“Me? Nope. Not at all. Just…” She pointed to the apple.
“Are you attempting to bribe me, Doreen?” said Ms. Schweinbein. “Is a piece of fruit the going rate to get a teacher to pretend that your scattered homework is acceptable and that your constant interruptions in class are contributions rather than distractions?”
“No! Not bribe! I just—”
“Well, it won’t work,” said the teacher, tossing the apple at the garbage can.
Doreen deftly caught it before it went in, and stuffed it back into her bag.
“Geez, why’s she always such a downer?” Doreen mumbled, sliding into her desk.
“She’s cool to me,” said Janessa from the desk to her right.
“Me too,” said Vin from the desk to her left.
So it was just Doreen that Ms. Schweinbein despised? What in the heck was up with that?
“Where were you last night?” Janessa whispered.
“Huh?” said Doreen.
“We went out patrolling with her,” Vin whispered. “Ana Sofía sent a group text about it. You didn’t get it?”
“Oh! Yeah! I, uh, couldn’t make it,” said Doreen.
“Ended up being a bust anyway,” said Janessa. “It wasn’t a real villain, and Squirrel Girl just talked to her—”
As the late bell rang, the PA system played its familiar five chimes, indicating morning announcements.
“Good morning, Wolverines!” drawled the voice of Heidi, student body president and fellow Squirrel Scout. “Listen up, because we have a legit announcement today after the boring ones. Blah-blah track meet after school, blah-blah Kiwi Club fund-raiser tomorrow. Okay, okay, here’s the real scoop: Of course you know about the mall that’s going up on the border of Shady Oaks and Listless Pines?14 Well, the Chester Yard Mall’s PR guy sent us a letter, and they’re doing a contest. When the mall opens in two weeks, there will be an election to vote for the mall’s mascot—either a dog or a cat. All the schools in Listless Pines will be campaigning for the dog—”
“BOO! Listless Pines eats garbage!” another voice shouted.
“Shut up, Dennis. Okay, like I was saying. All the schools in Shady Oaks—”
“Including Union Junior. Go Wolverines!”
“SHUT UP, DENNIS! Anyway, we’ll be campaigning for the cat, and everyone knows cats are way better than dogs. So if the cat wins the vote for the Chester Yard Mall mascot, then the mall is going to pay for a pizza party for our entire school!”
In Doreen’s classroom, there was a collective gasp. In middle school, the words “pizza party” invoked reverence. After a moment of respectful silence, the class erupted with ebullient cheers.
“Listen, everybody, we have to win,” Heidi’s voice continued. “No way is Listless Pines going to get our pizza party. So, hey, all the school clubs, you need to come up with ways to advertise the opening of the mall to the entire community, convince them to come out on mall opening day in two weeks, and vote CAT!”
“GO CATS! GO WOLVERINES!”
“Shut UP, Dennis—” The PA speaker cut off.
The class boiled with excited chatter.
“Cats, huh? I like dogs okay, but if it’ll get us a pizza party…”
“I can’t wait for the new mall! I heard they’re going to have a Johnny Blaze Steak Buffet with a full Latverian mustard bar!”
“Listless Pines smells like sewage.”
“Oh man, pizza sounds sooo good right now. My mom made me drink a kale smoothie for breakfast.”
Doreen glanced up anxiously at the teacher, sure she would shush them all with an angry shout. But Ms. Schweinbein just leaned back against her desk, smiling in a satisfied sort of way.
“This is big news indeed!” said Ms. Schweinbein. “Cats and dogs. Which is better? Both, if you ask me, for both are royalty of the greatest kingdom on earth: Kingdom Animalia. But as pizza is at stake, we will naturally join Team Cat. For the rest of the period, split into groups and come up with ways to sway the mascot vote toward the cat.” She rubbed her hands together. “How I love a pizza party.”
Doreen felt her phone buzz and glanced down. Heidi had texted the Squirrel Scouts group. She saw Janessa and Vin take out their phones as well.
HEIDI
Okay Squirrel Scouts did you hear the news? Are you all psyched?
