Chapter
Thirteen
Chloe thought that it was really weird for her to call Lana Lang, weird even by Smallville standards. Especially for any help. Especially if the help regarded her date with Clark. But, last year, the Monday after the Sadie Hawkins Dance debacle, Lana went up to Chloe and apologized for "messing up your moment with Clark." Chloe accepted the apology, albeit begrudgingly. While the eighth grade year went on, Chloe and Lana hung out in different cliques (Lana with all the popular kids, Chloe with just Clark and Pete), but they helped pass each other's notes around and helped each other with school work. It was when Lana asked Chloe to sign her 8th grade yearbook that Chloe realized that Lana was friendlier to her that whole school year than she was to Lana. They became friendly acquaintances during summer break and at the start of the freshmen year of high school.
"Lana...hi, it's Chloe," she said, wrapping her wet naked body with a towel and sat on her bed.
"Chloe, hi...," Lana said with a smile and got out her order pad; Chloe would call ahead, order two tall double mocha espressos for her and a cherry lemonade for her father and arrive with her father to pick them up. "Want the usual?"
"Actually...," Chloe smiled at the opening. "I want the UNusual..."
"OK," Lana said with a grin to a customer and handed him an eclair. "Ask away."
"ClarkaskedmeonadatetothecarnivalandIspilledcoffeeonmyclothesandIamsoscrewed ! " Chloe screamed quickly. Her nervous habit of babbling fast reared its head again.
"What?" Lana said and furrowed her brow. "All I got was Clark asked you out and the rest was garbled screaming. You sound like a wounded animal."
"OK...," Chloe said and laid back on her bed. She willed herself calm. "Yes...Clark asked me out..."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Lana interrupted with the truthful.
"Thanks, but I spilled coffee all over my clothes," Chloe said sadly. Lana winced; coffee and clothes did not mix. Lana wondered how many shirts Chloe had lost to spills and drips. "And I have a big ugly zit," Chloe lamented. "I can't call Clark or Pete. I don't.."
"How can I help?" Lana cut in. She was touched that Chloe called her. She thought Chloe was a smart girl with such a cute crush on Clark. And she was happy that she helped Chloe by playing matchmaker the night before while they chatted online (she giggled when she saw Chloe's instant message of 'Lana...I'm trying to get that big dumb gorgeous boy to take me to the carnival...please suggest we all go together!'). She waved over Zoe Garfield, a classmate that worked at the Talon, and pointed to the register. Zoe nodded and took over, leaving Lana to talk on the phone.
"I'd really like it if you could come over," Chloe said in a tiny voice, "and help me figure out an outfit to wear tonight... and maybe help with me with make up?"
"I've been DYING to do your make-up!" Lana said excitedly into the phone. "I tell all the girls you'd look so cute with some make-up on!" Lana's boyfriend, Whitney, heard Lana while he sat in his corner booth. He nodded and smiled at her and she waved back. He turned to his at his teammates on the football team and rolled his eyes.
"I wear make-up," Chloe said, surprised.
"Oh," Lana said caught off guard. "Um...anyways, you didn't have a backup outfit?"
"I wasn't expecting a disaster," Chloe admitted.
"Chloe, a girl should ALWAYS have a backup outfit," Lana advised, and knew she had to tell Chloe 'The Lana Rules of Dating'. "I'm surprised you didn't know that."
"I didn't," Chloe whispered.
"I have more advice for you," Lana said simply and sat on padded stool. "But I'll share that when I get there."
"Ok. If worse comes to worse," Chloe said, "We could put something together that's quirky..."
"Tonight we go for cute, not quirky," Lana said with a knowing authority to her voice.
"Clark likes me quirky," Chloe said back defensively. "He said so. I think I have it on tape."
"I'm sure you do. But he will LOVE you all cute," Lana said with a giggle she hoped would relax Chloe. She reminded herself to notify the staff to start slipping Chloe de-caffeinated coffee in all her orders.
"Well," Chloe said, catching on that Lana wanted to help her take Clark's breath away. She felt like opening up to her. "I think he loves me anyways."
"Good!" Lana said without any envy. "Let's cement that thought then!"
