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Cass watches Dad’s hands very carefully, holding out her own finger and closing one eye, trying to make sure he is matching the top of the poster to the straight line of the ceiling.
“Okay,” she finally says. “Right there.”
He steps back after he’s taped it and comes to rest a hand on her shoulder. “Does it look like you wanted?”
Cass beams. “It looks perfect. Everyone at the meeting is going to be very jealous.”
“That’s—Wait, the meeting?”
“Yes.” She lifts her chin. “The meeting of the Girl Fridays. We’re going to schedule one every other week after school: first when the new issue comes out so we can read it together and give our reactions, and then another two weeks after, when it’ll have had time to sink in so we can have a better discussion. I had the idea first, so I am the president.”
Her father looks down at her. He puts his hands in his pockets and pretends not to smile, but Cass can see. “And this is a…fan club?”
Cass pushes up her glasses. She crosses her arms. “Dad,” she says, very seriously, “this is a lifestyle.”
She saw other kids reading comics long before she tried them out herself. There was always a group that went to the newsstand together for the latest issue of Mr. Mysterious or Captain America, taking them out at recess or sitting with them on the street corners, even hiding them under the desk during class. (She’d had to keep herself from clearing her throat loudly to remind them that they were meant to be listening to the teacher.)
It wasn’t that she thought it was a thing only boys were allowed. She knows that there aren’t rules about what she’s supposed to like or do or be and what she isn’t; if she hadn't already realized that for herself, she’d be reminded by the memory of Mom raising her eyebrow mildly when Cassie had mentioned that her teacher only ever chose boys to be the line leader or to present when they did group work and when Cass asked why, the answer she got was that that there were certain students who were “better suited” to those jobs, and how that had changed after Mom was the one to bring her to her classroom the next day. Comics just never seemed that interesting to her - they all went to the library with Dad whenever they wanted so she always had as many books as she could read, and there wasn’t anything much special about the flimsy, brightly colored pamphlets with their silly storylines and dramatically written-out sound effects.
But then Karen Carlton came over to babysit while Mom and Dad had a date night, and when she was wrestling Annie and Ben into bed - well, wrestling Annie; Ben usually just got himself into his PJs, brushed his teeth, and read for fifteen minutes before turning out his light - Cass might have done a very tiny little bit of snooping. And in her bag, behind two kind of school-looking notebooks, there was Girl Friday issue #14.
She only got a chance to read the first few pages, where it goes from a normal day at school for average teenager Francie Day to Francie having to put on her mystical disguising deerstalker so she could investigate the latest mysterious happenings in Springville as Girl Friday. By the time Karen got down the stairs and exhaustedly told her that her extra half hour was up and it was bedtime for her too, Cass was sitting innocently on the other side of the room with a copy of Five Children and It - carefully turned right side up, of course, because Cass knows how not to get caught - and issue #14 was back just where it had been before.
The next day, she’d started searching through the newsstands and drugstores in the neighborhood until she had every issue. She never missed another one.
“—And that's how Francie realizes that her new neighbor, the friendly Dr. Crayshur, is actually the Creature Catcher, who's been luring all the animals in town into her basement to do experiments on them!"
Mom looks down at Cass and raises a soft eyebrow as they cross the street. It had been a little surprise when she turned up at the door instead of Dad when it was time to come home from playing with Nancy Freeman, but a nice surprise. She'd been able to tell Mom all about how the teacher hadn't done anything when Harry Grady was pulling on Nancy's braids, so Cass had checked out a library book under his name and then made sure not to return it on time; everyone know that Miss Weathers in the library was the nicest person in the school until you didn't treat her books right. Even after debating with Mom about whether that had been the right choice for how to do things - Mom would probably call it a lecture, but Cass is actually an expert on Mom's real lectures - there was still plenty of time to fill her in on the plot of issue #20, which had just been released two days ago.
"Well," Mom says thoughtfully, "I suppose one can't fault her investigative skills. But I do wonder, darling, if you might turn your devotion to someone else - someone real, perhaps?"
The idea almost stops Cass's feet. "Like who?" she demands.
"Oh, there's Mrs. Roosevelt, for example, or the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, or Lucille Ball, or Althea Gibson, or even your aunt Angie - it's taken quite a lot of hard work for her to get to the place that she is today."