LUCY
Yeah math class is having a fit you’d think everyone was starving
DENNIS
I’m starving. All I ate today was a candy bar
HEIDI
Stop bragging about your stupid candy bar Dennis
ANA SOFÍA
This is the Squirrel Scout group text for official biz not sure a mall opening qualifies
HEIDI
Totes qualifies. Squirrel Scouts fight bad guys and now listless pines r da bad guys
VIN
Maybe we should listen to Ana Sofía on this?
ANTONIO
We got the announcement at the high school too skunk club is mega power in to take down listless pines
JACKSON
PIZZA PARTY!!!
HEIDI
Cats r best anyway so now we just have to get everyone in town to go vote for cats and we win
DENNIS
Shouldn’t I be on the pro dog side since I’m a dude?
JANESSA
What are you even talking about Dennis
DENNIS
Dogs are boys and cats are girls that’s just science
JANESSA
What are you even talking about Dennis
LANESSA
I for one am loving this, at last something to fight for!
DOREEN
Something to fight for? Isn’t justice enough?
LUCY
Haha Doreen ur hysterical
ANA SOFÍA
I didn’t realize everyone was so disgruntled
BARON
Ah yesteryear was a time fit for bard tales but of late the bards are silent as we noble warriors do naught but wait and watch
VIN
He means we don’t do anything exciting anymore
DUCHESS
Tis true. We long for the adventures we once knew
HEIDI
Yeah no offense to SG I still think she’s top drawer but it’s just like ever since she cleaned up shady oaks nothing exciting ever happens
JACKSON
PIZZA PARTY!!!
ANTONIO
PIZZA PARTY!!!
The whole conversation was making Doreen feel a bit ill, almost as if the four peanut butter sandwiches she’d had for breakfast hadn’t settled well.
“Doreen,” said Ms. Schweinbein, suddenly leaning over her desk. “I specifically said to join groups. In class. Not play phone games or google celebrity crushes.”
Doreen looked left and right at Vin and Janessa and others also on their phones, who the teacher didn’t seem to see. Or care about.
“But they are—” Doreen started.
“What?” said Ms. Schweinbein. “They are what? Hard at work? Not insulting their teacher?”15
Doreen’s tail throbbed. Her leg shook, tired of inaction. Everyone not on their phones had already formed groups and were in earnest discussion. She was group-less.
She hopped up and made her way to the back of the class.
“Hey, there!” she said. “I’ll join your group.”
“A little late for that,” said a boy.
Doreen turned to another.
“Hello, fellow middle schoolers. Sorry I’m late. What’s our plan for dominating this mysterious mall challenge—?”
“Um, we’ve already kinda formed our group?” said a girl.
“Nope,” came the preemptive denial from a member of the third group.
Doreen sat back at her desk.
Honestly, she thought, I’d rather face off with a Super Villain or a droid army than a middle school classroom.
She rubbed her head, feeling exposed without her brown-eared hoodie. Her han
d went to her waist for a pick-me-up snack of nuts, but of course she wasn’t wearing her utility belt at school. Here she was just Doreen Green, and right now, Doreen Green didn’t feel like much of anything at all.
Ana Sofía walked home from school slowly, her head so full of thoughts it felt almost too heavy for her neck. Something about the mall PR stunt smelled as rotten as Listless Pines on a sweltering hot day.16
Ana Sofía couldn’t decipher PA announcements, so her teacher had repeated the gist of it for her sake. But still. Classrooms had terrible acoustics plus endless background noise—chairs squeaking against the floor, whispered conversations, creaking desks—and her hearing aid amplified not only the teacher’s voice but every squeak, creak, and whisper as well. So whenever she was in class, her teachers wore a small microphone around their neck that transmitted what they said directly to her hearing aid. Even with that solution she usually didn’t catch everything. Like the name of the mall. What had the teacher called it?
Plus the mall was apparently offering to foot the bill for an enormous pizza party. She did the math:
Student body of Union Junior + Union High = approx. 3000
$10 per pizza
8 slices in each pizza, 4 per student17
Cost of pizza: approximately $15,000
Fifteen thousand! That seemed like a lot of money just for a little PR for a mall everyone was already excited about anyway. And it didn’t even include drinks! Though if it did, Ana Sofía hoped there’d be black cherry soda.
