She cleared her throat. Why was it so hard to speak aloud the secret?53
“Squirrel Girl,” she whispered. “That’s what I call myself in my head.”
“And you can talk to squirrels! Doreen, I think…I think you could maybe be a Super Hero.”
“Nah,” said Doreen. Adults were Super Heroes. Adults like Captain Marvel, Captain America, Captain Britain, Captain Universe, and all the other captains, plus gods of thunder eating shawarma with or without shirts.
“But what if you kept doing hero stuff? And the Avengers noticed you? And asked you to join? Then you’d be a real Super Hero. And you’d probably get to hang out with Thor….” Ana Sofía blushed and looked at her feet. “I guess that’d be cool or something, not that I’ve thought about Thor much ever.”
Doreen had been able to destroy those traps. And dodging the LARPers’ swords had been easy as nut cake. And people didn’t usually leap as high as she did….But no. No way was she a Super Hero.
Not yet.
TEXT MESSAGES
DOREEN
On my way back. Walking ana sofia home took longer than I thought
MOM
Are you dressed warm enough?
DOREEN
Wearing gramma’s hoodie
MOM
With the little bear ears? Adorbs!
Can I say adorbs or is that too hip for a mom?
DOREEN
I can’t keep track of all the hip things so yes maybe
MOM
How’s your strength? Have you been eating enough protein to keep it up?
DOREEN
I need a fanny pack or something to carry spare nuts. I hate purses they bounce around when I leap
MOM
You’re leaping? In public? Is your tail tucked out of sight?
DOREEN
Yes
Prbly
I’m such a terrible liar!
MOM
Doreen what’s going on?
DOREEN
I had to save ana sofia from some teens dressed up medieval who put her in a pillory which is a thing and also destroy squirrel traps designed by a wannabe James bond villain and people think I’m the Jersey ghost but the tail is so distracting no one looks at my face
MOM
Well yes I can see that all makes perfect sense but still you can’t expose yourself
DOREEN
Ok
MOM
No more going out with your tail out
DOREEN
I know I know
MOM
And we’ll need to talk about some kind of
What do parents do when their kids disobey and make dangerous choices?
DOREEN
I dunno I’ve read about groundings
MOM
Yes you should probably be grounded. Or something
DOREEN
Ok
MOM
Stay warm! Come home soon! I love you! You’re grounded!
DOREEN
Love you too
TIPPY-TOE
Tree squirrels and ground squirrels, we’re like cats and rats: their names might sound similar, but if you stick them in the same burrow, you’re going to have a ruckus.
We tree squirrels stay in our parts of the neighborhood and keep messes to a minimum. But after that first unfortunate incident with the trap and my falling into it (which we aren’t talking about), I took it upon myself to hunt down every wretched trap I could find and send them to the big scrap-yard in the sky.
I found a lot. And not just in trees. Whoever made them wasn’t just a problem for my tree squirrels. They were a problem for all squirrels. It was time we worked together and got rid of them all.
A month ago I might have laughed at the idea of working with the groundies on anything. But I would have said that about humans, too.
It was dusk, and my nose twitched with the scents of humans cooking their evening meals. I scampered away from houses to the cracked foundation of an abandoned building where I knew ground squirrels sometimes burrowed. Immediately three groundies surrounded me, those stumpy things they called tails twitching behind them.
“Ay-yo, Tippy-Toe,” said Miranda Creepsforth.
Miranda was one of Big Daddy Spud’s enforcers. Big Daddy pretty much ran the ground squirrel clans around here, and like his name suggested, he was a big one. But Miranda was no petite peanut herself. Or any kind of peanut. Peanuts are delicious. Miranda did not look like a tasty treat for anything but an owl with gut bugs.
“Shuck and scratch, Miss Mandy,” I said, speaking in traditional Jersey squirrel dialect. “Just the squeak I wanted to see.”
The group of ground squirrels arranged themselves around me. I had nothing but good intentions, but I wasn’t sure the same was true of them.
“You got no reason to chitter with me,” she said, her short tail vibrating.
