When Claire stepped onto the stage in response to her cue, she no longer wore the silver veil. It didn't match her outfit very well anymore, not with the red cloak fastened at her neck now draping over her shoulders and falling almost as low as the hem of her dress.
With her head held high she walked to the center of the stage, curtsied low before Prince John-AKA Ellen Lowry-and said her lines in a clear, ringing voice. When Robin-Tasha-professed his love, Claire found herself forgetting Tasha's pretty, freckled face and imagined instead a tall, dashing, very handsome defender of liberty and justice.
She never choked on her lines; she never tripped over her dress; she never let the princess-like facade falter. Her head was full of Adrienne Leonard and the oath she herself had screamed in that selfish brat's face. This play would not be ruined. Claire Kent in the steel-blue gown and the gleaming red cloak would see to that.
Mom had glimpsed her in the hallway just before the audience filtered in and froze stark-stiff. Claire hastily explained what had happened-Adrienne, the paint, the leftover curtain material-and for a moment thought she was either in for a scolding or a disapproving remark about the cloak.
"I know it doesn't quite match . . . " she began slowly.
"No, no!" Mom cried, recovering herself and cupping Claire's face in her cool, slender hands. "No-I'm sorry-you look beautiful. Those colors go very well together and . . . you're beautiful, Claire, you really are."
"Is Dad here?"
"No, but I just got a text from him-he's on his way."
"Think he'll like it?" Claire asked, twirling so the blue and the red swirled together.
Mom smiled, tossed her ginger hair behind her shoulder, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Yes, I think he'll like it-a lot."
When the play was over, the audience of parents, grandparents, and friends rose to their feet in thunderous applause. Tasha stepped out, clicked her heels, bowed merrily, and the crowd laughed. When Claire stepped forward, however, and curtsied, the crowd roared.
It startled her. She straightened again, hesitated, then smiled broadly, thrust her arm up, gave her hand a flourish, and bowed deeply. Approving whistles now accompanied the cheers. Claire giggled, lifted her hem, and playfully skipped backwards, allowing the beaming merry men to have their time in the sun.
The victory-flushed cast exited stage left and filtered, at last, into the audience, seeking out familiar congratulatory faces. Claire raced down one aisle, holding her hem well above her ankles, looking frantically until she finally saw Dad waving at her with Mom beside him. Claire beamed at him and raced forward, grabbing his hands.
"How'd I do?" she shouted over the noise.
"You were magnificent," Dad said. "I like your costume!"
"Mom told you?" she asked, self-consciously winding a curl around her finger.
"Yes, and you should see Mayor Leonard-he's white with fury because his daughter wasn't in the play," Mom said with a sneaky, amused glance across the auditorium.
Dad, too, looked around, straightening his suit as he did so. Claire noticed it for the first time; he hadn't been wearing it when he left home this morning. He must've stopped by the house before he came here. "I'm pretty sure I glimpsed another familiar face a minute ago-"
"Here I am," someone said. Claire whirled. It was Mr. Wayne, dressed immaculately in a pin-stripe suit with one arm tucked behind his back.
"Congratulations, Miss Kent," he said, and suddenly swept his arm back to the front again. Claire bit her lip to keep back a gasp of delight at the bouquet of deep-red roses extended to her.
"You shouldn't have," Mom said, but with a smile.
"Nonsense, she deserves it," he said. "When you're clearly the star of the show, roses are a poor excuse of a gift-but now I'm glad I got the red ones."
Suddenly shy but very, very pleased, Claire took the flowers. Her demure reaction seemed to delight the man. He looked to her parents.
"How about that dinner I suggested?" he asked briskly. "I had second thoughts about having it in my hotel-privacy concerns, you know-and thought Miss Claire might like the experience of a meal in a limo instead."
"Is that your latest tweak to the old car, Wayne?" Dad asked cryptically. Mr. Wayne just laughed and led the way.
As he opened the door of the shiniest black car Claire had ever seen, she glimpsed Adrienne Leonard getting into a similar looking-but smaller-vehicle with her father. Adrienne's face had been scrubbed clean but there were still streaks of yellow in that straw-colored hair of hers, and she glared murderously at Claire as she stepped into the car.
Claire noticed, too, that the glowering Mayor Leonard took one long, hard, suspicious look at her parents. Dad looked back at him with a cold steadiness that she had never seen before, and gently pushed her into the car out of Mayor Leonard's range of vision.
"He saw you?" Mr. Wayne asked abruptly as soon as the door closed and he gave instruction to his driver to drive around the city.
"He saw me . . . but I think he's probably angrier about his daughter being smacked down by mine than anything else," Dad said with a smirk.
"Under any other circumstance I'd scold you for that, you know," Mom said, raising her eyebrows at Claire.
Mr. Wayne looked amused and curious. "You smacked down William Leonard's daughter?"
Claire fingered the edge of her cloak, embarrassed. "I wasn't supposed to have this. But she threw paint on me out of spite . . . and I slammed into her for it."
