He was sitting on the stop step, and had the "broody" look to his shoulders with which she was well familiar. It was the tense and slightly hunched look that made her want to go to him and rub all the knots out; dig her palms into his muscles and push out the angst. She didn't quite dare such familiarity.
Lana wasn't sure where she and Clark stood these days. They saw very little of each other due to school starting up again. She was busy in her off time helping Nell manage the Talon. It was fall, and he was extraordinarily busy at home assisting his father with harvest. Things were still tense between him and Chloe, something for which Lana felt somewhat responsible. That made things awkward. Whitney, though gone, also made things awkward.
Awkward. It wasn't a pretty word, but it best described her relationship with Clark. It was made up of uncomfortable silences, unspoken feelings, and almost kisses.
She had received a few letters from Whitney, all of them basically the same and all reiterating his request for her to wait for him. "Wait for me," he said. "I'll be somebody...."
Lana didn't want *somebody*. She wanted Whitney, and she did not understand what he was trying to prove. Had he misunderstood her desire to leave Smallville, twisting it into the need to take on the responsibility of getting her out himself? It was not what she had asked. It wasn't what she wanted. In fact, anymore, she wasn't sure what she wanted. Perhaps she didn't want Whitney at all, or whoever he would be once he came back.
Her eyes found Clark again as she stood near the gates to the schoolyard looking out across the football field. Slowly she descended the steps and sat down beside him.
"I have never seen a more miserable looking back," she said. "What's wrong?"
His eyes cut her way. He glanced at her out of their corners, and wordlessly handed her an all too familiar, white paper card.
Lana took it. It was creased down the middle, but she unfolded it and looked at the long row of letters running down one side. It was a long row of "A's" in everything from Chemistry to Advanced Calculus, History to College English. At the bottom everything skewed slightly sideways. At the bottom were the electives.
French - A - no surprise there.
Choir - A - also no surprise. Pete told her once that Clark had perfect pitch.
PhysEd. - C - okay, odd, but not by too much. Clark was pretty clumsy sometimes and the boys gym teacher was an ass.
Art ...
"Clark..."
His voice was morose. "I know. I know. Don't say it."
She said it anyway. "How are you flunking Art?"
"I'm not flunking," he said indignantly. "A 'D' is a passing grade." He sighed as he took the report card back from Lana. "It was the unit on calligraphy that got me."
To this, Lana shook her head and laughed.
He fought to maintain his morose expression. "It's not funny."
"I've seen your handwriting, yes it is."
"Then," he continued. "The last project we had - we had to make something out of clay." The wince was painful to see. Clark bit his lip, and dropped his eyes down to his hands, where he turned the paper around and around in his fingers. "I made a pencil holder."
She looked at him. "A pencil..."
"I took the clay, and poked holes in it with a pencil. When we fired it, the heat contracted the clay and the holes shrunk...." His voice became very quiet. "The pencils didn't fit anymore."
Lana thought she was going to fall down the stairs. She put her head down on the folder she held across her lap, and laughed until she thought she was going to burst.
"It's not funny." Clark repeated, grumbling, which only made her laugh harder. "Mrs. Larson said that basically, I'd made a rock."
Raising her head, Lana howled laughter. Tears ran down her face, and her hands shook as she wiped them away, only to have more fall as she burst into giggles again. "A rock!"
Clark pouted. "Not funny." But his face twitched as he fought to hold back his own laughter. "My mom is going to kill me."
Sniffing, trying to suppress the giggling that boiled up from the pit of her stomach, Lana shook her head. Her voice squeaked. "Why did you take art in the first place?"
"I like art." He shrugged. "I'm just not very good at making it myself I guess."
"I guess."
He looked up across the football field, and as she looked at his profile, Lana sobered. She realized how much alike they were in that neither of them seemed to have found a secure niche within the High School social order. Clark was too smart, yet not quite dorky enough to fit in with the science geeks, and just dorky enough not to fit in with the popular crowd. He was too shy to be cool, and too friendly to be an "outcast." His family was too successful for him to be considered one of the poor farm kids, but yet not nearly financially secure enough for him to be one of the "snobs."
He simply did not fit in anywhere.
Lana felt she had the same problem. She had always been too pretty for the smart girls, who labeled her a "princess" and a "snob," but the other cheerleaders found her too introspective and bookish. Every boy she'd ever encountered, with the exception of Whitney and Clark, had either been one big drooling, groping, hormone, or too intimidated by her looks to approach her at all. She was always misinterpreted and misunderstood. Additionally, she had discovered that whereas she was good at a lot of things, she'd not yet found one thing at which she could excel.
The closest she had come to being very good at something had been, ironically, her drawing. She, unlike Clark, had gotten excellent grades in art.
"Look," she said finally, putting a hand on his arm and drawing his attention back to her. "I know Mrs. Larson, she hates giving bad grades. Stop in this afternoon sometime and ask her if she'll let you do something for extra credit, I'm sure she'll say yes."
" 'kaaaay," he said slowly. "But then what? That won't solve the problem of my complete and utter inability to produce anything remotely like art."
She smiled, wrinkling her nose at him. "I'll help you, if you help me with my physics homework."
Lana wasn't stupid. She saw the cogs clanking around in his head very clearly. An afternoon with Lana, possible salvage of his GPA; this was a good thing.
"Sure, but I warn you, it won't be easy to teach me art."
"I'm a good teacher," she said, and stood up. "You'll see."
