By Jaclyn Hark
Dee Dalsey was constantly surrounded by heroes. Big heroes. Little heroes. (One that could be either, depending on the need.) Heroes with super strength, super speed, or super senses. Not to mention the whole slew of heroes that could fly.
Yet none of them had her special power. Dee could be invisible.
Well… not really. But she came super close. The skill came in handy at times like this, as the heroes had insisted it was fine to finish cleaning the boardroom around them and their impromptu meeting.
“We will not negotiate with terrorists!” yelled a caped mountain of a man while flinging the contents of his coffee mug across the high-gloss executive table.
Dee sighed as she sidled up behind him, crouched to table-level, and swiped an absorbent rag over the spill. The mess disappeared and so did she, back to the wall and her cart of supplies.
“Who needs Antarctica, anyway?” he continued, seemingly unaware of both spill and cleanup.
A silky-looking super woman rolled her eyes. “Penguins. Seals. Earth’s entire connected ecosystem. But we should just let it get blown up. No biggie!”
As much as Dee liked penguins, she was more focused on the pile of crumbs collecting at another hero’s feet as he speed-ate (literally) a pile of sandwiches. Squatting low, she waddled to the pile and swept it into her dustpan.
This was pointless, she decided. She’d come back after they were done to assess the damage.
“Oh, Dee?”
Her boss’s voice startled her to a halt at the door’s threshold. She’d been spotted.
The spandex-clad stuperstud, who had more powers than she had pairs of socks, fixed her with that look—the one he used when making an enormous, potentially dangerous, and certainly inconvenient request.
“I forgot to mention the mayor is stopping by. You always keep the Quarters in top shape, but would you give it an extra once over? We want to make a good impression.” He smiled, and she wondered if sheer physical flawlessness should be considered one of his superpowers.
Then his request sunk in. That was it?
“No problem, boss!” She saluted, fingertips to forehead—then, feeling silly for doing so, she slipped out the door.
At least the rest of C.A.P.E Quarters really was in top shape.
She turned the bend and gasped. Taking in the scene, she suddenly felt a kinship with those poor Antarctic penguins also suffering a heinous attack on their land.
Big, greasy footprints… everywhere. Her head whipped left to right, looking for the offending feet.
There, at the other end of the hallway, an unfamiliar man meandered. He wore shabby overalls and the dirtiest boots she’d ever seen.
“You!” she barked. He stopped. He pointed at himself questioningly. “Yes, you. Who do you think you are, dragging dirt all over my clean carpet!”
“Oh! Sorry! Hi. I’m Henry. I’m–I’m new. I’m a mech—”
“Don’t move!” She pulled a yellow box of Saran Wrap from her cart (an essential tool for several cleaning hacks) and marched toward the new guy.
She dropped to her knees in front of him, forcibly lifted his left foot, and began wrapping it in plastic.
“What—”
“Even the hems of your pants are dirty!” She wrapped around and around up to his mid-shin, effectively containing his grime.
She ignored his expression of bemused curiosity as he watched her work. His head tilted and his fluffy brown hair fell to the sides of his highly raised eyebrows.
Mission accomplished, she stood and faced him like a normal person.
And… oh. Actually, he was kinda cute… in a second or third glance kind of way.
“Uh—hi,” she said, suddenly self-conscious. She offered a handshake in belated greeting. “I’m Dee. I’m the cleaning lady.”
“Ah. That tracks,” he said, with a straight face that broke almost immediately into a smile and a sideways glance at his own footprints.
“Was that a pun?”
“A bad, yet intended one, yes.”
She grinned her approval. Then she remembered. “The mayor is coming!”
Up his eyebrows went again. “He is?”
“Guard the hall! Don’t let anyone through till I get this cleaned up!” She sprinted away.
When she came back, lugging a massive carpet cleaner, she almost laughed to see him standing guard at the entrance. Arms crossed and a serious expression on his face, he didn’t seem to know it was impossible to look fierce while swaddled in sagging Saran Wrap.
“Thank you,” she said, shooting him a genuine smile. She plugged in her machine and flipped the switch.
Nothing happened.
“No! No, not today!” The thing had been on the fritz for weeks, but she’d been too lazy to undergo the laborious government approval process to purchase a new one. She frantically toggled the on and off switch.
A hesitant hand landed over hers.
“May I?” he asked.
She nodded, distracted by the warmth of his hand.
Then he knelt and popped open the lid that covered the spinnable cleaning brushes. In under a minute, he had taken half the thing apart, pulled several wads of… something… from between the gears and brushes, then re-assembled the machine.
“Try now.”
She flipped the switch and heard a beautiful whirring sound.
“Phew!” He wiped his forehead dramatically. “That was quite the brush with death.”
“Stop,” she said with both an eye roll and a giggle. “And… thanks.”
He shrugged. “No problem. That’s what I do. I fix things. Mostly jets. I was hired for the jets. But I’m happy to do carpet cleaners whenever needed.”
He smiled, and she noticed a smudge on his forehead that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. Something fluttered inside her chest.
As she scrubbed the grease from the carpet, he watched, as if waiting to see if there was more he could do to help. She shyly glanced at him more than once, thinking how heroes really did come in all shapes and sizes—and some had truly surprising superpowers.
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