- Chapter 12 - Meet the Freak -

"My name is Luci. How are you? Very nice thank you. May I have a glass of water? Yes, you may. It is dripping outside. Wear your coat," Luci recited in heavily accented English.

"You're not getting it right," Ford chimed in. He didn't look away from the three dimensional puzzle he was working on their computer terminal. "You're feeling very well, and it rains outside. Your glass of water could drip."

Luci frowned at her little brother's effortless pronunciation and recollection of the strange dialect their benefactress Onlea had left them to learn. Languages, Galactic standard included, were not among Luci's favorite subjects. They were too arbitrary, all rote memorization. Onlea asked that they learn it though, and Luci wasn't about to argue with her. Onlea saved their lives. Learning English wasn't a huge thing to ask, and Ford was even good at it.

Good at English and calmly playing games all day, Ford was acting like everything was normal, and it was really starting to get on Luci's nerves. She wanted to shake the cold little brat until he cried like he was supposed to. They were orphans, and Ford was supposed to be traumatized...except she hadn't let him know about their parents. She hadn't known how to tell him. She still didn't.

Ford had been all questions and fear after their rescue and then he'd been fine. Luci couldn't put her finger on when things changed, when he started dealing with everything so well. She'd been distracted with important things: keeping them safe, learning English, managing Reo. At some point while she hadn't been paying attention, Ford changed from the whiny brat she understood into the calm video game master ignoring her. He hadn't asked about their parents or crawled in bed with her for weeks. And he'd attacked the language lessons with focus Luci wouldn't have believed her little brother possessed.

Luci's frown deepened and she stared at the back of her brother's head as though it might divulge some bit of insight into its inner workings. Maybe she should just stop looking for trouble. Ford was fine, and she needed to figure out a way to master English the way he was. Pleasing Onlea was at the top of her priority list. Luci wasn't giving their mysterious savior any reasons to change her mind about their value. It was too easy to shoot annoying cargo or passengers out the nearest airlock. "How do you do that you little worm? I swear you study half the time with double the effect."

"I'm smarter than you," Ford said. Still not looking up from his game, he tossed a clear electric notepad to his sister. The surface was covered in line after line of alien characters, more English. "Translate that, if you can."

"Smarter than me? I don't think so," Luci snapped. She scanned the document Ford had tossed her, understanding maybe one word in three. "What is this?"

"It's my manifesto." Ford finally looked up from his game and grinned at his sister. "Once you get a little better at English, you can read the documents Onlea has on the ship's system about Earth. That's where we're going. Reo-Ra told me so."

"Earth? And since when do you talk to that cow, Reo?" Luci couldn't help being offended. Ford barely talked to her. Why would he feel the need to exchange words with Reo-Ra, the woman who didn't even want to be bothered with them?

"She's not a cow. She's just older," Ford said. More important than her age, her size, or anything else, Reo-Ra knew what was happening. And as far as Ford could tell she hadn't lied to him yet. Reo wouldn't tell him anything about Onlea or her plans, but at least she'd told him some of the truth. It was more than he could say for Luci. She'd tried to protect him, to keep little details like his parents' death from him. He wasn't angry at her for lying, by the same token that he wasn't sad about his parents death. He just wasn't anything right now. It made it easy to think and learn and plan. The manifesto his sister was struggling to read was the result of several weeks careful reading and planning. He'd penned it in English, testing the language skills he'd been practicing. "I was thinking that maybe we wouldn't want to do whatever Onlea wants us to do when we get to Earth. So we should learn enough to get by without her help."

Luci set aside the manifesto that she couldn't quite read and tried not to cry. Ford was acting so grown up. He was really thinking ahead. Maybe he was a lot smarter than she usually gave him credit for. "I can't read that thing, but it's really great that you wrote it. You want to tell me about it?"

Ford shook his head and kept playing his game. "You can try reading it later." He switched to English smoothly. "It can be a goal."


Slouched low in her seat, Reo-Ra stared at the bridge's communication screen. The green incoming message light had been flashing for several minutes. On a normal day, a message from virtually anywhere in the galaxy could have been loaded in a matter of seconds, but the escalating civil war had interrupted relays and slowed matters considerably. Rather than annoying Reo, the delay was welcome, giving her a chance to compose her thoughts for the impending interrogation. There was little question about who was on the line. The Eradicator was overdue checking in.

The screen flashed to life without warning, filling with the image of a decidedly scorched Eradicator. Soot smudged her pale cheeks, and steam rose in waves off her exterior. "Are you damaged?" Reo asked politely.

