From the alleyway, Diego watches as an agent affixes manacles onto his sister’s slender wrists, followed in turn by his mother and his father. A plastic grocery bag floats past Diego before getting tangled in the chain-link fence that separates Diego from his family. Tears cloud the boy’s vision. Blood pounds in Diego’s ears.

When the agents knocked on the door of their modest house earlier in the day, Diego had been playing in the backyard. At the sound of his father’s yelling, he had wanted nothing more than to run into the house, in order that he might protect his family from these alien forces imposing their imperial will. But what protection could a boy of ten offer his family? So instead of running toward them, Diego ran away like a coward—like a child.  Now, crouched in the alleyway beside the fixed-gear Spiderman bike he received for his tenth birthday, Diego watches men in black military gear poke and prod the citizens of his town, the neighbors he has known for years, people who have shown him kindness and patience and friendship.  

Anger boils up inside Diego. It is at the peak of his anger that something extraordinary happens: Diego begins to levitate! Diego has always suspected he might be a superhero, so he’s not terribly surprised by this development. It would explain why dogs always bark at him and why he never has bad breath, despite rarely brushing his teeth. But why did it take him so long to gain his powers? Had they always been hibernating within him, only to manifest in this, his moment of need?

Regardless, if Diego is now a superhero, he isn’t going to waste time cowering in an alleyway. With a leap, he takes off from the ground, shooting high into the air. Following a series of acrobatic loops, he returns to Earth, landing on the far side of the chain-link fence, near the buses that are to collect his family and neighbors and take them to a country they barely know.

At his sudden appearance, several officers raise their guns, but Diego is not afraid. When the bullets come, they bounce off Diego’s chest like so many spit wads! As the officers reload, Diego picks up the empty buses one by one and tosses them into the Rio Grande. He then picks up his entire family in his arms and flies them back to their house, where his mother begins to fix the family a dinner of chiles en nogada, and his father picks up the TV remote, and his sister retires to her bedroom to text her friends. And Diego, content in seeing his family safely returned to their old lives, picks up a sketchpad, eager to create a superhero suit worthy of his new powers….

From the alleyway, Diego watches as the buses pull away.