It Runs In the Family
By: GEFM


Chapter 1

Her feet padded across the floor, quietly. Each step was marked with a hastened and compulsory silence.

The building was abandoned, which in it of itself coursed curiosity in her veins. Only yesterday she was knee deep in a story here, and the equipment used to test god knows what piled high to the ceiling of this place.

J.L Kent didn't really spend much time in these sort of run down dirt ridden crime infested areas. But she was 16 now, and defiance was about as rich in her as any other emotion. Her parental units may have warned against the solitary investigation biz, but playing P.I has pretty much been the highlight of her night excursions. Plus they warned strongly. They didn't explicitly forbid her.

The gray area was way too tempting.

It's not like its really all that dangerous in Metropolis anymore. The hero boom down there has made things a little more comforting on the streets. Out of all the crime fighters in the world we definitely got the best draw; Superman.

I'm Joanna's best friend, Erick. And yeah, I got dragged into this whole thing too. I'm hiding behind a garbage can right now as a look out. Some look out.

I'm what you'd call the underdeveloped high schooler. The only six-pack I know of is in my father's fridge down stairs. I can bench press my little baby sister and that's about it.

And that's why I allow myself to be forced into these compromising situations, because of J.L.

The girl isn't "cool" by anyone's standards but everyone knows her. She's the champion of the lessors. In a way, I think she's the first person to ever do that. It occurred to her that there was so many more 'us' than the minority of 'them'. That idea alone was revolutionary.

She has this innate sense of justice, a feeling of right and wrong that she judges everything by. She stands up for us, she always has. It's not in a physical way; she's just as feisty as a mad pitbull. The girl is real aggressive and gets the point across with daggers.

You'd think that "the cools" would make her out to be some sort of Queen of the nerds but they respect her and her authority. She was immediately offered the presidential position in the student government this year but declined. That's how J.L is; modest, calm, but powerful.

Not to mention strikingly beautiful. Her dark hair flows shoulder length, wavy in the right spots. Her eyes are piercing blue, like she can see right through you. She got them from her father, J.L once told me. She's not "hot" or anything, but she has a different brand of attractiveness to her. Its real, it's earthly.

She is the most amazing person I have ever met and…if you haven't figured it out already, I'm totally and completely, hopelessly in love with her.

J.L on the other hand has always separated romance from her life. She's not a tom-boy and she cries too much for her own good but…Well she once told me that she had bigger plans for herself and she didn't really want to affect her decisions now. She wanted to get there first and then get the rest later.

I don't really think that's how it works. I mean, no one goes looking for love it hits you like a bus on a sunny day. That's what happened to me anyway.

J.L moved to our corner of Kansas back in 9th grade and really shook me up. You might have heard of some of the small towns around here; Grandville, Smallville, pretty much all of Lowell County. We're about ten times smaller than those guys, so much so we only got internet a few years ago. I was this nobody photographer at Grover high when she arrived, an ambitious girl with a penchant for getting herself in tight spots.

Now, I'm a pretty safe guy and am quite a worrier but she couldn't have that. If I was going to be her person, her confidante, and one day her guy, that had to be altered. We met in journalism class, which we were both mistakenly placed into. We had befriended over the terrible assignment. I realized then that her energy had no outlet to escape to. She always wanted to do something extraordinary but she didn't know what yet.

She was lost but luckily there were so many options. She excelled most in English but was also very skilled in Math and Science. It occurred to me early on that the girl could do anything.

Her parents Clark and Lois Kent were pretty well off because Mrs. Kent had written some book that had made enough money to last them a good lifetime. J.L was close to them, but they were very secretive about their private lives. I've spent a good amount of hours staying up with Joanna listening to her frustrations about it.

I think it's awful really. I can't imagine not knowing my family's history. Not that it would be difficult for me to find out. The Abelson's have been rooted here in Grover for practically an eternity.

I've really only ever seen her mom around, I try not to press the issue of the whereabouts of her father but I'm told he has a steady job in Metropolis and works long hours. At least that's how Mrs. Kent accounts for his absence.

I guess that's what this whole new phase is with J.L. She's finally begun digging her way into her past trying to figure out what it is everyone's been hiding. It started when we were perusing the library with our English class one day, when I had spotted a book in the biography section called, "Lane and Kent: Daily Planet's Dynamic Duo". My eyes were pretty sharp about these minute details (photo geek, ya know) and I was certain that the couple I saw on the binding were definitely familiar faces. We immediately took it out—after withstanding the awestricken look of realization from our teacher—and brought it to my house to review. Her parents were partners at the Daily Planet, where they had reportedly met. It was a humorous shock when we realized that they were celebrities in their day. Her mother had won three Pulitzers for her work on Superman and Mr. Kent had helped unearth various other expositions on large-scale corruption cases.