Ana Sofía’s dad was a construction manager on the mall, and he’d complained that the client was extremely particular about the details. He’d also mentioned that the client insisted on “no overtime!” so the workers got off before dark. According to her dad, that was very unusual.
She took out her phone and browsed the website for the construction company, and from there clicked a link to the mall’s homepage.
Chester Yard? That was random. Ana Sofía had lived in Shady Oaks her whole life and had never heard of any person or place called Chester Yard. And that was a weird motto, but whatever.
She scrolled down and for the first time saw the Chester Yard Mall’s symbol:
That looked extremely, uncomfortably, confusingly familiar. Take away the exclamation-pointed words, replace the happy face with a skull, and that was…that was…the Hydra logo, wasn’t it?
She texted the link to Doreen.
ANA SOFÍA
Does this look odd to you?
DOREEN
Yes why do they have DEALS! twice seems overkill
ANA SOFÍA
But it looks like something else right? It’s not just me?
DOREEN
They’re calling it chester yard mall? Boring. I’d name it something fun like marshMALLow. Or squirrel mall and nut emporium. Or just nut mall but then they’d probably think the stores sold nothing but nuts
ANA SOFÍA
Probably
DOREEN
Omigosh can you imagine a mall just for nuts I’m freaking out what a great idea
Are you coming over later?
ANA SOFÍA
I’ll text you
Doreen hadn’t noticed the similarities between the Chester Yard Mall symbol and another, more sinister symbol, so Ana Sofía tried to pluck out those niggling weeds of worry. After all, if an actual secret evil organization was behind the neighborhood mall, why would it make such an obvious allusion to itself with that similar symbol?
When Ana Sofía neared the Arcos Romero family’s brick bungalow on Amanat Street, she smelled a faint wisp of sulfur.18 Then as she reached the door, she felt the rumble of his tremendous voice. Felt it even before her hearing aids crackled with the sound, the vibrations of his deep bass traveling through the earth and up into her sock protectors.19
Then there he was in her kitchen—six foot six, blond hair, an empanada in each fist, going on about something while her mother Teresa laughed. Ana Sofía rolled her eyes. Her mom used to only make empanadas for birthdays, but recently, she found the time to do it whenever he stopped by, acting all like, Oh, these delicious meat-filled pockets of goodness? It’s no trouble at all, I make them constantly!20 For the family, she usually baked the empanadas, saying they had less fat, but for the god of thunder, she fried them. The whole house smelled of oil and crisp dough and wondrousness.
“Hola, Mami,” said Ana Sofía, leaning in for a cheek kiss. “Hey, Thor.”
“Ana Sofía Arcos Romero!” Thor boomed, turning to face her fully. He finished off his empanadas with a heroic chewing-and-swallowing speed.
“Gracias por la bendición de ser amigo de vuestra casa,” he said in heavily accented Spanish. “Vosotros siempre me daís la bienvenida.”
To Ana Sofía, Thor’s Spanish sounded like Shakespeare’s English—with words and verb tenses that seemed formal and old-timey to her, though she knew they were still common in places like Spain. He used uncommon words in both languages, so she was surprised she could follow him. But he also spoke clearly and with so much natural emotion and animation no matter who he was speaking to, she could read his lips more easily than those of just about anyone else she knew.
Teresa said something in Spanish that Ana Sofía didn’t totally catch, but no doubt was something like Es un verdadero encanto, este tipo, because she was always saying stuff like that. She smiled so huge at the robust Avenger, it made Ana Sofía blush.
Perhaps in past years, Ana Sofía had been the one secretly fangirling over the Norse god hero her family saw on Super Hero Action TV Live! news clips, where he was usually punching flying alien beasts and robot sharks and stuff. Not that she had ever admitted it out loud, but there was a slight possibility she did sorta, kinda use to daydream about, well, being buddies with Thor, like hanging out with him at a carnival, and he’d win her a stuffed frog at the strength game, and she’d introduce him to cotton candy, and they’d go to the face-painting booth and get matching Captain America masks and how they’d laugh and laugh!
