My friend Joe said, “You’re so funny,” when Mom revealed her true identity.

  He laughed as he left to go home, and I fumed. Mom smirked, and it made me even angrier.

  “I told you, Stanley,” she said. “True or not, no one will ever believe I’m Onyx.” She patted my shoulder as she walked past, carrying the almost empty tray of pizza rolls we’d been snacking on while we played Fists of Fury.

  “People have this notion supers are like the ones in comic books.” Mom laughed. “The idea we might be boring old suburbanites just doesn’t compute.” She sat the tray in the sink before turning around to give me one of her serious mom looks. “It’s a notion we’ve cultivated for generations now,” she scolded. “You’ve got to stop trying to ‘unmask’ your dad and me!”

  “If it’s so impossible for ‘regular folk’ to believe, why do you care anyway?”

  “Ideas grow,” she said. “All they need is for a seed to be planted and given time.” Mom sighed and leaned against the counter. “It might not happen for years, but it can and will if you keep this up. Don’t you see? You’re shooting yourself in the foot.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You mean shooting you and Dad in the foot,” I grumbled.

  Mom’s brow crinkled, and she frowned at me for a moment. “You’re upset your abilities haven’t presented themselves yet, aren’t you?”

  I looked away. My face felt like it was on fire. “I’m seventeen,” I said. “It should have happened by now.”

  “It will,” Mom said. She walked across the room and squeezed my shoulder with a fraction of a fraction of her immense strength. “Every now and again, it takes a little longer.”

  I looked up at her and tried to smile. Judging by the look in her eyes, I didn’t manage a convincing one.

  “Not all superpowers are as flashy as super strength or manipulating fire,” she said. “You could be a microkinetic like Grandma Quinn or a precog like Great-great-grandpa Matheson.”

  “Yeah. Some super I’d make. I could tell the villain’s futures,” I snarked.

  “You could still do good,” Mom said.

  She ruffled my hair, and I could tell my attitude upset her because she wasn’t modulating her strength as well as she normally did. My scalp burned a little, and a low ringing started up in my ears. Times like this, when she lost the smallest bit of control over her powers, drove home how much energy she had put into not hurting anyone by accident or breaking stuff all day, every day.

  “And doing good is the whole point,” I recited my family’s first rule. I sighed. “I just want to be out there with you and Dad.”

  “I know, kiddo,” Mom said. She gave me a light hug and a grin. “I know.”