* * * * * * * * * *
“Well, make it quick. I have a hair appointment in ten minutes.”
Mindy Church crossed her arms and shrank away from her intercom into her comfy leather chair and frowned. Why should she have to take care of a common thief? Wasn’t that what security people were for? Sometimes she wished she didn’t have to run the Costmart store her Billy had set up as his legitimate cover; how was one person supposed to keep up with all the little details? For the sake of her illegal operations, though, she understood the shopping warehouse was a necessary evil.
‘Twenty-pound vats of mayonnaise are evil. Makeup is divine!’ Mindy scribbled a note to the purchasing department.
A knock sounded, then her office door swung open to reveal a teenage boy trailing half a step behind a beefy security guard. “Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Church, but this shoplifter is refusing to cooperate with us. He says he’ll only talk to you.”
Sighing to herself, Mindy mentally reviewed her bag of tricks. Teenage boys were even easier to manipulate than grown men. As with anyone, the key was finding the right bait to lure in the fish. Mindy selected “dumb blonde” mixed with a little “mommy.”
“Honey, what happened? Did you forget to pay for something before you left the store?”
“Yeah, right. I had to steal that CD three times before your watchdogs caught me.” The boy edged towards her and lowered his voice. “You’re not the airhead you pretend to be. Send the goon away so we can talk in private.”
Mindy widened her eyes at the teen’s boldness. She caught the guard’s eyes and motioned with her head to the door. “Out!”
The guard began to open his mouth, and then closed it again as he escaped the room. It was best not to challenge her authority.
Rather intrigued, Mindy took a moment to size up her unanticipated visitor. The teen was slouching casually in a rumpled rock band t-shirt and faded black jeans. With a passing glance, he would blend in with the hoards of bargain shoppers who flowed through her store’s doors. But his eyes…
She understood the look in his eyes. They burned fiercely of humble beginnings, emotional betrayal, unbearable loss, fierce determination, a need to control. She saw those eyes every night as she wiped layers of makeup off her face.
“Alright, you have my attention.”
The young man fished a neatly folded piece of paper from his front pocket and casually flipped it to her. With an indifferent yawn, he sat in the chair opposite her desk and watched as Mindy opened the note and reviewed its contents - a photocopy of a newspaper article from three years ago.
“Hmmm, I vaguely remember this. One of their broadcasts interrupted my favorite soap opera.” She looked up at her visitor and mentally calculated his age. “I suppose you were one of these smart kids?”
“I still am.”
Mindy glanced down again to continue reading. She noted, with minor irritation, the Lane and Kent byline. “Yeah, so what’s it to me? This says Lex Luthor had the drug and research notes destroyed.”
“True, but what it doesn’t tell you is how the paper investigated that story. Luthor didn’t know that Lois Lane and Clark Kent had stolen a sample of the original drug from Dr. Carlton’s office. They sent it to Star Labs for testing, and the lab techs created a synthetic version of Mentamide 5. The lab notes were gathering dust in a cardboard box up until two weeks ago.”
“I’m still waiting to hear why I should care.”
Phillip Manning set a smile on his face. “I got a job in the mailroom at Star Labs a few weeks ago. As I was shredding old files in the back room, the formula for Mentamide 5 caught my eye. I knew right away what I had when I saw it. So over the next few days while I was delivering mail around the building, I stole some ingredients and recreated the drug.”
Mindy was pleased with herself for concealing any outward sign of interest. “Does your stuff work the same as the old stuff?”
Mindy waited for the real reason the teen had gone through the trouble of meeting her, and she wasn’t disappointed to see a slight frown crease his brow. “Not quite. I mean, it still makes me smart, but not as smart as the real stuff. And I don’t feel exactly like I did back then.”
‘Here’s the pitch.’ Mindy knew she was close when the boy looked at her with a steely gaze.
“I need the real ingredients in order to make the drug work the same.”
“And I suppose you think I can get them?”
“Mrs. Church, I have faith that your, shall we say ‘talents,’ can get you anything you want.”
Nodding, Mindy acknowledged the teen’s assessment. “Fine, but I still don’t see why I should help you.”
Another photocopied article was passed to her, detailing the miserable robbery attempt her henchmen had pulled downtown two days ago. “When you help me get what I want, I’ll help you get what you want.”
Mindy drummed her well-manicured nails along the top of her desk. She considered his words. Then she pressed a button and spoke into the intercom.
“Cancel my hair appointment.”
---&-&-&---
“I’ve seen that pig before.”
Aymee Valdez stepped off the elevator with her unusual leashed pet and heard the smile in Lois Lane’s voice. After a brief look around the Daily Planet’s bullpen, Aymee quickly moved in the direction of the reporter’s desk. As she arrived, Lois stood and pulled the teenager into a friendly hug.
