A globetrotting novel that takes a determined teen from Japan to Australia and to Argentina and Mexico on a quest to prove that humanity is more good than bad from the author of Let’s Get Lost and Before Takeoff.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and the first chapter of Adi Alsaid’s Actually Super, which is out August 22nd.
Isabel is having an existential crisis. She’s three years into high school, and everything she’s learned has only shaken her faith in humanity. Late one night, she finds herself drawn to a niche corner of the internet—a forum whose members believe firmly in one that there are indeed people out in the world quietly performing impossible acts of heroism. You might even call them supers . No, not in the comic book sense—these are real people, just like each of us, but who happen to have a power or two. If Isabel can find them, she reasons, she might be able to prove to herself that humanity is more good than bad.
So, the day she turns 18, she sets off on a journey that will take her from Japan to Australia, and from Argentina to Mexico, with many stops along the way. She longs to prove one— just one— super exists to restore her hope for the future.
Will she find what she’s looking for? And how will she know when—if—she does?
Chapter 1
Dearborn, Michigan
No one believes Isabel when she says she’s going to travel the world to hunt superheroes. For perhaps obvious reasons.
She has been forming her plan for months now, but its seeds have been there much longer. Late at night, in front of her computer, the conviction strengthening the way convictions do best: alone in the dark, unchallenged. There are no questions in her mind that she’s going to do it. That she is right to do it. Her friends, however, have a lot of questions.
Mainly: Say that again?
Mainly: What?
She has gathered them at Roys’s, the frozen custard shop that is full even now, during spring break in Michigan, the temperatures still flirting with the twenties. The others have nowhere else to be, but even if it weren’t break, they’d meet at this table most afternoons. She’s kept this plan to herself for long enough, and now that she’s officially booked her flight, she wants to share it with the two people closest to her.
“But superheroes aren’t real,” Sam says, as if it needed to be made clear. Isabel says nothing.
“And even if they were,” Chío jumps in, brushing light brown hair out of her eyes, “how are you qualified to hunt them? And, like, why?”
“I said hunt them down. Of course I wouldn’t be qualified to hunt them. Also, I don’t like hunting.” Isabel is undeterred by her friends’ so far unsupportive reactions. They will come around, they always do.
“I don’t get it,” Sam says.
“I’ll take follow- up questions.”
There is a silence at Roys’s, or at least at their particular picnic table. The wind pushes Chío’s empty custard cup to the ground. She stands to chase it and toss it into the nearby bin, then rejoins the table, biting her lip.
“No questions, then?” Isabel spoons another key- lime- pie bite, shuddering at both the cold and the explosion of flavor. She isn’t sure what she was expecting from telling them. The confusion isn’t entirely surprising, but she thought there might be more excitement.
“Too many, is the thing,” Chío mutters. Isabel sits, waiting for them to come. Especially from Chío, who questions everything, who uses the scientific method to decide which pizza place in Dearborn is best, who will not allow a statement to pass as a fact unless it can be measured as such.
“And you’re not messing with us?” Sam asks.
“No. I know how it sounds, okay? I get it. But it’s what I’m going to do. So, let’s just move past the whole ‘Is she high?’ phase and ask any logistical questions you may have. Where I’m going, how I plan to find them, that sort of thing.”
Sam laughs and hunches his shoulders against the cold. “I think we need another minute to chew this over, Izzy.”
Then Chío, who everybody could tell was working herself up to this, says, “I mean, seriously. What? You can’t expect us to just accept what you’re saying. It’s decidedly bonkers.”
Isabel rolls her eyes and blows a raspberry. “You guys are so boring.”
Another silence follows, during which Sam pulls his phone out and starts googling superheroes. Little does he know it was this exact move that led Isabel to where she is now. For different reasons, sure.
Sam picks at his ice cream as pages load, and Chío studies Isabel’s face. Isabel decides to grant her friends the time they need to process. Meanwhile, she daydreams about the journey to come, the adventures she’ll have. She pictures the first time she will meet a superhero, and her heart swells at the thought. It is almost too much to take, so she eats some more ice cream instead.
This is what she’s been doing with every spare moment since she stumbled upon that very specific corner of the internet, since she came up with the plan. A weird corner, yes, but the only thing that eased the despair that had been growing in her chest since she was thirteen or so, and her awareness of the wider world increased.
“Maybe you can clarify what you mean by ‘superheroes,’” Chío says, her brow furrowed hard enough to form three deep wrinkles.