“Truth,” I said. “I got chitter-plans settled on Big Daddy Spud. But as you’re on the chew for Spud, I figured you could squeak the meet.”
“What chit you got with Spud? Delivering a message from your owner?”
“Ooooh, burn,” said one of the other two groundies.
“Excuse me?” I asked. Miranda was purposefully trying to irritate me. Squirrels were not owned, and to suggest otherwise was an insult I was just about impatient enough to repay.
“Everybody knows you’re some skin monkey’s pet, Tippy-Toe,” Miranda said.
My teeth ground together. Skin monkey. Hearing that mound rat apply the slur to Doreen made my blood boil. And pet?
I put my face in front of hers. “Is this cracked chitter from Big Daddy Spud himself? Or are you being a cat-addled branch dropping on your own time?”54
Miranda smirked. “Nice leash,” she said, flicking the bow around my neck with a claw. “Your skin monkey owner give you that, little pet?”
Fast as a snake, my paws were around Miranda’s throat, lifting her off the ground. Her companions twitched to move, but I rattled my tail at them.
“Stay where you are, or Miranda loses an ear.”
Their eyes darted from me to Miranda and back again, but they kept position.
Miranda’s hind paws raked the air, and her front paws tried to pry mine away. “Yeah…right,” she said with a wheeze. “My ear. What are you going to do, chew it off?”
I smiled, showing my sharpest teeth.
“Lookit, Todd! Lookit,” said a human voice. We’d been too occupied with our own quarrel to notice the approach. An adult female human, older than Doreen, stared down at us. Her feet were blocking my escape. I dropped Miranda.
Another human joined her. Todd, apparently.
“Geez, Tammy,” he said. “It’s a whole…gopher…village.”
The lot of us squirrels groaned, almost at once. For all our differences, many of our struggles were the same. Humans. Calling us gophers would be like us mistaking them for gorillas.
“Naw, naw, Todd,” said Tammy. She pointed at Miranda. “That there’s a groundhog, and them little ones are chipmunks.”
Todd pointed at me. “What’s that one then? Some kinda cat?”
Miranda laughed. Cats are not particularly respected in our community.
Tammy furrowed her brow. “Naw, that there’s a rat. One of them pretty rats they sell at the pet store.”
Miranda laughed harder.
“Them pretty rats are called ferrets,” Todd said.
“Well la-de-da, Mister Doctor Professor Todd,” Tammy said.
Miranda made a break for it, attempting to dart between Tammy’s legs, but Todd kicked her back. Miranda tumbled, coming to a stop with a groan at my feet. Things just got real.
“Should we eat ’em, T-Dog?”
“GROSS, NO! Let’s just stomp ’em,” Todd said, and began to stomp.
Usually humans aren’t fast enough to actually get us, but Miranda wasn’t moving, and she was slow to begin with.
Quickly, before he could stomp Miranda, I scampered s
traight to Todd’s foot, up his leg, across his chest, and onto his face. He screamed.
“Getitoff, getitoff!”
“I got it!” Tammy yelled, and hammered her fist toward the spot on Todd’s face where I was clinging. But when her fist landed, I was somewhere else. I was on Tammy’s face.
Todd groaned, pressing his hands to where Tammy had punched him. I stared into Tammy’s wide, terrified eyes. I grabbed her cheeks with my paws.
“WE ARE SQUIRRELS,” I yelled. “NOT GROUNDHOGS. NOT CATS. NOT RATS. NOT! FERRETS! SQUIRRELS!”
She didn’t understand. No human ever understands. Except Doreen. Even so, when I leaped to the ground, she ran away. Todd followed quickly after, whimpering into his hands.
One of Miranda’s companions was laughing. I’d seen him around before: a slim, quick fella by the name of Puffin Furslide.
“Shut it, Puffin,” said Miranda, rolling to her feet. She ambled in my direction. “You grabbed me. Nobody grabs me.”
“She saved you, Miranda,” Puffin said. “That human was gonna straight-down paw-stomp you.”
