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The fights started early Monday morning.

It wasn’t as though Lois’s weekend had gone very well; she’d had to stay the night with Lucy and her mother, and then stay on Sunday until her mother was sober enough to pick up her car. That had taken most of the day and had led to the first of many arguments between Lois and her mother.

It had been bad enough when Lois was there to protect Lucy, but for Ellen to endanger Lucy had enraged her. Lois had said things she hadn’t meant to say, and her mother had alternated between being angry, being regretful, and from blaming Lois’s father.

Lois had heard it all before, and as far as she was concerned, the day had been wasted.

Seeing the first fight between the football players during first period had been surprising; the fights that happened later throughout the day had been an eye opener. Apparently the football players who hadn’t been at the fight were teasing the ones who had.

The story had somehow grown over the past day and a half to make those team members look like clumsy buffoons. Lois suspected that many of those spreading the rumors had been more than happy to make the team look bad. For all their success and popularity, they treated people lower in the pecking order like dirt.

Even some boys who were not on the team had taken shots at some of the football players, as though their position in the hierarchy had been threatened and people were hoping to topple them.

So Lois wasn’t surprised after lunch when she was called to the principal’s office.

“What’s this I hear about a fight Friday night?” Principal Hardwick asked. The balding man was heavyset, and he’d always reminded her a little of Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard. His eyes were piggish and they stared at her suspiciously.

“I’m not sure what you mean?” Lois said primly, siting with her backpack in her lap.

“The Kent boy attacked several members of the team, and from what people are saying, you were with him.”

“That doesn’t seem likely,” Lois said carefully. “One boy attacking the football team out of the blue.”

“I’ve got a dozen witnesses,” Principal Hardwick said.

“What I saw was the team tripping all over themselves,” Lois said. “Probably because of all the beer they were drinking to celebrate the game.”

Principal Hardwick stared at her for a moment, not acknowledging her statement. It didn’t surprise her, given his record of overlooking other indiscretions by the football team.

There was too much money riding on the team for him to do anything to damage their chances. Luthorcorp had recently renovated the high school stadium in return for the right to rename it. Apparently billionaire prodigy Lex Luthor was determined to cover everything in Metropolis with his name.

Costmart advertised wherever they could, and there were other corporate sponsors. Lois suspected that the principal was taking payoffs, but she hadn’t been able to prove it.

Last year’s coach had been fired because Tom Church hadn’t gotten to play as much as his father thought he deserved. This year Church was all but second on the team. They’d tried him as quarterback, but he was too slow to keep up with all the plays.

“Kent attacked them.” The principal stared at her. “You may not know this, but he has a record of doing this kind of thing before.”

Lois stared at him for a moment. What was he trying to get her to say? Was he expecting her to betray Clark, who hadn’t been trying to do anything other than protect her?

“He never hit anyone,” Lois said firmly. “Anyone who says otherwise is lying or mistaken.”

She’d be able to say that under oath, although if she was asked about him throwing people or grabbing them it would be a different story.

The principal looked disappointed. “That’s what the team members involved said; they were just tired and clumsy after the game.”

Undoubtedly they’d been trying to keep their humiliation to a minimum, but Lois was grateful. It was going to be hard enough for Clark now, especially as the principal was a sycophant to the football interests.

“I’m sure,” Lois said dryly. “Alcohol being involved probably contributed.”

He stared at her but didn’t reply.

“You should stay away from that boy,” Principal Hardwick said. “He’s bad news.”

The door opened suddenly and the secretary said, “Teachers are reporting fights in the gym, the cafeteria and Miss Simmon’s class.

Principal Hardwick stood, with an irritated expression on his face. The one way he didn’t remind her of Boss Hogg was that he was almost as tall as he was fat. He was six and a half feet tall and he was physically imposing when he wanted to be.

“I’m not done with you young lady,” he said. A moment later he strode out of the office.

Lois waited a moment, and then unzipped her backpack. She had another disposable camera in her bag, and she pulled it out.

Glancing back at the door, she rose to her feet and stepped around the desk. There were filing cabinets behind the desk. Principal Hardwick was known to keep permanent records close to hand to help in intimidating students.

With the number of fights that had been happening throughout the day, Lois had suspected that he wouldn’t keep them locked. She was pleased to see that she was right.

She began pulling files as quickly as she could. There was no way of knowing how quickly the fights would be resolved or how soon the principal would be back. For all Lois knew the secretary could check in on her at any time.

Luckily her experience in the coach’s office had shown her exactly which files she had to pull. She didn’t bother with the team members who were passing. Instead she focused on the ones who weren’t going to be able to play if their grades weren’t changed.

There were letters in the boys’ files from teachers who were complaining about having to change the grades. Lois suspected that there were other teachers who hadn’t even bothered to protest. She knew that Tom hadn’t been passing science for example, but his grades didn’t reflect that.