"Hardly," the Eradicator replied. The billow of smoke which followed her reply didn't engender much confidence in Reo. "Make the ship ready for departure. I am returning post haste. We need to establish you and the children before things get any hotter with this war." Kal was using his Eradicator a lot for a man who'd sworn her off until she completed her personal mission. Rather than being happy about the direction from Kal-El, the Eradicator found herself annoyed at having to leave Reo and the kiddies in limbo. She'd become truly attached to her breeding program, and she wanted to see it through.

"Time management," the Eradicator mumbled, using a phase from the remnants of Chloe's meandering memories still echoing through her synapses. The Eradicator who wanted to have everything needed serious time management.


Couches were made for sitting, not for sleeping. The broken-down floral print couch in the Kent's living room was barely made for sitting anymore. Jonathan had to rock himself out of the hole he'd spent the night pretending to sleep in. He tossed aside his quilt and pillow without bothering to fold them. He wasn't in the mood to be neat. The industrious banging in the kitchen wasn't helping his mood any. Apparently, Martha made it out of bed on time. People who got to sleep in real beds without holes or springs poking them in the back all night, had no trouble rising with the chickens. Hesitating outside the kitchen holding his back, Jonathan decided to do breakfast before braving the stairs for a shower and change of clothes. It would give him a chance loosen up and maybe get a sympathy jab in.

Nearly two months on the couch was cruel and unusual. Martha had to forgive him sooner or later. It wasn't like he'd killed someone. It was just a small lie and just to protect their family. Stooping over dramatically for effect, Jonathan headed into the kitchen, but it wasn't Martha fixing breakfast. Clark was studiously studying the back of a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts, while some instant oatmeal boiled away on the stove. Abandoning the dramatic stoop meant to shame Martha, Jonathan frowned. "Where's your mother?"

"Morning Dad. Mom's asleep." Clark didn't look up from the directions on the box for another couple of beats. "You know, convenience food I can handle. Would you like your processed carbohydrates boiled or toasted?"

"Toasted...Your mother's still asleep?" A couple of seconds earlier, Jonathan had been uncharitably imagining Martha sprawled across their queen size sleeper, but now his annoyance and back-pain seemed a little less important. Was Martha sick? Aside from the flu, Jonathan couldn't think of anything that would make his wife turn off her alarm clock and roll over. "Should I go check on her?"

"Please don't." Clark inserted his dad's breakfast selection into the toaster and smiled to himself. "I turned off her alarm clock."

"You what?" Jonathan tried to wrap his mind around that bit of information. Why would Clark turn off his mother's alarm clock? He had been doing so well, even after things got sticky between his parents. They'd managed not to fight in front of him, and Clark just accepted the new status quo with Dad on the couch and Mom selling cheerful a little too hard all the time. You couldn't live in the same house with them and not pick up on some of the tension running around. You couldn't exactly call turning your mother's alarm off a rebellion though. Maybe it was a cry for help, or something? "Do you mind elaborating a bit there?"

Clark sighed and poured his oatmeal into a plastic bowl. The stuff settled into a sticky amorphous lump of appetizing goop. Clark stabbed the concoction with his spoon and set it on the table. The spoon stayed stubbornly erect as if defying his assessment of appetizing. Breakfast wasn't perfect, so what. Nothing was perfect.

His parents had been feuding over something for weeks now. Clark had been good, respected their privacy, and waited for it all to blow over. But whatever had them barely civil with each other wasn't blowing anywhere. Sleeping, generally a mental necessity more than a physical one for him, had become impossible. Lately, Clark spent his evenings listening to his parents' sleepless wanderings. His father tumbled all night on the creaky old sofa in the living room. His mother was up at least half a dozen times a night, getting water, walking the halls. Sometimes she even came down and peeked in on him. Last night when she'd wandered down, he'd feigned sleep as always, but he watched her through the pillow he'd buried his face in. Her eyes were puffy, and her cheeks glistened with fresh tears.

The sense of family and belonging that Clark had spent so much time worrying about and trying to resurrect in himself lived in those tears. His mother was crying, and he didn't like it. He wanted to help her. Now if he just knew whether he was the problem tearing his parents apart or the glue binding them together? Lying there in his bed, Clark decided to try and be the glue for at least a little while. He hadn't been problematic for them lately. He wasn't a wild teenager, but he hadn't been a very proactive one either.

The new proactive Clark had turned off his mother's alarm before it could wake her when he knew she'd barely slept two hours last night. Then he'd decided to make breakfast, possibly a bad idea. Now his dad either didn't realize he wasn't the only one not sleeping these days, or he didn't understand why his son would get involved. "I turned off her alarm because she didn't sleep well last night. Neither of you guys have been doing much sleeping for quite some time. I figured we could fend for ourselves this morning, and then you could wake her up after I go to school..."...and maybe you can talk while I'm gone and make up for God's sake.

