The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World

  Annoyingly, she and Doreen didn’t have any of the same classes, so she had to wait till lunch to tell her. She stood by the cafeteria doors, adjusting her socks (rainbow stripes today), tapping her toes, and feeling generally hippity-hoppity excited, which was a new and alarming sensation for her and made her anxious about her own mental health.

  When Doreen finally arrived, Ana Sofía experienced a second unfamiliar emotion. A weird, foreign, slightly uncomfortable sensation in her heart. She grimaced when she figured out what to call it: “gladness.” She wanted to roll her eyes at herself. “Glad” people tended to be shiny and annoying and too dull to realize that “looking forward to things” or “enjoying the moment” was supremely pointless. And yet, here she was, Ana Sofía Arcos Romero, too glad to even roll her eyes. In fact, she practically smiled. This whole BFFAEAE business was seriously messing with her head.40

  Doreen’s whole face lit up when she saw her. “Hi, Ana Sofía!”

  Ana Sofía signed, “Everyone’s talking about the Jersey Ghost.”

  “Seriously?”

  Ana Sofía nodded. “I’m almost sure they think it’s real. I’m absolutely sure they don’t know it’s you.”

  “Come on,” said Doreen, hooking her arm in Ana Sofía’s. She headed straight for the Somebodies’ table.

  “No, no, danger, warning, turn around,” Ana Sofía said, tugging backward, but Doreen was like a freight train headed downhill.41

  “What are you guys talking about?” Doreen spoke, signing for Ana Sofía to see.

  “Nope,” said Heidi, one of the Somebodies. Ana Sofía knew her name, of course. She knew all the Somebodies’ names. But she would have bet her top five socks that Heidi didn’t know hers.

  Lanessa and Janessa (no relation) both made shooing motions with their hands, and Jackson pointedly turned his back to Doreen.

  Ana Sofía finally managed to pull Doreen away. “I told you, they have to acknowledge you first.”

  Doreen made a sign that Ana Sofía had learned meant “weird, but not the good kind of weird.” But she simply headed to the next table over, where a few people from Doreen’s computer class were hanging out.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Doreen asked.

  Ana Sofía couldn’t follow everything they said, even with Doreen attempting to sign it as they spoke, but Doreen filled her in on what she missed after.

  “The Jersey Ghost,” said one. “Everyone says it’s real, but I don’t think so.”

  “I’m telling you, man, my brother saw it,” said another. “He had just tagged the bridge when suddenly it was there. It leaped up onto the side of the bridge and cleaned off the fresh paint with its massive tail!”

  “It has a tail?”

  “Yeah, he said the tail was huge, luxurious, and…and beautiful.”42 He bowed his head, blushing.

  One guy said that he knew a member of the Skunk Club who had claimed the Jersey Ghost’s tail was, in fact, “fat, packed, and wicked,” while another asserted the tail had been “battle-ready and straight-up colossal.”

  Doreen and Ana Sofía left them arguing over adjectives and exited the cafeteria, ducking into a quiet, empty classroom.

  “So you’ve been out since garbage day?” Ana Sofía asked after Doreen had rehashed the conversation.

  “Yeah, just one other time. I didn’t mean to. I saw some people spraying graffiti on the bridge, and I remembered how you didn’t like the graffiti so much, so I tried to clean it off. I didn’t know anyone saw me.”

  “They don’t know it’s you. How can they not tell?”

  Doreen shook her head but didn’t appear to be listening. “I just meant to make the neighborhood nicer for the squirrels and for you and stuff. But it turns out I’m actually entertaining the masses! I love being a phantasmal spook of legend.”

  “It’s the tail,” said Ana Sofía. “All they see is the tail. Doreen Green doesn’t appear to have a tail, so clearly you couldn’t be the Jersey Ghost.”

  “I’m not the Jersey Ghost,” said Doreen. “I mean, I shouldn’t be. It’s fun, but I’m not supposed to show my tail in public. I never, ever have.”

  “It’s your disguise! They don’t recognize you with your tail. You’re totally safe!”

  Just a week into their friendship, and already Ana Sofía could read Doreen’s face like a comic book.43

  “Will you…will you come out with me?” Doreen asked, looking uncharacteristically timid.

  Ana Sofía nodded her fist. Yes, yes, yes.

