Just Call Me Superhero Read Online Free PDF

squeeze her way to the table between the legs of chairs and Janne’s wheelchair. I leaned forward to hide my face. I was afraid she might drop the tray on my head otherwise. She kept her eyes trained on the ice cream and didn’t notice anything until she had safely set down the last bowl on the wobbly table and then looked up.
    I wondered whether the camera had captured everything. The interested glance at Marlon. The annoyed jealous look at Janne. The puzzled look at Richard. The disgusted look at Kevin and Friedrich, who was still talking nonstop about his innards.
    And then the look at me.
    She had no way of knowing I had been watching her the whole time. That behind my sunglasses I was looking directly into her suddenly wide eyes. She tripped over Janne’s wheelchair and back to the counter. The others reached out their hands for their ice cream bowls and avoided looking at me. Even Janne stared into her ice cream with embarrassment.
    “This could be a great film,” said Richard after a pause. And then to me: “You’ll be the star.”
    “I’ve already been the star once, thanks,” I said.
    Janne’s face turned to me. For minutes on end, longer than ever before. I stared at my hands so as not to frighten her.
    “What happened to the dog?” she asked.
    “Shot,” I said.
    “And the owner went to jail?”
    “No,” I said. “He got a suspended sentence.”
    “And what have you been doing since then?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “I haven’t been home for long.”
    “How long?” asked Marlon.
    “Maybe half a year. Or a bit more. After the operations I was in a rehab center for a while.”
    “That’s a long time,” said Janne, running her hand pensively over her knee. She had very thin fingers. I wanted to touch her hand. She was probably cold. A ring would look beautiful on one of those long fingers, I thought, a heavy ring with a big stone, the kind Claudia liked to wear. Except they didn’t suit her because she had short, fat fingers.
    I imagined putting one of Claudia’s rings onto Janne’s finger.
    “Do you play piano?” I asked.
    She ignored the question.
    “I play the flute,” said Friedrich.

 
    I have no idea why I rang my own doorbell. Maybe just to hear the shrill sound from outside. Nobody was there anyway. I had a key in my pocket; I’d been a latchkey kid since elementary school and it was something I was genuinely thankful to Claudia for.
    The door opened and standing there was Johanna.
    Life is full of coincidences, I thought ruefully. I had just been thinking about Johanna on the lawn earlier. And I hadn’t thought of her for years. Now here she was in front of me. I pulled my hat further down my face and straightened my sunglasses.
    “You’ve gotten so tall,” she exhaled.
    I let my gaze drop. “And you’ve gotten so pregnant.”
    She blushed. It looked as if she had swallowed a basketball. I looked farther down: her dress was short like back then, her kneesocks striped. She looked like an over-ripened Pippi Longstocking. She’d been studying something social-minded for years, if I remembered correctly.
    “Can I come in?” I asked.
    She stepped to the side. “It’s your home after all.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Frau Hermann’s not well.”
    I managed for a moment to pry my gaze away from her belly.
    “Is it serious?”
    She didn’t answer.
    It was strange that today of all days I had remembered our tongues entwining. What could bring a woman in her early twenties to kiss a fifteen-year-old? I mean, sure, I came across as older, she’d said so herself afterwards. I had not forgotten the way she looked at me that time.
    I pushed past her.
    “How are you?” she asked my back.
    “You can see for yourself.”
    “There’s worse things,” she mumbled. “You shouldn’t get too worked up about it.”
    “Never. It’s just a face.”

 
    F or the next meeting the guru had asked us to come back to the meditation room at the family services center.