I do not own Smallville or it's residents: the Kents, Lana, or Pete.
This story is for entertainment purposes only, so please read and be entertained.
"Pa, do you think Mrs. Wingate will be okay?"
"I don't know boy. Hips are nothing to take lightly, especially for those of us getting on in years."
"No, I mean, with her garden."
His ma turned around to look at him from her place in the passenger seat. Her eyes were wide, and corners of her mouth turned down, which made Clark sit up straighter. His ma' voice sounded loud and strained. "Clark, don't tell me her garden means more to you than the woman herself!"
Clark's eyes went wide. "No! I just mean it'd be better if it looked nice for her, when she got back. You know, instead of it looking bad or even ordinary. She isn't used to it looking ordinary. It'd be nice for her if it looked the way it usually looked. Wouldn't it?"
His ma smiled at him and turned back around in her seat. His pa grinned at him in the rear-view mirror. "You know Clark, I think you're right. But if you want that, I dare say maybe you and the other kids ought to do something about it."
He heard the frown return in his mother's voice as she added. "Yes, see if you can get other folks to help you."
Clark frowned now. He lifted things with labeled weights or that he weighed himself on the big scale in the barn. So, he knew he could not lift over 450 lbs. even though he only weighed 140. By running up and down the nearby highway a few hours before the sun came up, he also knew he could reach around 200 miles per hour by the calculations of an old stopwatch. He only did so barefoot now after he'd melted the rubber soles of his pair of tennis shoes. Neither of his parents had been happy about that. In fact, they weren't happy with his experiments altogether.
He used a, after some tinkering by him, remote-controlled radio to test his hearing. He used a piece of cardboard with numbers and letters written on sticky notes he placed at random while his eyes were shut to test his sight once he got far away. He'd been kinda nervous about telling his folks he was starting to see "through" things too. While in a hurry, he'd written a letter on the wrong side of a sticky note and had grabbed and stuck it on along with a lot of others before running hundreds of feet away. After looking back, he'd rolled his eyes at himself. Then he'd concentrated on it in hopes he would the dark ink through the light-colored paper a little. The results had been better than expected. Then he tried replicating them while writing lighter and lighter and then with a pencil. He could definitely see "through" sticky note paper.
His speed, strength, and fast thinking now made his chores and studies go by fast. So, he helped his ma and pa who were both now suffering from stiff joints more and still had time to read books both from the Smallville library and shipped to it from still further away libraries. Most of them were on biology and physics as he tried to figure his new abilities out and avoid further damaging his clothing or other things living or non.
Both his ma and pa feared the FBI folks coming back for him rather than Moe. So, they insisted he be careful. Even before Pa clarified he get other kids to help, Clark frowned. His pa looked at him in the rear-view mirror again this time not smiling. "Keeping up a big garden miles away from home all by yourself would be mighty suspicious Clark."
"I know."
His ma cut in. "Besides, I think a lot of folks like Lana and your friend Pete would like to help."
Clark gave a weak smile. He didn't really even mind getting help to care for Mrs. Wingate's garden especially not if it from his two best friends. Mrs. Wingate might even like knowing a lot of people helped out. He just didn't like the lie of "pretending" he needed more help than he did.
. . .
Lana and Pete stared at him wide-eyed outside the school the next Monday morning. Clark grimaced. He should have realized it'd be like this.
Lana, ever curious, had become a reporter for the school newspaper, so as to have an excuse to and get credit for "getting all the news" and telling everyone about it. Though, she still preferred to do it in person. This had led Pete to asking her to at least wait till the papers were printed distributed throughout the student body before she filled everyone in on the unverifiable or otherwise edited out details of the stories.
Lana's hardest struggle, though, had been actually waiting for others to answer questions. In fact, chief editor Pete, always looking for more titles to put on college applications, had told her to go ahead and send folks her questions instead of going in person and let him do the actually interviewing after they read the questions that she thought needed answering. Lana had been so peeved she'd tried to quit. Then, after a talk with her mother she told Clark all about, she went back, apologized to Pete, and told him she'd try harder to listen.
Pete had gone with her to interviews and, as they agreed ahead of time, had put a hand on her shoulder when she went too far talking instead of listening. It was so effective a teaching strategy for his old friend, Clark had become scared Lana might actually get in the habit of waiting for answers. This would make his secret harder to keep from her.
He'd felt sorry for Lana later, though, when she interviewed him after he got the highest-grade point average in the school again. His own eyes had widened as he'd watched her. Her eyes had bugged out as her front teeth dug into her bottom lip. He'd also listened to her foot tap even faster than her heart was beating while he tried to answer questions fast enough. Then he'd had to repeat himself when, while trying to repeat back to him what she wrote down, he realized she'd gotten a few things wrong. Finally, she had figured out how to occupy herself "while" the person answered by mastering "shorthand" and writing while she listened.
After his parents had told him to get help with his idea to help Mrs. Wingate have a spectacular, or at least nicer, homecoming he'd thought it was convenient his best friends ran the school newspaper. It had seemed the best way, besides Lana herself, to ask the student body for their participation. Now, he kinda wished he was talking to two other students. Maybe then the Smallville School Sentinel's lead reporter and editor wouldn't be looking at him like this.
Lana grinned. At that sight, Clark grimaced feeling bad for his last thought. He felt worse as she spoke. "That's great Clark! Really great! I bet Susan and Beth, oh and Michael likes to garden, and Joe, he needs money. Do you think your parents will pay?"
Pete cut in. "Probably not, but maybe we can raise donations from those who'd like to help but have more money than time. We can use it to buy seeds and things and, if there's any money left over, pay those who won't do the actually gardening otherwise."
