Solving Mysteries

Story by Jaelle Tieche

| WHAT IF? CONTEST

Hello, my name is Jenna, and I’m going to tell you about how I became a superhero named Super Jay and gained powers. It all started with a normal morning.

“It’s time to wake up, the bus leaves in 10 minutes,” my mom says, flustered. 

“I’m coming!” I say, grabbing clothes off the floor.

“Here's your lunch,” Mom says as she shoves my lunch into the backpack.

I run to the bus as fast as I can, but don’t make it, so I have to walk to school. 

“Okay, at 5 o’clock this Wednesday at the festival, I will explode the bomb,” the Mayor says quietly on the phone. 

I overhear the conversation while coming around the corner. “Oh shoot, I have to hide and run so they don’t know I heard them.”

I run the other way as fast as I can to school and contemplate what I should do. I sit in school all day and can't focus because of what I heard. 

“Rachel, something really weird happened on the way to school,” I tell Rachel. 

“What happened, Jenna?” Rachel says anxiously, waiting for a response.

“I overheard the Mayor saying he would explode a bomb next week,” I say worriedly.

“What should we do? We have to stop him!” Rachel says anxiously.

We decide to walk home to my house and figure out what we should do. On the way home we enter a cold, dark alley and find a small white dog running super fast towards us.

“Look, it's a dog!” I say, thrilled. 

“OMG! It’s so cute, but it looks lost,” Rachel pointed out.

“We should bring it to my house.”

While I was picking the dog up to bring him home, it scratched me so hard it made me bleed. The dog quickly ran away right after. 

“OUCH!” I screamed in pain.

“Are you okay?” Rachel asked, worried.

“I feel weird and dizzy. What just happened?” 

We walked all the way home, and Rachel got a band-aid for me to help my scratch. I didn’t feel quite right but still went on with my day. 

The next morning, I had to get up really early to go to my weekend track practice. We were recording mile times and seeing if we had improved from last month's recordings. My last mile time was 7.32. The coach called the signal to start our mile; I was off and felt like I was going extremely fast, but it wasn’t hard.

“And 4.45 is Jenna's mile time,” the coach yelled.

“What?” I said, confused, as I had never gotten even close to such a fast time.

“How did I do that? It felt so easy and weird,” I murmured quietly to myself. 

After track practice, I told my mom how I got 4.45 as my mile time and how I had never gone even close to that fast before. I was pondering in my mind how I could have run so fast. 

“Maybe it was the pre-workout shake you had this morning before practice,” my mom suggested.

“Or maybe it was the good night’s sleep I had last night,” I said. 

I wondered to myself if last night's sleep had affected me, but a thought suddenly hit. I thought to myself, I wonder why I had such a deep sleep, and then I remembered. 

“Mom! It was the dog! When it scratched me, it gave me powers, which is why I ran so fast,” I yelled in excitement. I had solved the mystery!

“Now you're just being crazy, Jenna,” Mom said. 

I went through the whole rest of my day wondering what had happened. I decided to call my friend and fill her in, while hopefully getting some advice.

“That’s crazy, Jenna,” Rachel exclaimed. 

“Well, what should I do?” I thought out loud.

“Let's go try and find the dog. Maybe he could help us with the mayor issue.”

“Good idea, Rachel.” 

Rachel and I went down the same alley the dog had scratched me in to see if the dog was there. We found him lying on the cold, wet ground, but this time he was calm and tired. We noticed that we could see his ribs and gave him some food. 

“Here you go,” Rachel said, handing him some leftover hamburger. 

“We should take him home. He seems more calm now,” I said. 

We decided to bring the dog home and named him Captain Jack, but called him Captain J as a nickname. Once Rachel and I got to my house, we snuck him into my bedroom.  

“Let’s think of a plan on how to stop Mayor John from exploding our town,” Rachel said. 

“Well, maybe Captain J can help us, and all of us together can stop him!” I exclaimed.

“We have to think of names for us so we can go undercover and no one will know who we are,” Rachel thought. 

“Super Jay, that’s it, that's my superhero name,” I said.

“Now that you have superpowers and can run super fast and Captain J can run super fast we are an inseparable and unbeatable group,” Rachel pointed out. 

Me, Captain J, and Rachel came up with a plan with Captain J and Rachel as the sidekick and distracter.

“At 12 o'clock this Wednesday, we will make our way to the Mayor's private house,” I said. 

We came up with a plan that we would distract the Mayor's assistant and say that we were here to talk about secret stuff about this Wednesday. Then we would find the bombs and split up and deactivate them so they wouldn’t set off. 

“How are we gonna know where the bombs are?” Rachel pondered.

“I’m not sure, but I have a few places in mind. It could be under his desk, under chairs, or on roofs,” I remarked. 

Over the next three days, Rachel, Captain J, and I got all the materials we needed to pull the plan off and save our town. We didn’t tell anyone else because we wanted to stay undercover. We spent many hours strengthening our plan, then Wednesday morning came around. 

“Today’s the day, we couldn’t be more prepared,” I announced to Rachel and Captain J.

“Okay it's 11 o’clock right now and we need to make our way to his private house by 11:30 and be there by 12,” Rachel exclaimed.

We biked all the way to his house and got undercover in work clothes. 

“What brings you here today?” the guards said sternly. 

“We are here for a meeting about the plans for today,” I said. 

“Okay you are welcome in, the waiting room is down the hall.”

We all made our way slowly, looking everywhere for any signs of a bomb canister. Once we got to the waiting room, we snuck around and waited at the corner until the Mayor left his room.

“There he is. Everyone take cover, he's leaving his room,” I said quietly. 

The Mayor left and all signs were clear so we snuck into his room. We looked under his chair.

“Any luck, Rachel?” I said.

“What is Captain J sniffing?” Rachel said, confused.

“I think he can smell the bomb, go check in the bookshelf he is closest to.”

“Here it is!”

“Quick, deactivate it, the Mayor could be back any minute.” 

“What are you girls doing?” the Mayor said abruptly, walking back in his office. 

“Nothing, we are just cleaning your office,” I said, trying to hide Rachel so she could deactivate it. 

Rachel quickly found the bomb and deactivated it, but the Mayor asked Rachel what she was touching. She pulled out a random book and made up an excuse, saying the page was torn and that she was fixing it. 

“Well, thank you girls, I shouldn’t have bothered you,” the Mayor said gratefully. 

We pretended to clean and then went back to our house. 

“Good job, Rachel, you did it!” I exclaimed. 

“We did it, thanks to you and Captain J,” Rachel proudly said. 

We went on with the rest of the day, then we left for the yearly festival, which started at 4:30. Rachel, Captain J, and I made our way to the festival, making sure everything went as planned. 

“Thank you everyone for coming,” the Mayor told the crowd.

“We have a special performance from the shining stars orchestra tonight,” the Mayor's assistant added. 

Once the orchestra ended, I checked my watch. It was 4:58. Under the piano I saw something. Then it hit me: there was another bomb. I whispered to Rachel, “There’s another bomb! We have to tell everyone right now.”

“Run, run, bomb, run, run!” I screamed to everyone.  

“AHHHHHH!” the crowd screamed. 

Everyone ran and got out of the festival, and then there was a big boom. 

“That was a close one,” I said, out of breath from running. 

The cops arrested the Mayor and the next day I, Super Jay, was all over the world, on newspapers, magazines, and television shows. I even got an award from the police department thanking me for my bravery. And that’s it: that’s how I became Super Jay and saved the town.