He looked up at her and narrowed his eyes at her. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Who do you think taught Whitney how to drive a stick shift?" Clark burst out laughing and she gave him a little wave good-bye. "Call me after you talk to Mrs. Larson. I'll be at the Talon until six."
This, she thought as she headed to her next class, was going to be interesting.
****
She had a drop cloth, two easels, paint, and brushes all set up on the screened porch overlooking the Potters' back yard. On a stool behind the easels was a blue vase with a red rose sticking out of it. The supplies were left over from a painting class Lana and Nell had taken together at the community college once during an exercise in "bonding." The flower was plastic. The vase was an empty Ty Nant bottle pinched from Lex.
Clark eyed the arrangement dubiously. "I'm supposed to paint that?"
"What's wrong with it?" Lana pulled her hair back and secured it in a ponytail with a worn but much loved pink scrunchie.
"It's a little," He winced. "Complicated."
Laughing, Lana picked up a brush. "It's a flower in a vase, Clark."
"Translation: complicated."
"Mmm, yes I forgot, your major contribution to the art world was The Holy Rock of Smallville." She spread her fingers out and widened her eyes. "Oooh...."
He was grinning as he picked up one of the brushes himself. "Shuddup, Lana."
She laughed.
"Meanie."
"Clark," Lana cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. "Seriously. You can do this. Now see, I've already drawn the outline of everything on the canvas with a pencil. We just have to fill in the color."
"Paint-by-number."
"Right, you got it."
"Okay, I think I can handle something like that."
Lana watched him out of the corner of her eye as she opened a bottle of paint and put a bit of pale yellow in one of the little cups on her pallet. She'd hung a sheet up along the screen behind the flower vase, giving it a background other than the past-due-to-be-mown yard. She kept one eye on Clark as she spread the pastel gold across her own canvas.
Clark squinted at his canvas and made a face.
"What's the matter?"
"There aren't any numbers."
Her brush paused in mid stroke. "You're kidding?"
His silly grin said it all. He picked up the paint and put some in his pallet, squinted again at the scene before him, and added white to the yellow. His yellow, Lana noted with some pride, was a closer match than hers. She tended to like her colors a bit brighter than they actually appeared on the object she was painting.
"You are too much of a realist," she said. "There's your problem."
"What do you mean?"
"Your paint is too thick."
"Huh?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, two separate thoughts. Your paint is too thick, add some water, and you see things very much as they are, Clark. Your perceptions are very - uncomplicated. You can copy something, but you can't add to it, customize it."
He dipped his brush in the can of water set between them on another stool. "I guess. I did okay with the calligraphy as long as we were copying directly from the book, but when we had to add our own embellishments, I fell all to pieces." Shrugging, he continued. "I have a hard time looking at a lump of clay or a blank canvas and seeing anything other than a lump of clay or a blank canvas." His head tipped to one side. "I wonder if it has to do with the fact I have a photographic memory."
Lana paused, startled, and looked at him directly. "Do you?"
Biting his lip, as if perhaps wishing he hadn't brought it up, or maybe just concentrating on catching the drips of his now too-wet paint, he nodded. "Yeah. Stuff like math or history, that's pretty easy because it's mostly memorization. Writing and, well, art, those are harder because I have to think of things on my own - create - and I'm not very creative." He stopped, and turned to look at her. "Does that make sense?"
"That makes perfect sense," she said, returning to her painting. "Also explains the math grades."
He didn't say anything for a moment, and then: "You won't tell will you? I usually don't like people to know. I'm afraid they'll like, think I'm making notes about everything they say."
"I'm the Fort Knox of Secrets." She glanced at him, and smiled. "I won't tell anybody, Clark."
"Because it doesn't work that way you know," he added hastily. "It's not stuff I hear, it's stuff I see."
"I know."
His expression, and his body language, spoke of relief. "Thanks."
Lana pretended to keep working on her painting, but she was still watching him. "So, who else knows besides me?" She asked quietly.
Blushing, Clark caught a drip, smeared the yellow paint awkwardly across his canvas, and shrugged. "Nobody." His face split in a wry grin. "I never told anyone before."
"I'm terribly flattered you chose me," Lana swirled her brush around in the water-can.
"I trust you."
"Thanks, Clark. That means a lot to me."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Do you trust me - and I know you probably shouldn't because I have let you down a few times."
Lana continued to idly swirl her brush in the water, then turned her gaze upwards to find him looking at her. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes, primarily because she'd seen it so many times before. Clark was truly in love with her, and she knew it, but she wasn't sure she could reciprocate such a strongly defined emotion.
Clark was her friend. He was probably her best friend. He'd saved her life several times, and she'd come to look at him as her protector; the big brother she'd never had even though they were the same age. Recently, however, her perceptions had started to change. Instead of the protector being a big brother, the protector had become a white knight, and in fairy tales it was always the knight who married the princess he rescued.
Wasn't she the fairy princess? Should she consider herself and Clark in "happily ever after" terms?
"You've never let me down, Clark," she said softly. "You've had setbacks, but you always come through in the end."
"Thanks."
She smiled at him, he smiled back, and she showed him how to add shadow and light to his background.
He scowled as he attempted dry brush blending. "Okay, now I get a secret."
Lana laughed. "Oh, do you?"
"Yes. Give it up, Lang."
Pouring some blue paint into her pallet, Lana considered. "Hmm. Okay. Remember when Mr. Dumphey went through his drill sergeant phase and he was busting people for holding hands in the hallway?"
"Oh, yeah! He got Chloe, too."
