- Chapter 10 - School Is In -

The girls' room at Smallville High was full to overflowing with teenagers trying to get one last peek at their first-day fashion statement. The aroma of a dozen brands of mascara and lip gloss intermingling with institutional bathroom cleaner was eye-watering. Chloe stood in the bathroom doorway for a long second before deciding to forego the crowd and use the mirror she kept at the Torch to check her own look, particularly the concealer on her jaw hiding the little blip of acne her astringent ministrations had failed to prevent. It wasn't that she was a vain person either, Chloe rationalized. This was the first day of school. You had to try and set a tone for the year.

On her way down the hall, Chloe spotted Clark, flanked on either side by his parents. His first-day look was conservative and flannel, as usual. No obvious skin problems to conceal - lucky him. Then again, Clark had bigger problems than a mild acne break-out. The world's only alien amnesiac was possibly doomed to return to junior high. He looked kind of nervous and a little tense. Clark didn't even look her way before ducking into the Guidance Counselor's office. Chloe bit down on her bottom lip. She should have gotten him the study material sooner. What if he didn't pass the placement test?

"You look grave," Pete said. Joining her next to a bank of yellow lockers, he hiked his backpack up and followed her gaze to the closed counselor's office. "Let me guess, you're worried about Clark and his test."

"Aren't you?" Chloe asked. Pete seemed way too laid back and blasé about it all. "You're best friend may be the second oldest kid in the eighth grade after today. A little concern is due."

"Not really. What can we do? Nothing. This is all Clark now. If he fails, he can always join the junior varsity basketball team. He towers over the average eighth grader you know." Judging from Chloe's glare, she didn't appreciate his attempt at a humorous spin on Clark's predicament. "All I'm saying is Clark will be fine. So what if he has to go back to the eighth grade." At least he's alive. "I have family in the eighth grade. My cousin, Jesse, already has the word from me. He'll have Clark's back and make sure he survives if worst comes to worst."

"The Ross network, extended family working together in a non-Sopranos kind of way - you're good Pete. I still hope he passes." Glancing at the hall clock, 7:55, Chloe decided that the opportunity to check her hidden zit had passed. She got moving toward her first scheduled stop of the day. "So which homeroom did you draw this year?"


Mr. Flutey, guidance counselor, sat forward over his desk, his hands steepled under his chin. Gold-rimmed glasses sat solidly on his hawk-like nose. He neither smiled nor spoke while the Kents read over the school board policy and procedures sheet he'd handed them. Mr. Flutey hadn't provided Clark a copy to read, so he crossed his arms and tried to avoid the strange man's incessant stare. His office was a dark little room, dusty, and it smelled of tobacco. Now that he really looked at Mr. Flutey, he had that dried wrinkled look of someone who has smoked hard for most of their lives - the smoked-beef-jerky effect. Clark grinned at the small memory he had clawed out. Pete came up with that term to describe someone, one of their grade-school teachers. What was her name? What grade had that been?

"So Clark can restart the ninth grade with no penalty as long as he passes the state board's placement test?" Martha asked. The school springing a test on her kid when he was still recovering, still vulnerable, pricked at her maternal protectiveness. "Someone really should have warned us that Clark was going to be taking a test his first day back. He hasn't had a chance to properly prepare."

"It isn't something you can prepare for. Eight years of education are either there or they're not. If young Clark here studied all summer he couldn't fool the test," Mr. Flutey droned. "You of course have the entire staff's sympathy for the personal trials you've gone through over the last year, but proper educational placement will only help you succeed. If all goes well, you can pick up your education virtually where you left off."

Clark almost snorted. The sympathy bit would be a bit more believable if the man's expression ever changed from zombie-mode. He might not be perfectly prepared for this test, but he'd done quite a bit of speedy reading overnight thanks to the heads-up from Chloe. This could go okay.

"What happens if he fails?" Jonathan asked. "Will he get a chance to test again? Is this all or nothing?"