“Finally, a good question!” Isabel raises her hands up to the heavens. “I mean people with superhuman abilities. Not necessarily crime fighters, Batman or whatever. Though there’s evidence that some of them do become crime fighters.”
“Batman doesn’t have any superhuman abilities,” Sam cuts in, unable to help himself. “He’s just a fit dude with lots of resources. So, either way, you wouldn’t be going after Batman?” he asks, hopeful, as if ruling out Batman makes this all easier to swallow.
“Correct,” Isabel says.
At the same time, Chío shakes her head and mutters, “What the hell are we talking about? You’re not even into superheroes.”
Oh, right. There’s a lot her friends do not know.
“I’m not looking for actual comic book characters or anything. I know that’s fiction.” Isabel cracks a smile, as if now they’ll all fall in line as she expects. As if this clarification is the only one they’ll need.
“Just people with comic book powers,” Sam deadpans.
“Yup!”
“And what makes you believe they exist?” Chío is trying to keep her voice nonjudgmental, but even she can tell she’s failing. She shoves her hands into her coat pockets, looks around at the other tables. There are a few kids from school she recognizes, plus a few she doesn’t. She wonders if this could be a prank Isabel is organizing with someone else, but Isabel doesn’t have friends outside of this group.
Isabel knew the question was coming, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to answer.
Her first instinct is to lie. The problem is that the ridiculous part has already been said out loud, and she can’t take it back. No amount of reasoning will make them feel better about it if they can’t handle what’s already been said.
Telling the truth would only make her friends worry more, try harder to talk her out of it. “I found evidence on the internet” is often a wild thing to say, but when it comes to believing in superheroes, the statement compounds in its ridiculousness. Nothing can justify believing in superheroes. Even the scientifically plausible theories of genetic mutation, or of a subtle variation in evolution, sound more like science fiction than science. All her friends on the forum warned her as much. Not even religion can excuse believing in them (and Isabel, in her late- night internet scouring, has tried to find one that would).
“I just have a feeling,” Isabel says.
“That superheroes exist and you have to find them,” Chío says, the inflection in her voice aiming to shake Isabel into realizing how delusional she sounds.
“It was a dream,” Isabel pivots, improvising.
But no. That doesn’t feel right. She cannot lie to her friends. Well, she has been lying. But only by omission. She’s hidden this plan for months, but it really goes back years. Not just about the superheroes but about the whole reason she stumbled onto them in the first place. The growing, gnawing sense that the world was more evil than good. The desperation whenever that thought entered her mind, and the urgent need to do something to counteract it. Not just turning the TV on for a light distraction the way people do after too much doomscrolling, but an actual antidote.
She used to spend her time on her phone seeking out evidence that people were good. Videos of strangers coming together to rescue dogs in rushing water. Cheesy stories about people paying for each other’s coffee. Heartwarming articles about post- disaster helpers.
And those had worked, for a while anyway. The problem was they weren’t big enough in their kindness. When it came down to it, it was just that: kindness. Isabel needed evidence that humanity could counteract evil. Because there was no doubt that evil people existed, or that at the very least people did unthinkably evil things. And it seemed like evil was often winning its war against good.
The despair in Isabel’s chest would not go away unless she found evidence that there was balance to the world. That something existed that was unthinkably good. Random acts of kindness were great, but they did not cancel out evil.
Now that Chío’s prying, that Isabel’s truth is starting to come out, lying— outright or by omission— feels wrong. It is tempting to open the faucet fully and let it all pour out onto the table, into the world. Or at least into these two people who love her.
Her friends can tell that the thing about a dream is bullshit, and they stare, waiting for more. What will it be?
Isabel takes another spoonful of custard, begging the tart dessert to imbue her with the strength to withstand judgment. To just say the rest out loud. It would be freeing.
But she’s been so safe in her secret all this time. Safe from ridicule, from others telling her that her idea is flawed, which would simply land her back at despair. As exciting as it is to think of her plan in action, to share it with others, it is hard to step outside the secret’s comforting embrace. She swallows, thinking that feeling free can wait until summer.
Chío’s hand lands on top of Isabel’s. They meet eyes, and Isabel feels the faucet turning a little more. “I had this theory,” Isabel says. “Well, it’s one that other people have had on this forum I found. I’ll tell you more about that later, but the important part is that this theory, that there are people with superpowers out there, it helped me feel . . .” She reaches for the right word, but can only land on “okay.”
“Okay with what?” Sam asks.
“The world.”