The toaster popped and Clark snatched the steamy frosted pastries with his bare hands. He tossed them onto a plate and offered them to his dad. "I already thawed some orange juice."

Martha wasn't sleeping? She didn't have the excuse of a lumpy old couch either. Was that good or bad news? Was she ready to forgive and move forward? A smile tugged at Jonathan's lips despite his situation with Martha. Clark had obviously decided to make it known that he was a member of this family, and he didn't like the way things were. It was almost like old times. "Thanks for breakfast. You had best hurry and eat, or you're going to be late."

"You're welcome." Clark plopped down in front of his already cooling oatmeal, pried his spoon out of the cementing goop, and hesitantly tasted the gray stuff. Butter and cinnamon almost made up for the absolute lack of texture. Maybe he'd overcooked it a bit? "I'll wait for lunch now that I think about it. Wouldn't want to be late."


Twenty one crystal shot glasses stacked into a pyramid danced with the morning sun scattering light around the otherwise unlit study. As though he were playing Jenga instead of toying with imported Italian glasses, Lex poked at the bottom row of the configuration. Unlike a Jenga tower which can withstand a bit of degradation to its support structure, the crystal pyramid tumbled with the high pitched tinkling of shattering glass.

Lex stared at the pile of worthless Italian shards dispassionately. They still captured the light, but instead of casting their rainbows around the room they created a much confined prickly bastion of rainbow light on his desk.

Leaning back in his desk chair until it creaked and nearly toppled, Lex mentally reviewed his current endeavors, both fact-finding and financial. Unfortunately, it was a short list. Dr. Hamilton was overseeing a variety of experiments at Cadmus Labs, and his inheritance from his mother didn't require daily inspection. Lex found himself missing the job his father had deprived him of. Managing Smallville's ailing fertilizer plant hadn't been his idea of a good time, but it had its uses. Filling the long hours between crises and social engagements was difficult in a one horse town like Smallville.

Commuting to Metropolis and circulating through his old social scene was almost tempting, except that his father was bound to find out. Lionel would love to know how frustrating his latest act in their personal war had been, and Lex refused to give him the satisfaction.

Quite frankly it left a lot of time for special projects like the gradual resurrection of his friendship with Clark. Lex had never actually worked at a friendship before meeting Clark. There were plenty of people willing to befriend a poor lonely billionaire, no effort required. Finding someone he wanted to know, who intrigued him, who might actually be genuine, that was worth the effort. Besides, you couldn't say he hadn't reaped rewards from the relationship. Being alive was nice.

As of yet, Lex hadn't moved forward with his investigation of his valued friend. He had plans and theories, but selecting a discreet inquisitor with unquestionable loyalty was damn near impossible. He'd had what felt like a perfect selection with Jon Fisk. Extortion made for real trust. The man would never have risked his daughter. Well Lex had learned a hard lesson about bluffing a genuine psychic...don't.

Idly Lex rocked out of his chair and started pacing restlessly. Boredom could be a dangerous state of mind if you thought about it. Lex spent too much time thinking, plotting, theorizing. The monotony of it was enough to drive a man mad. He needed to act. Something needed to happen.

"Mr. Luthor?"

His housekeeper, Cynthia, had interrupted his internal tirade, and Lex almost shouted at her angrily for her poor timing. But he caught himself. He'd been grinding his teeth over the monotony of his current situation. Shouting about a break in that monotony didn't make sense. "What is it?"

"You have a visitor, a Mr. Dreyer," Cynthia said. She took a small step backwards as though bracing for an explosion.

When had the help started acting like they were dealing with a particularly prickly grizzly around him? Lex smiled thinly. Maybe he'd been a little moody lately. "Show him in, please." The name Dreyer didn't exactly strike up any personal memories, but Lex knew who his father had placed over the fertilizer plant. Benjamin Dreyer, a real barracuda by all reports, was probably doing Lionel a personal favor with his visit to fertilizer-land. The protracted wait before checking in with the man he'd replaced, that was a not so subtle professional insult.

Dreyer breezed into Lex's office, apparently unaffected by the trappings of wealth meant to intimidate. While Dreyer wasn't particularly tall or broad, he carried himself with a cocky swagger that attempted to command respect. Lex wasn't impressed. He'd met more than his fair share of wealthy educated men with that same aura of superiority. Well, Lex learned disdain at the feet of the master. Dreyer was out of his league if he planned to intimidate with attitude. "Can I help you?"