Mr. Flutey sighed and shook his head wearily. "This isn't pass-fail. A placement test determines the level you're at. Now, we always appreciate it when parents support their children and come in to school, but Clark will be testing all morning, and we'll design a schedule based on the results this afternoon. I think we can handle it from here."

Martha exchanged an offended look with Jonathan. This so called guidance counselor was completely devoid of social skills. "We weren't planning to stay all day. We just want to make sure you're doing what's best for our son."

"It's okay, guys. Policy says I take the test. I'll take the test then," Clark said. The protective show from his parents was comforting, and Clark couldn't keep a smile off his face. He was the strong one, virtually invulnerable, but he needed his parents to protect him from a rude bureaucrat. Martha and Jonathan were showing a bulldog style stubbornness that made Clark feel more like their son than months of coddling had managed. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Mr. Flutey showed his first hint of emotion at that question. He laughed and shrugged. "Well you could fail the functional literacy portion and land in the fast track to MacDonalds." Mr. Flutey's laugh died slowly. The Kents weren't even smiling. "It's just a little guidance counselor humor. Look, I have hundreds of kids out there who haven't even realized how bad they screwed up their schedules. Clark needs to be testing today so that he doesn't fall behind his classmates, whatever grade level he ends up in. I'm sorry if I seem brusque, but this is the busy season for me."


It wasn't the homecoming queen, a cheerleader, or girlfriend-to-the-quarterback who walked into Smallville High when Lang Lang pushed open the old blue double doors. She'd cut herself adrift from those helpful identities. They were old masks, and she'd enjoyed casting them away. Now that the outer layers were gone, you'd think the inner Lana Lang would have blossomed and asserted herself. Adjusting her new pink sweater set, Lana couldn't help feeling like a complete fraud. Every mask she shed just revealed a new one. Today she was the slightly rebellious coffee-house girl. She was single but that probably never would have happened if Whitney hadn't been moving on. He made it easier by going away.

It wasn't like this year had to be lonely or threatening. There were dozens of cliques that would be overjoyed to add Lana Lang to their regular posse. All she had to do was pick a group, choose her facade for the year, and go with it. Except that she quit cheerleading to stop hiding. I am not a sheep, and I don't need a flock.

Squaring her shoulders, Lana stepped into her homeroom and found a smile. She didn't need a clique but a friend wouldn't be a bad thing. Pete and Chloe were occupying a couple of the back desks. She and Chloe hadn't ever really bonded, but Pete had become a definite friend. He had helped her with the page she'd written about Clark in the yearbook, and she'd agreed to play blind date for his surprise. Having the same homeroom had to be fate. "Good morning," Lana said. She took a seat across from Chloe and behind Pete.

"Morning," Pete chimed. He pointed to the clock at the front of the room and abandoned his seat. "I better head across the hall ladies. A tardy is no way to begin my year." He leaned in to Chloe on his way past and whispered, "Play nice."

Chloe shot Pete a sarcastic eye-roll. Sure she'd shown herself to be a tiny bit defensive about queen-Lana, but she'd never actually been rude in person...well not recently anyway. "Hi Lana," she said. "Happy with your schedule?"

"I guess," Lana said. So much for fate, Pete wasn't in her homeroom after all, and Lana wasn't oblivious enough to miss the passive-aggressive twitches Chloe couldn't quite suppress around her. The tension wasn't a mystery. They were almost in a love triangle before Clark vanished. Of course, the triangle never actually materialized. There were crushes running everywhere without anyone acting on anything, and now the male vertex of said polygon didn't even remember any of it. Maybe things could be different between them now? They could at least manage to polite. "I needed to pick up a PE elective so I'm trying track. How did your schedule turn out?"