“Why do you need to feel okay with the world?” Chío asks. She says it not judgmentally, but with her scientist brain, digging for information, wanting to connect the dots. But she needs more dots than Isabel can provide. It’ll never make sense to Chío.
Isabel takes too big a bite of ice cream, causing not a brain freeze per se, but a cold that digs in too deep. She shivers and stands to throw the rest away. When she comes back, they are still looking at her so expectantly, and she realizes how much she has to explain. Not just the despair, but what led the despair to AM12 turn into a plan. Her dad, her grandmother, the stuff at school, the pandemic, so much more. It feels daunting. “I just do,” she says.
Isabel finds that the new tone of the conversation is pressing down on her, and she looks away from her friends, hoping to return to the half- joking mood from just a minute ago.
“Speaking of which, guess where I’m going first,” she says once she’s overcome the tightness in her chest. “You’ll never believe how much I found the ticket for.”
They stare at the itinerary on Isabel’s phone, dumbfounded as she passes it around, the delusion now made real. Detroit to Shanghai, Shanghai to Tokyo. Isabel Madeline Wolfe, seat not yet assigned. August 30.
“I can’t believe that’s the price,” Sam says. He’s marveling at the distance represented by the plane ticket, at how much of the world his friend will be traversing. It no longer feels like a joke, no longer feels as if summer will arrive and the only talk of superheroes will be those relentlessly attacking the silver screen. Senior year will arrive and Isabel will not be here.
Chío has been staring daggers into Isabel, and the silence only makes them sharper. “I’ve been really exploring the world of cheap travel, and the money I’ve saved is gonna go so much further than I would have ever imagined. There’s a rumored Super in Tokyo, and I found that one- way ticket, so it made sense to go there first. I don’t even need a visa for Japan.”
“Izzy. Please. What the hell are you doing?”
Isabel pretends she didn’t hear. “We think his name is Hatori, and he goes around different train stations in Tokyo saving people who need him. He doesn’t dress up or have, like, a persona or an alias or anything like that. Most of the real ones don’t.”
“Right.” Sam has more follow- up questions, but Chío is so sullen that he starts looking stuff up on his phone instead.
“Why are you guys acting like I’m dumping you?” Isabel says, joking.
“Oh man, that is what it feels like,” Sam chuckles.
Chío shakes her head. “Dumping us would be more understandable,” she says. “You’re leaving us for a delusion.” When Isabel says nothing, Chío feels herself soften. She’s in shock, but attacking Isabel won’t change anything. “Can’t you do this after high school? Why go now?”
“I’m taking my GED over the summer,” Isabel says. The hurt of being called delusional dulls quickly, smoothed by the relief that she doesn’t have to delve into Actually Super quite yet, doesn’t have to reveal everything behind the trip. She can’t believe she thought this would go well. “I wanted to go right away. I only waited because it’d be too hard traveling underage without my parents’ permission.”
“Do you even know when you’re coming back?” Chío hurls the question as if it’s a right jab, as if she wants it to bruise Isabel’s eye. So much for not attacking.
A minivan parks nearby, and half a dozen nine- year- olds come pouring out, all uncontainable excitement and shrieking. It is Friday afternoon, and it seems everyone in Dearborn is craving custard despite the cold. There are working professionals and soccer moms, college kids home for spring break, children everywhere. Not a single superhero in sight.
“You’re not coming back, are you?” Sam says, his voice taut with both wonder and heartache.
Another silence. Isabel wishes she could tell her friends something that would make them more okay with all of this.
“We still have the rest of the school year,” she says. “Summer too.”
That makes neither of them feel better, and the air between the friends grows heavier and heavier, despite the laughter from other customers, and the few leaves in the trees rustling gently in the breeze. Isabel wishes she could make them understand how it feels to know she’s chasing this dream, wishes she could convey the excitement she’s been feeling since she booked the flight and made it real for herself. How it’s already helped ease her despair.
Isabel picks at a crusty patch of mint green on the table, wondering how to get the silence to stop. She is going to miss her family, sure, mostly, and definitely these two people sitting next to her. She wishes she could pack them up into her bag and bring her friends on this quest; it is the one trepidation she has about leaving.
Isabel smacks the table with her palm, pulling them from whatever rumination they were having. “You guys should come meet me! A year from now, your last spring break before you go off to college.”
Chío perks up the slightest bit at this. “Do you know where you’ll be?”
“Well, no. But we can just pick a place now and I’ll make my way there.” Her phone is out already, and she’s zooming out on Google Maps to see the world in its entirety. Look at that, she thinks, the whole world in my hands.