Clark grinned back at his friends. "That sounds like an idea."
Lana began rocking back and forth from heels to toes and shaking her arms out. "Oooooooh, I'll bet we can get a lot of articles out of this! We'll get Michael to bring the camera and take lots of pictures and ..."
"Are you going to head the project Clark?"
Lana didn't even blink as Pete cut her off. She just pressed her lips together and stared at Clark bug-eyed again. Clark shrugged. "I guess I could since it's my idea."
Pete's smile widened. Lana laughed. "Wow Clark, not only did you have an idea you're telling others about, but you're taking charge? Has "Little Clark" finally grown up?"
Clark frowned while raising an eyebrow. Just by looking around, Clark knew he was consistently the tallest out of everyone in Smallville born the same year as him. However, having skipped ahead two grades into Pete's class, he always walked the halls as the shortest in line. His "new" classmates, minus Pete, had originally given him the nickname "little Clark." However, it had spread throughout the school so that even teachers called him that within a year. Lana didn't usually call him "Little Clark," but just the fact she was now after always telling him to stand up for himself all the time?
He sometimes wondered if she did know his secret. If he wasn't an alien with superhuman, but only normal human capabilities, he didn't know how she expected him to survive standing up to kids who made up a good percentage of the school football team. He sighed and let his annoyance go this time. His moving forward a few grades had also kept him from staying close friends with any of his former classmates besides Lana. She still sat beside him on the bus, came to him for homework help, and shared news with him, sometimes all at the same time. He'd probably overheard the joke a million times that Lana stayed friends with him, because he let her talk on and on more than anyway else. This speculation was usually paired with "That's 'Little Clark," for you. He's just too nice ..."
Thankfully, Pete stood up for him in their shared class against others who tried to push him around. So, if he stayed close enough to him, he didn't have to stand up for himself too often. Pete was also president of the school science club. They were both members of it with two other people; one was boy a year younger than him, very smart in chemistry and math, but struggling in English and history. (He gave him tutoring in both of those subjects.) There was also a girl a year older than him and thus a year younger than Pete. He didn't give either of them help with their homework. Most of the older kids didn't come to him for that unless they were "really" desperate. Together, they had had made science fair projects that had won awards in interschool competitions. Lana had interviewed him about those wins and Pete had then printed up stories on them complete with pictures by Michael Jameson. Clark tried to let the older girl or younger boy in the club decide what they would make or experiment on letting Pete shoot down too expensive, dangerous, or time-consuming ideas. His membership in the club and grade point average had cemented his reputation for brains, his readiness to let others, and being too nice.
Clark now took a breath and said, "It's just a 'neighbors helping neighbors' project Lana."
She giggled. "Of course, but if you're going to take lead on it, you'll have to actually 'lead.'" She twisted on her toes and smirked at him.
Clark sighed in return. "I imagine anyone who wants to help will have good ideas too."
Lana pressed her lips together. "Melissa probably will. She likes flowers about as well as Mrs. Wingate herself."
Mellissa did want to help and became his most constant companion in Mrs. Wingate's garden. Mrs. Wingate herself gave them both her permission to make her garden thrive in her absence, despite Clark wanting it to be a surprise. Doing that had become impossible, because Lana told her mother, who told Mrs. Wingate's sister-in-law, Lillian, who then called Mrs. Wingate's sister in Topeka, Mrs. Johnson. She had then told Mrs. Wingate during her next visit to her in the hospital. So, Mrs. Wingate had known even before Clark's call for help in the project appeared in the next edition of the school paper. In fact, Melissa, who Lana also talked to, talked to him before it came out in the paper as well. Actually, about half the school and a third of the county had known by the time the article in Sentinel covered it. That was how news "really" got around in Smallville.
Clark's house started out as the one Mrs. Wingate's sister called to begin with on what she wanted done, but soon Melissa became the one she talked to after Clark made the mistake of saying, "That's what her sister said she wanted. You'll have to tell her if you don't think it'll work." Secretly, he thought the weather was too wet to begin planting when Mrs. Johnson said her sister wanted it done. However, he found it hard to break the habit of doing as he was told especially over the phone with a grownup lady he'd never met. Melissa and Mrs. Johnson ended up talking a lot in the following months.
First, they had to plan out if any changes to the usual layout of the garden would be made, they weren't, Mrs. Wingate wanted it the same. Then the money had to be raised for the annuals. Heather and Melissa both made up the majority of donations, but about everyone in Smallville school gave a dime or more and a special collection was taken at church in which kids also gave between a nickel or quarter and some adults gave even more. Between Mrs. Wingate's own garden shed supplies and folks bringing their own supplies between seeds, seedlings, and potting and garden soil/plant food weren't really a problem.
He knew there was a problem when, while interviewing him on Mrs. Wingate's porch after he and Mellissa had dug the soil up for the annuals, Lana glared at him while asking "Is it true this was all your idea?"
"Yes."
"Would you say those who say, 'Miss Mellissa Dean is now running things' are correct?"
"I'd say Mrs. Wingate is running things through her sister, Mrs. Heather Johnson, who contacts Miss Mellissa, who runs things here."
"But it was your idea!"
Clark shrugged. "That doesn't mean I should run things. I mean Mellissa loved and knows more about flowers and landscaping than me."
"You'd know 'just' as much about it if you put 'half' your brilliant mind into learning about it."
"Why should I, when Mellissa, Mrs. Johnson, and Mrs. Wingate are doing it so well?"
Lana rolled her eyes at him, got off the porch step, and strode away. "We'll finish this interview on the bus Monday."
What do you think?
God bless
ScribeofHeroes