“Aymee, how are you? It’s been so long!”
“Fine, thanks.” Aymee showed little enthusiasm.
After her confrontation with Phillip, she had run back to her friends, revealing her fears to them. Dudley and Karen had become convinced that Phillip needed help, but brainstorming options hadn’t generated much of a list. Aymee knew they needed some outside assistance. And there was only one outsider in whom she felt she could confide.
But any thought of Lois Lane always left Aymee a bit off center. She had been put under Lois’ guardianship for a few days three years ago, something she had never quite been able to comprehend. It took other foster families much longer to qualify for a placement; the speed with which the reporter had accomplished the feat was a testament to her tenacity. However, while in her care, it had been clear to Aymee that Ms. Lane had only cared for her in order to get the story on the Smart Kids.
During their short time together, however, Aymee had developed a connection with the reporter. Despite their initial conflict, Lois had taken a genuine interest in her. Aymee had grown to like Lois and had appreciated Lois’ help in ending the Mentamide experiments.
Still, it was difficult for Aymee to completely get over Ms. Lane’s questionable motives for taking her in to begin with. Lois Lane had used her.
So while Aymee was grateful the reporter and her partner had helped her mom improve her life, allowing Inez and Aymee to rebuild their family, she was also relieved that there had been little contact between the two of them since they had parted ways. It was easier for her to deal with Lois’ absence from her life than to have to sort through her conflicted emotions.
Reuniting with her now, though, Aymee could see a difference in the previously brittle reporter. There was sincerity in her smile, brightness in her eyes, joy in her demeanor. She just seemed happier now.
Socrates snorted and Aymee pulled her thoughts back to the present. She was here for Phillip’s future; there was no need to dwell on her past.
“You look worried, Aymee. Is something wrong?” Lois had a look of concern on her face.
Aymee exhaled a breath she was barely aware she had been holding. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that she had made the right choice. She had faith that this was one adult who could be trusted.
“We should probably talk in private.” Aymee paused to scan the room with her eyes and found Clark Kent sitting at his desk with a guarded look on his face. Then she headed towards the conference room, quietly adding, “We need your partner, too.”
---&-&-&---
Lois motioned to her husband as she followed Aymee Valdez into the conference room, marveling at the passage of time. Could three years really have come and gone so quickly? The beautiful young woman in front of her had been a child when last they spoke, a realization which sent a stab of guilt through her heart. Aymee had been her child for a few days, and yet Lois hadn’t bothered to keep in touch with her over the years.
Half-hearted excuses tried to vie for prominence in her head. Aymee had a real mom. Lois didn’t “do” Christmas cards. There was never enough time in the day to send off a quick e-mail. Lies. All lies. Lois’ conscience knew the truth: she was embarrassed by her actions back then.
At that time in her life, Mad Dog Lane had been in charge. Lois’ character had been swept aside by clouded judgment, a rabid pursuit of the story, an insatiable need to control. She had abused the Social Services system so that she could get her hands on a material witness. And at the time, she had not felt a twinge of guilt about what she had done.
But now, seeing Aymee through new eyes, Lois understood. The story wasn’t everything; people were more important than words on a page. Clark had taught her that. She couldn’t help but glance his way. Clark had chipped away the Mad Dog veneer she had carefully hid herself behind, opening a passage into her soul. He had helped her to let people into her heart and to express the caring and giving nature that had always been within her. Though three years ago she hadn’t believed she’d ever have kids, she now hoped with everything she had that one day she would be the mother to Clark’s child.
Lois looked at Aymee as a mother would. And she saw pain. In an instant, the maternal instinct she never believed she had kicked in. She wanted to take that pain away.
“Thanks for talking to me. I’m sure you’re busy…” Aymee began.
“Come on, we always have time for you.”
Clark entered the room and pulled the door closed tightly behind him. There was something about his stance, though; something about the way he looked at their visitor that struck Lois as not quite right.
Aymee wound Socrates’ leash through her fingers. “I need your help. I didn’t really know where else to turn.” She gave half a laugh and said, almost to herself, “Funny. There was a time when I could have thought my own way out of this problem.”
“Well, I’ve learned over the years that it’s always good to rely on your friends.” Lois put a sympathetic smile on her face.
“Yeah, sure. I relied on my friends three years ago and look what happened.”
“Hey, it all worked out in the end.” Lois observed the question in Aymee’s face. “How much do you remember from all of that?”
“We all remember things.” Aymee glanced at Clark and caught his eyes. “Secrets we probably shouldn’t know.”
