“Hey, Lo-Lo.”
Lois forced herself not to grimace at the sound of Joe Malloy’s voice. She hated the nickname Lo-Lo, but Joe thought it was cute and insisted on using it at every opportunity. Because he was the quarterback, and popular, some of the others had begun to pick it up. She pretended not to mind, because letting him know that he was getting to her would let him win.
It had obviously been a mistake to eat at the school cafeteria. She normally did so because it didn’t seem worth fighting Metropolis traffic to have five minutes gulping down cold, greasy fast food sludge. Normally her friends would have sat with her. Today, ominously, she was sitting alone.
At least it wasn’t strange that Joe was talking to her. He’d been teasing and harassing her all semester. Some of her friends were even acting like they were a couple of some sort.
As if she’d ever fall for his cheesy lines.
“What do you want, Joe?” Lois asked. She couldn’t help the note of tired irritation in her voice. She’d been getting veiled looks from members of the football team in her various classes all day. She was starting to feel a little paranoid.
The football player slid into the empty seat beside her and grabbed the banana from her lunch box. “I can’t believe you eat that crap…raw fish is nasty.”
“Sushi isn’t…” Lois began before forcing herself to stop talking. “At least I’m not a walking heart attack like you and the rest of the boys.”
“We’re young and we’re gonna live forever!” he said, grinning. “Haven’t you heard?”
He put his hand on Lois’s back and she flinched. Breaking the fingers of the team’s star quarterback wasn’t going to win her any points with the team or with the rest of the school. The fact that she was getting angry looks from some of the team members’ girlfriends now was telling.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’ve been hearing some nasty rumors.”
Lois grimaced. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m sure it’s a big fat lie.”
“I’ve heard that you aren’t exactly pulling for the team,” Joe said. His hand remained where it was on her back. “That you aren’t showing a lot of school spirit.”
Twisting out from under his hand, Lois turned to look at him. “I’ve got as much school spirit as anybody.”
“So why don’t you come to the game tonight? Prove it to everyone.” There was something in Joe’s voice that Lois hadn’t heard before, and Lois looked him in the eye. “The Lions are loyal, isn’t that what they say?”
His expression was tense, the teasing note in his voice gone. There was a look in his eye that was concerned.
“I’ll think about it,” Lois said. She hesitated. “What are people saying I’ve done?”
“Nobody’s saying anything in particular,” Joe said, and Lois couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not. “But people are getting worried.”
“I think they’ve got me confused with someone else,” Lois said.
Joe grabbed her hand and said, “Let’s make it a date.”
“Joe…” Lois said. This was an old argument, and sometimes Lois almost thought he was wearing her down a little, but moments like this reminded her why she’d avoided dating him like the plague.
“Being the quarterback’s girlfriend, that makes a real statement,” he said.
Lois looked down at her meal. Without the banana, she was going to be hungry. It was just another sign of how her day was going. “Maybe we can talk about this later.”
His grip on her hand tightened. “Don’t wait too long. I’m a hot commodity.” He took a big bite of her banana, reminding him of why he wasn’t.
Finishing her banana, he threw the peel onto the table. He pulled away from her and a moment later he rose to his feet.
“Be at the game, he said. “Or else people might get the wrong idea.”
A moment later he was sauntering away, his body language a clear sign of dominance. Lois had been raised around athletes her entire life. She found confidence to be as attractive as any woman.
What she hated was a sense of entitlement. Football players felt that everyone owed them something, whether it was a grade or a date, or even part of someone’s lunch.
Lois had no doubt that Malloy was playing the good cop, but she’d heard the threat underlying what he’d been saying. If people got the wrong idea about her loyalty to the lions, others might not be as magnanimous as Joe.
She’d heard rumors about some of the team members and how they’d treated girls. Not all of them were gentlemen.
Lois hated bullies though; part of the reason she’d been looking into the grades scandal was that she was tired of seeing people being bullied.
The crash of a dropping tray made her jump. She turned in time to see a heavyset girl with glasses fall to the floor.
“Eating oatmeal again, fatty?” one of the players said. “It’d do a lot more good on your face than in you, at least until we can find a paper bag.”
The girl had managed to drop her tray without spilling her bowl. The player bent down and reached into the bowl with his hand. He smeared oatmeal from the girl’s dropped lunch onto her face.
“Hey! It’s an improvement!” he said, staring at the girl who was glaring up at him, frozen.
The football players at together at a long table and they all started laughing, even Joe. If Lois had been in the least attracted to him, it was gone now.
Lois was outraged, but looking around she couldn’t see any of the teachers. Most likely they were out on one of their many smoke breaks.