"Chloe? Who was Chloe holding hands with?" Her brush halted halfway between the pallet and the canvas.
*Oh*, *my God*, *was that a jealous pang*, *Lang*?
Clark shook his head. "Nobody, she was singing. Humpty Dumphey nabbed her on the way to the bathroom. She had a hall pass and everything, but he said she was making too much noise because she was singing."
Lana's brush continued on its way to the canvas. "Oh."
"And of course when she launched into a speech about acceptable decibel levels and how there was no way she was singing loud enough to disturb any of the classes she passed, he said she was back talking and gave her a detention."
"Okay, that's right. I do remember seeing her among the throngs of people he'd collared." She grinned mischievously. "See, he got me holding hands with Whitney and we tried to escape him by ducking down two separate hallways. Whitney escaped but Mr. Dumphey caught me."
"Oh."
*And that definitely was an* "*Oh*" *of jealousy*. *Green*-*eyed monster at your back Clark*?
"I got him back though," she said quietly, and started filling in her bottle drawing with the loud blue color.
She felt Clark's eyes on her, but didn't look.
"You!" He blurted. "You're the one who trashed his car?"
Lana frowned. "Trashed is a rather harsh, Clark. Decorated is more like it."
"Oh, man! That was so royal! Pink shaving cream! How many cans did it take to cover it?"
"Fifteen."
He laughed delightedly. "And then it wouldn't start..."
"Took all the spark plug wires off."
Clark dissolved into teary eyed giggles. "Oh, the dance he did when he found it! Pete and I had to duck behind Chloe's car we were laughing so hard. We were afraid he'd bust *us*!"
"Well that's my secret, Clark, and you can't tell. Nobody knows it was me, not even Whitney." She narrowed her eyes and pointed her paintbrush at him. "Don't you tell, especially not your little buddy Pete."
"Never! Scout's honor." His laughter died into the occasional snicker. "But you should see Pete imitate Dumphey's dance. It's hysterical."
"Don't you tell!"
"I won't but..."
Lana shook her brush. "No buts."
As she shook the paint laden brush, one drop hanging on the very end, flicked upwards into the air. Her eye tracked it reflexively as it sailed up into the space between herself and Clark. She was not particularly alarmed, since she had put down a drop cloth, but she gasped softly as she realized where the droplet of bright blue paint was going to land.
It hit Clark right between the eyes, just above the bridge of his nose.
Lana covered her mouth. "Oh, Clark, I'm sorry."
He didn't say anything.
She giggled. "You look like Boy George."
He frowned. "Right."
"Oh no!" Lana shrieked, ducked, but failed to get out of the yellow spray that showered down at her. Her hair went from dark brown, to dark brown with yellow polka-dots.
Clark calmly went back to painting.
Lana hid behind her canvas, and reached around to dip her brush into the red paint, popping out long enough to fling an entire brush full at him. "Touche'!"
A drop of red paint dripped off the end of his nose and down the front of his shirt, which was also dripping red paint. He looked at her. Only her eyes could be seen from around the edge of her painting.
"You're in trouble," he said quietly, and picked up his bottle of blue paint. He made a production of dipping his brush....
And then came after her.
Lana screamed, grabbed her yellow, and started flinging back at him as she retreated around to the back of the canvases. "No fair! No fair! You're too - eek - tall!" She ran around to the other side.
"Fwoosh!" Clark laughed, and double dipped his paint brush in red and blue, throwing an ugly purple streak across Lana's face.
"Cheater!" She was laughing just as hard, and had picked up another brush from the table. Standing at his easel she dipped into her yellow jar and his red jar simultaneously and gave him both barrels.
"Ow, my eye!" He doubled over. "Ow, ow."
Horrified, Lana stopped. "Oh, Clark! I'm sorry. Are you okay?" She went to him, leaning over with one hand on his paint sticky shoulder. "Let me see."
He nailed her in the chest with the whole bottle of red paint. "Gotcha!"
She shrieked as he caught her around the waist and picked her up off the ground kicking. "Put me down! Ooh! It's running down my shirt!"
"Nope. You're dangerous."
Tears streaked through the pain on Lana's face as she laughed, and she started to hiccough. "Put *hic* me down!" She giggled.
Then she saw her opportunity.
Reaching around his chest, she snatched up the bottle of yellow paint from the closest easel.
"What are you doing?" Clark looked down. "Lana, no, don't!"
"*Hic.*"
Lana poured the whole bottle down his pants, and collapsed to the floor laughing, crying, and hiccoughing as he proceeded to perform what Pete would have dubbed "The Kent Boogie."
"Gugh!"
"*Hic.*" She shrieked as he slipped in the paint running down his pants legs and tumbled to the floor next to her. One of the easels fell, and the canvas bounced off the top of his head before falling aside with a clatter. Together they sat in the mess of spilled paint and laughed.
"Oh, *hic*, I haven't laughed like that *hic* in forever." Lana raised a hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but busted out laughing again as she realized she was doing nothing but smearing paint around.
Clark sobered. "Nell is going to kill us." He made a face, a rather odd face.
"What *hic* is it?"
"I think I have paint where paint really shouldn't go."
Wheezing, she buried her face in his shoulder.
"It's not - ew - funny," he said plaintively.
Which only made her laugh harder.
It felt good, to laugh, and especially to laugh *with* someone. Lana had not been laughing enough lately, and in truth, felt as though she was far behind in her laughter quotient in comparison to others her age. She'd experienced too much tragedy and too much heartache to do much laughing through the years. Recently, with the death of Principal Kwan, Whitney's father, and Whitney's subsequent departure from Smallville, she felt as though she were even forgetting *how* to laugh.