"Good morning, Mr. Luthor. Forgive me. I should have stopped by far sooner." Technically, he'd been waiting for Lionel to drop by or send word about his purpose in this place. Waiting for a word from Lionel was getting old. Dreyer wasn't so inexperienced that he couldn't recognize a family skirmish when he landed in one. Coming here to pump the puppy-Luthor for information might shed a little light on the particulars of the family quarrel. With a little luck he could get out of Smallville and back to his career without having to abandon the hard won position he'd achieved at Luthor Corp. "It's possible that we could help each other." Judging from the snide smirk Lex didn't bother to suppress, he wasn't impressed with the prospect of help from his replacement.

"I need help from the manager of Smallville Fertilizer?" Lex strolled over to his bar and rummaged around for a glass. He hadn't destroyed them all, had he? "Now, I can understand that you might be looking for help. I can't imagine a worse demotion, Chicago Industrial to Smallville Shit."

Dreyer didn't show a hint of the annoyance Lex's cavalier dismissal sparked. Instead, he selected a seat and made himself comfortable. "You and I both know my transfer wasn't about a demotion. Papa-Luthor was scolding his recalcitrant son, and he involved me by some unknown stroke of cunning and wisdom. Hell, he practically told me I was part of the family with this transfer."

Giving up on finding a glass, Lex crossed his arms over his chest. "But you aren't part of the family, Dreyer. Lionel threw you away, and he might just forget you out here in the boonies. If you weren't concerned, you wouldn't be here nosing around for allies and information."

"Touché, only a fool takes Lionel lightly." Dreyer casually steepled his fingers together and grinned. "I'm no fool, Lex, and neither are you. Why don't you pour me a drink, and we can have a serious conversation about...things."

Lex was tempted to bite, to try sparring with this acolyte of his father, but what was the point? Whatever Dreyer said, he had a purpose known only to himself and Lionel. It was hard to win a game where Lionel made all the rules. Lex started to dismiss his visitor out of hand, but the shimmering mass of glass on his desk caught his attention and he reconsidered. Playing his father's game was a bit more interesting than twiddling his thumbs. "You want to talk so desperately, I'm listening. Say something interesting."

Something interesting? Dreyer's grin widened.

"Have you heard about Lionel's new pet?"


Behind a gray metal desk Allison Flutey ran a finger over her piles of papers, plans and projects to fill her students' day. She was teaching special topics, a hodgepodge of kids with special needs. She had dyslexics, stutterers, kids who weren't reading at grade level, kids who couldn't handle their basic math. She even had a kid this semester that she was supposed to be helping adjust post-amnesia/kidnapping. An hour a day in special topics wasn't the answer for most of the kids that came her way. The school district was under-funded, understaffed, and they expected her to do her best with the time and resources she had.

Having only one instructor to a half-dozen lesson plans per class, Allison had learned to think outside the box a little. She never lectured to a class. Instead, the students helped each other. She divided them into teams, and they worked on goals she set for them on a weekly basis. Rotating between the small groups, she tried to keep them on track and help when they were stuck. Some of the kids did really well with her system, and others weren't interested. All classes had their underachievers, but with her system, those reluctant students could hinder their partners, so she tried to keep them relegated to their own group. She didn't give up on them, by any means. Those kids ended up maximizing her time most days. She had to stand on their heads to keep them working.

The first grading period was coming to a close, and it was time to dole out some feedback. Unlike most courses, special topics was a pass/fail deal. Attempting the projects she set out was sufficient to get the pass, but Allison liked to review each student's progress and give them some real feedback about how they were doing. She'd spent her weekend putting together the student's feedback reports, but a couple remained incomplete. She'd just not had enough contact with the last two students to give them any meaningful feedback. Francis Gold, a dyslexic, had been in her class since entering middle school and he knew how her system worked. She didn't have to hover to know he was working his exercises, and his partner, Clark Kent, was equally quiet and industrious.

Francis, she knew had improved by leaps and bounds over his first two years, and by all rights he should be on the final stretch with conquering his problem. If daily reading comprehension assignments and weekly writing assignments continued to improve, he could be graduated from special topics. She just needed to talk with him and get an idea for how he was feeling about his reading and writing.

Kent was a different story. The only thing she knew for sure about him came from his placement test, and the gossip mill. Her husband, Bill, told her the kid just needed to get a few things about the world straight in his head, like which color traffic light you stop at and how much you'd reasonably pay for a loaf of bread. Her lesson plan had been simple, read magazines, watch a little television, and write reports on what he was learning. She had six of his reports on file. They were well written, concise, and seemed to show that he was learning something. Of course a conversation would help her evaluate his progress.

Today she'd just have to make time for Francis and Clark.


"How can you eat that, man?" Pete asked. The cafeteria's beefy noodle surprise was something only a starving man would consider eating, but Clark was shoveling the stuff down like it was great. "I guess the Kent cast-iron stomach rule still stands, you can eat anything. But should you man?"

