June & Lucy Shown Above

Featured Song:
Everyday Superhero by Smashmouth

They say time passes quickly when your happy and unfortunately that was something Nelly and Johnny's powers couldn't prevent. Their girls were growing up, June was now ten and Lucy was going on seven. Lately family nights began to be replaced by socializing with friends. And eventually phrases like Mommy! Daddy! I need you! turned into Mom! Dad! We can do it ourselves! Or I love you Mommy and Daddy! turned into Just go! You're embarrassing us!

But in June and Lucy's defense, their parents did tend to appear a little on the chaotic side. Things would sometimes happen in their household that they couldn't for the life of them understand. How does their mother constantly know where they are? At any moment? At anytime of the day? Was it just Lucy's imagination when her father tossed her high up over the roof of the house and caught her again? And Juniper could've swore she saw her mother outside her bedroom window once... her second floor bedroom window!

At first the girls assumed it was just normal for parents to do those things. But when they started school, they began to realize that there was something off about their parents compared to others. In the third grade, Juniper was asked to write an essay for Father's Day and read it in front of the class. She wrote about how her Daddy could toss her ten feet into the air and catch her. How he ripped the door off the car with one hand when she locked herself inside. And how he once fell off a latter and landed headfirst into a stone birdbath and didn't even get hurt.

The class laughed at her and the teacher gave her an A for creativity.

There was no doubt in Juniper and Lucy's minds that there parents were odd... but then again what family wasn't?

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Johnny woke up that morning and looked over at his wife, Nelly. Twelve years of marriage and two kids later and she was just as beautiful as the day he met her. Except his lap isn't scalding with hot coffee...

Johnny smiled, taking in the moment of this golden morning lying beside his lovely wife. He rolled over and put his arm around Nelly's waist and kissed her temple. Nelly sighed happily in her sleep.

Then Johnny glanced over Nelly's head at the alarm clock... it was 7:06 and the girls had to be at school by 7:30!

"Nelly!" Johnny shouted suddenly, making his wife jump awake. "We're late! It's past seven!"

"Shoot!" Nelly cried, leaping from bed. "Go! Go! Go!"

"It's times like this, I wish we had super speed!" Johnny told her, throwing on his Tommy Hilfiger hoodie over his pajamas.

Nelly slid into her slippers and took off into the hallway, banging on the two other doors in the hallway.

"June! Luce! Let's go! Get up! We're late!" She hollered.

"I'll get them up!" Johnny said. "You get a start on some breakfast! Doesn't have to be the continental kind, drinkable yogurts and apples will suffice!"

Nelly made a beeline down the hallway for the kitchen.

"Girls! Let's go!" Johnny banged on their doors.

"Relax! I'm up!" Juniper said from behind him.

Johnny turned and saw his eleven year old daughter coming out of the bathroom. Her pretty brown eyes were smeared with eyeliner and her lips were painted red. Her attire was a dark blue crop top with black leather mini skirt with zipper on the crotch that went all the way down from top to bottom.

Johnny took it all in with a look of stunned terror.

"June Bug, do Daddy a favor and put on another outfit?" Johnny asked her.

"What's wrong with this one?" Juniper looked up from her phone.

"Nothing" Johnny shook his head. "It's just that I'm dropping you off at school and this outfit makes it look like I should be dropping you off at your usual street corner..."

Juniper sighed heavily and headed back into her room.

"Hurry! We're late!" Johnny yelled after her.

"It would go a lot faster if you just let me wear what I want!" Juniper yelled through her closed door.

Johnny knocked on Lucy's door next and opened it. "Luce the Goose! Let's go!" He called sticking his head in the room.

But Lucy was nowhere to be found.

"June! Where's your sister at?" Johnny asked.

"As if I know?" Juniper replied, struggling with her jeans.

Johnny slid down the hardwood floored hallway into the kitchen, where Nelly was rushing with the girls school lunches.

"Lucy's gone AWOL" He told his wife.

Nelly closed her eyes and rushed through all the various locations, nooks and crannies of the Clark household. Finally one area of the house in particular lit up in her brain...

"She's outback... on the trampoline, probably!" She told Johnny.

Johnny leaped over the kitchen island and raced out the sliding glass door, onto the stone patio outside. The morning air was still moist and cold with fresh morning dew and the weak but warm sunrise glistened across the Clark's backyard. And smack dab in the center of it all was seven year old Lucy, bouncing on the trampoline and giggling in her panda bear onesie.