There is some discussion about whether Sam can afford to travel, whether their parents will allow them to join Isabel, even if it’s just for a week. They make a few superhero jokes, including one about what they would each do if they had a power, but that topic feels fraught and it wears itself out quickly. Now what Chío and Sam feel most of all is the fact that they’re going to miss the hell out of their friend. So they start studying the map, and looking up articles on places to go, and checking flight prices. It almost feels like they’re simply discussing what movie to watch.
After an hour or so, they all put their hands at the center of the picnic table to agree to the plan. It is a symbolic gesture that feels weird because they’ve never done it before, but appropriate because they’ve seen it done so many times on TV. And though there are still six whole months of normalcy to live through before Isabel leaves them and takes it all with her, they look each other in the eyes, their hands touching, and they promise to meet up in a year in a small beach town in Mexico.
**
Word gets out that Isabel is leaving. When she goes to bed at night, she is thankful to be away from the looks people give her, thankful to be back in the company of herself, and her bed, where she is allowed to dream of her trip without interruptions. She retreats to the internet, to the forum, where people don’t raise their eyebrows or wait for the punch line. Instead, they profess their jealousy, bid her a good trip, offer advice. They debate whether she should share evidence she finds with the world or not, which, as usual, derails into a conversation about why they believe superheroes are kept secret.
Mathilde, a twenty- seven- year- old teacher at an international school who fell into the Actually Super community after what she calls a prophetic dream, right away says that Izzy should come visit her in Jakarta. The thought of spending time in person with someone who believes what she believes is almost more joy than she can bear, and she looks at the calendar to count down the days (though of course she already knows how many are left until she’s free to go).
Her parents focus more on the part of her plan that involves dropping out of school than on the superhero part, at least for a little while. She reminds them how much student debt she’ll be avoiding. They say that’s not the point, but then have trouble articulating what their point is. Once they realize her plan begins on her eighteenth birthday and they will be legally powerless to stop her, their attention switches over to the more peculiar particular of her plan.
“Can’t you find superheroes in America?” her dad asks, a whine in his voice.
Isabel sighs. This is the part that’s hardest to explain, because the theories floated on the forum feel conspiratorial and a little kooky, even to her. “There’s no hard evidence they exist here,” she says, making sure to stress the last word so they don’t jump at the phrasing.
The truth is, there’s a few rumored in the U.S. But who wants to go to Cleveland and Fort Lauderdale? Those two have the least backing evidence anyway, and the general consensus on the forum is that any American superheroes have been kidnapped by the government or have exiled themselves to avoid exploitation.
Plus, getting away from the U.S. is part of the draw of the whole plan. She doesn’t make eye contact with her dad, as if he might read her mind and start another fight.
“Honey, why?” her mom asks, trying to add more inflection, somehow, into the sentence than she has managed to convey in the previous eight hundred or so times she has asked.
“Because I think it’s important for people to follow their dreams,” Isabel says. And for a second, just one glorious, shining, hopeful second, Dorah Wolfe believes she has finally understood. Not fully, perhaps. She has not grasped on with an entirely closed fist, but enough. Her fingertips have brushed up against understanding. Her daughter is making a point. About life, and the way people live it. About what is Truly Important.
Isabel feels for her mom. If it were possible to leave behind a little piece of herself just to provide her mom some comfort, she would.
Then Isabel adds, “And my dream is to meet superheroes.” Mrs. Wolfe’s epiphany is extinguished like a blown- out birthday candle.
Not knowing what else to do, they sit her down for a talk. Her dad, of course, leading the way, loudly, getting up to pace as he makes his points and then going back to the couch. Her mom sits quietly beside him, fussing with things on the coffee table that do not need to be fussed with. There is a world where Isabel offers her mom to come along on the trip, at least for a while. But that is a world in which Isabel knows where Dorah stands in this argument, other than as an uncomfortable peacemaker, not wanting anyone to be upset but not caring to solve any disputes either. Over the years, as Isabel has woken up to who her dad is, her mom has remained an inscrutable puzzle. Sweet, but sticking by Abel through the worst of his rants.
It is perhaps what makes leaving easy. Knowing exactly how the last fight will go. Her father raising his voice, trying to put his foot down, despite not having any ground to stand on. Her mother not picking sides, not weak, rather displaying an impressive stronghold on the fence. Not flinching at the things her husband says.
Isabel sits there quietly, not pushing back like she has in the past, knowing she will soon be free.