"Excuse me for being hungry," Clark said between bites. "I skipped breakfast. Besides it's not that bad."

Pete just grimaced and returned his attention to his corned beef sandwich packed safely from home. The silence that settled between them was comfortable, an improvement from the awkward conversations they'd struggled with over the summer. Pete liked to credit the institutional lunch system for the turn around. Male bonding over cafeteria sludge was how they'd founded their friendship in grade school. Things hadn't even changed that much. Clark still ate the stuff, and Pete still gagged over it. "Hey, I saw that you're back on staff at the Torch. How did Chloe rope you into horoscope/lunch menu duty this time?"

Finishing his milk, Clark pushed back his virtually spotless tray. "There was no roping involved. She explained how we need extracurricular activities to get into college, and that the Torch would be a good one for me, and..."...there just aren't that many things an alien trying to recapture social invisibility should attempt.

"And if you didn't agree to do them, she was going to have to do them herself because the freshmen recruiting campaign didn't go quite as well as planned," Pete added. "She roped you in. Accept it."

"Maybe a little, okay? I don't mind working them up." Pete's knowing looks and comments about roping made Clark more than a little self-conscious. Could Pete tell that he'd had a little crush on their mutual friend for a while now? Chloe was a friend, the best of friends, and Clark wasn't about to mess that up by making her uncomfortable with his mixed up feelings. Well, he wasn't acknowledging his feelings right now, and if he refrained from acknowledging Pete's possible perception of those feelings, everyone would stay happy comfortable friends. "I have to finish some homework. I'll see you tomorrow, Pete."

"Sure, man. You're through being grounded aren't you?" Waiting for Clark's nod, Pete grinned. "I'll call you this afternoon." He sent his trash sailing to the nearest trash bin with an over-handed toss.

Clark carried his trash over for a less showy disposal and headed for his sixth period. It was a little early, but he hadn't been making up an excuse about his incomplete homework. He had a short summary to write before the class was over and he might as well get started. Sixth period, special topics, was little more than a glorified study hall anyway. The teacher, Mrs. Flutey, seemed to be working hard. There was just too much going on at once. They'd hardly even spoken. She brought him magazines stamped discard from the local library and he wrote small summaries of the things he'd picked up from reading them.

The papers Clark turned in were carefully composed to bring out concrete discoveries like the president's name or the location of Walt Disney World. Other more general trends he internalized and judged against his hands-on experiences with humans. For instance, if the magazines were to be believed, all humans were obsessed with clear pores, good sex, and fluffier laundry. Judging from the teenagers he spent his days with, the laundry thing was a concern for later in life.

Sixth period wasn't quite as deserted as Clark had expected. Mrs. Flutey seemed to be in conference with one of his classmates, actually his small group partner, Francis. Rather than barge in, Clark took a seat in the hall by the door. He propped his notebook on his knees and started scribbling a brief summary of the interesting facts he'd discovered from TV over the weekend. Three sentences in, Clark came to the gradual conclusion that he should have watched a little more news and less MTV. Stretching his learning curve to a full page was going to be difficult.


Damn kids.

That was Mr. Flutey's mantra as he cut his way through Smallville High's crowded halls. The children didn't like him any more than he liked them, and they took every opportunity to get in his way, trip him up, and make his life miserable. Well, he could put up with their shit. He was an adult, and they were by and large idiots at complete mercy to the chemicals in their bodies. Someday when the sex hormones subsided, a few of those kids might grow into productive members of society, maybe. For now they were just malicious pains in his ass, and he didn't have to like them.

The new football coach, Walter Jennings, had summoned him to the field house to find out a few school policies, like exactly how important winning was to this school when athlete grades were concerned. His wife's classroom door was ajar and Flutey poked his head inside to say a quick hello before he had to face the damn athletic types. What he saw stopped him cold. Allison was reading something off a sheet of paper, and she had a student entranced. Jaw slack, the kid was practically drooling. He looked like he might fall out of his desk any second. "Not again," Flutey whispered. "Allison!"

"Bill, what is it?" Mrs. Flutey gasped. She dropped her sheet of paper and tossed Francis an apologetic look. But Francis didn't appear to have been listening to her anyway. She half-expected a snore to rumble out of his nose. "Francis?"

"Allison, I'll take care of him. They need you in the band hall. A girl is hysterical, one of your students. You need to hurry," Mr. Flutey commanded.

"Which girl?" Mrs. Flutey asked, already rising. "Is it Amber?"