"Your mom discovered Superman?" I furrowed my brows at her in utter amazement.

"Looks like it." She grabbed the book off the table where I had laid it down and stared at the page blankly.

Her nonchalance bewildered me. "Don't you see how amazing this is? I mean, she even dated him!"

"Yeah, it's something."

J.L wasn't nearly as thrilled as I'd been about the whole thing. The entire time I read the documentation no matter how enthusiastic my narration, she sat cold, distant, detached. I couldn't shake the feeling that she was disappointed about something. What exactly I couldn't place. I decided to let it go at the time, but it still bothers me. It obviously hasn't stopped bothering her.

That's why we're here. At least I think it is. Lately, she's been on a mission. Maybe it's a competition I'm not sure but I sense her agitation growing each time we hit a dead end in a story. It was just a stupid thing to do on weekends, take a bus into the city, creep around for some bate, and follow it somewhere. It was an adventure; it was fun.

Except now its mutating, she's investing herself in our journalism class to the point of obsession. Our teacher, Mr. Katz has already dubbed her the star of our journalism class, not just for devotion but for natural talent.

She is desperate to make a name for herself. I don't get why exactly. We're only 16, juniors in high school. But then, even though we're close there's always been a part of her I don't completely understand.

"'Ms. Lane was able to convince Pauline Kahn, the famously ridged Editor of the Daily Planet at the time, of her talents and became the youngest reporter to be hired at the paper. Lois had a history of breaking records, she was also the youngest intern and columnist at 15.'"

"Your mom has gotten exponentially cooler in the past five minutes."

J.L looked away absorbed in her thoughts. "It certainly explains why the woman can't make cookies, that's for sure."

I heard a loud crash and feet shuffling inside. Being the lookout, I was assigned a call––a crow's caw actually—except when I'm stressed and scared I can't really remember that kind of thing. BAM

Okay, that was a gunshot. I'm sufficiently stressed.

"Joanna! Get out!" I jumped on the trash bin and propped myself up to a musty window that gave me a crummy view of what was going on. Basically, it was bad. J.L was running away from a couple of two stereotypical evil henchmen, big, stupid looking, and lucky for us, slow runners too.

After climbing off of the pile of garbage I ran to meet her at the door. I grabbed her by the hand when she got out and we ran like all hell. This is officially the worse it's ever gotten.

Introspective moment… remind me again why I'm doing this.

We get to my car, because we've out run the two idiots. Did I mention I can drive? I can. We quit the bus thing the moment I got my license and started working as undercover investigators. The get away car is no babe magnet—that is of course unless I meet a girl who's into minivans for some reason—but she's dependable.

I'm about to pull out when she leans over to me. "Thanks Erick. You saved my life." I feel her kiss me on cheek, not long but it was no quickie either.

Reflection over: That's why.

I try really hard not to turn and look at her because, somewhere north I'm very aware that there is still a pair of psychopaths after us. That's doesn't mean that everything south isn't very aware about something… else.

We speed away and are safe after some of what J.L calls my acrobat driving stunts. I have to admit that I do, do some crazy things on the road, but it's the stress. I don't enjoy it at all.

"Did you get any good shots?"

"Not really. I don't know if you noticed but the building was completely vacant." She stuck a tongue out at me playfully.

"What I really can't understand is how they caught on so quickly let alone how they could manage to clean it all up in a day."

"That's what these guys are great at. We obviously stumbled on something big and they had to protect that information, fast."

"Damn it." J.L banged a fist on the dashboard, rattling me. "People deserve to know this is going on. They can't take all that charity money and use it for illegal drug production."

"You got to admit that there's a poetic irony to it. We donate to Narcotics Anonymous to find it all trickle down into the hands of dealers who are out there to get more people addicted."

She shot me a quizzical look. "Only you would find something humorous in this."

"That's why you keep me around. The quick wit." I made a right onto her street.

"Lord no." Her house was the first on the left and I pulled into its driveway. "You're the only one I know with a car." She chided and smiled. God her smile, that was what I loved most. It lit up the world.

I managed my own grin, uncertain but brought to life by her energy.

She slammed the door and stepped onto the paved path to her door. I would normally walk her in but she had told me that she felt weird about it a couple of days ago. "We're not dating. I don't want to give people to get the wrong idea about us." Yeah, because that would be terrible.