"Okay, who's for more potato salad?" asked Clark, waving the bowl in front of his wife and older daughter.
"Come on, Clark, you know I'm over my carb limit already," Lois grumbled good-naturedly. "If I ate another bite, I'd have to spend an hour at the gym -- which is hard to do when I'm the resident babysitter. I can barely find time to get to my Tae Kwon Do class as it is."
"What about you, Pumpkin? You want to split this with me?" He held the bowl out to Emma.
Emma grinned in unholy glee. "How about I race ya?"
"You're on!" said Clark, quickly divvying up the remainder of the salad onto his and Emma's plates -- but making sure to give his daughter the smaller portion. "Ready?" She nodded, and they were off.
"Clark!" squawked Lois "You're teaching her terrible table manners!" They didn't seem to be listening. "Emma, don't you dare get even a smidgen of food on that dress! I don't want to have to take it to the cleaners the very first day."
But her warning was not needed, as Emma, though careful, managed to shovel in the last bite just ahead of her father. "I win; I win!" she said around the final mouthful. Lois examined the satiny material, but found the dress unharmed.
"I swear, you're giving your daughter an awful upbringing," she grumped, trying to keep the corners of her mouth from curling upward.
"Oh, honey, lighten up!" Clark grinned. "It isn't every day our daughter gets her first portrait taken." He turned to Emma. "I thought you did a good job sitting still for the lady behind the camera. Besides," he said, gesturing toward Emma's empty plate while turning back to Lois, "maybe she'll inherit my metabolism and invulnerability. Maybe she'll grow up and be able to eat bombs!" He grinned at Emma.
But Lois noticed that at that comment, Emma had gone quiet. Again. "What's wrong, sweetie?" she asked, trying to keep her voice nonchalant.
"Nothing. Can I go play on the hill?" Emma wiped her mouth with the paper towel and wriggled off the bench.
"Okay. But take off those shoes and socks first, or they'll be all dusty when you come back. And don't go down to the shore; I don't want you falling in the water and getting that dress wet." Emma quickly sat down on the grass and undid the latches on the shiny black shoes. Pulling them and the white stockings off, she set them on the picnic bench, and then walked purposefully up the little tree-studded hill that separated their picnic spot from the bay, as Lois followed her with her eyes.
"Clark, I'm worried about her. Every time the subject of your powers comes up, she gets all quiet. I think that the thought of them scares her."
"Hmm. I've been noticing the same thing. Maybe she's nervous about possibly getting superpowers when she reaches puberty, like I did." He paused. "Lois, do you think being the daughter of an alien freaks her out?"
Immediately Lois reached over and placed a hand on Clark's. "Oh, honey, of course not." She grinned. "You're obsessing again. I just think that it was kind of a shock the way she found out about you, that's all. But I worry that having to keep your secret -- our secret -- from everyone, even from my mom and dad, not to mention Gracie, is hard on her. After all, she was only five when she found out. And I've noticed this behavior, this" she waved her arm in the air, "withdrawal, on each of the few occasions when the subject has come up -- and even on those times when you've had to go and be Superman, and she's figured out where you've gone. I think we need to find time to sit down and talk with her about it. Maybe today -- oh, no. What is it?" She had seen Clark's head lean to the side, and a far-away, listening expression cloud his features.
"Fire at the LexOil chemical plant. I'm afraid this one might take a while." He looked around and, lowering his glasses and using his super-vision, determined that no one was within sight of their secluded picnic spot, except Emma, who was now at the top of the little hill, looking back at them; then he stood and spun into the Suit.
"That's okay; I brought along that new novel. I'm just going to curl up on the blanket and read until you get...back..." Before she finished speaking, Superman waved up the hill to Emma and rocketed into the air.
* * *
Emma stared down at her father as he did his spin-thingy and flew up into the sky. Her lips compressed together, and she turned to gaze instead out over the bay.
Her daddy was Superman. He was Superman; and he thought that, when she grew up, she would be Superman too. He and Mama had explained to her, that he had begun to get his powers when he was about twelve; and he hadn't learned how to fly until he was eighteen -- all grown up.