Lois could almost feel the nervous energy flash through her husband. The subject of the Smart Kids hadn’t come up since Lois had learned about Clark’s other identity; clearly, something had happened between Superman and the children in their shared history. And she knew the one thing that always put him on edge.
But it had been three years since the truth about Superman must have been revealed to the kids, and it appeared they had kept the knowledge to themselves. Surely that meant something.
“Why are you here today?” Clark asked. There was a slight bite to the tone, a rudeness Lois felt her husband probably didn’t intend. Her guess about the past had been confirmed by his reaction.
“Phillip’s in trouble. Lately he’s become a completely different person. I think he might be on drugs and I don’t know how to get him to quit. I’m really worried about him. People do stupid things when they’re high. I just don’t want him to get hurt.”
Lois tried to calm Aymee’s fears. “Hey, we’ll do everything we can to make sure Phillip gets the help he needs.” But when she looked at her husband, she could see his fear would not be calmed that easily.
---&-&-&---
“Shhh…” Dudley whispered as he nibbled little kisses along Karen’s neck.
“Quit it,” she said. “They’re going to catch us!” Karen broke away from her boyfriend to slow things down between them. This was certainly not the first time the two of them had fooled around - they were with each other practically every day. But lately their relationship seemed to be getting more intense. And Karen was feeling pressure from all around her to do more.
The school’s health education teachers had tried to convince her that abstinence was the only acceptable choice she could make in the face of her raging teenage hormones. But she knew many of her classmates had not made that choice. It was clear from the conversations she constantly overheard in the girls’ bathroom. It was obvious from the behavior of teenage couples tucked behind corners that weren’t fully hidden from view. And whenever Dudley’s hand slipped an inch beyond what she was comfortable with, she was reminded that he was having a hard time keeping his sexual feelings in check.
She understood her unauthorized presence in the boys’ dormitory didn’t exactly send the right message to him. But there was really no harm; she wasn’t going to do anything there other than round a few bases with Dudley before stopping short of home. She was only fifteen.
The same age her mother had been when Karen was born.
Karen didn’t talk about her mother very much; she’d go weeks without even thinking about her. But sometimes, after the lights went down at the Beckworth School and she tucked herself into bed for another night, she thought about her. Her mother should have been the one to embrace her in a hug, tuck her into bed at night, and kiss her fears away. Her mother should have been the one to help Karen push away the pressures of the world.
But that would have been a different life. A life without teen pregnancy, homelessness, and drug addiction. A life with stability, security, and love.
Beckworth provided some of that life for her. Since coming to the school, she had been freed of the constant upheaval of moving from one foster home to the next. Even when she was younger, she knew none of those caretakers would ever be her family. Rebelliousness and anger prevented her from embracing any of the people who had come into her life, and she had inevitably been pushed out of each of those homes. She had no illusions now that she would ever be adopted; she wasn’t a cute little newborn free from problems and emotional baggage. No, she’d be kicked out of the system at eighteen with a few bucks and a housing voucher. She had to make it on her own.
And she couldn’t do that with a child. She wouldn’t make the same mistake her mother had.
There was security in her life, too. At least she knew each day that she’d have a bed to sleep in, three meals to eat, and an education to fall back on. All of the things her mother hadn’t had.
Of course, Karen also had a different kind of security than most kids lived with, but she didn’t complain about that. Ever since she and her friends had broken out of the school, new measures had been put into place to prevent it from happening again. Now and then she’d catch a sideways glance from a staff member, a reminder that the past had not been forgotten, and an assurance that she was being watched. The reminder of that monitoring was enough to keep her in line.
A quiet creak from the window, a shadowed movement across the room, and the appearance of Phillip Manning beside his bed were reminders, though, that she had the ability to think her way through those security measures if she ever set her mind to it.
Karen nudged Dudley in the arm and motioned across the dorm room. Her boyfriend dragged his eyes away from her chest long enough to notice Phillip, then shook his head.
“He’s on drugs again, isn’t he?” Karen asked the question, though the tone of her voice made it sound like a statement.
“Probably.” Dudley sighed.
“Why didn’t we just tell Aymee before? She’s obviously worried about him.”
“Well, it’s not like we have proof. Besides, she figured it out. And Phil would have killed us if he found out we said anything to her. You know how he feels about her.”
Karen offered a half-hearted agreement. “He doesn’t think he’s good enough for her. He wants her to believe he’s perfect. And in the meantime, he’s messing up his life and making both of them unhappy.”
Dudley let a silent moment pass, and then said, “I think it’s more than weed this time.” Karen looked sharply at him as he continued. “He’s mean, really angry, and even more withdrawn than usual. I’ve seen him shake in the morning as the stuff’s wearing off. He’s hooked on something bad.”