It was Clark who came to he rescue as usual. He made her forget the sad things. He drew her out of the past into the present, and he made her laugh.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, and looked into his face. His eyes were bright with good humor, and seemed very bright green in contrast to the blue and yellow paint smeared all around them. He smiled down at her, but as he saw the serious expression on her face, the smile slowly died, and his lips parted slightly as if he were going to ask her what was wrong.
He didn't ask, and she continued to gaze up at him in silence until, cautiously, he kissed her.
It was short, and delicate, but filled with a gentle affection he could not have masked. She felt it, and returned it.
They drew apart slowly, and Lana heard his soft sigh.
"Maybe," she said quietly, after a moment of silence. "That should be our secret."
Biting his lip, he looked away from her slightly, then nodded. "I promised."
"I know."
*Another awkward silence*, *but at least we got through the kiss this time*.
Lana sniffed.
"We should clean this up." Abruptly he levered himself back to his feet, and began picking up the now empty paint jars lying on the floor.
She agreed, scrambling carefully to her feet. The drop cloth was puddled with spilled paint. "I'm sorry. Our painting lesson was a failure."
He shrugged, but grinned shyly. "But it was fun."
Lana met his gaze again. "Yeah, it was. Thanks, Clark."
"You're welcome."
Further discussion was curtailed by Nell's outraged cry at the sight of her newly painted sun porch.
*****
Clark was standing on the front porch, nervously shifting his weight back and forth. Lana smiled as she saw him, and came out to greet him. His already strained relationship with Nell had been further complicated by a rather pathetic apology for the messy state of her niece and her sun porch after his painting lesson. Coming over made him nervous. Lana had been upstairs finishing a homework assignment when she heard him stammering at the front door or she would have staged a rescue before Nell had a chance to make him uncomfortable. Instead Nell had called Lana down with a definite chill in her voice, and Clark looked like he'd just been tied to the bumper of Nell's truck and dragged naked down road made up of broken glass and thumb tacks. "Pained" was an accurate description of his expression.
"She hates me," he whispered as Lana joined him on the porch.
"She'll get over it," she whispered back. "What's up?"
He grinned, and presented her with a folded card; his report card.
She flipped it open, and looked at it. In the section labeled "Art" the grade had gone up from a D to a B minus. "Hey! Congratulations!"
Clark stuck his hands in his pockets and blushed. "Thanks. I took in my painting, the one we did on the porch."
Lana frowned as she handed back his report card. "Clark, that was a mess, all paint splattered."
"Yeah, I know, but Mrs. Larson said it was very Jackson Pollock. She loved it."
After a moment of staring at him incredulously, Lana laughed. "You're kidding?"
"Nope," he hesitated, and then leaned in to give her a quick peck on the cheek. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"And I brought you a present. Come on." Reaching out, Clark took her hand, and Lana followed him down the steps. "Close your eyes."
"Okay," she said, obeying. "But this is bringing back a bad vibe, Clark. You aren't joining the Marines are you?"
He laughed. "No."
She stumbled a little, but his strong hands caught her and steadied her. She kept her eyes closed until he brought her to a halt roughly halfway down the front yard, and whispered in her ear:
"Open your eyes."
Slowly, she opened her eyes, and looked.
"Oh! Wow!"
There, in the yard, was a sculpture. It had been made out of barbed wire, twisted and shaped into the form of a leaping horse. One rear foot was anchored to a piece of rebar, which had been driven into the ground to hold the whole thing upright. Head lowered, forelegs striking out, the horse sprang from it's steely anchor forward into the air, as if it were a real wild stallion leaping over a stream. It's barbed wire mane and tail streamed out behind it, adding to the illusion of forward motion.
"Do you like it?"
Lana walked all around the sculpture. "It's - it's beautiful, Clark!"
His grin broadened. "I watched your horse playing out in the paddock, and I thought about what you said about being to much of a realist. I could just make something real, you know? So I remembered your horse playing, and I just copied the picture out of my head."
She stopped short, and pointed to the sculpture. "*You* made this?"
Clark nodded.
"Clark! This is fantastic! You should have Mrs. Larson look at it! You could do this for a living." Lana came back to him, and placed a hand on his arm, but frowned as she saw him shaking his head.
"This is yours," was all he said.
Carefully, Lana studied his eyes, and she understood after a moment what he meant. He had poured his heart into making her a gift. It wasn't art. It wasn't meant for public display, but rather to bring her pleasure when she looked out from her porch or her window and saw it there in the yard. He wanted her to remember their laughter, and the secret kiss they had shared.
"This is yours," meant, "*I* am yours."
Lana stood up on her toes, and kissed his cheek, much like she had the first time they had really talked; in the darkness, in a graveyard full of memories. "Thank you," she whispered.
"I'm glad you like it," he replied quietly.
"I love it." Taking his hand, she gave it a little squeeze. "I hope you wore gloves."
He looked puzzled. "Glove - oh - yes. I did."
There was a pause.
"Would you like some lemonade? Nell's leaving for the Talon in a few minutes." Lana grinned, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "It will be safe."
"Sure, I'd like that."
"Me too."
A half hour later they were sitting on the glider, admiring the barbed wire stallion as he swayed gently in the breeze. It made him look like he was galloping over the lawn and into the sunset.
Ten minutes after that, howls of laughter echoed up from the Potter house and drifted out over the Kent's soybean field.