"OK," Chloe said with a giggle at Lana's enthusiasm. Then she remembered Lana used to be the head cheerleader.
"I'll bring some shirts, some make-up, and some things for your hair," Lana thought aloud. "But you're much too curvy for any of my pants and skirts...we'll work on that when I get there."
"OK," Chloe blushed. "You're a lifesaver!"
"Your personal lifesaver is Clark," Lana said, and they both giggled. "Me? I'm you're new best girlfriend!"
"You're my ONLY girlfriend," Chloe said, amazed that Lana was so eager to be 'best girlfriends'. "When can you get here?"
"In two hours," Lana. "Everyone from school is starting to pour in."
"OHMYGOD!" Chloe said, the panic returning. "What do I do in the meantime?"
"When I stress or when I get bummed out and suffer from the 'Blahnas', a hot bubble bath, scented candles, and tunes from my CD player always does the trick," Lana offered.
It started with a little snort. Then it grew to a chuckle. Suddenly Chloe started laughing like a maniac. It was surreal: Lana and Chloe de-stressed the same way; Smallville was officially in 'The Twilight Zone'.
"Good idea," Chloe said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "See ya."
"Umm...ok," Lana said, thinking Chloe was a nice girl, but very strange. 'Chasing down those strange stories with Clark must have rubbed off on her,' she thought. "See ya in two hours!"
An hour and a half later, Lana left the Talon in Zoe's capable hands (and told her she was going to slip some extra cash in her paycheck envelope for having to miss out on the opening of the carnival; Zoe thought Lana was the coolest, even if Lana was younger than she was by 3 years). She walked into the back-alley, got into her little red 1978 Corvette Stingray (it belonged to her Aunt Nell, who fell in love with the GM-made car after seeing "Corvette Summer" four times at the drive-in with Jonathan Kent back in '78...'well, HE saw that movie the fourth time,' Nell thought with a wicked grin whenever she saw Jonathan in town), and drove it toward the cottage house. Aunt Nell adopted Lana after the death of her parents in the 'Great Meteor Shower of 1989' and they lived in that cottage since then.
Zipping along, she pressed a button on a remote connected to a CD changer behind her seat. The non-stock CD player changed discs and, instead of the listening to "Thankyou" by Dido, the song she and her friend Felice Chandler listened to on the way to school, a new disc, a compilation of old alternative rock, started to play. She skipped ahead to the song that she thought personified her.
"I might like you better if we slept together...I might like you better if we slept together... I might like you better if we slept together...But there's somethin' in your eyes that says Maybe...that's never...NEVER SAY NEVER," Lana Lang sang loudly.
Lana loved driving alone. She could be herself and not what people wanted her to be, what they thought she should be, living for their ideals. At school, she was in the National Honors Society, on the school's cross country track team, in "The Shutterbugs" photography club, was France in the Model United Nations, on the "The Statesmen" debate team, and until two months into the new school year, she was the head cheerleader on every squad every year since anyone could remember.
After school and on weekends, she showed her horse in Dressage competitions, and won many ribbons and trophies. Nell somehow found time for her to volunteer at the home for the elderly, read to children at the local library, organize blood drives, food drives, clothing drives, and she recently started a partnership with Lex Luthor in ownership of the local coffeehouse/movie theater, The Talon.
On the surface, Lana Lang had the perfect life; Girls wanted to be like her, boys wanted to be with her. She had the perfect car, the perfect clothes, in the perfect classes, had the perfect friends.
Under the surface, Lana Lang hated her life. She was burning the candles at both ends, and her Aunt Nell was burning the middle of the wick. The more Lana excelled, the more she felt the pressure not to fail and she couldn't enjoy any of her accomplishments and her achievements, because she was SUPPOSED to excel. Failure was not an option, and neither was being average.
No one knew that Lana started to throw up blood, from all the stress. Or that she was losing weight. She wished she could be normal. She envied Chloe's joie de vie. She wished she could just be like Chloe and worry about a date rather than profit margins and payrolls. She hated being a role model and always having to make the right decision. So, she purposely made...interesting choices.