"I think so. Now hurry." Once his wife was safely out the door, Mr. Flutey headed straight for the drooler, Francis. The diversion he'd invented to keep his wife out of the way wouldn't last long, ten or fifteen minutes at best. This kid had to be awake by the time she came back. "Francis Gold." Mr. Flutey took the kid by the shoulders and shook hard. His head lolled loosely, and when Flutey let go he slumped forward over his desk like a rag doll. "Shit. You wake up, you little shit-head. You wake up."

Pushing Francis back into an upright position with one hand, Flutey used his free hand to slap Francis's face as hard as he could. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." Punctuating each word with a slap, until his hand was throbbing, Flutey could feel tears pricking at his eyes. If it happened again, there wouldn't be any coving it up. People would figure it all out. Jesus Christ, this kid had to wake up.

"What are you doing to him?"

Flutey let go of Francis as though he'd been burned. Another student, Clark Kent, was standing in the doorway, staring. How much had he seen? Without Flutey holding him upright, Francis slumped again, this time falling completely out of his seat and into the floor.

Clark had managed to work without paying attention to the kids in the hall, talking and clowning, but Mr. Flutey slapping another student was a little harder to ignore. The way he'd been cursing and carrying on, the man seemed almost...nuts? Maybe it was just him? Maybe this was something else he'd forgotten, or maybe he was just misinterpreting what he'd heard? Francis moaned pitifully from the floor, and Clark headed that way. The kid had red marks coming up on his cheeks and he seemed completely disoriented. If this was acceptable human guidance counselor behavior, in his alien opinion it sucked.

Thank you God, Flutey prayed silently at the noises from the drooler. "Kid passed out. I was trying to revive him," Flutey said. "Clark, right? Help me get him to the nurses' office."

Those slaps had seemed well beyond friendly wake-up taps, but Clark kept his critique to himself. Mr. Flutey wasn't very pleasant and he didn't take comments of any kind from students well. Clark helped get Francis to his feet, and focused his attention on the kid leaning heavily against him. "Are you okay, buddy?" Francis blinked confusedly at him and moaned again hollowly.

"You're going to be fine, Gold," Mr. Flutey affirmed. He wasn't just lying to try and make the kid feel better either. No one who regained consciousness had ever suffered any permanent affects after discovering their sensitivity to his wife's affliction. "A couple of hours in a dark room and you'll be fine." Alone time with the missus was guaranteed to bring any truly sensitive shit-heads out of the closet.

They managed to get Francis to the nurse's exam room and onto a bed. He still hadn't said anything, and Clark thought maybe they should call someone, a doctor maybe? The kid couldn't get a word out of his mouth or take a step on his own. "Want me to have the office call his parents or something?"

"I'll handle it," Mr. Flutey said. "You need to head to your sixth period." With Clark safely gone, Flutey sank down into a chair by Francis's bedside. He'd have to hurry if he was going to explain things to the nurse and intercept his wife before she made it back from the wild goose chase he'd sent her on. "Gold, you hear me?"

"Shut up," Francis managed to mutter after a long pause. "Hurts."

Flutey nodded to the squinting teenager. A couple of hours in a dark room, he told himself, everything would be fine. Sighing, Flutey abandoned his seat and shut the lights off on his way out the door. He fed the school nurse a load of crap about a kid with a migraine, and headed back toward his wife's classroom. He caught her power walking her way back to class. She didn't look very happy with him. "Allison, I'm sorry. I just found out it was prank. There wasn't a girl...I'm so sorry."

Mrs. Flutey stopped long enough to drop a kiss on her husband's cheek. "It's okay. I know the kids can be a little hard on you." The fact that they were returning the disdain and anger he showed them, wasn't something Mrs. Flutey tried to correct in her mate. He had his reasons, and he refused to discuss the matter. "Was the Gold boy okay? He seemed a little out of it. It isn't like him to nap on me like that."

Flutey nodded his expression warming toward the person he protected and loved in this world. "He had a migraine I believe. I sent him to the nurse."

"That's too bad." So much for a thorough interview today, Francis would just have to make do with a substandard progress report. "Well, I'll see you round about four then." Mrs. Flutey made haste for her sixth period. She didn't have enough time with the kids as it was. Wasting their hour in the hall wasn't an option.

"I love you," Mr. Flutey mouthed after his wife had already gone. He lingered a long moment in the now quiet hall and breathed a shuddering sigh of relief. They had dodged another bullet, and God bless her, Allison still had no idea what was happening.


Back in sixth period, Clark tried to reconcile the incident between Francis and Mr. Flutey in his head. The whole situation felt wrong, but Clark didn't trust himself to make the snap decision about what was appropriate. Brain-damage-boy was in special topics for a reason after all. According to the school's plan, he was supposed to ask Mrs. Flutey about things that confused him. He just couldn't see himself questioning the woman about her husband. Technically he could ask his parents or Chloe or Pete to explain the situation to him. That would mean admitting the functional literacy deficit that had him doubting his gut feeling, and he hadn't come clean about that to anyone.