Lana and Clark were spitting lemon seeds at each other.
Lana wasn't sure where she and Clark stood these days. They saw very little of each other due to school starting up again. She was busy in her off time helping Nell manage the Talon. It was fall, and he was extraordinarily busy at home assisting his father with harvest. Things were still tense between him and Chloe, something for which Lana felt somewhat responsible. That made things awkward. Whitney, though gone, also made things awkward.
Awkward. It wasn't a pretty word, but it best described her relationship with Clark. It was made up of uncomfortable silences, unspoken feelings, and almost kisses.
She had received a few letters from Whitney, all of them basically the same and all reiterating his request for her to wait for him. "Wait for me," he said. "I'll be somebody...."
Lana didn't want *somebody*. She wanted Whitney, and she did not understand what he was trying to prove. Had he misunderstood her desire to leave Smallville, twisting it into the need to take on the responsibility of getting her out himself? It was not what she had asked. It wasn't what she wanted. In fact, anymore, she wasn't sure what she wanted. Perhaps she didn't want Whitney at all, or whoever he would be once he came back.
Her eyes found Clark again as she stood near the gates to the schoolyard looking out across the football field. Slowly she descended the steps and sat down beside him.
"I have never seen a more miserable looking back," she said. "What's wrong?"
His eyes cut her way. He glanced at her out of their corners, and wordlessly handed her an all too familiar, white paper card.
Lana took it. It was creased down the middle, but she unfolded it and looked at the long row of letters running down one side. It was a long row of "A's" in everything from Chemistry to Advanced Calculus, History to College English. At the bottom everything skewed slightly sideways. At the bottom were the electives.
French - A - no surprise there.
Choir - A - also no surprise. Pete told her once that Clark had perfect pitch.
PhysEd. - C - okay, odd, but not by too much. Clark was pretty clumsy sometimes and the boys gym teacher was an ass.
Art ...
"Clark..."
His voice was morose. "I know. I know. Don't say it."
She said it anyway. "How are you flunking Art?"
"I'm not flunking," he said indignantly. "A 'D' is a passing grade." He sighed as he took the report card back from Lana. "It was the unit on calligraphy that got me."
To this, Lana shook her head and laughed.
He fought to maintain his morose expression. "It's not funny."
"I've seen your handwriting, yes it is."
"Then," he continued. "The last project we had - we had to make something out of clay." The wince was painful to see. Clark bit his lip, and dropped his eyes down to his hands, where he turned the paper around and around in his fingers. "I made a pencil holder."
She looked at him. "A pencil..."
"I took the clay, and poked holes in it with a pencil. When we fired it, the heat contracted the clay and the holes shrunk...." His voice became very quiet. "The pencils didn't fit anymore."
Lana thought she was going to fall down the stairs. She put her head down on the folder she held across her lap, and laughed until she thought she was going to burst.
"It's not funny." Clark repeated, grumbling, which only made her laugh harder. "Mrs. Larson said that basically, I'd made a rock."
Raising her head, Lana howled laughter. Tears ran down her face, and her hands shook as she wiped them away, only to have more fall as she burst into giggles again. "A rock!"
Clark pouted. "Not funny." But his face twitched as he fought to hold back his own laughter. "My mom is going to kill me."
Sniffing, trying to suppress the giggling that boiled up from the pit of her stomach, Lana shook her head. Her voice squeaked. "Why did you take art in the first place?"
"I like art." He shrugged. "I'm just not very good at making it myself I guess."
"I guess."
He looked up across the football field, and as she looked at his profile, Lana sobered. She realized how much alike they were in that neither of them seemed to have found a secure niche within the High School social order. Clark was too smart, yet not quite dorky enough to fit in with the science geeks, and just dorky enough not to fit in with the popular crowd. He was too shy to be cool, and too friendly to be an "outcast." His family was too successful for him to be considered one of the poor farm kids, but yet not nearly financially secure enough for him to be one of the "snobs."
He simply did not fit in anywhere.
Lana felt she had the same problem. She had always been too pretty for the smart girls, who labeled her a "princess" and a "snob," but the other cheerleaders found her too introspective and bookish. Every boy she'd ever encountered, with the exception of Whitney and Clark, had either been one big drooling, groping, hormone, or too intimidated by her looks to approach her at all. She was always misinterpreted and misunderstood. Additionally, she had discovered that whereas she was good at a lot of things, she'd not yet found one thing at which she could excel.
The closest she had come to being very good at something had been, ironically, her drawing. She, unlike Clark, had gotten excellent grades in art.
"Look," she said finally, putting a hand on his arm and drawing his attention back to her. "I know Mrs. Larson, she hates giving bad grades. Stop in this afternoon sometime and ask her if she'll let you do something for extra credit, I'm sure she'll say yes."
" 'kaaaay," he said slowly. "But then what? That won't solve the problem of my complete and utter inability to produce anything remotely like art."
She smiled, wrinkling her nose at him. "I'll help you, if you help me with my physics homework."
Lana wasn't stupid. She saw the cogs clanking around in his head very clearly. An afternoon with Lana, possible salvage of his GPA; this was a good thing.
"Sure, but I warn you, it won't be easy to teach me art."
"I'm a good teacher," she said, and stood up. "You'll see."
He looked up at her and narrowed his eyes at her. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Who do you think taught Whitney how to drive a stick shift?" Clark burst out laughing and she gave him a little wave good-bye. "Call me after you talk to Mrs. Larson. I'll be at the Talon until six."
