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It’s hot out.
The same kind of hot as back home—an icky, damp hot that makes the back of Jolyne’s sundress stick to her skin and the straps irritate her shoulders. Grandma made her wear it, said the fabric was light and looked cute on her; but Jolyne hates it. The skirt trips her up when she runs and catches on brambles as she sneaks around the garden. She’s got it hiked up over dirty, scab-riddled knees and tied in a hasty knot, now. If it gets ruined it’ll be Grandma’s fault anyway, for making her wear it in the first place.
She takes a couple more steps forward and grimaces when her mary-janes make the grass crackle underfoot. She kicks them off at the heel, takes a second to wiggle her newly liberated toes and appreciate the coolness of the dirt. Then she keeps moving. She has to act fast, or her target will be gone forever.
Just ahead is a bush bursting with cobalt-blue hydrangeas. Jolyne crouches low behind it; when her hands scrabble toward the branches to keep her balance the air erupts into a cloud of gnats that float about her like a gossamer veil and obscure her visual on the big maple tree some meters away.
She screws her eyes shut tight and tosses her head this way and that, wisps of hair flying free from her braid. A couple determined swats, some sputtering, and they leave her be. No way are these nasty little bugs going to get in the way of what she really wants. She needs to be able to concentrate—
Because there it is, sitting cozy and unaware in the shade of the maple leaves: a rhinoceros beetle, the very biggest Jolyne has ever seen. Easily bigger than her own hand. Maybe even bigger than Grandma’s. She never gets to see rhinoceros beetles at home. She knows they’re around but Dad says they attract snakes, the bad kind, so he keeps the garden clear of them all year. When she saw it there, drinking from a little puddle of sap on the bark, shell glistening like a hunk of obsidian, something spoke to Jolyne. It was so gross , and yet— so cool .
She has to catch it. She has to show it to everyone.
Especially Dad. If she can catch it like that —
Her palms are covered in mud so she uses the heel of her hand to push the loose locks away from her eyes. Her wrist comes away with a little bit of blood, and only then does her cheek begin to sting. She must have scratched it somewhere beneath the couple shrubs she crawled under, guerrilla-style, to get closer to the tree. She grins, imagines herself traipsing around school with a big scar under one eye when she gets back from summer vacation. Like a pirate. Or a thief. Or an adventurer.
That’s what she wants to be when she grows up. Just like Dad and Great-Grandpa and all her ‘uncles’ that she’s smart enough to know aren’t actually her uncles. She wants to travel around the world looking for treasure and fighting bad guys, and then come home and have a secret identity as the coolest girl in the first grade.
But first, she’s got to practice using her superpowers.
She rises slowly, keeping her center of gravity low and her knees bent. The beetle’s grown disinterested in its food and has marched about-face, little legs bending and twitching like a robot, or maybe an alien. It’s going to take off soon. She has to hurry.
Somewhere else in the garden a cicada begins to drone.
Jolyne sticks out her hand, stares the beetle down, and concentrates. She looks deep within herself, like Noriaki told her, finds the way really really wanting that beetle makes her feel. She tries to envision herself: a tiny Jolyne inside her heart, picking up that feeling and chucking it as far as she can out of her body like a skipping-stone across water, until it hits the beetle right on its big ugly-beautiful horn.
The tips of her fingers begin to tingle. She beams, and thinks harder.
The tingle moves past her palm, down to her wrist. A little harder. The skipping-stone turns into a clean white butterfly net, the fibers shiny and tightly woven and smelling faintly of detergent. A little ways up her forearm—
She’s got it.
Holly comes running the second Jolyne calls her, and it’s kind of hard to tell what she screams at the loudest: the mud all down Jolyne’s front, the blood smeared across her cheek, or her hand, which has come unraveled and turned into a wriggling meshwork of thread thirty feet away from her.
The sundress gets tossed in the laundry; Jolyne’s face, elbows and knees are washed and her nose smeared with aloe vera for a sunburn she won’t be aware of until tomorrow. She puffs up in triumph as Grandma applies a bandaid to her cheek. She feels like a warrior.
After she's dressed (she feels happier in her t-shirt and overalls, even if they are a little heavier) and in the living room, Grandma pours her a glass of barley tea and turns on a baseball game. The team Dad likes is playing, running around and getting sand on their pinstripe uniforms. Jolyne half-watches with her elbows propped on the low table, tapping the glass of her beetle’s new home. Maybe that’s what her secret identity will be when she’s grown up. Maybe she’ll become a baseball star.
