Kellie Ross paused on her way out the door for school.  Mom was watching a morning TV newscast, and the footage it showed was of Elevator Girl, the area’s newest -- and currently only active -- superhero.

Gemma Ross saw Kellie out of the corner of her eye.  “There’s Elevator Girl again,” Gemma said.  “She stopped another armed robbery in progress.”

“Cool,” said Kellie.

“She looks so familiar to me,” Gemma said to her daughter.  “Does she look familiar to you, Kellie?”

Kellie shook her head, even though her mom wasn’t looking at her.  “Nope,” she lied.

In fact, Kellie knew exactly who Elevator Girl was, because Kellie was Elevator Girl.  But, unlike her grandfather, whose heroic legacy she was continuing, Kellie was maintaining a secret identity, so she was keeping that secret from everybody -- even her mom.

“I don’t know,” Gemma said.  “That leather dominatrix outfit she wears just looks … wrong on her somehow.  She’s clearly young, and that’s part of it.  But I just have the feeling I ought to know who she is.”

“Mom, I gotta go.  I’m gonna miss the bus,” Kellie said.  As a freshman in high school, the teen was too young to drive.

“Oh, right, Kel.  Have a good day,” Gemma said.

“You, too,” Kellie said.

As Kellie waited at the bus stop, Mom called out to her.  “Kellie, your bus doesn’t go by the financial district, does it?”

“No,” Kellie said.  “Why?”

“Some crazy supervillainess is there, holding some folks hostage for money.  I don’t want you anywhere near there.”

“It’ll be OK, Mom,” Kellie said.

“OK, Kel.  Love you.”

“Love you, Mom,” Kellie said as Gemma shut the door.

Kellie looked around.  Instead of standing at the corner for the bus, Kellie ran to the area behind the house.  There, with trees screening her from view, Kellie took off her outer clothes, revealing the pink and white tights underneath.  She grabbed the simple black mask she had tucked in a pocket, buckled a thin black leather belt around the outfit’s waist, and activated the elevator wrist controls to turn herself into a huge giantess.

Kellie wished she could wear her leather outfit.  She used it primarily as armor, and this was going to be her first time going up against a supervillain, as opposed to some ordinary, but armed, crooks.  But Kellie also knew she needed to make a quick change here, since lives were in danger, and the leather outfit was a more laborious change -- plus she’d have to go back into the house, which she couldn’t explain to Mom.

Before she left, Kellie picked up her street clothes, which were now smaller to her than doll clothes.  She dropped them into the cleavage of her scoop-necked tights.  She hoped she got everything; she’d need them later when she went to school.

As she strode across blocks of territory, Kellie chuckled.  Her mom had unknowingly confirmed the other reason Kellie wore the leather outfit in action.  It wasn’t something Kellie would wear, making it an extra layer of protection for her secret identity.

Kellie could see the area cordoned off by police within two minutes’ walk.  She hit the bracelet controls and dropped down to 20 feet tall.  “What’s going on, officers?”  she asked.

The cop did a double-take; it was Kellie’s first public appearance in her quick-change outfit, which was quite a different look for her -- more girly, less kinky.  “Elevator Girl?” he said.

“Who else?  What can I do  to help?”

“This super-strong woman called Betty the Brick is inside, holding a half-dozen financial executives hostage,” the officer said.  “Her powers make her immune to any kind of sniper fire, and one of the executives has a heart condition, so tear gas is out.  Can you help?”

“I think so,” Elevator Girl said.  “What floor are they on?”

“The top floor,” the officer said.

“Good.  I’ll come in from below,” Kellie said.  “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” said a half-dozen officers all at once.

As she ran, Kellie lowered herself to 6-foot-6 so she could run through the door.  Once inside, she quickly located the ventilation system.

Kellie’s late grandfather had left her an instruction manual for use and care of the size-changing device, but he had also included a how-to guide for some tactical maneuvers.  What Kellie was about to do was one of those maneuvers.

Elevator Girl opened the old, large vent, then put her upper body inside. Next, she hit the elevator device’s down button, dropping to the size of a speck.  Since the system’s air conditioning was running, she simply road the air up to the top floor.  She got blown out on several earlier floors before she got there, but she just kept getting back in and riding.  Fortunately, she had so little mass at speck size that she wasn’t injured by any of the falls.

Within two minutes of entering the building, Kellie was on the top floor, and caught a break; she came out in the room where Betty the Brick was holding the hostages.  Taking advantage of the element of surprise, she snapped up to 22 feet -- and hit her head hard on the room’s 20-foot ceiling.