"Lucy Goosey! Let's go!" Johnny called to her.

"No!" Lucy shook her head. "I quit the first grade! From now on, I'm going to trampoline school. Where I'll learn to bounce to the moon and back!"

"Luce, we're running late! C'mon!" Johnny urged her. "We still need to get you dressed! We don't have time for this!"

"Bounce! Bounce! Bouncity-bounce!" Lucy sang, continuing her trampoline routine.

Johnny checked his watch: 7:18! Desperate time call for desperate measures...

He checked to make sure the neighbors weren't around and then climbed onto the trampoline. He steadied himself on the trampoline as Lucy continued to jump around.

Then he used his super strength to jump down hard on the trampoline, vaulting little Lucy high up into the air. She screamed as she came soaring back down, she closed her eyes in fear.

Johnny used his powers of flight to shoot up into air and catch his falling daughter. He landed swiftly back on the lawn and when Lucy opened her eyes her father was carrying her back into the house.

"Still think you're ready to bounce your way to the moon, Luce?" He asked her, smirking.

Lucy giggled, shaking her head.

They returned to the kitchen, where they found Juniper arguing with Nelly about her second outfit choice.

"What's wrong with these jeans?" Juniper scoffed.

"June, they're three sizes too small!" Nelly told her.

"That's fat-shaming!" Juniper cried.

"You're being dramatic" Nelly shook her head. "Go change, we don't have time for this!"

"I'm not changing again!" Juniper crossed her arms and deliberately sat down at the table.

"John, talk to your daughter" Nelly said, taking Lucy by the hand. "I'll get this one dressed."

Johnny turned to Juniper as they left. "Juniper, you have to understand you're too young to be dressing this way. You're only eleven."

"I'll be twelve soon!" Juniper muttered.

"In six month's" he told her. "And twelve is hardly a step up."

Juniper rolled her eyes.

"The main concern we have is that there's a lot of guys your age who might get the wrong idea, when you wear clothes like that..." Johnny said as delicately as possible.

Juniper's furrowed brow relaxed as she looked up at her father. "So mom isn't trying to fat shame me..." she nodded, understanding.

"That's right" Johnny smiled.

"She was slut shaming me!" Juniper slammed her hand on the kitchen table. She got up and stormed towards her room, slamming the door.

Johnny sighed and walked down the hallway and leaned in the doorway of the bathroom. He watched as Nelly helped Lucy brush her teeth.

"So how'd it go?" Nelly asked feigning curiosity.

Johnny groaned, pressing his forehead against the door frame. "I don't understand teenage girls" he told his wife.

"Good, cause she's not a teenager" Nelly replied. "She's just a little girl who thinks she's a teenager."

"I heard that!" Juniper shouted from her room.

"You were suppose too!" Nelly yelled back.

Nelly checked her phone for the time: 7:25. "Juniper Carolyn Clark, get out here now or were leaving without you!" She shouted, as she slipped the girls lunches into their backpacks.

Juniper came out of her room wearing a powder blue crush-sleeved top and a pair of black slacks. "How's this?" She asked.

"Beautiful" Nelly smiled.

"Gorgeous" Johnny kissed her forehead.

"Seriously?!" Juniper groaned. "This was suppose to be ironic! I'm not wearing this! People will think I'm selling Bible's!"

"Too bad!" Nelly handed her her backpack. "We're late! Car, now!"

Juniper scoffed "I'm changing!"

"Juniper!" Nelly snapped.

Her daughter turned to look at her in annoyance and Nelly stared deep into her eyes. She focused all her frustration into her staring and widened her eyes giving them a commanding look. She was using The Glare...

"In the car now... and drop that attitude!" Nelly demanded in a low but angry voice.

"Yes, ma'am" Juniper grabbed her backpack and headed out the door.

Johnny and Nelly rushed out to the car with the girls. "Seat belts!" Nelly told them as they got in.

As soon as they buckled up, she started the car and began backing up out of the driveway.

"Mommy!" Lucy said.

"Yes, baby?" Nelly asked.

"You know, you and Daddy are still in your pajamas, right?" She asked them.

Nelly and Johnny froze and looked down. They were in such a rush to get the kids ready, they neglected to change.

"Well, we're just dropping you two off anyway" Johnny shrugged.

Nelly nodded and continued out of the driveway and down the road.

