Chapter Eleven

Chloe Sullivan sat in a deep, sunken bathtub filled with hot water and scented bubbles, but she didn't enjoy herself. She was at the opposite of relaxed in the water and suds while she hugged her knees to her chest, gently rocking herself. Ever since her parents divorced, she took bubble baths to escape, to run from stresses in her life. Sometimes, she bathed because she was on the edge of a deadline for a term-paper in school, or to soak while she worried about a story she was writing for the school's newspaper. Lately, she was taking quite a few more bubble baths, particularly after finding herself in precarious situations that required Clark to rescue her.

She scooped up water several times and each time let the hot water cascade down her hair and face, her neck, shoulders, and chest. She looked at the ten different types of shampoos she had lined up against the wall and on the tub rim. She selected the richest in volume and massaged it into her wet strands of hair. She twisted and yanked at her short hair creating two shampoo horns. Usually, the satyr horns reminded her of the free spirit she likened herself to be and that made her happy, but, this time, she frowned and leaned back, sinking deeper into the bubbles, only allowing the tops of her shoulders to be above water.

"This is silly, right?" she said to Plucky, a bright yellow rubber ducky that bobbed in the bubbles on the water's surface. Plucky was her bubble bath confidant, and more often than not, Plucky heard Chloe's theories, conjectures, and hypotheses before she spoke them outside the bathroom walls. Plucky silently floated away because Chloe's underwater movements caused ripples in the water. "Figures… even you're no help," she frowned. Sticking her tongue out at the useless toy, realization hit her. "Jeeze, what am I doing? This is so not a life or death situation here." Plucky bounced against the side of the tub, turned and stared at her. "Yeah, I know...I know, " she sighed at Plucky. It was far dire than that.

Chloe did not have an outfit to wear on The Date.

Just 15 minutes earlier, Chloe had raced home for the benefit of Clark and Pete, but just laughed when she closed her front door. She had clothes. She had style. She had panache that Smallville had never seen. She worried a bit because it WAS a date with Clark, their First Date, but she had mentally walked her way through getting ready and going out so many times already (her favorite scenario was going to the drive-in, but she knew either she or Clark needed wheels for THAT one) that, to her, The First Date was going to be a breeze and getting ready for it even more so. She had no worries. She walked into the kitchen and poured a bowl of Chex party mix (her favorite snack other than a Clark bar) and grabbed a Starbucks Frappaccino from the refrigerator. She looked at the Felix the Cat kitchen clock; it was 1:30 PM. She scoffed aloud, "Clark's the one that's gonna scramble between now and seven." At seven PM, they were going to the carnival together. She already laid out an outfit on her desk, in her room upstairs. She was as utterly confident and cocky as when she'd explain to Clark something important about defeating a 'meteor freak'.

Chloe hummed happily and headed up the stairs and that's when her crisis on seemingly infinite levels began.

Carefully unlocking the deadbolt on the door to her spacious room with her key, she balanced the bowl of Chex mix and the Starbucks bottle. She had a bit of trouble when she twisted the doorknob, but succeeded. With her hip, she bumped the door open and smiled at the brand new outfit she bought just for the eventual date: a vintage, two sizes too large, powder blue long-sleeve button up shirt. It had royal blue pinstripes and delicate ruffles from the collar to chest. The fabric was crimped and really soft, much like Clark's hands, she thought. She loved the shirt. Under it, Chloe was going to wear a white scooped tank top, and planned on having the blue button up open a bit to show off...her chest. She blushed. She never seemed so brazen when it came to her figure but now she thought she wanted Clark to check her out. Or check her out even more than he now was doing. She smiled, liking that he was looking at her the same way she checked him out. It was that kind of thinking that was the influential factor in what pants she decided to wear. She rarely wore jeans but she had one pair, perfectly broken in and faded Levi 501's that caught Clark's eye quite a bit before she got the beige cargo pants. Of course, her Doc Martens would be her footwear. 'I'll wear that tonight,' she thought looking at the clothes on the desk, '...a touch of make-up...a hint of perfume and...'

Chloe's boot caught the spine of the thesaurus she left on the carpet and the book slid, taking her foot with it. She lurched and her eyes went wide. She lost control of the bottle and bowl in her hands, and while she toppled away, she watched the bottle float in the air and tip forward, spilling the creamy dark brown liquid and splatter onto her new shirt, new tank, and ONLY pair of jeans.