Betty turned around at the noise.  So much for the element of surprise, Kellie thought.

“Elevator Girl!  I’ve been expecting you,” said Betty the Brick.  “I’ve wanted to test my strength against yours.”

“Then let’s go outside, where you can really do it,” Elevator Girl said.

Betty laughed.  “ Not a chance,” she said.  “My powers ramp up against a stronger foe to make me even stronger, but with your strength at skyscraper-size, I might get so muscle-bound I couldn’t move.  No, I like my odds in here, especially with these folks around.”

Kellie grew a bit and, on her knees, tried taking a swing at Betty.  The Brick grabbed her arms and pulled the giantess toward her, then slugged Elevator Girl hard enough to send her into the room’s back wall, sprawled out.

Betty guffawed.  “Face it, kid.  You can’t outmuscle me!” she said.  “Looks like I’ve just gotten me another hostage!”

Kellie smiled.  “We’ll see about that,” she said.  She pushed off the ground with her left hand and legs while manipulating the bracelet with her right.  Then she seemed to vanish.

“What?”  said Betty.  “Where is she?”

In fact, Kellie had become the smallest she’d ever been, making her giant-sized push-off incredibly forceful.  Using a technique her grandfather described, she guided her glide through the air to land her microscopic form inside Betty the Brick’s ear.

Kellie was grossed out by what was inb the ear besides herself.  The earwax was a completely gross muck, but she slogged through it to get to the inner ear.  There she started messing with the fluid that controls balance.

Betty roared.  The bone conduction in her head made that feel like an earthquake to Kellie, but she kept at her task.  Soon the villainess was toppling over, to dizzy to stand.

Then Kellie got out of Betty’s, grew to 15 feet tall and took advantage of something she’d learned in martial arts class.  Brute strength couldn’t overpower Betty, but she was still basically human.

Kellie delivers a quick finger-zap of pressure to Betty’s temple, hard.  Striking the nerve bundle knocked the villainess out.

Elevator Girl breathed hard for a moment.  “Guess she forgot even bricks can be broken,” she said.

The people in the room began to cheer.

“Not yet,” Elevator Girl said.  “This won’t hold her long.  Is there a line she was using to talk outside?”

“My phone, there, on my desk,” a well-dressed woman said.

Kellie picked up the phone, which was off its hook.  “Officer, it’s Elevator Girl,” she said.  “I’ve got Betty the Brick, and the hostages are safe, but have you got a means of holding her?  Good.  Bring that up here.  Under the circumstances, I need to hold her here until you do.”

Kellie looked at the clock and tightened her jaw.  She would be late for school, and didn’t know what kind of trouble she’d wind up in, but she it was worth it.  She’d saved some lives.

At home, Gemma was watching live TV news.  This was her day off from the nursing home this week, so she had the time to watch.

Then she saw the police exiting the building on live footage from the hostage scene.  Behind them came Elevator Girl, who was wearing a different outfit that showed her physique and manner of movement more clearly than the leather outfit she’d worn before.  With the leather get-up, the heroine’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail.  Now she wore it loose.

Gemma gasped as she saw Elevator Girl move.  “Oh, my God!” she said aloud.  “That’s Kellie!”

Gemma stood up, her hands over her mouth in shock.  There was absolutely no doubt in her mind.  That was her daughter, her only daughter, Kellie, walking across the screen, waving to the crowd, already a giantess, looking weary even at this hour of the morning.  She watched the girl touch her wrist and grow to even more colossal size, striding out of the shot and doubtless across a city block with each stride.

Gemma sagged back onto the sofa, her head swimming.  How could that be Kellie?  Kellie was at school.  Of course, Kellie was at school now!  By now, classes were in session, and she would have gotten off the bus and arrived at school.

Wanting reassurance, Gemma called the high school office to double-check Kellie’s status.

Meanwhile, Kellie was carefully making sure she hit the height she had been when she tucked her street clothes into her cleavage earlier.  Standing in a wooded area in a park near the school, she got the clothes out and placed them on the ground, then shrunk down to normal size.  Taking the mask and belt off, she tucked the mask into her purse and put the belt back onto her street clothes.  They were a little bit big -- she’d slightly missed her target size as a giantess -- but were close enough that she could make them work.  She was getting better at nailing specific sizes, and with more practice, she’d be able to do this perfectly.

Gemma hung up the phone, her effort at reassuring herself a failure.  Kellie wasn’t at school. 

