The Mohanigans were tired and hungry as they made their way back along the long concrete pier to the cruise ship. The son Billy pretended to be a shark, chomping noisily and letting crumbs flake from his mouth like fish entrails.

“Gross. Stop that or I’ll throw you into the water, midget.” Meghan said.

Billy considered this and then said, "Do it. I'll live with the stingrays." Earlier that day he had pleaded with his parents to allow him to smuggle one of the baby stringrays home in his swim-shorts.

"Meghan, don't push your brother into the water. Remember, there's toxic chemicals in there," said Mrs. Mohanigan, referring to the rusty oil drums slowly bobbing up and down.

"Toxic chemicals!" Billy said, and then made a rush to throw himself in the blue water.

Mr. Mohanigan grabbed Billy by the shirt color as the boy was about to leap from the edge.

"Billy! Damn it," said Mrs. Mohanigan, looking as if she was about to hit her husband. "I told you not to buy him those magazines—he doesn't know about fiction.”

Mr. Mohanigan rolled his eyes and looked at the side of the dock, where a group of workers were hammering at some concrete. He kept his hand on the boy's shoulder for the remainder of the walk.

"What’s fiction?" Billy asked.

"Provided for one's entertainment, Billy," said Mr. Mohanigan, and winked, which did nothing but confuse the boy. "—only for some good, old-fashioned entertainment," he added.

"Not everything is good, old-fashioned entertainment," Mrs. Mohanigan. "Besides, it's better for Billy to find out this way than by standing in a thunderstorm with a coat hanger, hoping to turn into the Flash, or whoever."

"Then I could shoot lightning bolts," Billy said.

"That's right," Meghan offered.

"No, then you could run at the speed of light," Mr. Mohanigan corrected his children.

"Ignore your father," Mrs. Mohanigan said. “If I had super powers, I’d want to be able to read
people’s minds.”

“I don’t think you would,” said Mr. Mohanigan, as a group of bikini-clad tanned girls walked past.

“You don’t think I already know what a slob you are?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. The comment had upset his wife. “Billy, pass your mother one of her fig rolls.”

Billy held the box upside down and awkwardly shook it. “There’s none left,” he said, and tossed the package to the ground.

“Billy! What did we say about littering?”