"You're what?" Chloe exclaimed, spewing milk across the lunchroom.
"I'm engaged!" Lana confided. Her eyes sparkled, and she nodded a couple of times.
"To Lionel Luthor?" Chloe squawked in disbelief.
Lana's face crumpled, and she looked at Chloe reproachfully. Chloe knew that look. In about five minutes, maybe less, Lana would start getting really, really pissy. "I thought you'd be happy for me!" Lana began.
Chloe knew that her only hope was to say something like, "Lana, I'm really happy and excited that you're going to drop out of high school and marry Lionel Luthor, who is not, in any way, the devil. Please, tell me all about your color scheme and what theme you want me to plan for the shower." She tried, opening and closing her mouth silently once or twice, but just couldn't bring herself to do it. Chloe abandoned her lunch and fled.
"She's what?" Clark exclaimed, sinking into a chair. It creaked alarmingly.
"Engaged to Lionel Luthor!" Chloe repeated, walking agitatedly around the Talon office. "She just now told me in the lunchroom!"
Clark shook his head. "That can't be right. There must be some sort of explanation. Maybe he's using mind control, or some sort of kryp-- I mean, meteor rock derivative on her."
Chloe gave him a disgusted look, and he shrank in his chair. Ever since their little conversation, Chloe had basically agreed to accept rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty about his origins. He really could use the word 'kryptonite' around her, and tell her that was the real name for the meteor rocks. He trusted her not to push, because she'd said she wouldn't. It was still hard though, and he appreciated the fact that she satisfied her understandable anger with looks, instead of whacking him with a big kryptonite bat. He knew that, somehow, he'd have to convey that appreciation to her. Preferably soon.
She stopped glaring at him and resumed pacing around the room, looking genuinely worried about Lana. "Lana's always been the Virgin Queen of Smallville High, but if you look at her family, this really isn't that out of the question. You know what people always said about Nell, and ever since it turned out that Henry Small was Lana's biological dad, it's been pretty plain that Laura Lang wasn't all that different."
"Her Great Aunt Louise, too," Clark added, remembering the rush his father had felt, and the fatal love quadrangle there.
"How do you know all this obscure Smallville history?" Chloe asked in an exasperated voice.
Clark panicked a little and shouted, "Hey look! A hummingbird!"
"What? Where?" Chloe asked automatically. Her blonde hair fluffed as she whipped her head around to look out the window, then she fixed him in another tight-lipped look of mercifully short-lived rage.
"Um. It's gone now. I'm an obscure Smallville guy? I mean, my dad's family's lived here forever, and...."
"Okay." Clark felt relieved when Chloe decided that was good enough. Dang! He really had to tell her. She'd kept the secret of where he was all summer, and that really, really wasn't going to be the convincing argument when Dad flipped out about her knowing everything.
"Anyway," Chloe went on, "Lana's female relatives seem to have a demonstrated streak of slut and/or gold-digger, so I guess this shouldn't be a surprise. She's seventeen, and we're all dumb at seventeen."
"I thought that was 'grand at seventeen.' Sorry." Clark ducked his head to hide from Chloe's angry glare. He was a little surprised it didn't set anything on fire.
"Well, you can't deny that it's dumb to get involved with Lionel Luthor! Even if he is the richest man in Kansas, and one of the richest in the country!"
"You really think Lana wants him for his money?"
Chloe gave him another look, one that made him understand that he was a small-time hick with no idea of how the world worked. How could she say so much without actually saying anything?
Chloe resumed pacing. "Which would be fine, I mean to each her own and everything, but this is Lionel Luthor we're talking about!"
"And he's the devil." It was nice when Chloe and he were completely in agreement about something.
"Exactly. So what are we going to do?" Chloe sat down. They both thought for a while in silence.
"Do you suppose Lex knows yet?"