She’d asked the office to call her back if and when Kellie arrived.  Now the mother set back down, staring through the floor, trying to figure out what to do next.

Kellie knew she’d need to stop in the office to sign in and did so.  When asked why she was late, she told the receptionist she’d missed the bus, then was released to go to class.

Soon after the receptionist called Gemma.  “Mrs. Ross, this is Jackson High School.  I’m just calling to let you know that Kellie, your daughter, just checked in.  She’s here now.”

“OK, thank you,” Gemma said.  “Did she say why she was late?”

“She said she missed the bus.”

Gemma’s brow furrowed.  “OK, thanks again,” she said.

“No problem,” the receptionist said.  “Good-bye.”

Gemma sat down.  That answer made no sense.  The bus stop was within sight of her house, and Kellie knew her mother’s work schedule well enough to know that she could have given her a ride to work today,  The only way Kellie would have said that was if Kellie was lying … and it wasn’t like Kellie to lie … But, if Kellie was Elevator Girl, then she might lie for something that important, especially if lives were involved.

But how could Kellie be Elevator Girl?  That made no sense.  Kellie had no superpowers … that Gemma knew of … and how did she get them if she had them?

Then it hit Gemma:  Reporters had said, after Elevator Girl’s first case, that Elevator Man was her mentor.  Gemma had never seen Elevator Man, and had barely heard of him.  Maybe if she knew something more about this long-ago superhero, she could put some of this together.

Gemma went to the old tower computer she had kept nursing along and got on the Internet.  She ran a search for Elevator Man and found a web page devoted to him within a Super 6 website.

When she got a look at Elevator Man’s face, Gemma’s blood ran cold.  She knew that face.  She had been to the funeral of the man she associated with that face about a month before.  It was the face of her father-in-law, Kellie’s grandfather, Blake Ross.

Suddenly it all began to make sense.  Blake was an inventor;  Elevator Girl had come on the scene just after he’d died, and just after he’d had a final visit with Kellie, and only Kellie out of all the family,  He must have given her a device that let her become Elevator Girl.

Gemma walked away from the computer and sank down in an old, overstuffed chair that had been her husband’s before he died.  Usually, when she sat there, she felt comforted by a sense of his presence,  Now, she was lost in a haze of fear, confusion, anger and more fear.  She pulled over a throw pillow and huddled into the chair in terror.

Kellie found her day progressing more or less normally.  At lunch, she was approached by her friend, Jenna.

“Where were you this morning?” Jenna said.  “I missed you in algebra.”

Kellie shrugged.  “I missed the bus,” she said.

Jenna pulled back her head and turned it at a slight angle while making a face.  “That’s not like you,” she said.  “At least, not until your grandpa died.  Up to then, you were always on time for everything.  Now you’re late sometimes, or you run out early or just don’t show up at all.  What’s going on?”

Kellie’s eyes shifted back and forth.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “Maybe it’s just grief coming out in a sideways way.”

“I didn’t think you were that close to your grandpa,” Jenna said.

Kellie smiled wistfully, and a little bit sadly.  “Grandpa Blake was something special,” she said.  “I really only found out how special right at the end, right before he died.”

Gemma went in to Kellie’s room.  She didn’t want to mess anything up in the room, but she was reasonably sure the leather costume had to be somewhere around here, if Kellie really was Elevator Girl.  And it was nowhere to be seen.

Gemma decided to play a hunch.  The house’s unfinished basement was its least used area.  Even the upstairs rooms, mainly used for storage, saw more traffic than the basement. She would check both locations, upstairs and down, to see if the costume was there.

Kellie got on the bus for home.  “Missed you this morning,” said Rob, the bus driver.

“Yeah,” said Kellie.

Gemma hadn’t found anything upstairs.  She had gone to the basement, and nothing was immediately visible in the basement.  She was about to go upstairs when she remembered the old coal bin, a room into which an old chute for delivering coal ran.  It would be a natural way out of the basement If someone were trying to slip out unnoticed, she realized.

Gemma walked tentatively over to the bin’s door and opened it.  The only light came from the basement’s windows, but what she saw was unmistakable.  There was a cheap wooden table set up in the corner, a table she’d never seen before.  Draped over the table was something she had seen before, but only on television or the Internet.  It was a very familiar-looking leather costume.  The hip boots stood atop the table beside it, leaning against the wall.

The single mother felt as though her entire world had just crashed in upon her.  She didn’t know what to do from here, but she knew one thing.  She and Kellie were going to have a long talk.  And that talk would start with a visual aid.