In the corner, she could see Clark Kent. She’d been watching him for the last few days. He always ate in the cafeteria, and he always sat alone. He sat hunched over his food, as though he was afraid that someone was going to try to take it from him.
Now, though, she could see his shoulders stiffen, even though he hadn’t turned to look at the little drama behind him.
The girl, Annie, Anna…maybe Annette, Lois couldn’t really remember… pulled herself heavily to her feet. The parts of her face that weren’t covered by oatmeal or acne were red and flushed. The girl ran out of the room and left her tray on the floor.
The player grinned at Lois maliciously. She recognized him now. Tom Church. Of all the rumors she’d heard about players, the rumors about him were the worst.
“I can’t believe you touched that,” one of the girls, a cheerleader named Julie snickered. “You’d better go wash the nerd off.”
Everyone was staring at the players table, which was just as the football players liked it.
There was a sudden burst of wind, which shouldn’t have happened in a closed room like the cafeteria, but Tom Church reacted as though he’d been slapped in the back. He stumbled and fell, shoving his knee into the bowl of oatmeal.
Somehow, his own meal went flying and hit him in the back. A combination of sloppy joe mix, chocolate milk and cheese fries slithered wetly down his back.
Tom Church scowled and looked around wildly, as though daring anyone to laugh. In spite of that, Lois heard a few sniggers from behind her, and as he stood up and headed out of the room, there were isolated laughs, even from the players table.
Church obviously wasn’t liked much even by his own people, but he was a good player.
Lois noted that Clark had finally turned to look at the spectacle. His lips were pursed, as though he was about to whistle. He saw her looking, and his expression smoothed back into neutrality. He turned back to his meal, but his shoulders were more relaxed.
She could have sworn that for a moment she’d seen a smirk on his face, but it was only there for a second. A moment later, his expression was back to its normal neutrality.
Lois wondered why she found herself watching him even now that his possibly betraying her to the others was a moot point. Either he’d already done so, or Lois had slipped up somewhere else. Either way, she had no more reason to worry about him. She had her own worries now.
Her choices were getting more limited. A group of people who would assault a girl in the middle of the lunchroom in the middle of the school day would have even fewer compunctions about doing worse if they could catch her behind the bleachers after a game.
Accepting Joe’s protection rubbed her the wrong way for a number of reasons. First, he’d make a lousy boyfriend, even if there was a certain status from dating a quarterback. Second, as soon as she found another ways to get her pictures and write the story, he’d turn against her just like the other.
Third, and most important, sometimes he made her skin crawl, although not nearly as badly as Tom Church.
He kept calling her Lo-Lo. Lo-Lo was a child’s name, or the name of a brainless bimbo. Lois Lane wanted her name to be one to be reckoned with. She wanted Lane to be as much a household name as Woodward and Bernstein, or Norcross and Judd.
She wasn’t going to get there by cowering in her room, or by hanging all over the arm of the local football hero.
Going to the game was going to be tricky; she’d have to make sure that she was never alone at any time.
Lois went through a list of the people she called her friends one after the other and scowled to herself. Those who were loyal weren’t brave. Those who were brave weren’t particularly loyal.
She slowly packed her lunchbox, black and lacquered with oriental symbols. Her stomach was still rumbling, and for a moment she wished she’d brought a sandwich instead of getting fancy.
Rising to her feet, she kept a wary eye. It would be just like someone on the team to trip her, either now or in the halls.
Dropping her trash in the gray thirty gallon bucket by the door, she was startled to realize that Clark Kent was behind her, slipping his tray into the window where the lunch ladies collected them from the students poor enough or dumb enough to actually eat the cafeteria cooking.
She turned toward him and said, “I don’t suppose you’d want to go to the game tonight, would you?”
The one thing she’d learned about him this morning had been that he was a quick thinker. He was strong, and she had a feeling that he was brave, although she couldn’t be certain.
He looked at her for a long moment, and for a second Lois had the feeling that he’d been listening in to her conversation with Joe. That was impossible, of course, as he’d been all the way across a crowded, noisy room. He hadn’t even been looking at them, so he obviously wasn’t a lip reader.
“Not a date,” she hastened to add. “Just…friends.”
He was silent for a long moment, and Lois got the impression that he was struggling within himself. The student behind him grumbled, waiting to put his tray away. Finally he shrugged and said, “I’ve got a little time free.”
For some reason, Lois found this reassuring. Even though he was the person who’d thrown her into a locker, she had a feeling that he’d be pretty good at getting her out of any scrapes that might come up.
She only felt a little guilty for using him. It wasn’t like he didn’t owe her anyway. After all, he’d thrown her in a locker and hadn’t even apologized. He wasn’t going to be her date, he was going to be her bodyguard.
So why did she feel a little flutter in the bottom of her stomach?