"It could technically be worse," Chloe said. She ran a finger down her schedule critically. "I have my seventh period free for the Torch, and that's what's important. I landed Mr. Jamison for literature and Ms. Elise for trigonometry, not my first choices but not a disaster either. No classes with Pete and definitely none with Clark." Chloe could have kicked herself for mentioning Clark, the pink elephant between them, the moment his name was out of her mouth. She'd opened the polite conversation door. Lana could ask all the questions she wanted, and Chloe would have to choose between chatting about Clark and being rude...well it wasn't like she hadn't been rude before.

"Maybe you have some classes with me. Let me see," Lana said. She slipped Chloe's schedule off her desk and compared it to her own. "There, you have a friend in European history. I have that third too."

At least she hadn't pounced on the conversation-Clark opening, but declaring herself a friend? Chloe barely restrained herself from snorting. Lana didn't even begin to run in the same social circle as the Pete-Chloe tier of high school. "Right, you saved my life." Did Lana think Chloe was a social reject who needed some kind of pity friendship? Chloe didn't bother to restrain her sarcasm as she took her schedule back. "I mean God forbid I have to sit with a friend from the Torch or a casual acquaintance. That would be a disaster."

"I was just trying to be nice," Lana snapped. Her face felt hot and flushed. Lana tried not to be hurt or offended. Chloe was just wry and sarcastic normally. She wasn't trying to pick a fight. The second bell rang, and Lana sighed as any obligation to continue the conversation with Chloe passed.


Functional Literacy

Read the following questions completely and choose the MOST correct answer. Mark all answers darkly with a number 2 pencil on the score sheet. You have 40 minutes to complete this test section. There are 50 items in this section.

1. What is a traffic light?

A. A signal to direct traffic to: go, slow, or stop
B. A car with working headlights
C. An expensive piece of stereo equipment
D. A child monitoring device

2. When it is noon _.

A. It is 12 o'clock
B. It is midnight
C. It is time to go to bed
D. You are not allowed to drive on highways

3. What is a baseball hat?

A. An incandescent light
B. An implement for changing a tire
C. A clothing accessory worn on the head
D. A small flying mammal

4. How many pieces of $1.50 candy can you buy if you have $12.00 (no tax is assessed)

A. 12
B. 4
C. 10
D. 8

Clark looked up from the first page of the functional literacy portion of his placement test with a smile on his face. His parents had left disgruntled, but Clark understood Mr. Flutey's joke about failing functional literacy now. If you could read the questions at all, you wouldn't fail.

At the very least, this was going to be a nice confidence builder. Maybe the whole test would be as pleasantly easy? Not likely, but he could hope.


When the bell rang releasing fourth period, half the student body headed for the cafeteria. The more sensible kids avoided the grotesque food and droves of junior high kids to eat packed lunches on the quad or grab a snack from the gym's vending machines. Chloe fell into the latter category. She bought a can of carbonated caffeine before heading to the Torch offices to tweak her opening editorial. Pete would know where to find her, and as far as she knew, Clark was still in guidance counseling Hell with Mr. Flutey.

The Torch offices weren't really offices. You had a big room with computer stations and Ink Jet printers. While it was no Daily Planet, Chloe was sort of happy to be back. At the Planet she was a peon barely worthy of coffee fetching duties. The reporters normally reserved all fetching for their college interns. The Torch was just a high school student publication, but she was the big fish in this office. Yes she'd learned things at the Planet, besides how Bob Norris likes his coffee. Not that she would have believed it before she'd been there, but Chloe learned more in the trenches running her little paper than watching the big boys run theirs.

Chloe didn't even make it to her computer before the assistant editor found her. Mark was rather short and slightly acne burned around the cheeks, but he was a good reporter, and a huge help as assistant editor. He couldn't seem to keep his hands from tugging at his curly brown hair when stressed, and Chloe had a suspicion he'd be bald prematurely if he didn't learn to calm down. His hair was pointing in thirty directions at once, a sure sign of extreme panic for Mark.