While she's thinking, Cass squints at Mom's hand where it's wrapped around hers, her deep pink polish shiny, her grip firm enough to hold on tight and safe without hurting. Then she says slowly, "Well, I guess I can be interested in them too. But it isn't as if they have comic books written about them, you know."
"True enough, although I'm certain your father could draw some for you if you wanted. But then how about Captain America? After all, he was a real hero during the war, and there are certainly enough comic books about him.
This time, Cassie doesn't even need to think. "Mom. Captain America is boring. And everyone knows that none of his best stuff could ever be real."
There was never a day when Mom's office building was really empty, but Saturday was probably the closest it came. They'd gone over and had dinner at their usual table in the kitchen because Mom couldn't get home, Cass mostly talking about what might happen in issue #23 coming out soon, and then Mom wanted Dad's help with some work, so Cass and Ben and Annie got to have some fun, running around in the downstairs gym and coloring on a million sheets of paper while Mom's secretary Maria watched them.
Even when it got late and Annie and Ben started falling asleep, Cass had been sure she could stay awake, reading by herself until it was time to go home. She was sure she was awake - really! - except that she did get a little startled and made a "huh?!" sound when Dad lifted her out of the chair. Her head dropped back against his neck as he carried her in one arm, Annie in the other, out of the office while Mom, holding Ben, said good night to Maria and locked up.
No one talks most of the way back to the car, and Cass would probably have actually fallen asleep, except that suddenly Mom says, so quiet that Cass almost doesn’t hear it through her drowsy, muffled brain, "Do you ever regret that none of the children know who you were and what you did, and that perhaps they never will?"
"What I did which time?" Cass can feel the even rise and fall of Dad's breathing, the rumble of his voice in her own body.
"Oh, either, I suppose. But certainly your slightly more believable - or at least verifiable - exploits to begin with.”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it,” Dad says after a minute. “Maybe I will talk about it someday, but I didn’t do any of it to be recognized or admired, even by them. Did you?”
Slowly Mom replies, “No, there was a need and I had the skills, and that’s been the story ever since. But it’s…I appreciate, sometimes, the way that the things I’ve done show them what they can do, that they see my work and even if they don’t understand it now, they get some sense of what it could mean for them, how open the possibilities of their own futures can be. It isn't the reason, precisely, but my life and choices have cleared a path for them, or at least let them see that the path is there. ”
Dad makes an understanding sort of sound. His footsteps pause for a moment, and Cass knows that he’s letting Mom go first through the door. “For my part, I guess I think about how I’ve made the world better for them. And maybe they won't know exactly how or that I was the one doing it, maybe they won't realize for a second that things might have been different otherwise, but it’s enough for me to have that, just to remember that for myself.”
“Even if they never know about any of it - Azzano, or New York, or, of course, your most daring starring role?” Cass can hear the smile in Mom’s voice now, just before she begins to hum that song she sometimes sings when she’s teasing Dad - Cass remembers that the words are something about “strong and brave” and “carry the flag shore to shore,” but mostly she remembers that it makes Dad roll his eyes and smile too.
“Not sure you exactly have a place to talk with that, Betty,” Dad says, and the matching smile is in his voice already. Cass must be sleepier than she thought if her ears aren't working - Betty isn’t Mom’s name, after all.
“I neither participated in that, nor authorized it, as you well know,” Mom says in her boss voice, nudging Dad with her elbow. He laughs, readjusts Cass so she’s held tighter. Cass can hear Mom doing the same for Ben so she can find the keys which means that they must be getting close to the car. She’s glad. The car is new, and nice as these things go, but she just wants it to bring them home soon. She wants to be in her bed now, snuggled underneath her favorite blanket, with the door closed but the hall light on, feeling so cozy and safe…
“I suppose it’s a good thing that it doesn’t bother you,” Mom says from somewhere in the front seat. “Because I don’t know that even the truth would allow you to unseat a certain comic book detective in Cassandra’s mind.”
Dad laughs again. Even his voice seems to make a sort of shrug. “If I was going to be shown up by someone, Girl Friday is at least one I don’t mind losing to.”
In the back, her cheek against the window and Ben warm beside her, Cassie smiles. Finally starting to understand, she thinks. I’ll work on them more tomorrow.
She’ll figure out the exact details of that plan when she wakes up.