  DOREEN

  After school, Ana Sofía went to Doreen’s house. Ana Sofía helped Doreen with her math homework, and Doreen helped Ana Sofía with her history homework.44 They ate dinner—nut loaf with potatoes and gravy. Dinner at the Green home was lively. Doreen’s dad, Dor, a shiny-cheeked, bald-headed, red-bearded version of Doreen (sans tail) performed magic tricks with a fork and napkin. Her mother sang Italian songs in an embroidered cat apron. Doreen broke a plate.

  “It’s okay,” said Maureen, facing Ana Sofía as she spoke to make it easier for her to read her lips. “We buy the ten-cent plates at the secondhand store. We learned our lesson when Doreen was a toddler. She’s…special. It’s really important that no one else knows that, okay? I know Doreen trusts you, but I need your promise you won’t reveal her secret to anyone.”

  Maureen smiled, but her lip trembled a little with worry.

  “Mom!” said Doreen, mortified.

  But Ana Sofía nodded. “I promise,” she said.

  As the evening light mellowed from yellow to gold, Ana Sofía caught Doreen’s eye and nodded toward the door.

  “Whatcha got there? BTE aids, huh?”45 Dor asked Ana Sofía. “Which model is that? How’s it work in the wind for ya?”

  “We’re going now, Dad. I’m going to walk Ana Sofía home before it gets dark, okay?”

  “Sure, sure. Be careful, don’t talk to strangers, back before bedtime, remember who you are, look before crossing the street, don’t jump on rooftops—”

  “I got it, Dad. Bye!” said Doreen.

  They took a shortcut through the park. The fall sunset was all peach and gold, the air a mix of cool and warm, like a cup of tea with cream not yet stirred. Doreen sniffed the air and peered into the developing shadows.

  “It’s like we’re Super Heroes out on patrol, looking for bad guys,” said Ana Sofía. “I mean, I know you can’t really be a Super Hero unless you’re super-amazing at things and are part of the Avengers or another equally auspicious Super Hero collective. It’s like with the Somebodies. The real Super Heroes have to acknowledge you and say you can be one of them. No one just wakes up one morning all like, ‘I’m a Super Hero now,’ and then they just are.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Doreen.

  “Yes,” said Ana Sofía. “That’s just how things work.”

  “Huh.” Doreen figured that must be true. The hero-watch websites and news shows screamed about grown-ups who tore up skyscrapers by their foundations or flew spaceships and stopped intergalactic wars. There was nothing super-heroey about walking through the park with a squirrel tail stuffed in the seat of your pants. “But you’re right, it does feel a little like being heroes on patrol. We’re totally pards.”

  “What was that?” asked Ana Sofía.

  “We’re pards,” said Doreen, finger-spelling the word.

  “Pards? Is that a thing?”

  “Totally. Like partners, but cooler.”

  “Best friends was a big leap for me. I don’t think I can commit to being a pard.”

  Doreen just nodded, but she felt certain Ana Sofía would warm up to the idea. Who wouldn’t want to be pards?

  “So, I brought this,” said Ana Sofía, pulling a white bedsheet from her backpack. “In case you wanted to, I don’t know, drop it over your head and look more Jersey Ghost-y?”

  A chittering sounded from a tree, and then Tippy-Toe was on Doreen’s shoulder.

  “You don’t say!” said Doreen. “Well, of course, Ti
ppy, I’ll be right there.”

  Tippy-Toe sneezed, the kind of sneeze that meant “Very well then,” but in a completely adorable way that would probably make you go awwww. Tippy-Toe would disagree that she sounded adorable. She felt completely professional, thank you very much.

  “The squirrels have found another of those weirdo traps in the trees,” Doreen told Ana Sofía. “A chance to save the day! BRB, ’kay?”

  “’Kay. Do you want the sheet?”

  “No thanks, it’d probably get in my way.” Doreen and Tippy-Toe loped off like lopsided twins, leaving Ana Sofía standing there. Alone. In the LARPer-infested park.

  Doreen looked back. Ana Sofía had wrapped the sheet around her shoulders and head as if for warmth. Doreen almost went back to her, but she was certain she’d only be gone for a few seconds. She followed Tippy-Toe to a tree, found the trap, and with a bit of effort managed to dismantle it. But just then a new squirrel chirped an alarm. Another trap! By the time Doreen had climbed that tree and destroyed the second one, news of the traps had spread. The trees came alive with squirrels on the hunt, sniffing out and calling alerts on more “danger cages.” Doreen followed their calls. She was traveling farther and farther away from Ana Sofía.