“How long has this been going on?” Karen whispered harshly.
“I don’t know. Maybe a week?” Dudley saw the anger well within his girlfriend. “Well what did you expect me to do, call the police?”
“I expected you to tell me! We have to help him, and we have to tell Aymee. I don’t care what Phillip thinks. He needs help, and we’re the only friends he’s got.”
Dudley tried to hold onto her arm as Karen got off of the bed, but she stood just out of his reach in an angry stance. Then she pointed at him, then at Phillip, as her eyes flashed a clear sign that she expected the two boys to have a conversation.
‘Well,’ Karen thought as she marched from the room, ‘at least my virginity’s safe for another night.’ Dudley would be sitting in the dugout for the foreseeable future.
---&-&-&---
“Well, this is just sad.”
Clark Kent observed his wife close the folder full of background information that Jimmy Olsen had gathered. He sighed in agreement. Reviewing the statistics on teenage drug abuse for the last hour had been depressing. And despite all of his powers, Clark understood there was no way for him to help someone who didn’t acknowledge he had a problem.
Physically, Clark couldn’t feel the allure of illegal substances. Despite growing up in middle America rather than the inner city, Clark had seen others get involved in drugs. Smallville High had had its share of joints passed behind the stadium bleachers, but Clark had never taken anyone up on the opportunity to get high. When he was a teenager, Clark had been afraid of his emerging powers, unsure of his own biology. He had guessed that drugs wouldn’t work the same on him as it had his peers, and he had not held any interest in putting that theory to the test.
The moral upbringing his parents had instilled in him, no doubt, had also influenced his decision to stay clean. For the millionth time in his life, Clark silently thanked whoever had placed his fragile childhood into Jonathan and Martha Kent’s hands. His adoptive parents couldn’t have loved him more, and the strength of their family bond helped shape the man he grew up to be.
However, Clark understood the emotions that led some people down a dark path. He had felt isolated from others, like no one could possibly understand or accept the real him. He had wanted to escape -- not only from his small town, but also from himself.
Lois tossed the folder onto the coffee table and moved next to Clark, settling in the crook of his arm. “I just don’t understand why someone as intelligent as Phillip would let himself get involved in this.”
“Well,” Clark reflected, “sometimes smart kids do stupid things.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make it right.” Lois looked up into her husband’s eyes. “Do you think we should have done something? You know, maybe kept better track of them over the years?”
“We’re not their parents. We did what we could, but there comes a time when everyone needs to bear some individual responsibility.” A feeling nagged at Clark, though: the ache he felt when he was unable to save every victim from a disaster. He shook his head. “I know that’s a bad excuse. I could have done more.”
Lois bit her lower lip and downcast her eyes. “I’m not really proud of what I did back then. I should have handled things differently. When it was over, it just seemed easier to get Aymee together with her mom and let her forget about me.”
“The kids figured out my secret.”
Lois nodded her head, silently signaling that she had deduced that on her own.
“I tried to convince them that they were wrong,” Clark continued, “and in the end they seemed to be unsure. Ever since then, I’ve kind of avoided coming into contact with any of them. I thought maybe they’d forget about it if they didn’t see me. I should have handled that differently.”
“Well, we all make mistakes.” Clark saw Lois run a hand over her flat belly, lost in thought. He gave his wife the quiet space she needed as he softly cuddled her beside him. After a few moments, Lois threaded her fingers between his, signaling the continuation of their conversation.
“Do you think it’s genetic?” Lois gazed at the folder, though Clark guessed that Phillip Manning had little to do with her question. “I mean, drug or alcohol abuse?”
Clark sat the two of them up straighter and turned his body to fully face his partner. “I believe that parental influence can sometimes have a more powerful effect than genetics. The lack of a stable home life could have led Phillip to turn to drugs.” He used his hand to gently turn her face to his. “But you’re not destined to repeat your mother’s mistakes.”
The catch in her voice as she held back a sob could not escape Clark’s sensitive hearing, and he pulled his wife into a strong embrace. “I love you so much,” Lois declared. She pulled back by a fraction to fix him in her gaze, willing emotion to pour through their connection. “You are going to be a wonderful father.”
Clark smiled and brought a hand to her waist, purposefully running a thumb along her midriff. “And someday, you’ll have the chance to be an amazing mother.”
He leaned forward to press a comforting kiss on her lips. But the emotion wrapped up in their conversation enveloped them, and Lois deepened the kiss with a soft moan. As tongues dueled and hands tugged at clothing, Lois and Clark began to do their best to ensure that someday came sooner rather than later.
* * * * * * * * * *