"We've got a problem," Mark said. He grabbed a seat at one of the tables and took a deep calming breath. "Lyn that writes the horoscopes and the advice column quit this morning. She told me in homeroom. A spot opened up on the cheerleading squad and she made it. She said she just didn't have time for the paper this year. Also, Clark always kept us in lunch menus and activity schedules. Brian who writes the sports articles had been picking up that slack, but he seems to think it's beneath him this year, and he quit. He said something about writing for the yearbook being less stressful, fewer deadlines or something. That's two regular columns down and we haven't even had our first official meeting. I was thinking that we could roll back our opening issue to next week?"

Chloe smiled, actually enjoying a small crisis to start the year. "Don't panic. That's why we bring in a fresh crop of freshmen yearly. I'm sure Lyn and Brian will be fairly easily replaced." Chloe crossed her arms and sighed. A couple of jerks who were too busy for her paper – she refused to get angry over them. They weren't worth it. "There's no need to postpone anything. All we have to do is pick up the slack until the club fair in two weeks. So would you like sports or advice?"

"You and me writing extra articles? I guess that could work. I could write about sports, except I really don't want to interview linemen and quarterbacks and whatever the rest of them are called. Give me advice I guess," Mark said. He paused and grimaced. "That means I have two articles due tomorrow. Excuse me." Taking a seat at one of the workstations he rested his head in his hands and commenced tugging at his hair.

"Bald before thirty," Chloe whispered. She booted up her station, but instead of heading to her editorial for tweaking, she started a new file, sports. At least she knew a football player. Bench warmer or not, Pete could give her a scoop on the year. The Crows had a new quarterback and coach. That was big news to the more school-spirited crowd.


Slouching low in his seat, Clark waited outside the counselor's office for a word on his future. Mr. Flutey had encouraged him to grab a bite to eat and come back at one, but Clark didn't exactly know where the cafeteria was. Asking around for directions didn't appeal to him. He'd probably ask someone he was supposed to be bosom buddies with, and they'd be upset that he didn't know them. Heck, they'd probably think it was great gossip that he couldn't even find the stupid cafeteria. The idea of a lot of humans he didn't know whispering about his problems made his skin crawl.

"Mr. Kent, I thought I sent you to lunch?" While Clark had been contemplating his gossip-fodder status, Mr. Flutey had returned from the grading room. He was holding the stack of papers Clark had spent the morning bubbling in. "Too nervous to eat?"

"I guess," Clark said. He nodded to the papers and offered a hesitant smile. "How does it look?"

"Well, I haven't had a chance to dissect it thoroughly, but it looks pretty good. Come on in and we'll talk about what we have here." Mr. Flutey unlocked his door and headed in. "I was half-expecting you to have serious problems. The brain is a funny organ. It can take some retraining when basic functions like memory are scrambled."

"But I did okay?" Clark didn't even try to suppress the sense of accomplishment that filled him. He had failed at a lot of things over the summer: memory recovery, training to manipulate kryptonite, managing peace between Lola and his parents. Finally he had one success to bolster his ego. "I won't have to go back to junior high?"

"I don't think that will be necessary, no." Mr. Flutey dealt the scantron score sheets into two piles. "I was happy with all your math and sciences. The graduated scale estimates you'd be in the 95th percentile of entering ninth graders in Kansas, and you were sitting at that level before the amnesia based on your standardized tests."

He aced the math and science then. Clark wasn't surprised. Those were the reasonable questions. If he didn't know them right off, he could figure them out. The tests that had him worried were the ones where he'd found himself guessing every other question. So he didn't remember what a Capulet was. It didn't sound like Mr. Flutey was going to hold his memory gaps against him.

"Your literature and histories were a little less promising. 50th percentile isn't what your records suggest would be normal. It still isn't something I'd hold you back over. You'll pick those things back up. There's a lot of repetition in those areas of the curriculum. I have to tell you, the biggest concern was functional literacy." Mr. Flutey pulled out one of the scantrons and handed it across to Clark. "You missed 10 of 50. I believe that's 80% but only 35th percentile."