It wasn't that he was ashamed, Clark reasoned. He just didn't want them to know.

On cue, Mrs. Flutey breezed through the door. The shortish lady was a burst of energy. Wasting no time on taking roll, she gathered a thick stack of papers Clark recognized as their weekly lesson plans. She roamed through the groups collecting assignments and in some cases excuses in exchange for their new week's goals. She could switch gears easily between the diverse packs of challenged students. Clark wasn't very enthusiastic about landing in special topics, but it was almost worth it to watch Mrs. Flutey pull off teaching the class.

Her last stop today was Clark's non-group. With Francis at the nurses' station he was technically on his own. Mrs. Flutey held out her hand for his assignment, and Clark winced at the less than half-filled page he'd scribbled in the hall. The standing assignment required a full page, and he'd have bullshitted his way to that if Mr. Flutey hadn't interrupted him. "I know it's supposed to be longer, sorry," Clark said. Your husband needed help after abusing my classmate.

"Hey, no problem, it just means you're catching up to the learning curve I imagine. You're getting less new information out of similar observation times," Mrs. Flutey said. She scanned down the paper and noted the abrupt ending, mid-sentence. "Or you didn't get a chance to finish it before coming to class?"

"Sorry again, I would have finished it, but I got distracted," Clark said.

Mrs. Flutey didn't seem overly angry. She rolled his assignment up and bopped him lightly over the head with it. "Do better next time, and stay for a minute after class. Don't look so stricken either. I'm not planning a punishment. I just want to have a quick question answer session. Alright?"


The tangy aroma of Italian spices wafted under Martha's bedroom door. It crept across the floor and tantalized the sleeping woman from her dreams. Martha blinked slowly enjoying the aroma until the implications of that particular odor hit home. Sitting up in bed Martha snatched up her alarm clock. Quarter after two? The orangey afternoon sun spilling across the hardwood floor verified her clock's report. How had she slept all day? Why hadn't her alarm gone off?

Martha rolled out of bed and scampered to her closet throwing on the first clothes that came to her hand. There were things she was supposed to do today. There was grass to be hoed, herbs to be cut, meals to be cooked. Someone should have woken her. Was she the only person in this family thinking straight? Jonathan knew better than to let her sleep all day. Of course it didn't pay to make assumptions when it came to what Jonathan knew better than to do. Sometimes he went off on wild tares and locked alien rocks in boxes without consulting anyone.

With an exhausted sigh, Martha took a seat on the edge of her bed. There wasn't any steam left in her over Jonathan's betrayal. She couldn't stay mad at him when she knew how hard he was fighting to keep their family together. But at the same time she wasn't going to apologize to him, when he'd screwed up. If things were going to get back to normal, Jonathan was going to have to suck it up and admit he was wrong. She would not be coming to him with an olive branch.

Her resolution reaffirmed, Martha headed downstairs to speak with Jonathan. They had a few minutes before Clark would be home from school. Martha peeked into the kitchen without announcing her arrival. The place was a complete mess. Every dish she owned seemed to be either on a counter or piled in the sink. Jonathan was sliding a pan of wheat rolls into the oven while a red sauce simmered over on the stove.

"Do you need a hand?" Martha was already halfway to the stove to rescue Jonathan's mystery sauce before asking his permission to jump in. "You know, in the future, if I sleep in, you can wake me up. Tell me you got Clark off to school with at least a Pop-Tart?"

"I had a Pop-Tart. Clark went with the oatmeal," Jonathan said. He turned to Martha, unaware of the flour on the tip of his nose. "I couldn't get your pasta machine to work, so I was going to go with regular old parade brand egg noodles, but I couldn't find any in the pantry. You woke up just in time to save dinner."

Tomato sauce with egg noodles? What was Jonathan trying to cook? "You couldn't find any store bought noodles because I don't have any, and you had better not have broken my pasta machine. What are you cooking anyway?" After reducing the heat, a couple of quick stirs had the sauce simmering more sedately.

"Marinara surprise," Jonathan said. He smiled and though she was obviously fighting the urge, Martha couldn't contain a twitch of a smile in return. "Anyway, I can turn dinner over to you, or you can show me how to work this pasta machine."

"I wouldn't know where to begin with marinara surprise, but I can show you the secret to the pasta machine." Martha wasn't thinking about an olive branches or blame when Jonathan stepped in close to watch her demonstrate noodle production. She could hear her voice, so composed and crisp, but more importantly she could smell Jonathan, feel his almost touch at her back. His warm breath slid past her neck, and Martha wasn't explaining about pasta anymore. God but she'd missed this, missed him.