But now that he was genuinely a friend of the family, it was Teresa who was all fangirl giggles. Honestly. He wasn’t that big a deal. Well, he was big—his head nearly touched their ceiling, and he wasn’t even wearing his helmet. Just a gray hoodie and jeans today, as if drab clothes could possibly make him inconspicuous. For one thing, there was his war hammer, Mjölnir, sitting there on the linoleum. Kinda hard to blend in with the populace with a giant war hammer. For another, he was so broad and thick and heavy the floor creaked beneath his size-twenty sneakers.
“Whatcha got today?” Ana Sofía asked.
He lifted the hem of his jeans to show her the star-spangled tops of his socks.
“Nice,” she said. She slipped off her boots, showing off her purple-and-blue socks knit with a pattern of cat faces.21
“Excellent!” said Thor.
“Socks,” Ana Sofía said with a sigh. “They’re hugs for the feet.”
“Allow me to sing the praises of socks,” said Thor.22 “Asgard, alas, has no socks.23 Nor Vanaheim. Therefore praise be to Asgardian goat leather. For it is highly odor absorbent.
“The elves of Alfheim make beautiful socks, but they are far too thin. And tiny! Woe betide any who claim the socks of Alfheim the best in the Nine Realms, for they are useless for naught but to prance upon carpets of grass! Svartalfheim’s socks are much like those of Alfheim, except they are evil. Also they only come in purple.
“The socks of Jotunheim serve in terms of size, but what do the Frost Giants care for foot warmth? Nothing, if one is to judge by the quality of their footwear! The socks of Nidavellir are too small and come preloaded with bits of whatever the dwarfish sock-smiths were eating during their labors—primarily yak meat, though oft a well-squashed elderberry.
“Niffleheim’s socks are made from the hair of the dead and are known to whisper in a most unsettling manner. And Muspelheim’s socks are constantly on fire.
“So you see, Midgard is the only place to go. And the fine kn
it foot sleeves of Teresa Romero are the best in Midgard.”24
Ana Sofía was pretty impressed with herself that she’d managed to catch all that he said. But then again, he had made similar sock speeches in the past.
“Oh! That reminds me,” said Teresa. “I knit you a new pair. Espérame.”
Ana Sofía rolled her eyes again. Thor rubbed his hands together eagerly as Teresa ran off to fetch them.
“Hey, so, Thor,” asked Ana Sofía as she picked out an empanada, “what do you know about Hydra?”
“Hydra? Nefarious fools, the lot!” he said. “’Twould do them good to spend a year mucking the stables of Valhalla, by Odin’s beard it would. I have heard them claim that like the ancient beasts from whence they stole their name, whenever one cuts off a head of Hydra, two more take its place. And so it would seem! Despite the many labors of my colleagues in the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. to shut down their sordid operations, Hydra still exists, thousands or perhaps millions of humans devoted to their cause of domination and control, ever moving about the planet, always with new branches of their sect concocting evil plans.”
Ana Sofía had broken open the empanada and was scooping out the meat filling with a spoon onto a plate. Meat and sauce were unacceptable to the girl whose primary diet consisted of plain crackers and cheese, but she couldn’t resist the flaky pastry empanada crust. She handed the plate of saucy meat to Thor like always.
“So what would you say is their main goal?” she asked, taking a bite of the empty empanada shell. It crunched and flaked and tasted of heaven.
He spooned all the meat filling into his mouth and swallowed before answering. “World domination.” He waved his hand dismissively, as if their lack of imagination was beneath his notice.
“Do you think they would open up a…branch or franchise or whatever…of Hydra here in Shady Oaks? And invest in local businesses? Possibly with secret nefarious goals in mind that have nothing to do with quality shopping choices?”
“Nothing is too dastardly for Hydra! Though to be honest, Hydra is no villain fit for Thor Odinson. Too many little people running around in green jumpers. Like ants they seem to me—tiny and yet annoying when they bite. I prefer smacking fiends of more titanic girth with Mjölnir.” He gave his hammer a friendly pat. “Like Frost Giants. And leviathans that have come ashore to test out evolution, that sort of thing. Unless Hydra puts on giant robot suits and marches on cities, I leave them to S.H.I.E.L.D. However, I believe the Winter Soldier is well-versed in Hydra’s hideous underbelly. Also—”