Disclaimer: Clark Kent in all his incarnations belongs to corporations. I'm just providing the playground. Original character: if you can figure out how to pronounce her name, have at it.
Sequel to "Babysitter," which was inspired by LaCasta. All the credit, and none of the blame, for this one goes to WaffleNinja, who had some interesting insights into, and ideas about, the years we didn't see.
And of course, as always, many thanks to all reviewers for their encouragement and suggestions, even MarkMark (grin), who in real life must be a grammar instructor. (Mark, I honestly thought I had typed those extra letters. I blame the Bush regime.) All of you were right about all of it, and someday I'll get the cat off the keyboard long enough to correct them.
Jane
Clark was hatching a plan.
His parents had learned, as he grew out of toddler-hood into a responsible and well-behaved youngster, to be wary of that secretive gleam in his all-too-innocent expression.
Unfortunately for them, they knew, Clark had also gotten to be very, very good at keeping secrets. Their own fault, they supposed, having so often stressed the importance of not getting "caught." But still, a nine-year-old shouldn't be able to smile and shrug and toe the ground so guilelessly when you KNEW he was up to something.
They'd given up on monitoring his e-mail. Clark flicked through screens so fast that sometimes he'd read a book while waiting for the computer to catch up. They'd mentally thrown their hands in the air in surrender, given him the age-appropriate lectures, discovered that he not only already knew about "those places" (and thought they were "BOORE-ing"), but also already knew about computer viruses and worms.
"Pete's brothers told us about the one that practically crippled NASA," he'd said matter-of-factly. "Don't ever click on an .exe, even when it comes from someone you know. The virus raids your e-dress book and sends it on."
Jonathan and Martha just looked at each other. "By the time he's twelve, he'll be telling me how to run the farm."
"Oh, no, dad," Clark said earnestly. "But I did find this really great book on organic enhancement techniques...." Which turned out to be from the professional research section of the county library, and about 600 pages thick.
(It amused the "Library Ladies" no end when the third-grader earnestly asked their advice, and made them surreptitiously wink at each other in approval when he dragged his schoolmates over to the Reference Desk and give them an impatient lecture on when they were SUPPOSED to ask for help.)
"Clark, 'age-appropriate' also includes not using phrases like 'enhancement techniques' until at least junior high."
Clark went quiet for a few seconds, as if filing away and reorganizing what he knew against what he was supposed to know. "Thanks, mom. I'll remember. The lady did look at me kind of funny when I went through the research section."
"Hopefully she thought you were just looking at the pictures."
So the high-speed home computer was well worth the usurious loan, if it kept Clark's high-speed mind occupied and out of trouble. If he wanted to send a thousand e-mails a day, they were just going to have to trust that he knew better than to send them all to one place, and that the computer was slow enough that it didn't look like he was a virus himself.
Clark was well aware of this, of course. He'd figured out years ago that most people's senses weren't quite as acute as his. (The exception being the barn cats, who had been suspicious of him ever since they discovered that he was claw-proof, and was faster than they were, and had learned to keep one ear pointed in his direction at all times.) He knew pretty much exactly what he could get away with, and when he was being spied upon.
So, an e-mail to Pete, and e-mail to Lana, an e-mail to the town paper under an assumed name criticizing the parking, an e-mail to several national papers criticizing factory farms, an e-mail to a couple of researchers who were pursuing outliers on the human genome, and an e-mail, carefully snuck in, to a woman he had secretly been keeping in contact with for years now, and who had gleefully joined in his game of keeping their "relationship" from her old friend, his mother.
"Hi, 'J'. Hope you're hanging in there."
He paused, wondering if that weren't in bad taste. 'J', their private e-mail shorthand for "Jane" – the Anglicized version of her Eastern European name – had been his first babysitter, and had terminal bone cancer. But somehow she'd beaten all the doctors' gloomy predictions, and she was still getting around under her own power, though not without help, or bad days. Well, no point in refusing to face facts.
"Wonder if you could help me out with a trick here. My parents' anniversary is coming up, and they somehow don't think I can be left alone for a weekend."
Hm, no point in bringing up the fact that the last time he'd been left alone for two hours, well, best not to go into details about what trying to clean out the barn at high speed had ended up coating the walls with.
"Could you maybe convince them that you can keep an eye on me for a weekend while they go take some time off and celebrate? You know I can take care of things. We can play chess maybe. I suck at chess. Who invented a knight's move anyway? Just weird."
"And I've actually learned to cook a little. Let me know what you like, and I'll wheedle mom into laying in supplies. I promise not to let the dog lick the bowl this time." Even invulnerability wasn't all that great for cleaning up dog leftovers. Dogs had resilient stomachs, but also extensive methods of expressing their dislikes.
"Really looking forward to seeing you again, if you can spare the time." He hoped that was evasively polite enough. "Until later, this is your worst student at cartwheels, signing off."
The answer came so fast he might have suspected Jane of super-speed herself. "Which weekend, and do you like cornbread?"