"Sounds like a humbling she had coming to her," Mr. Wayne said with dry humor.
Claire glanced at her parents, who were watching her calmly. "I wish I hadn't done it now. I know I shouldn't have. But everyone's been wanting someone to stand up to her and I just couldn't help myself."
Mr. Wayne shifted to a more comfortable position, crossing his arms over what Claire realized was a very strong, broad chest. "Sometimes that's what people need to see: one person standing up and pushing back when it's the hardest time to do it."
Claire nodded, still fighting a little guilty twinge in the back of her mind.
This car was the oddest, grandest thing she'd ever been in. It was very roomy inside, with a small compartment that kept food warm and trays for the diners to eat on. Claire balanced the tray on her lap carefully and ate in silence while the grown-ups talked, almost as if they'd forgotten she was there.
"Leonard is as ambitious and arrogant as I expected," Mr. Wayne was saying. "The problem lies in his charisma-and his pocketbook. It's allowed him to go places and do things that no other man in the whole city can do."
"There's concern that now he's targeting the news organizations here in the city," Mom said quietly. "The Planet is safe. I think Perry White would die rather than cow to anyone, whether he's a politician or a businessman. But the Times is in Leonard's back pocket . . . and judging by that hit-piece on Joseph Jackson in the Advocate last week, I'm thinking they're taken, too."
"Jackson," Dad mused. "Isn't he the city's representative at the State Capitol?"
Mom nodded. "Yes, and one of the leading voices against Leonard's attempts to seize more and more power. Corruption in the city government is already so rampant...and now that Jackson's under fire, I'm worried about the state legislature. Who knows what's going on up there?"
"Or what Leonard's ultimate plans are," Mr. Wayne muttered.
There was a brief silence in which Claire dropped her fork. "Sorry," she whispered.
"That's okay," Mom whispered back.
"Any new details on that lab?" Mr. Wayne suddenly asked, his voice quiet.
Garage. Claire looked up, intrigued but without knowing why. Dad sat back, still balancing his tray on his knees.
"No," he said, equally quiet. "They're working on something there but it isn't a like a gun or a missile or anything. It's almost like . . . a serum, maybe?"
"A biological weapon?" Mr. Wayne prodded.
"Right. But I'm still not sure, and I can't do anything unless I have absolute proof that it's a threat to Metropolis."
"Claire," Mom said abruptly, startling both men. "Claire, what you hear in this limo, don't ever repeat outside of it. Your father has been investigating Mr. Leonard but you can't ever-ever-talk about it, not even at home. Understood?"
Claire looked at her father; he looked strangely embarrassed. Mr. Wayne looked at Mom, then Dad, then Claire. He leaned closer to her, his deep grey eyes serious but kind.
"Consider it an honor, Miss Kent, for your parents and I to feel free discussing these things in front of you."
Claire felt the honor-but she couldn't helping feeling, too, the awkwardness of being forgotten and then remembered. It had never happened before; her parents treated her almost as an equal. Now there was a secret . . . a secret she'd been allowed to hear, but only accidentally.
"I won't repeat it," she said quietly. "I swear."
Mr. Wayne sat back, stretched his arm over the back of the seat. He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.
"She has your spirit, Lois," he said. "But she has Clark's honesty. You've inherited their best qualities, Claire . . . you should be proud to have them."
"I am," Claire said firmly, trying to stifle the uneasy suspicion that there was something else he wanted to say and dared not, for fear of, perhaps, unveiling more secrets.
That night, after sleeping for several hours, Claire woke up with the urge to use the toilet. Half-awake, she did her business without incident. Tiptoing back to her bedroom, she strained her eyes in the dark, feeling her way slowly with hands outstretched and feet wary of toe-stubbing obstacles.
And then it happened.
The hallway changed, shimmered, and Claire found herself looking through the floor and into the moonlit kitchen below. She could see her feet but no floor beneath, though she felt it. Terrified, Claire gasped and clapped her hands to her eyes.
When she drew them back again, everything was dark. Heedless of unseen hazards, Claire ran back to her bedroom and threw herself face-down into bed again, breathing hard. After a while she dared to peer over the edge of her bed, stare at the floor, and will the thing to happen again.
This time, she saw into the living room. Claire flopped over, aghast. Her throat felt dry. She turned to face the wall, commanded herself to look into her parents' bedroom-and there it was. Her parents were sound asleep in their own bed and Dad had left the window open; the light curtains fluttered softly in the cool April breeze.
Claire blinked and the vision faded. She cowered down into her bed again and clutched her pillows, trying to decide whether or not to tell them in the morning. She had never kept a secret from them in her life. She couldn't do it now.
But they might think she was a freak . . . that she was making it up . . . Mom might laugh and Dad might smile, suggest she write a sci-fi and put that in.
Claire shuddered. No, she would not tell them. Not until she had more opportunities to test it, when she was wide awake and had no reason to attribute it to a nightmare.