This, she thought as she headed to her next class, was going to be interesting.
****
She had a drop cloth, two easels, paint, and brushes all set up on the screened porch overlooking the Potters' back yard. On a stool behind the easels was a blue vase with a red rose sticking out of it. The supplies were left over from a painting class Lana and Nell had taken together at the community college once during an exercise in "bonding." The flower was plastic. The vase was an empty Ty Nant bottle pinched from Lex.
Clark eyed the arrangement dubiously. "I'm supposed to paint that?"
"What's wrong with it?" Lana pulled her hair back and secured it in a ponytail with a worn but much loved pink scrunchie.
"It's a little," He winced. "Complicated."
Laughing, Lana picked up a brush. "It's a flower in a vase, Clark."
"Translation: complicated."
"Mmm, yes I forgot, your major contribution to the art world was The Holy Rock of Smallville." She spread her fingers out and widened her eyes. "Oooh...."
He was grinning as he picked up one of the brushes himself. "Shuddup, Lana."
She laughed.
"Meanie."
"Clark," Lana cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. "Seriously. You can do this. Now see, I've already drawn the outline of everything on the canvas with a pencil. We just have to fill in the color."
"Paint-by-number."
"Right, you got it."
"Okay, I think I can handle something like that."
Lana watched him out of the corner of her eye as she opened a bottle of paint and put a bit of pale yellow in one of the little cups on her pallet. She'd hung a sheet up along the screen behind the flower vase, giving it a background other than the past-due-to-be-mown yard. She kept one eye on Clark as she spread the pastel gold across her own canvas.
Clark squinted at his canvas and made a face.
"What's the matter?"
"There aren't any numbers."
Her brush paused in mid stroke. "You're kidding?"
His silly grin said it all. He picked up the paint and put some in his pallet, squinted again at the scene before him, and added white to the yellow. His yellow, Lana noted with some pride, was a closer match than hers. She tended to like her colors a bit brighter than they actually appeared on the object she was painting.
"You are too much of a realist," she said. "There's your problem."
"What do you mean?"
"Your paint is too thick."
"Huh?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, two separate thoughts. Your paint is too thick, add some water, and you see things very much as they are, Clark. Your perceptions are very - uncomplicated. You can copy something, but you can't add to it, customize it."
He dipped his brush in the can of water set between them on another stool. "I guess. I did okay with the calligraphy as long as we were copying directly from the book, but when we had to add our own embellishments, I fell all to pieces." Shrugging, he continued. "I have a hard time looking at a lump of clay or a blank canvas and seeing anything other than a lump of clay or a blank canvas." His head tipped to one side. "I wonder if it has to do with the fact I have a photographic memory."
Lana paused, startled, and looked at him directly. "Do you?"
Biting his lip, as if perhaps wishing he hadn't brought it up, or maybe just concentrating on catching the drips of his now too-wet paint, he nodded. "Yeah. Stuff like math or history, that's pretty easy because it's mostly memorization. Writing and, well, art, those are harder because I have to think of things on my own - create - and I'm not very creative." He stopped, and turned to look at her. "Does that make sense?"
"That makes perfect sense," she said, returning to her painting. "Also explains the math grades."
He didn't say anything for a moment, and then: "You won't tell will you? I usually don't like people to know. I'm afraid they'll like, think I'm making notes about everything they say."
"I'm the Fort Knox of Secrets." She glanced at him, and smiled. "I won't tell anybody, Clark."
"Because it doesn't work that way you know," he added hastily. "It's not stuff I hear, it's stuff I see."
"I know."
His expression, and his body language, spoke of relief. "Thanks."
Lana pretended to keep working on her painting, but she was still watching him. "So, who else knows besides me?" She asked quietly.
Blushing, Clark caught a drip, smeared the yellow paint awkwardly across his canvas, and shrugged. "Nobody." His face split in a wry grin. "I never told anyone before."
"I'm terribly flattered you chose me," Lana swirled her brush around in the water-can.
"I trust you."
"Thanks, Clark. That means a lot to me."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Do you trust me - and I know you probably shouldn't because I have let you down a few times."
Lana continued to idly swirl her brush in the water, then turned her gaze upwards to find him looking at her. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes, primarily because she'd seen it so many times before. Clark was truly in love with her, and she knew it, but she wasn't sure she could reciprocate such a strongly defined emotion.
Clark was her friend. He was probably her best friend. He'd saved her life several times, and she'd come to look at him as her protector; the big brother she'd never had even though they were the same age. Recently, however, her perceptions had started to change. Instead of the protector being a big brother, the protector had become a white knight, and in fairy tales it was always the knight who married the princess he rescued.
Wasn't she the fairy princess? Should she consider herself and Clark in "happily ever after" terms?
"You've never let me down, Clark," she said softly. "You've had setbacks, but you always come through in the end."
"Thanks."
She smiled at him, he smiled back, and she showed him how to add shadow and light to his background.
He scowled as he attempted dry brush blending. "Okay, now I get a secret."
Lana laughed. "Oh, do you?"
"Yes. Give it up, Lang."
Pouring some blue paint into her pallet, Lana considered. "Hmm. Okay. Remember when Mr. Dumphey went through his drill sergeant phase and he was busting people for holding hands in the hallway?"
"Oh, yeah! He got Chloe, too."
"Chloe? Who was Chloe holding hands with?" Her brush halted halfway between the pallet and the canvas.
*Oh*, *my God*, *was that a jealous pang*, *Lang*?