Miranda cast a dark glare at her companion, and an even darker one at me.
“Big Daddy Spud is going to hear about this,” she said. “And then you’ll be in sticky sap.”
“I hope he does,” I said. “That’s all I was twitching for. Tell him I’d like a meeting. We have nuts to sort of mutual interest.”
Miranda snarled and scampered away. Her two companions moved to do the same, but I grabbed them both by the tails. “And you two squeaks…when she cracks open the story, make sure the fruit of it is the truth.”
They nodded. Puffin even said “Yes, ma’am,” which I took to be a good sign.
I let them go, and scampered back to the trees. I had work to do. Big Daddy would be in touch, and that meant I had a family meeting to plan.
ANA SOFÍA
When Ana Sofía walked to Union Junior High the next day, a couple of girls were waiting out front.
“Ana Sofía!” shouted Lucy Tang—the petite seventh grader with short black hair. She looked annoyed, so Ana Sofía guessed Lucy had probably been shouting her name for a while and getting more and more irritated that Ana Sofía hadn’t answered. As if she’d been ignoring her on purpose. Ana Sofía rolled her eyes and briefly considered the on-purpose ignoring after all.
Lucy said something else Ana Sofía didn’t catch, and she gave up and walked closer.
“What?” asked Ana Sofía.
Lucy glared.55 “My brother, Vin. Do you know him? He’s a LARPer, and he said you know the Jersey Ghost. He said it saved you. Is that true?”
“Well…kinda…”
The girls stood there, hugging their textbooks to their chests, mascaraed eyes blinking. Usually people didn’t stare at Ana Sofía. Usually people pretended she wasn’t there at all. In her better moods, when she was up for some benefit-of-the-doubting, she supposed most people weren’t trying to be mean. They probably thought it was more polite to ignore the deaf girl than to engage in a conversation that might turn awkward if she couldn’t understand them.
Ana Sofía glared. “What?”
“The Somebodies want the details,” said Lucy’s redheaded friend. “Tell us about it.”
Ana Sofía glared harder. They didn’t budge. Usually two glares did it.56 People, she’d learned, hate awkwardness more than hatred itself. But today these girls cared more about the Jersey Ghost than an awkward run-in with the deaf girl.
So she gave in and told them about how Squirrel Girl had saved her last night. As briefly as possible. And she thought that would be the end of it.
By the time she left second-period Pre-Calculus, a slightly larger group of students was waiting outside her classroom door.
“Can you tell us about it?” they asked.
Ana Sofía glared. They didn’t budge. She sighed and gave in quicker this time, telling the story and expanding it just a bit more.
After third-period US History, there wasn’t just a larger group waiting. The group was waiting. The Somebodies themselves.
“So…what happened?” asked Heidi, twirling a lock of blond hair around her index finger.
Ana Sofía swallowed, only her throat was too dry. She definitely didn’t care what the Somebodies thought of her. Or anybodies for that matter. And yet, all their expectant eyes on her, their gum-chewing mouths closed, their attention like a spotlight…
“Well…I was in the park last night, just walking home….”
And she told the story. The whole story this time, excluding Doreen, of course. Doreen hadn’t been there, after all. It’d been a stranger with a tail and heroic intentions.
As Ana Sofía spoke, she felt the tightness in her chest loosen; her spine seemed to lengthen. A crowd was gathered in the hallway, eyes on her. Usually her hearing aids turned the constant background noise of school into a fretful buzzing inside her brain. But now, silence. Total rapt attention.
“And then she picked me up as if I weighed nothing, placed me on her shoulders, and leaped. So fast, so high, for a moment, I thought we were flying. The ground was a blur far below. The stars seemed close enough to grab. There in midair I asked her, ‘Who are you?’ And she smiled and said, ‘Who, me? Why, I’m Squirrel Girl.’”
Squirrel Girl…Squirrel Girl…She could see lips repeating the name with wonder and excitement.
Except for the Somebodies. They looked at one another and shrugged.