But she could already fly.
She had discovered this one day in her bedroom shortly after she had learned about her daddy being Superman, when she had been sitting cross-legged on her bed, looking at a picture book. She had gotten engrossed in looking at the pictures, leaned back, and realized with a start that she was toppling off the bed. Alarmed, and trying to right herself, she had thought, *up*! And she had found herself floating, hovering a few inches above the bed. Filled with wonder, she had practiced, and found that she could do it anytime she wanted to, by simply thinking *up*, and then thinking about the direction she wanted to go. Day after day, when her bedroom door was locked, and Daddy wasn't home from picking Gracie up from Daycare, so he couldn't see her with his x-ray eyes, she would practice hovering, swooping around the bedroom. Once, when her mama and Gracie were both taking naps, she had opened her bedroom door, thought *up*, and then sailed silently down the stairs and through the entire house. Several times.
She could already fly.
And she would soon get Daddy's other powers. And then she would have to be Superman, and save everybody's life. And *she was only five*! And she was afraid.
So she had decided at the time that, if no one knew, if no one found out about her powers, she wouldn't have to be Superman until she was older -- maybe until she was all grown up, like Daddy. Then she could pretend that she had just got the powers, and no one would know that she had had them since she was a little girl.
And so she had done for nearly a year now.
She relaxed a little, looking out over the soothing view of the bay. She felt the breeze at her back, ruffling her hair and her dress. She saw a motorboat way out in the water, bouncing along the little waves; and she thought how much fun it would be to ride in one of those. Then she saw a bigger boat zooming along, and making two great big waves behind it. It zoomed past the little boat.
Then Emma's mouth dropped open as one of the big waves caught up with the little boat; and it bounced into the air, landed upside down in the water, and stopped abruptly with a great splash. She wondered what had become of the man driving the boat; and as she did so, the scene around the capsized boat seemed to sharpen; and she clearly saw the man's head come up out of the water. He sputtered, and began to swim, with funny little doggie strokes, back toward the boat.
With an increasingly uneasy feeling, she watched as he tried without success to climb onto the boat, and then started his slow circuit around it. When he came all the way around to the back of the boat, he tried again several times to climb up onto it; but each time he seemed to slip off. She saw him swim to the side and try to push upward. He must be trying to turn the boat over, she thought. But he looked so little compared to the boat, that she was not surprised when his effort failed.
Then Emma blinked, as the man simply dropped out of sight, disappearing beneath the waves. She watched for a couple of minutes; but the man's head did not re-appear. Was he *drownded*? Alarmed, Emma turned around, intent on calling her mother. Then she realized that there was no way her mama could get help in time to save the man. Somebody needed to *do* something, and do it right away. Turning back, she stared at the boat. There was still no sign of the man. She watched, in indecision and near panic, for two or three more minutes -- minutes that seemed like an eternity.
Then she remembered. She could fly. Maybe she could fly right out to the boat, and save the man.
But it was so *very* far away. She had never flown more than a few trips around the house; and this was a much longer ways. This was almost as far as the drive to school! If she could not go that far, she would fall into the ocean, and drown herself.
But the man was drowning already! Maybe he was already drownded.
Emma took a quavering breath, and thought *up*! Her feet cleared the grassy ground, and she began to move hesitantly forward. She glanced down and saw the shoreline just ahead, and stopped, hovering. Mama had said not to go down to the shore; she might get her dress wet.
Wait a minute; she didn't have to go *down* to the shore, she could go above it instead. She moved out over the water a few dozen feet, turned around in the air, and looked back. She was over water. And she became afraid. She began to drift back toward the shore, toward the hill, toward safety.
The thought came back to her: But he's drowning! She turned again to face the boat -- and saw a hand reach up out of the water beside it. He was still alive! *Go*, she thought. *GO*! And she was speeding over the dark water toward her destination, hair streaming out behind her, fear forgotten, the fierce light of a mission shining in her young eyes.
* * *