A lot of players were careless with their completed assignments, and Lois had gathered a mass of papers with the grades altered. Some teachers were more blatant about it than others, and some of the teachers seemed almost honest. Those were the ones who had left written protests.

Lois knew that she couldn’t get testimony from those teachers, however. Beyond the risk of being outed before she submitted her story, she knew their jobs were all at stake. They were unlikely to talk to a highs school junior who couldn’t change anything.

As Lois carefully replaced the last chart, she sighed in relief. As she was about to close the file cabinet door, she saw the name Kent, Clark on the header to one file.

For a moment, she struggled with herself. Clark had treated her with nothing but kindness and looking at his file would be a horrible violation of his privacy.

Of course, Lois had already looked at her own file. There hadn’t been a lot there, for which she was relieved.

Clark’s file looked much thicker.

Finally curiosity overcame prudence, and Lois pulled out the file. Opening it, she was surprised to see the results of several test batteries. An IQ test, the WISC-R taken when he was 11 suggested that he was gifted, although his grades didn’t match his accomplishments.

Before the age of ten he’d been a straight A student. After the age of ten his grades had dropped. He’d struggled in school for the next three years, and then his grades had started to get better again.

A psychologist’s report was attached. Lois skimmed as well as she could. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand about the various tests involved, although it looked like even at eleven Clark had been ahead of his grade level on the tests.

Lois felt her heart drop as she saw the psychologist’s summary. The psychologist had seen Clark on multiple occasions for the school, first when he was eleven, then at thirteen and finally when he was fifteen. Clark had seen his parents killed in a car accident in front of him, and according to the psychologist he had Post traumatic stress symptoms and Conduct disorder.

He’d set a lot of fires beginning about eight months after his parents’ deaths, and there had been escalating numbers of injuries to the other foster children he lived with in multiple homes. Authorities had been unable to explain how some of the injuries had been accomplished; in some it had looked like they’d hurt their knuckles punching a solid object.

Three of the foster fathers had similar injuries on their knuckles.

Clark had always claimed no wrong-doing, but he’d been sent from foster home to foster home. He’d deliberately broken a refrigerator door, torn doors from their hinges and he’d set a toilet on fire.

Despite this, no one ever claimed to see him acting out in anger. This made the psychologist believe that what Clark was doing was cold and deliberate.

He’d even been accused of harming a family pet, although he’d claimed that the biological son in the family had been responsible.

According to the doctor, bed wetting, harming animals and starting fires were three of the signs of a developing sociopath.

His records from Wichita Kansas suddenly stopped when he was fifteen, and the year after that he was noted as having been home schooled.

This school year his grades had been exemplary. He was back to making straight A’s, and there were no reports of behavior problems.

Lois frowned; the report about Clark being a sociopath didn’t match the boy she’d spent Friday evening with. Still, how well did she actually know him? He’d talked about Les Miserables and its theme of redemption.

Maybe he’d turned his life around.

She looked for his address, wondering if she’d be able to drop the money off that she owed him. She frowned; the address was familiar somehow.

A noise came from the outer office, and Lois quickly slammed the file shot and shoved it back into place. She slid the drawer closed and she returned to her place.

She’d just sat down when the principal opened the door and pulled Clark into the room.

Lois’s mind raced; the address she’d seen for Clark couldn’t be right. According to the school records he was living with Louie, her father’s friend. Lois was friends with Louie’s daughter; they planned to go to college together, although they hadn’t been as close lately.

Still, she’d have heard if Louie had a foster kid in his household, either from Louie himself or from his daughter.

Clark glanced at her, but Lois sat still, and impassive.

Louie had been known to procure illegal documents for people and to falsify people’s identities. He’d done it for at least one Cuban baseball player her father had treated; that was how they’d met.

Although Clark’s file had seemed legitimate, his current living situation wasn’t. Lois wasn’t sure why he’d go to the effort of paying Louie to fake an identity and then include all those damning details.

If she’d been creating an identity she’d have created something a little more normal. She might have thrown in some poor grades for verisimilitude, but she’d have made it as bland as possible.

Lois was intensely aware of the camera in her bag, but suddenly the football story seemed a little less interesting.

Who was Clark Kent really? Was he a tormented orphan who was lashing out? Was he some sort of psychotic sociopath who was really good at pretending?

If he was a sociopath, why wasn’t he out making himself popular? It had only been six years since Ted Bundy had been captured, and Lois remembered reading that the prosecutor had said "Sociopaths are egotistical manipulators who think they can con anybody."

Was he manipulating her? Lois had been the one who’d forced herself in his life, not the other way around.

None of it made sense, and if there was anything Lois hated, it was an unsolved mystery.