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About half an hour later, Johnny and Nelly returned home, they got the girls to school just in the nick of time. Once their kids were out of the house, Nelly and Johnny retreated to their Hideaway under the stairs. Nelly worked from home as an advertisement editor. She edited together footages for commercials and pictures for print ads. Johnny was a writer, who just sent his second book out for publishing with his literary agent Cassandra, hence why he finally had some downtime.

"Did Cassandra call you back about that book tour yet?" Nelly asked, still staring at her laptop screen.

"No" Johnny said as he bench-pressed six hundred pounds in the Hideaway gym. The one downside to having super strength... you still had to work out to keep it that way.

"You know, I'm beginning to rethink the whole idea of a book tour" he told Nelly.

"Why?" She asked him. "You did one for your debut novel?"

"Yeah, but that was eight years ago" Johnny shrugged. "And all I did was worry about you being home alone with our three year old and pregnant with our Lucy. I felt guilty, both for leaving you hanging and for leaving June. Besides I could just as easily promote the book with a series of book signings. Cassandra says there's plenty of local book store that showed interest in hosting it."

"I can handle the girls" Nelly told him, continuing to edit the commercial footage on her laptop. "You never let me put my career on the back burner, now I won't let you."

"No, I did do that!" Johnny told her. "You wanted to be a film maker, remember? And instead you settled for a stint in the advertising industry."

"Not true" Nelly retorted. "I directed that one fruit snack commercial two years ago. Remember? Juice Smashers?"

"Showing a group of kids to look into a camera and eat fruit snacks is not film making" Johnny said. "Besides that product was forty percent high fructose corn syrup. Good source of vitamin C, my ass. Nothing but cavities, that's what kids will get eating those. "

She smirked. "Then how come I caught you eating so many of them?" She asked.

Johnny put the weights back and sat up to look at her. "I buried the lead" he said. "I am staying home and not doing the book tour. That's final."

"No, you are going" Nelly told him. "It's been eight years since your last book."

Johnny walked over to where she was sitting and hugged her shoulders from behind, placing his chin on her head.

"I just don't want to leave you with the kids" He sighed.

"They're our kids, John" Nelly said. "You act like your leaving me with a pair of rabid wolverines for a week."

He chucked, kissing her hair. "Which one's this?" He glanced at her laptop screen.

"Multivitamin commercial for the new Pharmaceutical account we picked up" she explained.

"Hm... do you ever regret not becoming a film maker?" Johnny asked her.

"No" Nelly answered. "That was a dream I had when I was in my early twenties, before I knew how the real world worked. Before I knew what it was really all about..."

"And what is it all about, Nells?" Johnny asked her.

Nelly looked up at him and smiled. "You and our girls" She kissed his lips. "I might not become the female equivalent of Spielberg, or take on the film world. But I don't need to. I built my own world right in this house with all of you. And I love it."

Johnny smiled and used his super strength to lift her off the desk chair and lift them up to the ceiling. They both hovered off the floor as he kissed her passionately. Nelly was caught off guard, but she wasn't complaining.

"What has gotten into you?" She said as they broke the kiss.

"Have you looked at the date?" Johnny still hugged her in mid air.

"It's... Friday?" She guessed.

"It's April 17th..." he reminded her.

Nelly's eyes widened. "Oh God!" She gasped. "Our anniversary is tomorrow! I thought I had more time!"

"It's okay" he told her. If i'm being completely honest... I forgot too."

"Guess that means we'll spending this weekend... recharging" Nelly grinned.

"Mmm-hmm" Johnny moaned, hugging her closer to him. "Recharging with you is the best anniversary gift ever."

In the Clark family, recharging was the mandatory tradition of resting their superpowers without kids. Johnny's mother would come over and watch the girls for the weekend, while he and Nelly would left for their yearly couples getaway.

Johnny lowered them back onto the ground, but still held Nelly by the waist.

"You're sure you don't just want to exchange presents this year instead?" She asked him.

"No" Johnny answered. "You and me, together in a hotel room with no kids. For the whole weekend. That's my idea of an anniversary."

"It just doesn't feel right leaving the kids all of a sudden" Nelly said.

"Even superheroes need a break every once in a while..." Johnny kissed her before heading back to his weight training.

"Yeah, superheroes not parents..." Nelly muttered.

Most of the time, superpowers made parenting and domesticity a breeze. But Nelly sometimes wondered if it was best to use their powers to cut corners? Was it really right to keep all these secrets from their daughters? Maybe superpowers and parenting weren't meant to be mixed...