Chloe smiled, her arm around her boyfriend, Whitney. Her phone rang.
"I have to answer this one," Chloe said, kissing Whitney on the cheek, reaching for the phone.
"Hi, who is it?" she asked as she picked up the phone.
"It's Pete," the person on the other line said.
"What is it?" Chloe asked. "Are you and Clark really going to try out for the football team?"
"Yeah, why?" Pete asked.
"Nothing, except that it's crazy," Chloe said.
"You're crazy," Pete said.
"I know. Not everybody gets that lucky," Chloe said.
"What do you mean?" Pete asked.
"To be crazy. It's a good thing. To know what you want and go for it. To not care what anyone else thinks," Chloe said.
"Then why are you a cheerleader?" Pete asked.
"Hey, you were the one that said I was crazy….not me," Chloe said, giggling.
"Whatever," Pete said.
The phone line went dead.
"What was that all about?" Whitney asked.
"Nothing," Chloe said, letting herself fall into her boy's arms, embracing the warmth.
"I love you, you know," Chloe said.
"I love you to, babe," Whitney said to Chloe.
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Lana sat on her bed, staring at her journal, looking back at the bazillions of entries accounting for all the times she was either ignored or made fun of. She put up an invisible wall barricading her soul, but the taunts and jeers still stung. Not physically, of course. She hated the fact that she couldn't feel, physically. That she wasn't human. That every one of them that teased her was right about her. They said it in mock; they would never believe it was really true, but they said things like, "I bet you're not even human." They also said things like, "go eat dirt" or "You're not worth anything. No one could possibly ever love you." It wasn't the words that hurt; it was the fact that they were right that haunted her. She didn't want to be an unfeeling, apathetic robot. She didn't want to be a zombie, living for no reason, laboriously obeying rules dictated. She didn't want to be that Lana Lang: the Lana Lang that just let things happen; that just followed the crowd and let them hurt her. But she didn't really have a choice. She couldn't just go kill them; that would be wrong.
So she did the only thing she could do: forced herself to feel. The only way she could ever feel was with the meteorites. Kryptonite.
All she wanted to be was normal. She wanted to be able to tell them that they were wrong; that they were the ones who were freaks. She wanted to just scream. She wanted to scream that they were wrong; that they didn't know her…they didn't know what it felt like to be different, tormented, alienated. They didn't know what it felt like to not even have a warm shoulder to fall back on; someone to tell her that everything would be alright when obviously nothing would be alright. They didn't know what it felt like to be completely, utterly alone in the world.
And they thought she couldn't feel, but she could. Even though she could only feel pain when around the meteor rocks, she could feel other things. Her soul; it probably felt more pain than any of theirs had put together. They had made sure of it. That cheerleader, Chloe, and all of her evil little friends who thought they could just toss her around and humiliate her. It wasn't fair. She knew that life wasn't fair, but, nonetheless, she was getting pretty tired of it.
She got up from her bed and put the rock away. She decided to go to the forest and hang out; at least when she was hiding behind the branches of the trees, no one could see her. The woods always felt so peaceful and serene. Once she got to the woods (it only took her one second, since she has super speed), she gingerly walked over to the stream, taking her time, enjoying the beauty of the woods. She knew that dispersed across all of the woods of Smallville were the meteorite rocks, so she had to be careful. (Just because she wanted to feel like she was human sometimes, didn't mean that she wanted to die).
The woods were beautiful. She sat down by the stream and blew on the water, causing a ripple in the water. She stared at the fishies under the water; they were so peaceful.
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Meanwhile, Clark was sitting in his barn, reading.
His thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. Caller ID said it was Pete; he answered it.
"Hi Pete," Clark said.
"Hi Clark," Pete said.
"Are you still planning to try out for the football team?" Pete asked.
"Of course," Clark said.