Again, my thanks to those who reviewed. Before I present Chapter 9, I have a favor to ask of you. If you can think of a suitable superhero name for Aisling, could you please let me know by way of review or e-mail? I'm having trouble thinking up a good one.

Dear Joaquin,

I'm sitting in math class right now. The first time I walked into this classroom, I got the idea that I would hate it, and I do. I mean, I've always hated math, and it's even worse because the teacher is a big prude. She has a long nose and glasses on a chain and she always wears these really tragic dresses that look like the ones my grandma used to wear when she came over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner or whatever. If she wasn't so mean (the teacher, not my grandma), I would probably feel sorry for her.

But, anyway, all of my other classes are fine. At first, the school had me stuck in all of these remedial classes. It took the teachers a couple of days to figure out that I wasn't really that stupid, so I got put in regular English and regular Spanish, but I couldn't go to the normal science class because to be there you have to be in normal algebra. Since I don't know anything about math, the teacher of the science class for morons wouldn't move me up, but after I got full marks on a bunch of assignments and quizzes, she asked me if I wanted to take a placement test, and I said yes. I took the test, and it was on a bunch of stuff that I learned in elementary school, so I got full marks on that too. The teacher was so impressed that she decided that I didn't belong in her class or the class called "Science 9", and instead had me moved into a Biology class, which is normally only for tenth graders. It's kind of hard but I think it's fun. The teacher is really cool, and all of the stuff we learn is interesting. I'm doing good in Spanish, thanks to everything you taught me, P.E. is okay, and art is pretty neat.

I can't decide if my favorite class is English or Biology. After about a week in the regular English 9 class, the teacher asked me if I was interested in being part of the honors class, and I said yes to that too. They had me write an essay about why I wanted to be in the higher class, and I guess it was good enough, because they let me in. Even though it's an honors class, it's pretty easy right now because we're studying A Tale of Two Cities and I've already read it. Next we're going to be studying The Scarlet Letter, and I've already read that too.

On my third day at this school, I found a great way to make money. I'll tell you all about it later. I have a huge boodle in my sock drawer, and Mom has no idea.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about something funny that happened on the first day I spent with Mom. After she brought us to her apartment, she said that Janie and I could take a bath, and we did. We had fun splashing each other and playing with the soap bubbles. I washed my hair three times to get all of the grime out, and did the same for Janie. Then we got out and dried ourselves and came out of the bathroom wrapped in towels, because we didn't want to put our icky clothes on again and Mom had said that she would let us wear some of hers. When she came out of her bedroom with the clothes in her arms, she took a look at me and said, "I thought your hair was brown!" I guess my hair had been dirtier than I'd thought. I had nearly forgotten that my hair is supposed to be blonde. The look on her face when she said that made me laugh.

I like living with Mom. I stopped thinking of her as "Miss Stephanie" after a few days of staying with her. She's really nice, and she's a good cook. We do have to do chores around the apartment, but they're not bad. Is living with Edna Mode any fun? I've heard that she's kind of eccentric.

Oh, the bell's about to ring. I guess I'll wrap this up.

Love from Aisling

Aisling signed her name with a little flourish, then folded up the letter and slipped it into a paper folder. She watched the second hand on the clock jolt tediously. Eighteen more seconds.

She took out her small, patent leather assignment book and wrote down the homework, even though she knew she wouldn't do it. She looked over the assignments from the other classes. There were pages to read for English, but she didn't have to read them because she had already read A Tale of Two Cities several times. There was an anatomical sketch to work on for Biology; that could be difficult. No homework for art, and of course none for P.E., but for Spanish she had to write a page-long composition about an element of Spanish culture.

The bell rang, and every person seemed more anxious than the next to get out of the classroom. Aisling pushed with the rest, and hurriedly made her way to her locker. She put on her coat and gloves, collected her books, and then went outside to greet her clients.

They were standing about halfway down the school's front steps, on the right side, as they did every day. Before approaching them, she took out her paper folder and a pencil. She smiled as she strode up to the knot of boys that made up her clientele.

"So, what do you have for me today?" she asked of the eleven boys who clustered around her as she approached them.

"An essay about why we study languages. Three pages long," one said.

"These questions for science," another said, handing her a sheet of paper.

"A two-paragraph analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird," a third said, and one-by-one the boys listed their assignments.

Aisling wrote all of this down, and noted the names of the clients by their respective assignments. She didn't need to ask any names, as all eleven of the boys were regular customers of hers. After scribbling down the first ten, she turned to face the eleventh, who said,

"Oh, I'm supposed to do a one-page composition about an inventor."

"Which one?" she asked, pencil poised above her notepaper.

"Any inventor. Just pick a random one."

Aisling finished writing, folded up her piece of paper, put it in her coat pocket, and nodded to herself. "Who's paying in advance?" she asked, holding out her gloved hand. Five of the assembled boys pulled bills from their pockets, smoothed them out, and handed them over. Aisling took the bills and flipped through them. There were two twenty-dollar bills, four five-dollar bills, and two ten-dollar bills---perfect. She pocketed the money, gave a little wave to her clients, and took her leave.

She walked very quickly, with her hands shoved far down into the pockets of her coat. It was the middle of December, very close to the start of Christmas vacation, and the air was bitterly cold. By the time she reached the elementary school down the street, she felt as though her nose was going to fall off.

She gently pushed through the crowd of young children that were milling around in front of the school, and walked down the cheerfully painted and papered hallways of the school until she reached the classroom that had "1C" painted very conspicuously above its door. She stopped inside the doorframe, and beneath the chaos of paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling she saw her beloved Bella-Jane sitting at her desk, putting the final details on a drawing. The teacher looked up from her own desk and smiled as Aisling came in.

"Hello, Ashley," the teacher said pleasantly.