Determined, even if she wasn’t sure exactly what she had determined, Gemma gathered up the bustier and hip boots and brought them upstairs.  Kellie was going to have some explaining to do.

Kellie was feeling pretty good when she got off the bus near her house.  She’d had no real trouble at school over her tardiness, and that tardiness had been due to saving lives.  Until today, Elevator Girl had only stopped criminals, but today she had been a true heroine, keeping innocent people alive and safe.

Kellie climbed up the steps of the front porch.  The house was an older one, but it was all her mom could afford after Dad died.  The wooden porch was weakening and should probably be replaced, but it was beyond either of their knowledges or skill sets to do, and there was no money to pay for it.  It had cost Kellie money she’d been saving to get the leather outfit she was using as armor as Elevator Girl.

When Kellie unlocked and opened the door, she got a shock.  Mom was standing there, holding the leather bustier beside her, the hip boots on the floor next to her.  Kellie could tell her mother’s expression was emotional, but couldn’t read what the emotion was.

Trying to buy herself a few seconds, Kellie said, “Gee, Mom, if you’re expecting someone else. I can clear out for awhile.”

“Don’t get cute with me, young lady,” Gemma said.  “ I found these in the old coal bin in the basement.  What’s the explanation for these?”

“You tell me,” Kellie said.  “A costume party, maybe?  I hope you’re not planning to go into a new line of work with them.”

Gemma’s face turned purple as she shouted, “Don’t try to make a joke out of this, Kellie!  This is no joke!  I know who you are!  I know what you did this morning!  I know … I know …”

Then Gemma collapsed into a heap on the floor, sobbing hard.  It sounded like she was trying to say something, but the words were unintelligible.

Kellie shut the door behind her and ran to her mother.  “Mom!” she shouted.  Kneeling down and placing an arm on her mother’s heaving shoulder, the teen asked, “Are you OK?”

Gemma looked up at her daughter, tears still streaming down her face.  “You’re Elevator Girl,” she said.  “You’re Elevator Girl.  How could you?  Why didn’t you tell me?  How could you do this?”

Kellie debated trying to dodge, but realized her first move was probably just to try to get her mom back under control of herself.  “C’mon, sit on the sofa and we can talk.”

Once they were sitting on the worn yellow sofa together, Kellie asked, “Now, what makes you think I’m Elevator Girl?  Not that weird get-up, I hope?”

“I saw you this morning on the TV,” she said.  “And don’t deny it.  It was you.”

“You’ve seen Elevator Girl on TV and the Internet before,” Kellie said.  “If I’m her, why couldn’t you tell it before this?”

Gemma looked at the bustier and boots.  “That outfit,” she said.  “You move differently in it, and you’d never be caught dead in public wearing an outfit like that.  I said she looked familiar, but couldn’t place her, remember?  But today you were wearing an outfit that looked more like you.  And then you were late for school -- just late enough to have taken on that Betty the Brick chick and then split for the school.  And then I started putting it all together, and finally found that costume down in the coal bin.  It’s the easiest place in the house for you to get out at night without my seeing or hearing you.”

Kellie looked at her mother’s eyes.  “Not just you,” she said.  “That comes out at a spot the neighbors can’t see, too.”

Gemma looked at her daughter.  “Are you admitting it?”

Kellie put a hand on her mother’s hand.  “Mom, I saved a bunch of lives this morning.  I figure that was worth being tardy.”

Gemma’s face blanched.  “So … you are Elevator Girl?”

Kellie nodded.  “Yes, Mom, I am.”

Gemma’s lower lip quivered.  Tears hadn’t really stopped flowing from a few moments earlier, but the flow picked up again.  “Oh, god,” she said.

“Mom?” Kellie said.  “I can usually tell how you’re feeling, but I can’t read you right now.  How are you feeling?”

Gemma shook her head.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know.  So much I’m numb, I guess.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.  Finally, Gemma said, “I should probably ground you, y’know.”

“People will still need Elevator Girl,” Kellie said.  “If I have to sneak out for that, I will.  After all, with my powers, you couldn’t hold me here.”

Gemma looked at her daughter as if she were a stranger.  “You’d do that?”

“Reluctantly, but, to save lives, yes,” Kellie said.

Gemma stared at the floor.  “Well, I guess I can understand that,” she said.  “Kellie, I … How did this happen?  I mean, I figured out that you got some kind of size-changer from your Grandpa Blake just before he died.”

“How’d you put that together?”  Kellie asked, astonished.

