He didn't know how many days he'd driven, they'd all sort of blurred into each other: long hours at the road at day and small dinky road-side motels at night. The only thing that was changing was the weather, and the terrain around, sometimes nature, small towns or bigger cities. Oh, even the god-awful shows on the radio dwindled around the same subjects. Did people really listen to those in their own homes?

Were they really that interested in how a boy had cheated on his girlfriend with his male cousin?

Since he hadn't found any other shows worth listening to on the radio-waves during the days, he was taking a stand against whatever audience they were aimed at.

Still, he supposed it was better they occupied their time like that instead of discovering that vampires were real.

He didn't know how he would take it if Ônormal' disappeared.

Or if USA was thrown into chaos because there could be a vampire lurking around every corner. Xander knew there were vampires lurking around every corner, and that the monsters under your bed were real, maybe they weren't hiding under your bed, but they were real.

He just had to believe that there was something else out there, something wonderful.

This train of thought was getting him nowhere fast.

He thought he remembered crossing the state border between Colorado and Kansas a while back. That meant he was in Kansas.

His stomach was growling, like it used to do every now and then. He reached out for one of the Twinkies he had bought at a gas station in Colorado, only to find the bag empty. No twinky goodness for him at the moment.

Maybe it was time to stop in the next town, find a diner and get a meal where the main point wasn't to keep his eyes on the road?

------

He pulled the Volvo up to stop at a friendly-looking diner in a small town that was aptly enough named Smallville. He really hoped the naming practice wasn't the same here as it had been when they named Sunnydale.

If so, was he about to find himself in a town filled with giants?

The diner looked good enough from the inside, and by now his stomach had passed the growling stage and was staging explosions in his intestines. At this point he would eat the grass at the nearby park had the diner been closed.

But it wasn't.

It was very full. Very very very full.

Xander had hit Smallville during dinner-hours. And it seemed like the town had gone to Lucky's Diner en masse today. Leaving no place for the Xandman.

"Excuse me," the elderly lady sitting in the booth next to the entrance pulled his leg. "You look just like my son. Would you like to sit down?

Xander took one more look around the place before he shrugged and joined her.

"I'm just waiting for my husband," she told him. "But feel free to order. A growing boy like yourself should take care of his nourishments, why when my Clark was your age he was eating like crazy.

"It's nice to meet you, I'm Xander Harris." He figured that a polite greeting would probably be a nice way of saying thanks.

"It's a pleasure, Xander. I'm Martha Kent, my husband, Jonathan will be along any minute now. He's just gone to pick up Clark and Lois, that is our daughter in law, and a friend of theirs at the airport.

"Maybe I should move it along then, I don't want to interfere on your family reunion.

"Nonsense. You look like you could eat half a horse. Just sit down and order something.

He did so, and Mrs. Kent smiled satisfied.

--------

A couple of hours later Xander was on the road again. Mrs. Kent had offered to put him in for the night, but he wanted to get further. Further towards what he still didn't know.

Except that he wanted someone like Mrs. Kent.

Of course he couldn't have her. She was married and her son was older than Xander. But he wanted someone like her.

Again, it was just him, the car and the road.