Art

Jody loves her daddy, but she knows that he's a bad man, and so she's only a little bit sad when he goes to jail even though she'll miss him. The people who come and help her pack after he's arrested say that she'll be able to visit him but they don't say when, and she's been through this before, with Mommy, and so she knows that they're lying. But she doesn't know where the police took him so there isn't anything she can do about it.

At first she's taken to someplace where they ask her a lot of questions and give her a Happy Meal to eat. And she's trying to help them, but she doesn't know the answer to a lot of the questions they ask her, and besides they're boring. She wants to go home and play with her Barbies but she knows she won't be going home ever again because she isn't stupid and she knows that when both of your parents go to jail you go away and nobody ever sees you again. And she'd be more worried about what's going to happen to her but Daddy had told her that he wouldn't let anything bad happen to her no matter what. So she draws a picture while the grown-ups talk. And then they make a decision, and a man takes her to a house which isn't her house, with a family which isn't her family, and she tries to pretend she's happy about it but she misses her daddy even if he is a bad man. And when she gets kicked out of three houses in a row because she has nightmares and when she has nightmares they come true while she's sleeping she's only a little sorry because the people who lived in those houses were nice and didn't deserve it.

And then she's sent to live at a house with a woman with blonde hair and two boys who are older than her. And the boys say that their daddy is a bad man too, and that he's in jail too. And she asks them if they've seen their daddy since he went to jail, and they say that they get to see him as often as they want because Steph takes them. And they tell her that their daddy isn't as nice as Jody's daddy, and so sometimes they used to be afraid that he'd come and get them, but then they saw Superman talking to Steph, and when he raised his voice they could hear that he didn't want her to be taking care of them, but then she'd yelled at him and he'd flown away, and so they aren't afraid that he'll come for them any more, because even Superman's afraid of Steph. And they say that she doesn't even mind that they're metas, and that she'd even found this guy to teach them how to fly, and even though he's sort of a dork he knows a lot about flying. And Jody asks what's a meta, and they tell her it's somebody who can do more than other people can do, and she asks if they mean like if they're really smart, and they say no, and she says that she thinks she might be a meta.

That night she wakes up from another nightmare to see Steph dodging around the creature her mind had made and she starts to cry even as the monster disappears because she knows she's going to get kicked out again and she doesn't want to be bad but she really doesn't have a choice because she's asleep when it happens. But Steph just hugs her and says that she has some ideas about how they can make her nightmares better or at least keep her from projecting them. And Jody falls asleep in her arms and doesn't have any more nightmares that night because if Superman's scared of Steph then the monsters must be too.

The next day she gets to go and see her daddy, and she tells him about what's been happening to her and gives him a picture she drew after the guard looks at it. And she asks if he's made any friends yet, and he says that some of his friends are already in here, but nobody she knows. And then they're out of time and she gives him a hug before they have to leave, because she's happy that he has friends in there. And after she and Steph get back to the house, one of Steph's friends comes over and while he's over he looks at her drawings and says they're good, but she tells him that they don't match what's in her head. And he says he's an artist and maybe he can help her out with that, and she's thrilled because she's never met a real artist before. And it's years before she learns that Kyle is also one of the Green Lanterns and teaches her how to make better thought constructs. But she never follows in his steps and becomes a superhero, or in her parents' steps and becomes a supervillain, because it's far more interesting to use her abilities to make art. Her daddy goes to every show she has art in, even if he has to break out of prison to do it.