Clark shook his head. "Nobody, she was singing. Humpty Dumphey nabbed her on the way to the bathroom. She had a hall pass and everything, but he said she was making too much noise because she was singing."
Lana's brush continued on its way to the canvas. "Oh."
"And of course when she launched into a speech about acceptable decibel levels and how there was no way she was singing loud enough to disturb any of the classes she passed, he said she was back talking and gave her a detention."
"Okay, that's right. I do remember seeing her among the throngs of people he'd collared." She grinned mischievously. "See, he got me holding hands with Whitney and we tried to escape him by ducking down two separate hallways. Whitney escaped but Mr. Dumphey caught me."
"Oh."
*And that definitely was an* "*Oh*" *of jealousy*. *Green*-*eyed monster at your back Clark*?
"I got him back though," she said quietly, and started filling in her bottle drawing with the loud blue color.
She felt Clark's eyes on her, but didn't look.
"You!" He blurted. "You're the one who trashed his car?"
Lana frowned. "Trashed is a rather harsh, Clark. Decorated is more like it."
"Oh, man! That was so royal! Pink shaving cream! How many cans did it take to cover it?"
"Fifteen."
He laughed delightedly. "And then it wouldn't start..."
"Took all the spark plug wires off."
Clark dissolved into teary eyed giggles. "Oh, the dance he did when he found it! Pete and I had to duck behind Chloe's car we were laughing so hard. We were afraid he'd bust *us*!"
"Well that's my secret, Clark, and you can't tell. Nobody knows it was me, not even Whitney." She narrowed her eyes and pointed her paintbrush at him. "Don't you tell, especially not your little buddy Pete."
"Never! Scout's honor." His laughter died into the occasional snicker. "But you should see Pete imitate Dumphey's dance. It's hysterical."
"Don't you tell!"
"I won't but..."
Lana shook her brush. "No buts."
As she shook the paint laden brush, one drop hanging on the very end, flicked upwards into the air. Her eye tracked it reflexively as it sailed up into the space between herself and Clark. She was not particularly alarmed, since she had put down a drop cloth, but she gasped softly as she realized where the droplet of bright blue paint was going to land.
It hit Clark right between the eyes, just above the bridge of his nose.
Lana covered her mouth. "Oh, Clark, I'm sorry."
He didn't say anything.
She giggled. "You look like Boy George."
He frowned. "Right."
"Oh no!" Lana shrieked, ducked, but failed to get out of the yellow spray that showered down at her. Her hair went from dark brown, to dark brown with yellow polka-dots.
Clark calmly went back to painting.
Lana hid behind her canvas, and reached around to dip her brush into the red paint, popping out long enough to fling an entire brush full at him. "Touche'!"
A drop of red paint dripped off the end of his nose and down the front of his shirt, which was also dripping red paint. He looked at her. Only her eyes could be seen from around the edge of her painting.
"You're in trouble," he said quietly, and picked up his bottle of blue paint. He made a production of dipping his brush....
And then came after her.
Lana screamed, grabbed her yellow, and started flinging back at him as she retreated around to the back of the canvases. "No fair! No fair! You're too - eek - tall!" She ran around to the other side.
"Fwoosh!" Clark laughed, and double dipped his paint brush in red and blue, throwing an ugly purple streak across Lana's face.
"Cheater!" She was laughing just as hard, and had picked up another brush from the table. Standing at his easel she dipped into her yellow jar and his red jar simultaneously and gave him both barrels.
"Ow, my eye!" He doubled over. "Ow, ow."
Horrified, Lana stopped. "Oh, Clark! I'm sorry. Are you okay?" She went to him, leaning over with one hand on his paint sticky shoulder. "Let me see."
He nailed her in the chest with the whole bottle of red paint. "Gotcha!"
She shrieked as he caught her around the waist and picked her up off the ground kicking. "Put me down! Ooh! It's running down my shirt!"
"Nope. You're dangerous."
Tears streaked through the pain on Lana's face as she laughed, and she started to hiccough. "Put *hic* me down!" She giggled.
Then she saw her opportunity.
Reaching around his chest, she snatched up the bottle of yellow paint from the closest easel.
"What are you doing?" Clark looked down. "Lana, no, don't!"
"*Hic.*"
Lana poured the whole bottle down his pants, and collapsed to the floor laughing, crying, and hiccoughing as he proceeded to perform what Pete would have dubbed "The Kent Boogie."
"Gugh!"
"*Hic.*" She shrieked as he slipped in the paint running down his pants legs and tumbled to the floor next to her. One of the easels fell, and the canvas bounced off the top of his head before falling aside with a clatter. Together they sat in the mess of spilled paint and laughed.
"Oh, *hic*, I haven't laughed like that *hic* in forever." Lana raised a hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but busted out laughing again as she realized she was doing nothing but smearing paint around.
Clark sobered. "Nell is going to kill us." He made a face, a rather odd face.
"What *hic* is it?"
"I think I have paint where paint really shouldn't go."
Wheezing, she buried her face in his shoulder.
"It's not - ew - funny," he said plaintively.
Which only made her laugh harder.
It felt good, to laugh, and especially to laugh *with* someone. Lana had not been laughing enough lately, and in truth, felt as though she was far behind in her laughter quotient in comparison to others her age. She'd experienced too much tragedy and too much heartache to do much laughing through the years. Recently, with the death of Principal Kwan, Whitney's father, and Whitney's subsequent departure from Smallville, she felt as though she were even forgetting *how* to laugh.