"Hello," Aisling said, smiling back, not bothering to correct the teacher. People so often mistook her name to be "Ashley" that she had ceased to care many years prior. She walked up behind Bell-Bell and tugged at her hair playfully.

"Come on, Bell-Bell, get your books."

Bella-Jane didn't say anything in response, but she obligingly stowed her crayons and paper away in her desk, gathered up her floppy, gaudily-colored workbooks, and put them into the backpack that Mom had supplied her with. She retrieved her lunchbox and gloves and coat, and the two left the school, waving good-bye to the teacher on the way out.

The walk home was short, and they entertained each other with the kind of chatter that sisterly people share. Bella-Jane told Aisling about sitting in a circle with the other first-graders in her class and talking about fear, and Aisling told Bella-Jane everything that she had learned about butterflies in her biology class that day.

By the time they reached their apartment complex, they were both thoroughly chilled. Aisling savored the warmth of the lobby for a few seconds after stepping through the door, and then went up to the main desk to get the mail.

"Number sixteen," the lady behind the counter said, no longer needing to ask in which flat Aisling lived, and she handed over a thick stack of envelopes. "Oh, and this came too," the secretary said, placing a medium-sized cardboard box onto the counter. Aisling gave the letters to Janie and picked up the box, and was surprised to find that it was very light. She gave it a shake, but could only hear a muffled rustling sound. It sounded like fabric; perhaps Mom had ordered some clothes from a catalog.

They tromped up the three flights of stairs that led up to their fourth-floor flat, and Aisling opened the door with the key that she always wore on a piece of twine around her neck. Bella-Jane shed her backpack, coat, and gloves, then sat at the kitchen table to flip through the mail. She passed quickly over the bills, briefly examined the covers of the magazines, and then found something that actually interested her.

"Vasilisa sent me a letter!" she said, grinning open-mouthed at Aisling as she held up the envelope that their friend had decorated with rainbow-hued fish. Aisling smiled back and set the box on the table. Bella-Jane ran off to the room that they shared. Aisling wondered briefly if she should open the package, but decided not to.

After treating herself to a slice of the cake that stood under a glass dome on the kitchen counter, Aisling got her typewriter off of the shelf of the hall closet and settled down at the kitchen table to start on the assignments that the boys had given her. She remembered that Justin, Hugh, Alexander, Mario, and Michael had paid her in advance, so their assignments were her first priority. None of the tasks that the boys had her perform were ever very difficult—they all seemed to have trouble with writing, which was one of her strongest subjects, and it was a great help to her that she was thoroughly versed in all of the classics. As she was looking over the list, the phone began to trill, and she knew that it was Mom.

"Hello?" she said as she picked up the receiver

"Hi, Doll. Is everything alright over there?" It was indeed the woman she called Mom. It couldn't have been anyone else, because Mom always called at ten minutes after three to see if they were home.

"Yeah, we just got home."

"Did you pick up the mail?"

"Yup. Janie got a letter from our friend in Metroville, and we got a package."

"Oh! I think I know what that is! Did you open it?"

"Uh, no," Aisling answered, a bit confused as to what Mom sounded so excited about.

"Oh, good. Don't open it until I get home, okay?"

"Okay. Bye Mom."

"Bye-bye, Sweetie."

Aisling hung up the phone and resettled herself to commence her work. Doing this meant sacrificing every weekday afternoon except Friday, but it was a fabulous source of income. Hugh's assignment, the analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird, was finished in less than twenty minutes. Mario's assignment, a brief explanation of planetary motion, was finished in even less time. Before five fifteen, when Mom usually got home, she had finished not only the five assignments for the boys who had paid in advance, four of the others as well. The only ones left were the essay about the purpose of studying languages and the paragraph about the inventor. Both required a bit of research, and she knew that she could go to the library that very evening on the excuse of needing to do research for her Spanish homework. Beaming with self-satisfaction, she puffed on the freshly typed assignments to make the ink dry, then stashed them in her folder. Almost as if on cue, Mom walked into the apartment just as Aisling was closing the door of the closet after putting the typewriter away. Hearing the door slam, Bella-Jane burst out of the bedroom where she had been reading for the two hours that Aisling had been working.

"Hey, Babe!" Mom said happily as she scooped Janie into her arms and hugged her. "Did you have a good day?"

"Mm-hmm," Janie said as she was set down again. Mom turned to Aisling.

"How 'bout you?" Aisling shrugged her shoulders.

"It was all the same as usual," she said. "What about you?"

"It was kind of busy, but it wasn't too bad. Now, let's get to this package here," she flung her long coat over the back of a chair and peeled off her gloves. "Go ahead and open it."

Aisling pulled the cardboard package toward herself, and noticed for the first time that it was addressed to her and not to Mom. She gave it another shake as Bella-Jane clambered onto a chair to get a better view of the object of excitement. Aisling picked up the pen that was lying on the table and ripped a groove in the packaging tape, then pried the box open. What she saw was a layer of tissue paper and a folded letter. She picked up the letter, unfolded it, and read it out loud:

"To Miss Aisling Forrester, alias undeclared. Main contents constructed of fabric derived from material designed to never inhibit movements. Accessories constructed of chemically enhanced rubber. Color selected to compliment blonde hair, brown eyes. Monogram absent. All contents machine-washable."

Aisling wrinkled her forehead, still confused. "I don't get it," she said, looking to Mom for a help. Mom just grinned cryptically and said,

"It is what I thought it was."

Aisling, wanting to get to the bottom of the situation, dug her hand into the box, and underneath the tissue paper, she felt her fingers touch cloth. She clutched at the piece of cloth and pulled it out, and when she first glimpsed the thing it finally occurred to her what the thing was.

"Oh, it's—" she exclaimed as she drew the thing out.

"It's your new super-suit!"