  There was a click, a squeal, and a dozen squirrels at once cried out, “Help!”

  Tippy-Toe came running, screeching about the horrific situation. Little Candy Creeper, a squirrel no more than six months old, had discovered a trap, but in her excitement had bumbled her way inside it. Now the door was locked shut. The wall was crushing inward. She had only moments before her last breath would be squished right out of her.

  “I’m coming!” said Doreen, running along the thickest branches, bounding from tree to tree. She was off-balance running that fast, so mid-stride she lifted her tail free. But what if someone saw her out in the open, flying her freaky tail? She pulled up her hood.

  With tail out and hood up, Doreen leaped from a tree.

  “Chkkt!” replied five squirrels, carrying the trap down the tree and rushing it toward her.

  Using their tails, the squirrel posse catapulted the cage in the air. It whooshed across an empty soccer field. Doreen was coming from the other side. She leaped, caught it at the apex of its arc, and in midair, gripped the sides of the cage. “AAAARRRH!” she yelled as she ripped it apart.46

  When she landed, tail-first, and rolled to a stop, Little Candy Creeper lay nestled in her hands with no more than a bruised backside.

  “You okay?” asked Doreen.

  “Chkkt,” said Little Candy Creeper, pointing to her tiny bum, which was, as mentioned, bruised, but still in one piece.

  “Yeah,” Doreen agreed and collapsed on the grass, damp with sweat, breathing hard. A dozen squirrels were celebrating by running up and down her limbs, burrowing behind her neck and around her shoulders, bouncing on her tail, and generally squeaking with excitement. This had been a big day for the squirrels.

  Tippy-Toe chittered at her.

  “I don’t look like Doreen anymore?” said Doreen.

  Her huge tail was free and twitching in the breeze. She was wearing the hoodie her Canadian grandma had given her on her last birthday. It was nut brown, and the hood had little bear ears attached.47

  “Chktt-kit,” said Tippy-Toe.

  “No way!” Doreen sat up, holding out her hands, and Tippy-Toe leaped onto them. “Actually, you know what? That’s the name I call myself in my head. Just when I’m feeling sad or worried.” She whispered, still shy to say it aloud, “Like, ‘Come on, Squirrel Girl, you got this.’”

  All around her, the squirrels began to repeat the nickname. “Chktt-kit, Chktt-kit.” In Chitterspeak it didn’t mean “female squirrel.” It combined the words for squirrel with human girl. A creature who was two things at the same time.

  One squirrel on her shoulder put its bitty paw on her forehead, looked into her eye and declared, “Chktt-kit.”

  “Wow,” Doreen breathed out. Her skin prickled with goose bumps from the top of her head to the tip of her tail. The parts that had been curled up tight inside were starting to stretch, fill up the empty spaces. Never had she felt so fully herself.

  In the distance, Doreen’s keen ears became aware of voices speaking.

  “I’m not the Jersey Ghost! I swear!”

  Was that Ana Sofía? And then other voices.

  “Thou speakest truly, and yet clearly thou art pretending to be the Ghost of Jersey in thy spectral white shroud in order to frighten the peasants and cause unpleasantness! Thou wilst pay for thy crimes of deception and buffoonery—”

  “Not to mention subterfuge and tomfoolery.”

  “You are correct, Lady Genevieve von Orkhead-Schlinger, this one most definitely hath committed the grievous twin crimes of subterfuge and tomfoolery.”

  “My lord, what sayest thou? What be her fit punishment?”

  “The royal we declareth her punishment fitteth the named crimes of deception, buffoonery, subterfuge, and tomfoolery. She shall be clamped in the pillory.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, but it’s probably not true. Somebody, help!”

  Definitely Ana Sofía, Doreen thought as she jumped to her feet. A dozen squirrels went flying off her in various directions, like kernels of popcorn out of a pot.48

  “Ana Sofía?” Doreen said even though Ana Sofía surely couldn’t hear her. “I don’t know what in the heck a pillory is, but I’m coming!”

  Moments later, she cleverly deduced what a pillory was. Most likely, it was that wooden stand in the middle of the green with three holes in it: two that snapped shut around Ana Sofía’s wrists and a third larger one around her neck. Doreen had seen pictures of things like that in history textbooks, clearly some kind of medieval device for punishment. That the LARPers had randomly built in the park. A reasonable thing to use against her BFFAEAE Ana Sofía Arcos Romero?