“You said Elevator Man was your mentor, so I looked him up online,” Gemma said.  “One look at his picture, and I knew he was your Grandpa Blake -- a lot younger, but him.  And he used a device to change sizes, and I’d seen Elevator Girl touch her wrist right before she changed, and you had that private meeting with him the day he died, and Elevator Girl turned up just after he died.”

“You put all that together,” Kellie said.

Gemma wiped away her tears.  “Yeah, well, most people couldn’t,” she said.  “Your grandpa was pretty much a recluse, and most people don’t know you well enough to know how you move, the little gestures and such.  It took a pretty specific set of knowledge to start with to put this one together, and I’m kind of a unique holder of it.  Your secret is safe overall.”

Kellie nodded.

“What I can’t understand is why your father never told me about this -- his dad, I mean,” Gemma said.  “You’d think the fact that his father was a superhero would be something he might have thought to pass on.  We didn’t keep a lot of secrets from each other.”

“Dad didn’t know,” Kellie said.  “Grandpa told me that last day.  Grandpa gave up being Blake Ross while he was Elevator Man, and gave up being Elevator Man when he took back the Blake Ross identity so he could court Grandma.  He was never one at the same time he was the other; that’s why he didn’t wear a mask.  The only person who knew about his hero identity before me was Grandma.”

“Oh,” Gemma said.  “That’s too bad, really.  Frank would have been so proud of his dad, if he’d known.”

Hesitantly, Kellie asked, “Does that mean you’re proud of me?”

Gemma’s breathing said she was near tears again.  “You saved lives today,” Gemma said.  “How could I be anything but proud of that?”

“Then what’s wrong?” Kellie asked.  “If it’s that I covered it up --”

“That’s part of it,” Gemma said, “but not most of it.  It’s just that … “ She looked up at Kellie, her lip quivering again.  “I’m terrified,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of losing you!”  Gemma shouted.  “I love you, Kellie.  You’re my little girl, and the only one left in my family.  The only one left in my household.  I lost your father.  I don’t want to … “  She dissolved into sobs.

Kellie put an arm around her mother.  “To lose me,” she said.

Gemma, still sobbing, nodded.

Gently, Kellie guided her mom’s face up to look at hers.  “Mom, I can’t promise you won’t lose me.  Heroing is a dangerous business.  But I’m trying to be as careful to stay alive as I can.  That’s why I wear the leather get-up.  It’s armor.  And my powers help keep me safe, too.  Besides, I’m Grandpa’s legacy, and Dad’s, too.  I owe it to them to stay alive.”

Gemma grabbed her daughter and held her close. They both cried for a few minutes.

Then Kellie pulled back.  “It’s probably best you know, anyway,” she said.  “After all, there are bound to be times I have to be missing from school besides today.  If you know, it at least makes part of my life easier.”

Gemma nodded.

“You OK now?”  Kellie asked.

“I’m still terrified,” Gemma answered, “But I’ll help if I can.”

“Thanks,” said Kellie.

“For starters, let’s keep the get-up somewhere other than the basement,” she said.  “That moisture down ther won’t be good for the leather.”

“Where would you --” Just then, sirens ran past the house -- a lotg of sirens.

“There’d only be two for a medical run,” Gemma said.  “That’s something else, something big.”  She ran to the TV and turned it to a local channel.

“We’re live at the scene of an upper-floor skyscraper fire,” a reporter said.  “People are trapped in the building’s top floors.  Efforts are under way to formulate a rescue, either with helicopters or tower ladder trucks, but the fire is moving fast.

“I know that building,“ Kellie said.  “With my powers, I can be there in less than a minute.”

“Go!” said Mom.  “We’ll talk more after.”

Ditching her outer clothing to reveal the pink tights, Kellie said, “I love you, Mom.”  Then she grabbed a pair of gardening gloves, saying, "I'll need these."  She made for the dining room window, situated above the old coal chute, flung it open, dived out and grew to colossal size.

Gemma turned and watched the television. In 57 seconds, Elevator Girl appeared, gingerly placing a colossal finger by the building so the (to her) bug-sized people could climb aboard.  Once they were safely on, she lowered them to the ground, then used her colossal gloves to help smother the fire.

I’ll need new gloves , Gemma thought.  Then she saw most of the flames out, and the people on the ground cheering.

“Elevator Girl has saved the people from the upper floors,” the reporter said.  “The city’s superheroine has saved lives twice in one day!”

Gemma smiled proudly.  “That’s my girl,” she said.