It was Clark who came to he rescue as usual. He made her forget the sad things. He drew her out of the past into the present, and he made her laugh.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, and looked into his face. His eyes were bright with good humor, and seemed very bright green in contrast to the blue and yellow paint smeared all around them. He smiled down at her, but as he saw the serious expression on her face, the smile slowly died, and his lips parted slightly as if he were going to ask her what was wrong.
He didn't ask, and she continued to gaze up at him in silence until, cautiously, he kissed her.
It was short, and delicate, but filled with a gentle affection he could not have masked. She felt it, and returned it.
They drew apart slowly, and Lana heard his soft sigh.
"Maybe," she said quietly, after a moment of silence. "That should be our secret."
Biting his lip, he looked away from her slightly, then nodded. "I promised."
"I know."
*Another awkward silence*, *but at least we got through the kiss this time*.
Lana sniffed.
"We should clean this up." Abruptly he levered himself back to his feet, and began picking up the now empty paint jars lying on the floor.
She agreed, scrambling carefully to her feet. The drop cloth was puddled with spilled paint. "I'm sorry. Our painting lesson was a failure."
He shrugged, but grinned shyly. "But it was fun."
Lana met his gaze again. "Yeah, it was. Thanks, Clark."
"You're welcome."
Further discussion was curtailed by Nell's outraged cry at the sight of her newly painted sun porch.
*****
Clark was standing on the front porch, nervously shifting his weight back and forth. Lana smiled as she saw him, and came out to greet him. His already strained relationship with Nell had been further complicated by a rather pathetic apology for the messy state of her niece and her sun porch after his painting lesson. Coming over made him nervous. Lana had been upstairs finishing a homework assignment when she heard him stammering at the front door or she would have staged a rescue before Nell had a chance to make him uncomfortable. Instead Nell had called Lana down with a definite chill in her voice, and Clark looked like he'd just been tied to the bumper of Nell's truck and dragged naked down road made up of broken glass and thumb tacks. "Pained" was an accurate description of his expression.
"She hates me," he whispered as Lana joined him on the porch.
"She'll get over it," she whispered back. "What's up?"
He grinned, and presented her with a folded card; his report card.
She flipped it open, and looked at it. In the section labeled "Art" the grade had gone up from a D to a B minus. "Hey! Congratulations!"
Clark stuck his hands in his pockets and blushed. "Thanks. I took in my painting, the one we did on the porch."
Lana frowned as she handed back his report card. "Clark, that was a mess, all paint splattered."
"Yeah, I know, but Mrs. Larson said it was very Jackson Pollock. She loved it."
After a moment of staring at him incredulously, Lana laughed. "You're kidding?"
"Nope," he hesitated, and then leaned in to give her a quick peck on the cheek. "Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"And I brought you a present. Come on." Reaching out, Clark took her hand, and Lana followed him down the steps. "Close your eyes."
"Okay," she said, obeying. "But this is bringing back a bad vibe, Clark. You aren't joining the Marines are you?"
He laughed. "No."
She stumbled a little, but his strong hands caught her and steadied her. She kept her eyes closed until he brought her to a halt roughly halfway down the front yard, and whispered in her ear:
"Open your eyes."
Slowly, she opened her eyes, and looked.
"Oh! Wow!"
There, in the yard, was a sculpture. It had been made out of barbed wire, twisted and shaped into the form of a leaping horse. One rear foot was anchored to a piece of rebar, which had been driven into the ground to hold the whole thing upright. Head lowered, forelegs striking out, the horse sprang from it's steely anchor forward into the air, as if it were a real wild stallion leaping over a stream. It's barbed wire mane and tail streamed out behind it, adding to the illusion of forward motion.
"Do you like it?"
Lana walked all around the sculpture. "It's - it's beautiful, Clark!"
His grin broadened. "I watched your horse playing out in the paddock, and I thought about what you said about being to much of a realist. I could just make something real, you know? So I remembered your horse playing, and I just copied the picture out of my head."
She stopped short, and pointed to the sculpture. "*You* made this?"
Clark nodded.
"Clark! This is fantastic! You should have Mrs. Larson look at it! You could do this for a living." Lana came back to him, and placed a hand on his arm, but frowned as she saw him shaking his head.
"This is yours," was all he said.
Carefully, Lana studied his eyes, and she understood after a moment what he meant. He had poured his heart into making her a gift. It wasn't art. It wasn't meant for public display, but rather to bring her pleasure when she looked out from her porch or her window and saw it there in the yard. He wanted her to remember their laughter, and the secret kiss they had shared.
"This is yours," meant, "*I* am yours."
Lana stood up on her toes, and kissed his cheek, much like she had the first time they had really talked; in the darkness, in a graveyard full of memories. "Thank you," she whispered.
"I'm glad you like it," he replied quietly.
"I love it." Taking his hand, she gave it a little squeeze. "I hope you wore gloves."
He looked puzzled. "Glove - oh - yes. I did."
There was a pause.
"Would you like some lemonade? Nell's leaving for the Talon in a few minutes." Lana grinned, and lowered her voice to a whisper. "It will be safe."
"Sure, I'd like that."
"Me too."
A half hour later they were sitting on the glider, admiring the barbed wire stallion as he swayed gently in the breeze. It made him look like he was galloping over the lawn and into the sunset.
Ten minutes after that, howls of laughter echoed up from the Potter house and drifted out over the Kent's soybean field.
Lana and Clark were spitting lemon seeds at each other.