Can I tell you a secret? Bullfrog Girl’s name is really Betty Tate. I know because I was there the day she got her powers. We were playing in the bayou together. Betty caught a bullfrog. There was something strange about it—I swear it was glowing. Not a lot, but just a little bit. I dared Betty to lick it. I said I’d give her my new baseball bat to lick it. Shoot, I really never expected to have to give her that bat.

We walked home, going to my house first. I was dragging my feet. I really didn’t want to give her my baseball bat. But as we got close, Betty said she didn’t feel too well. I had trouble understanding her. She was slurring her words. It was almost like her tongue had grown too big for her mouth. By the time we got to my house, Betty couldn’t walk. She lay down in the grass and couldn’t move. Mom called Betty’s parents. And soon her mom’s car pulled up in the driveway to take her home.

Well, I didn’t see Betty for a few days at school. I just figured she was sick. But when she came back, I started noticing things about her. Weird things. Like, I’d be eating nacho chips at snack time. I’d look away for a second, and when I’d look back some were missing. And there was Betty, at the other end of the table, crunching away on something even though she only had a banana in her hand. And later, when I spoke to her, she totally had nacho breath!

In P.E., Betty was suddenly a star. I mean, she normally wasn’t too bad at sports, but suddenly she could catch a dodge ball coming at her at a hundred miles an hour. It was like she had glue on her hands. She was also super fast at hopping out of the way of flying balls. Balls so fast that no regular kid should be able to dodge.

A few months later, Mom was telling me about something she read in a local paper. There was a new superhero; they were calling her Bullfrog Girl. She could leap tall buildings in a single hop. She could climb walls with her sticky hands and feet. She could even catch robbers by lassoing them around the feet with her lightning fast (and super long) tongue.

As soon as Mom told me, I knew who she was talking about. It had to be Betty Tate, my best friend. I never told anybody, until today. So now I hope you’ll keep her secret a secret, too.