Taking a new step, uttering a new word,

 is what people fear most.

–Dostoyevski

 By the time Clark had recovered from his heart-stopping, and yet ultimately pleasant, wake-up call, he realised that he'd have to use his super-speed if he was going to make it to school on time. He left the barn, and made it into the bathroom, then into his room to get changed in the usual blur, that to him was like walking through water, watching the movement of things around him –a clock, the kettle boiling in the kitchen – all in slow motion, floating through space.  He wondered then, not for the first time, how long he could last in that surreal world; how long he could move at speeds so fast, it felt like he could stop time. It would be the ultimate escape.

  The prospect of staying in this world for more than a few minutes though, had always filled him with a strange sense of dread. He shrugged it away now, as he had always done, and turning to go downstairs for breakfast, he spotted the diary he'd brought with him, lying on his bed.

 Best not to leave this around for all to see again Clark. A quick X-ray glance at his room revealed a hollow space below the floor of his wardrobe, and so, after a dragging aside several miscellaneous items, and pulling up the wooden base,  his diary found a new home.

 Just as he was turning to leave though, he felt a pang of uncertainty.

 I could just leave it there, he thought. All of it. Hide it away now, and pretend it never happened. Leave everything buried…

  But thinking forward to seeing Lex that afternoon, he was filled with unmistakable happiness. No. This was real. He'd be writing in that diary again.  This was just another battle he'd have to face up to, albeit one a little closer to home than any of the other's he'd faced..

  It was strange, the feeling of having a secret that nobody knew about. Of course, there'd always been the secret, but not in this house, where it was talked about openly with his parents. This was the first thing he had completely to himself. Nobody else on earth knew what change he'd gone through last night. Maybe it was still the residual adrenaline from his meeting with Lex, but Clark couldn't help but see that as a little bit cool….He was in a good mood now, despite the nagging feeling that it wouldn't last as long.  He hung on to his good humoured, ' light' feeling, and the smile that came automatically to his face as he drank his OJ, leaning against the kitchen unit.

  "What are you so happy about this morning Clark?"

He looked up as his father came down the stairs, and proceeded to help himself to some breakfast.

 Clark held his grin.

 "Oh, nothing." Except I think I'm gay.

His father raised an eye-brow.

 "Must have been a good sleep you got last night then."

 "Yeah, I guess I did sleep well." Y'know, after I realised I was gay.

 His dad nodded towards Clark's juice.

 "Not eating anything?"

 His son tried to soften his grin now, the need to act normal slowly dawning on him.

 "Ah, I 'm really not that hungry ."

No, because I don't think I could stomach it right now. Because, apparently, I'm gay.

 After a few more seconds of this though, his stifled amusement, turned to something more serious. This wasn't working. He couldn't just stand here with his father, trying to ignore all the thoughts in his head. As his father continued to talk aimlessly about his plans for the day, it was starting to feel more than a little weird.  Despite the usual pleasure at knowing something nobody else did, ever present in his mind was the sense of guilt. His father would be destroyed if he found out what he was thinking and feeling. A man like Jonathan Kent would never even see this coming. He wouldn't understand. He'd been disgusted. Ashamed.

 Clark's adrenalin rush was definitely gone now. Only sadness, and an aching feeling of betrayal remained. That, and the helpless knowledge that these thoughts would plague him every single day from now on. He'd crossed the line. He'd made it all real, by writing it down last night. Now he'd have to live with it.

~ ~ ~

 At school he amazed himself with his ability to act completely normal. The painful, sorrowful, scared, excited thoughts that went through his mind were not allowed to be reflected in his face, his actions, or his speech. He was the everyday, somewhat naïve, somewhat teasing, Clark Kent.   The situation he'd been placed in at breakfast was repeated ten fold. Sitting in a classroom, with only the teachers voice to be heard, or in the cafeteria surrounded by a hundred pairs of eyes, hundreds of conversations, he sat there acutely aware of this knowledge, unseen by all except himself. He spent the morning half feeling like laughing, half crying, at this secret he had.

  None of it was helped by the prospect of seeing Lex tonight. He'd found himself telling Pete that  he couldn't hang out at the Torch after school because he had chores.  Clark didn't know why he lied. It just came out. So simply. So easily. He knew himself well enough after last night to know that the lie wasn't to spare Pete's feelings of jealousy over Lex. No, he realised that every part of him was primed towards one goal – to betray nothing of the strength of his attachment to Lex. Everything had to be played down. He felt like the entire day he had been trying to avoid Lex's name, the Luthor name…a hard task in a town so influenced by LuthorCorp.

  As he  found himself steering conversations away from anything he might be uncomfortable talking about, as he lied, as he sat there amazed at how much you could hide from those around you, Clark was suddenly struck by a staggering thought.

   How selfish was it to assume it was only him going through this? Not necessarily a confusion over sexuality, but some personal crisis none-the-less? He was walking through the halls slowly, watching the students mill about him, laughing together, flirting, standing by their open lockers, hurrying from one room to the next…Was it too much to hope that many of them were as contented, or even as superficial, as they seemed? What if all of them had things to hide…insecurities, confusion, shameful secrets…?

  He remembered how he and Pete had found Chloe reading a 'Problem Page' in a magazine once, with an amused look on her face. When questioned she had said how totally exaggerated it all was. "The magazines purposely pick the most extreme, atypical stories out there, just for money. I mean, here we have a pregnant fourteen-year-old,  a bulimic cheerleader, a girl who claims to be sleeping with her best friends' father, and  a senior taking drugs to cope with her SATs! I mean, c'mon, I bet the worst problem  95% of kids have is getting their homework assignments in on time."

 A debate had ensued of course, in which Chloe had admitted that there were truly kids out there with problems, but in the end she and Pete had agreed that teen life wasn't quite so dramatic as the media made out. Clark hadn't really made his position clear, as usual, careful to hide his own unique abilities.

 But now, one of those "stereotypical, melodramatic teen crises" had happened to him. And quite frankly, "I think I'm gay" was seen as right up there with the eating disorders, the pregnancy scares and the abusive parents where the magazines, the teen shows, and the gossip chains were concerned.

 So how many of the faces he passed by were hiding something just as serious, just as gut-wrenching as he now was? If he could hide it, so could they…What if they were all just hiding from each other?

He was shaken by the implications of that question. It somehow made the world seem colder, hopeless, hard. As if that meant behind everything there'd always be misery. He didn't think like that….

 But he suddenly wondered if Lex did.

TBC

[tomorrow hopefully]

R/R

Just a thought – be nice to people. You can never truly  know what's going on in their minds.