Clark stared down at the sheet, shock written on his face. "I can read just fine. I know I'm literate. How do you think I passed the other sections?"

Mr. Flutey chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "I'm sure it was the functional part that slipped you up. The test checks your basic reading and math skills, but more subtly it also gauges whether you have a working understanding of society."

"I failed functional literacy. I can't believe I failed functional literacy," Clark stared at the machine-graded slip of paper and its damning red marks. "What does this mean?"

Mr. Flutey turned to his computer and started typing. "Don't worry about it. Remember, we can't really fail a placement test. I have your original 9th grade schedule on file and I'm going to reenroll you in your courses. Instead of a free period sixth, I'm putting you in a special topic class. You'll report to room 412. My wife, Mrs. Flutey, teaches it. She'll go over these tests and help you figure out what your brain is missing." Mr. Flutey's hand was already under his printer when it spat out Clark's schedule. "Scamper on now. Get some lunch. Go to your afternoon classes."

Clark accepted his schedule and returned the scantron he'd been staring at. Mr. Flutey didn't wait to see if Clark was going to accept his dismissal, he pulled a brown bag lunch out of his desk and started unpacking. "Thanks," Clark said. He walked out of the guidance counselor's office as a ninth grader, and that was a victory. Excepting that the state of Kansas didn't consider him functionally literate, he'd done great on the placement test.

"Clark, you're looking a little lost there."

Why couldn't the steady stream of kids up and down the hall stay anonymous? Why did someone have to pick him out of the crowd when he was feeling like a complete idiot? It took a second to place this girl, but Clark at least had a name for her face, Lana Lang. He'd embarrassed himself the first time he saw her, running away like a spooked animal. "I'm not lost. I just don't know where I'm going."

"I see." Lana grinned and shook her head at him. "Well, why don't you let me help? Do you have a destination in mind?"

"You really don't have to." Lana held out her hand for his schedule, and Clark relented. He did need to know where to go, and she was pretty. She was almost too picture-perfect. There was an unreality about her. "A point in the direction of Mr. Ward's US history would be nice."

"Tell you what. There's still twenty minutes left in lunch. How about I give you the grand tour, and I promise to get you to fifth period on time." Lana gestured for Clark to follow her, and just like that, her mysterious not-quite-love interest was back. He'd lost the awkward smitten look he used to wear around her, but that was a good thing. Maybe they could start a friendship without all the expectations and pent up emotions running everywhere. "This building is the main hall. Most of your classes will be in here. The administration takes up a lot of the first floor. Almost all the freshman core classes are on the second floor. Just look for the number over the door. You've got a couple of electives on here that are out of this building. Follow me, and I'll point them out."

Clark listened to Lana's tour abstractly. He did need to know where things were, but he found himself pondering the guide more than the school. Where did Lana Lang fit into the puzzle of the old Clark's life? She was one of his six hallucinations – probably another friend. Someone would have told him if there was anything more between them. They tried to tell him everything else.

Lana couldn't help feeling a little silly as she finished her grand tour pointing out the library and the gymnasium. Clark had a slightly distant look like he was only half-listening. The poor guy probably had a lot on his mind. At least his schedule was a high school one and she wasn't showing him where the junior high was. "I guess that's it. You still have ten minutes to make it to history."

"Thanks. Now maybe I won't spend too much time wandering around lost," Clark said. "I really didn't want to ask Mr. Flutey to show me around."

"He is creepy, I know." Lana bit her lip as the silence between them began to grow. "You know the Talon is close to school," she blurted. "I mean while I'm giving tours, I might as well direct you to my coffee shop. You helped me get it started. I mean, I'd like to buy you a latte on the house some time." Lana felt her cheeks flush for the second time that day. "I didn't mean that like it sounded. I'm not asking you out or anything."

Her awkward invitation was sweet, and Clark smiled easily. "I honestly don't remember if I like lattes, but I'd love to try one out."