She liked boys, maybe too much so. There was an unspoken reason why Whitney Fordman, a senior at school, was her boyfriend even though she was just a freshman. She hid cigarette packs in the attic of her Victorian dollhouse. She loved the taste of wine coolers, of a cold beer, and so much more that would scandalize Smallville if its adult denizens ever found out. She had secret vices. No one noticed the small anarchy symbol she drew on her folder. Her role model was Sarah Michelle Geller's character "Kathryn" in the movie "Cruel Intentions," a DVD she watched incessently.
The Perfectly Pink Lana Lang was a facade, a front, and a wall...and there was times when she wanted to kill herself over it. She took the turn in the road sharply and let the back wheels slide. She hit the gas and the back wheel grabbed and lurched her forward into the straightaway. She shrugged. Some day tires would keep slide while she gassed it, and she'd spin out of control and wrap the car onto a tree-trunk. She wondered when that was going to happen, and wished it would happen soon.
After arriving, and up in her room, Lana gathered some of her darling shirts, cute sweaters, charming blouses and put them in her pink and white Yves Saint Laurent overnight bag. She went into her bathroom and got her curlers, hairdryer, brushes and combs and slipped them in another YSL bag. She hauled the two bags and her make-up case outside, tossed the bags on the passenger seat, and put the case in the trunk. She peeled out of the driveway with a smile, and drove to Chloe's house.
"Hey," Chloe greeted Lana at the front door exactly two hours after her call, wearing her dad's old baggy holey sweatpants and a HUGE Smallville High School PE shirt. She waved Lana into her house.
"Hey," Lana said back and entered. She read the name in black ink in a white bar on the front of Chloe's shirt. "You took Clark's PE shirt? Whitney laughs about Clark having to run laps everyday since he doesn't have the proper uniform."
"Clark will figure out I have it," Chloe said with a smug smile. She led Lana upstairs. "I'll give it back when he asks nicely."
"It's been six weeks," Lana said, liking what she saw of Chloe's house. It was very homey.
"Eventually he will figure it out and ask," Chloe said, getting to her bedroom door. "Besides, I like that I am keeping him in shape."
"There are other ways to do that," Lana said, watching Chloe unlock the deadbolt on her door. She thought that it was odd, because they were alone in the house. "With you more involved," she finished suggestively.
"LANA !" Chloe said shocked, her eyes wide at Lana's innuendo.
"Just saying," Lana said with a wink. They walked into the bedroom. Chloe put her arms out and spun slowly to show off the mess.
"Wow," Lana said, her turn to be wide-eyed. Chloe's room look like a small tornado whipped through it and tossed all her clothes around. "You really freaked out. I'm impressed."
"Thanks. I was gunna pick up," Chloe said and sat on her bed. "But I figured it was easier to pick out skirts and dresses this way."
"This was such a cute outfit," Lana said, looking at the coffee-soaked clothing. "I wish I could wear daring clothes like this." Despite the colder weather, Lana wore the complete summer collection from Abercrombie and Fitch: a pink Sabrina polo shirt, a white cotton Jacqueline Flirty mini skirt, white ankle sox with two cute pink fuzzy balls on each sock, and white leather pumas with a pink stripe. Lana was a prep, like all the girls in her clique. The only daring clothing Lana did wear was always hidden under her clothes. Or even more daring sometimes, nothing at all.
"Why don't you?" Chloe said easily. "There's no law that says you can't."
"There's an unspoken law," Lana said and turned to Chloe. "I have to buy certain clothes from certain stores, and wear them certain days. All of my friends do it too"
"That sounds stupid," Chloe said, sipping from her carefully-held bottle of coffee. "Just wear what you like."
"That's what I like about you Chloe," Lana said with a warm smile. "You wear what you like, and don't care what people say."
"People say stuff?" Chloe asked. She didn't know her style was that controversial. Or disliked.
"I mean, people say that you're...original," Lana said and picked through some of clothes on the floor. "I, for one, love your style."
Chloe smiled and they picked-thru the clothes, sorting out the too quirky from the too unique. Chloe looked at the clock, and wished she read it wrong: it was already 5 PM.