"No. Freaking. WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!"

Chloe didn't even care about the Chex mix that scattered everywhere. She cared about the bottle landed perfectly on the laid out clothes, on its side, and how it poured the entire contents onto the soft fabric. Chloe's tummy immediately went acidic. She grabbed the bottle but the damage was done. She just whimpered and picked through the soaked clothes; she dropped to her knees, knowing instantly that the vintage shirt and tank were ruined.

"Okay...breathe, Chloe," She reminded herself. She looked at the clothing and knew, absolutely knew now she was in a bind. She crawled to her closet, opened the folding double doors, and kneeled, her butt on her boot heels, looking up at her vast wardrobe. Her closet was filled with the cute and the quirky, the fashionable and the eccentric. Unfortunately, it was filled with clothes that Clark already saw her in. Panicking, she lunged and tore clothes off the hangers, tossing them to the floor, looking for clothes that looked hot, looked sexy, looked cute and that Clark hadn't seen so many times before. That didn't work.

She screamed and foolishly looked through the empty, unused hamper in the bathroom. Back in her bedroom (her actual hamper was the floor), she picked through four different piles of dirty clothes she had in corners, blocked off so her boys, Clark and Pete, couldn't see them. Nothing to wear in the piles.

She dove and dug under her bed for clothes she knew she kicked under it when the boys came over unannounced. She just found bras, panties and two more flannels that once belonged to Clark, a fact he didn't truly know yet. She quickly hugged the flannels, folded and layed them down carefully at the foot of her bed and ran frantically downstairs. She kicked open the door to the pantry, almost knocked herself out when the door slammed back, and checked in the washer and dryer. Nothing new miraculously appeared. She ran back upstairs. She looked around her room, eyes darting, hand ready to grab, knees flex to spring her towards something, anything.

"Come on, Chloe; think of what you can wear. Come on. You've been through worse than this. Come on, Chloe. Think. Mix and match stuff. OK...maybe you're wrong. THINK DAMN IT. THINNNNNNNNNNNNK!"

For a girl that could think there was life on other planets, and thought that alien life forms visited Earth (she desperately wanted to see an UFO or an alien, 'that would be the coolest.' she would think), Chloe could not think of anything. Growling, she turned and looked at herself in the mirror...and saw a blemish on her cheek. A rosy red blemish with a whitish bump.

"That better not be a zit," She told herself and checked her cheekbone. She moisturized, exfoliated, buffed, and washed, but all that skin care she dutifully performed everyday was apparently not enough. "THAT'S A DAMNED ZIT!"' she screamed.

It was too much for her, too much at one time. She crumbled to the carpet and curled up in a tight ball. Her room was more of a mess than usual with every article of clothing she owned or snitched from Clark strewn around. She had a pimple. In 15 minutes, her day was shot. 'Bubbles...oh god, I need bubbles,' Chloe thought and crawled on her elbows and knees into the bathroom. She ripped off her clothes, lit a lavender candle she hoped would soothe her, slipped a Weezer CD in the disc player, and started her bubble bath, and just soaked, hoping to wash away all her worries.

'I don't even have a gal pal to call in times like these,' Chloe thought and she took a breath, closed her eyes, and slid under the water. The hot water was bliss, like when Clark looked at her, and held her after he saved her. She began to think clearly. 'OK...get it together Chloe. You used 'gal pal' in a sentence and, worse, you meant it...ok, Chloe, you're in trouble and what do you do? Normally I call Clark, but he's my date, and I think there's a law against calling your date to help out on the first date,' she reasoned to herself. 'There's Pete, but he's a boy, too. I need a girl.'

Suddenly, Chloe shot out of the tub and ran wet and naked into her bedroom. She looked briefly at her window. The mini-blinds were angled so she could look out and so that a certain peeping tom with a telescope couldn't look into her bedroom. Maybe again he could, after tonight. 'He's probably freaking out just as bad as I am.' That thought comforted Chloe enough to calm down. She dug through piles of clothes, found her knapsack, and sat on her bed. Chloe took a deep breath when the panic again creeped into her pores. She grabbed her cell phone out of the sack and tapped on the buttons. She always called on Clark when she was in trouble, but this time the voice she sought was different.

"The Talon. This is Lana, how can I help you?"