  Uh, no way, nohow, nowhere, no duh.

  Doreen leaped into the green, higher than she’d ever done before. Excited from having just saved a freakin’ adorable baby squirrel, pumped up with the freedom and confidence of having her tail out, and most of all vibrating with the joy of hearing her secret name spoken aloud by a clan of squirrels, she screeched a squirrel-ish shriek. She landed by the pillory.

  “Let her go!” she said.

  “Kill it!” said the baron. “It’s a monster! It’s a demon! It’s a dragon! Thing! A dragon thing!”

  The baron came at her, sword swinging. Doreen ducked and dodged, leaped up, and landed on her attacker’s shoulders.49

  “Oof,” he said, crumpling to the grass under her weight.

  “What in the cheese was that?” said Doreen. “Seriously, attacking people with swords in the park? Time to rethink your leisure activities.”

  A second LARPer came at her, sword overhead, yelling “AAAAAAA—”

  But she stopped short when Doreen swished her tail, knocking the girl aside like she was swatting a fly.50

  Ana Sofía’s head observed all this from her wooden neck lock, her eyes wide.

  “Wow,” she said. “Whoa,” she said. Also, “Holy cannoli.”

  Doreen tried to release Ana Sofía, but the pillory’s clamping bar was locked shut. So she gripped the boards and pulled till they cracked and broke apart. Ana Sofía stood up straight, shrugging off the bedsheet and massaging her wrists.

  “Thanks,” said Ana Sofía. “I thought you’d left me.”

  “Duh, of course not.”

  “Ana Sofía?” Vin Tang took a step closer. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that was you!”

  Doreen felt movement behind her and she swirled around, claws out.51 But instead of attacking, the dozen LARPers had begun to drop to one knee. The baron she’d knocked down with a shoulder-strike was kneeling in front, eyes wide and wet as if he were about to weep.

  “Your speed and combat prowess is a mighty thing to behold.” He bowed his head and lifted up his sword in both hands, offering it to her. “My great-tai
led liege.”52

  “What? You guys are silly. Honestly I’m dead confused by whatever game you’re playing, but if you like it, that’s cool. Just don’t, like, kidnap people and lock them up in weirdo wooden head traps, ’kay?”

  Ana Sofía was still looking a little shaky, and despite the kneeling and the my-leige-ing, all those sword-wielding LARPers seemed a bit unstable and possibly dangerous, so Doreen picked up Ana Sofía, slung her over her shoulder, and leaped away.

  They’d nearly bounded right out of the park when she heard Ana Sofía’s strained, hiccupy breathing. Was she crying? Doreen stopped and put her down.

  Nope. She was full-on laughing.

  “What? What’s funny?” Doreen said.

  “I. Don’t. Know,” said Ana Sofía between laughs. “I think I’m freaking out a little. You tore apart that wood with your bare hands!”

  “Well, yeah, it was super-easy actually. Maybe it was half broken already?”

  Ana Sofía shook her head. She was searching on her phone. “Squirrel facts, squirrel facts…Aha! Listen,” she said, reading from her phone. “‘Squirrels can lift several times their own body weight.’”

  “Yeah, squirrels are awesome.”

  Ana Sofía continued to scroll through her phone. “They can run up to twenty miles an hour. Gnaw through solid metal. Jump five feet in the air. They regularly leap ten feet horizontally. What if…what if you don’t just have a squirrel tail and front teeth, and are pretty strong? What if you actually have the proportional strength, speed, and agility of a squirrel? So if a squirrel can leap five times the length of its own body, let’s say, then you should be able to leap five times the length of your body, which would be…thirty feet. Thirty feet, Doreen.”

  “Nah, I can’t jump that far.”

  “What if it’s more?”

  “I mean, I have some skills,” signed Doreen. “But it’s not like I’m Spider-Man.”

  “No, you’re not Spider-Man,” said Ana Sofía. She looked her dead in the eyes and said with great solemnity, “You’re Squirrel Girl.”

  “Whoa.” Now not just her skin had goose bumps but her bones, too. Electric thrills zipped through her veins. “That’s so amazing. I was just telling Tippy-Toe that that’s…that’s…”