"What about this?" Chloe asked. It was a long black canvas dress, with huge pockets on the side. The bottom was cut asymmetrically. "I bought it on a whim and wore it once."
"Hmm...It has potential," Lana whispered. She looked at Chloe. "Won't show your legs at all, but I'll rectify that."
"Whatcha mean?" Chloe said, watching Lana take the dress. Lana crawled very unladylike, opened her bags, yanked out the shirts, and handed them to Chloe. "Try these on while I cut up your dress."
"WHAT are you doing?" Chloe watched Lana slice into the dress.
"Shh...," Lana whispered and cut. "I have done this a billion times when Nell buys me a dress or skirt that's way too damn modest for my liking."
"Ok," Chloe said, surprised at this Lana, one she never seen before. "You seem a little...different than what I see at school."
"For some reason, I'm relaxed around you," Lana admitted with a smile. "I don't have to be 'Miss Perfect Lil' Pink Princess'...don't have to be fake around you."
"Are you fake around your friends?" Chloe hoped it sounded genuinely concerned, and not like an interview question.
"They wouldn't know it," Lana said with a bitter laugh. She cut a ring around the dress, chopping seven inches off and frayed out the new hem. "They're fake, too. You're not fake at all. That's another thing I like about you."
Chloe smiled at Lana.
"I like this burgundy one with the ties in the back," Chloe said after picking thru the colorful array of cotton polo tops and knit shirts that Lana brought with her. "But...no offense...it's still too plain for my taste."
"Slip it on," Lana said, setting down the dress. Chloe slipped off her PE shirt (she wore a bra underneath) and tugged down on the burgundy shirt. "It's a bit too tight."
"Tight is good!" Lana said with a smile, and hopped up with the scissors. She grabbed the front collar and made a cut in the middle of it. A shocked look flashed on Chloe's face when she saw Lana hold the two ends and ripped down, making a deep V shape in the neck.
"BAM! Instant cleavage," Lana laughed. "It's not plain anymore!"
"Whoa!" Chloe said, looking down at her chest. It seemed bigger, fuller. "Look at those!"
"Wow! Nice!" Lana said, stepping back and nodding. "I bet you'll catch Clark talking to your chest at some point tonight."
"The way these are popping out," Chloe said, looking at her chest in the reflection in the mirror. "He can't miss them. But...the V is too deep."
"Too deep? It shows off 'the ladies' just right," Lana explained.
"Dad is going to think it shows too much," Chloe said with a smile.
"OK," Lana said, rolling her eyes. "Wear a tank under it."
Chloe put the shirt on over a white tank.
"Looks good," Chloe admitted.
"You coulda shown more flesh," Lana said. "Now turn around."
Chloe turned and Lana slit the slides of the shirt just a bit and tied the back strings tight, accentuating Chloe's waist. "You've got a great figure, Chloe. I'm a stick compared to you."
Blushing, Chloe slipped off the sweats, slid on the dress and looked in the mirror.
"Combining your quirkiness and my preppiness," Lana said, pleased with herself, "just gave that outfit a sexy overhaul!"
"Wow! You ain't lying!" Chloe said into Lana's reflection in the mirror. "Now I have to see the dress on while I wear my boots."
"No boots! Please!" Lana said. She looked around for Chloe's boots to hide them.
"No WAY!" Chloe said and ran to her boots.
"Hello?" Lana said with a smile, watching Chloe put on two pairs of thick sox. "You always wear them. They are so clunky..."
"Hello? Clark is my date," Chloe reminded Lana. "Maybe if I was going out with...with," Chloe couldn't even think of dating anyone else, "with some boy... I might wear different shoes...maybe even buy heels. But you remember what happened: His huge ol' boot crushed my cute lil' footsie..."
"Oh yeah." Lana remembered that sickening crunching sound. "That's a concern. He'll be all nervous and that could make him clumsy. Are they steel toed?"
"God yes," Chloe nodded empathically. "I had him step on them a few times and no dents...yet."
"Ok Chloe...I'll let you wear the boots," She smiled and they giggled. "Now...where's your makeup?..."