In between Lois' walk between the History of Theatre and the Fundamentals of Neuroscience, she decided that she had to be a good friend and help Clark. She shot him a text. "hey smallville, wuz up"
"School."
She couldn't help grinning. Was he actually texting her back during a class? How very unSmallville-like. "cool. u still going out w/ lori?"
"Yes. Why are you asking?" It was almost supernatural how fast his texts came back with perfect spelling and grammar.
She couldn't accuse her of drugs without proof. "no rezone. shes just not yr tripe"
"I have a type?" he asked, able to decipher her misspellings-turned-autocorrect.
"oh u have a type. brute camels in a dress."
"You are going to get me in trouble. Do you know how hard it is not to laugh right now? I assume you meant brunette damsels in distress, which isn't true by the way."
"cant help the stupid autocorrect and is so true. u shed talk 2 lana. u invested to many years not 2 try. can u relay imagine going to prom w/ anyone else? donut u lay awake at night wandering what she is up 2?"
"I know what she's up to. She's taking notes on our physics lesson, which I'll probably have to borrow now. Talk to you later."
"ttyl" No one could say she didn't try. You do your best to help a poor, naive farm boy, but some people always had to learn the hard way.
After a tiresome lecture on the electricity in a neuron, she decided the only way to prove it was to shadow Lori.
Which turned out to be duller than neuroscience. Around 4, Lori had tea and watercress sandwiches. After that, she studied at the library for a straight three hours. Who did that without taking a break? Finally, however, her target met up with some of the girls from the team.
"Now we're cooking," Lois said to herself, taking out her phone, ready to take pictures at a moment's notice. "If these girls are juicing up, I'm going to get the evidence." And do what with it exactly? Take it to the coach? To the dean? She hadn't thought that far ahead yet. With any luck, maybe the team would get disqualified for the rest of the season, and she could go back to a normal schedule.
She followed them down to the beach. Really? They had swim practice in a couple of hours, and they were hitting the water. No one could say they weren't passionate about their sport. Maybe that was their secret, and the only thing being digested was the questionable choice of watercress.
After half an hour of watching them swim, she was completely and totally bored. How did private investigators do this? Food probably. Her stomach rumbled in complaint. Perhaps it was time to call it a day and head to the mess hall before they stopped serving.
But it was as she was standing up that she realized something. She'd seen them disappear under the water, minutes ago. Unless they were pearl divers, they should have come back up for air. She could only hold her breath for two minutes and that had been with lots of practice because she'd wanted to be able to hold her breath as long as the Navy Seals could.
They should have come up by now, but they hadn't. She sat back down behind the bushes. She waited. She was starting to wonder if they had swum downstream when she hadn't noticed or if she should be mounting a rescue when they finally emerged.
They weren't even gasping for air as they threw back their heads. Water glided and trailed down their hair and skin in such a way that they seemed to be drying at once. This was weird, Wall of Weird-level weird. Were they some kind of merpeople?