book and I got the same sort of feeling you get when your foot falls asleep. Then the tingling spread all over my body. I didn’t get what was going on, but I didn’t want to move because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did. It stopped as suddenly as it had started, but I knew, from that point on, I was different in more ways than one.