It was just a matter of time, Grandma is saying, before Jolyne got her superpowers. But for her to get them so early —that’s proof that it’ll be very, very strong. Exactly what she would expect from her adorable granddaughter!
Grandma’s got superpowers too, it turns out—she calls it a Stand, and it’s got pretty vines and blossoms that look like the climbing roses she grows in the front yard. She’s had it for a long time, since before Jolyne was born; but Jolyne has never seen it before.
“How come you don’t use yours?” Jolyne asks.
“Oh, I do!” she replies cheerfully. On days when Jolyne is bored or grumpy, she can always count on Grandma being in a good mood. On days like today, when it feels like everything around her is bright and sharp and wonderful—Grandma is her very best friend. Her partner in crime. “It’s a huge help around the house and always there when I need it! But that’s just the thing. I don’t need it all that much.”
“You don’t?”
“Not like other people might.”
Jolyne cranes her neck toward the TV as the audience begins to cheer. There’s a pop-fly ball careening into the grandstands at left-center field; the announcer is shouting in Japanese too fast and excited for Jolyne to understand. She feels the thrill, though, and her heart skips a beat as she stares. Oh, that's definitely what she wants to be.
Her fingers flex involuntarily.
“Like how?”
“Well, let’s see, how can I—oh!” Grandma claps her hands once, face lighting up in joy. “Great-Grandpa has shown you all his favorite comic books, right?”
Jolyne nods.
“And who’s your favorite?”
Batman has his car and his gadgets and his deep, brooding nature; Wonder Woman is tall and powerful and noble and stands for truth and justice; The Hulk has his fists, Captain America his shield, Kitty Pryde her phasing. Even Pink Dark Boy, for all his flaws, has his mysterious powers. Jolyne loves them all—but she knows who her favorite is. She doesn't even have to think about it.
“Spiderman,” she says with finality.
Grandma laughs.
“I should have guessed! I bet you know a lot about him, too.”
“Yep!”
“What’s important to Spiderman, then? Why does he use his superpowers?”
“He uses them to protect his family. And the people in his town.”
“But that’s just one reason, isn’t it?”
Of course Jolyne knows there are lots of other reasons to use superpowers. Some people use them for evil, so they can take over the world. Some people hide them because they’re afraid of what other people will think. Some people use them because they’re fun and cool.
She thinks she’s starting to understand what Grandma is trying to tell her.
“Yes.”
“The most important thing for me,” Grandma says, with a big smile on her face, “is to make sure my family has a place to go where they’ll be safe and happy, no matter what.”
“So you never beat up any bad guys?”
“Now, I didn’t say that!” She puts her hands on her hips and gives her hair an exaggerated flip. “Your grandmother is more than capable of doling out a time-out or two!”
The two of them break into giggles and return to their tea. Beads of moisture have started to roll down the outside of Jolyne’s glass; she wipes her hands off on her shorts in between long sips.
“But you see,” Grandma continues, “sometimes it’s better to use the thing that makes you special—your Stand, or mine, or anyone’s—to change things in little ways. No one can save the whole world all alone. And sometimes it feels like you have to, because you know you can make a difference when no one else wants to. But other times it does more harm than good.”
She casts her eyes down to the jar where Jolyne’s new friend is munching on a banana slice.
“You’ll be grown up someday, Jolyne, but you’ve got all this time to decide what’s most important to you. I know whatever you choose to use it for, you’ll put your whole heart into it. And that’s what matters.”
“Even if I wanna use it for treasure-hunting? Or playing baseball?”
“Even if you—mm, it might not be fair to the other players if you use it for baseball. But treasure-hunting is fine!”
Jolyne chugs the rest of her tea, feeling refreshed at last. Maybe she’ll go out and try her luck a second time.
“—Hey Grandma?”
“Yes dear?”
“Will they let me bring him on the train tomorrow?”
“If you keep the jar closed, I think it’ll be okay.”
“Of course I’m going to keep the jar closed!” After all the hard work of catching him? Anticipating the look of pride on Dad’s face when she tells him she caught it with her own brand-new Stand? She would never dream of letting him go. She pouts and gathers the jar into her arms; inside the beetle flutters his wings, irritated by the sudden movement. “I wanna show him to Dad.”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea, sweetie. Have you decided what you’re going to name him?”
Jolyne peers down at him.
“George.”
“George?”
“‘Cuz he’s a beetle.”
“Ah! That’s clever! I bet Noriaki will like that.”
Jolyne throws back her shoulders and raises her head proudly. Today has been a great day already, but tomorrow?
Tomorrow will be the best day ever .