Ike, a boy with brown hair sweeping across his forehead, was talking for a bit before Ana Sofía looked at him, so she didn’t catch it all, but at the end he maybe said, “A girl who looks like a squirrel?”
Jude, a boy with even sweepier hair, said something else to the group, but by the time she’d looked at him, she’d missed too much of it to guess the rest.
Yanni, the boy with sweepiest hair, was looking right at her when he said, “She sounds kinda lame.”
“‘Lame’ is an ableist term,” Ana Sofía muttered.
“What?” asked Heidi.
“Nothing,” said Ana Sofía. She could feel a powerful glare coming on like some people felt the approach of a migraine.
“Okay, you can go now,” said Heidi.
The crowd dispersed. Ana Sofía exhaled. But someone remained. Straight dark hair almost to his shoulders.
Vin Tang. His desk had been next to hers in fifth grade. Or was it sixth? They’d been on the same Math Heroes team. And he used to fold origami horses and leave them on her chair. She’d been certain he’d forgotten about her, until last night when he’d called her by name. For sure he’d forgotten about those little paper horses, but she still used one as a bookmark.
He waved to get her attention. “Hey. Hi.” He smiled, then looked at his feet, then back at her again.
“Hey, Vin.”
“Would you come with me? I want to show you something.”
He led her away from the cafeteria to the quiet back hallway by the music room. Suddenly there before her were the dozen characters who’d stuck her in a pillory just last night.
Her stomach turned cold. She started to back away.
“Wait,” said Vin.
Two others unrolled a ten-foot parchment and held it up like a banner. In fancy, inky calligraphy were the huge words:
We Begeth Your Forgiveness
“Um…you’re sorry?” asked Ana Sofía.
Vin shrugged. “Yes, but we’re sorry…”
Ana Sofía couldn’t make out the last part. She shook her head. “You’re sorry what?”
“We’re sorry,” Vin said, then finger-spelled the word medievally.
Ana Sofía couldn’t help smiling. Vin smiled back, and she understood both that he was aware that the LARPer stuff could get a little silly and that he still loved it. She could respect that.
“You, fair Ana Sofía, are her pard, and we honor you,” said the baron, bowing. He looked much skinnier without his cape and all.
“I’m her pard?” Ana Sofía asked,
wrinkling her nose. “How did that even become a thing?”57
“No, bard,” said the baron. “You tell her story. What power you hold!” He lifted a fist to the ceiling and shook it as if consumed with the idea of fabulous bardish power. “She is fierce and cunning, and we swear we will follow no other liege but…” He raised an eyebrow, waiting for Ana Sofía’s permission to name her.
“Squirrel Girl?” said Ana Sofía.
They all nodded, mumbling things to one another that she didn’t catch, but their faces seemed pleased.
“Please, Lady Ana Sofía, gift her this from us.” Vin handed Ana Sofía a leather belt. It looked handcrafted and resembled the ones in their LARPer costumes, but this had several utility pouches attached all the way around. And he’d worked images of acorns into the leather.
“You know what, she’s gonna love this.” Ana Sofía had an idea. “I wish you had your swords.”
In an instant, one pulled a sword out of her duffel bag and handed it to her. Ana Sofía could see now that the blade was dull, though it was heavy. A prop more than a weapon, but a prop that could definitely clunk someone pretty hard on the head.
“Kneel,” Ana Sofía said grandly.
All dozen dropped gratefully to a knee. One by one she tapped their shoulders with the sword tip.
“I dub you, each of you, a…uh…a Squirrel Scout, the very first Squirrel Scouts! Sworn to uphold justice, defend the weak, inspire the strong, and be valiant servants to our hero: Squirrel Girl!”
They lifted their fists into the air and repeated, “Squirrel Girl!”
Ana Sofía tried very hard not to laugh out loud. And yet at the same time she almost felt like crying. Like, happy crying. Was that a thing? ’Cause Ana Sofía was starting to believe that might be a thing. This thing—all things, frankly—had been easier before Doreen, when Shady Oaks was a hopeless mess and there was nothing ever to look forward to.