"I'm sorry," Jonathan whispered.

It wasn't the sweeping apology Martha had envisioned weeks ago, but she believed it. Jonathan was sorry, if only for hurting her. And his hands were on her caressing her shoulders, pulling her to him. Martha didn't fight the embrace. She was tired of fighting.

Lola was gone, Clark was fine, and Martha was ready to let the whole thing die.


Chloe had long since missed the bus when she finally locked the Torch offices for the evening. It was unlikely that football practice would be over yet, so a ride home with Pete would require more waiting. The weather outside was pleasant enough, early fall cool, and Chloe decided to walk home. She had her sensible shoes on today, and it wasn't that far.

The halls were quiet but not deserted. Teachers lingered in some of the classrooms and the Spanish club could be heard babbling in disjointed phrases from their end of the hall. Outside on the quad, things were a bit livelier with an attack Frisbee game getting underway. Chloe watched the teams execute a couple of tosses before she noticed the game's other spectator. He wasn't looking her way, but she didn't have any trouble recognizing him. Standing just in the afternoon sun, Clark leaned against the red brick wall of the schoolhouse.

Instead of shoving the heavy double doors open and greeting him, Chloe held back and studied her friend. Watching the sun play over his dark hair, Chloe had no problems convincing herself he was an alien. Humans weren't so ethereal, so perfect. His red t-shirt stretched across broad shoulders just hinting at the sea of muscles over his back. Chloe sighed at her own mooning. It wasn't exactly her style to stand around staring at her crushes, but she hadn't seen Clark in days. When they'd been in the same grade, they saw a lot of each other at school. The freshman classes were clustered together and you couldn't escape your classmates. Today, like most days this year, she hadn't had even one random-Clark-encounter.

Before she got caught staring, Chloe pushed the door open to join Clark. It wasn't like him to hang around school so late. Normally he would have been at home hours ago to start his chores. Clark wasn't grounded anymore, and it was nice to see him mixing things up a little instead of following a rote formula to his days. Confusion wasn't a daily part of his life these days, and it was time he started acting like the independent almost-adult that he was.

"Hey, Clark," Chloe said. She strolled over and tried watching the game. "Thinking about taking up Frisbee? These guys seem to be playing it a little seriously."

"Not really." Clark looked her way, but didn't smile. "Hey, Chloe, I was actually waiting for you." He offered her a folded sheet of paper.

Clark was waiting for her? Chloe accepted the paper, her mind buzzing a bit with possibilities. Their relationship was all about platonic friendship. Chloe, coward that she was, had made sure of that. Maybe Clark had different ideas? Maybe? Chloe flipped open the sheet of paper and frowned at the bright red F staring back at her. Not a love letter then, Chloe thought. "You failed an algebra quiz? I'm not the person to ask for help with that subject."

"No, I'm just the person to ask though," Clark said. "I love math. I make A's in Algebra without studying. Chloe, I own that class."

"Apparently, not this quiz." Chloe regretted the quip the moment it was out of her mouth. Clark was very sensitive when it came to his brain's functionality, and if he said he owned algebra, he didn't need her poking fun at him. Clark didn't say anything for a long moment, and Chloe opened her mouth to apologize.

"You don't understand," Clark said. He'd spent a lot of time and energy trying to function normally. With his history, people might not believe what he'd discovered today. They'd think he was trying to excuse a bad grade, or maybe they'd just think he was crazy. He hoped Chloe would believe him. Maybe he was expecting too much of her, but he couldn't help himself. She had to believe him. "I'm not sure about the hows or the whys, and I can't prove what I'm thinking, but Chloe, I swear I'm not imagining this. My teacher is a meteor mutant."


Alone with his last surviving shot glass Lex watched the evening light shimmer through the exquisite crystal. He wasn't drinking tonight. Drinking was a disadvantage he couldn't afford these days. His father had a new pet after all; a pet Lex hadn't been able to hold onto himself. The smug snake Drejer had been sure of his information's value, sure that Lex would want to know about his father's acquisition, Jason Fisk.

You couldn't bluff a psychic like Fisk, but as Lex well knew, Lionel Luthor didn't bother with bluffs. Somehow he'd discovered his son's interest in Fisk, and now Lionel had a tool Lex wouldn't want in the hands of his best friend, much less his father.

The thought of someone sifting through his thoughts and motivations left Lex coolly angry. Sure, he'd been planning the same fate for Clark and later his father but Lex's motivations had been if not perfectly pure, at least positive. He had just wanted the truth. He had just wanted to keep things under control.

Lionel had Fisk now...how could things get more out of control...