She pulled away from him as though she’d been scalded.
It hurt. It shouldn’t have; he could see that she was clearly disturbed. There was something wrong here, more than just the usual case of vomiting or drunken unconsciousness you usually saw at these parties.
He could tell from the look on her face that she was still blinded from being inside the house. All she likely saw of him was a silhouette.
Before he could say anything, she stumbled backward and turned and began to run. He could hear her ragged, sobbing breath as she ran up into the impromptu parking lot.
Clark glanced behind him to make sure that no one had noticed the scene, then slipped around the other corner of the house to watch Lois.
She was wandering aimlessly through the parked cars, a key in her hand. She seemed to recognize one car, and she approached it cautiously. It was an ugly VW Bug which had seen better days.
Lois tried the key and it seemed to work.
She slipped inside the car, and Clark frowned. He wasn’t certain that she should be driving in her condition.
A moment later the engine turned over, and she was spinning dirt for a moment before getting traction. A moment later the VW lurched forward at top speed- which admittedly wasn’t very fast.
Clark trotted back to the party. He tapped on Pete’s shoulder and said “I think Lois is feeling sick. I’m going to drive her back to town. I’ll drop her car back off tomorrow.”
Pete nodded, barely taking his eyes off a tearful Lana on the other side of the fire. “So I guess Lana is a free agent now…”
“She always was,” Clark said. “I just didn’t know it.”
He slipped into the darkness again, and as soon as he was out of sight, he took to the air.
Lois was swerving somewhat on the road, and Clark frowned. She hadn’t had anything to drink other than Annie’s cider, which had a minimal alcohol content. Still, if she went too far he’d stop her.
***********
Lois gasped as she woke. The sun was shining brightly and she had a massive headache. The last thing she could remember was seeing Clark and Lana fight. Now she was behind the wheel of her vehicle, which was pulled over by the side of the road.
She had no idea where she was, other than to note that it wasn’t Kansas.
Unsteadily she got out of her car. She noted with dismay that she had a new dent in her fender. Whatever someone had given her last night must have been something powerful.
Lois snorted. That showed her. Getting all sentimental about small town people. They really were just as corrupt as the big town folks. But they smiled while they were stabbing you in the back.
The other explanation…that something had gone wrong with the process that had brought her consciousness into her body was too terrifying to contemplate.
It was probably for the best. She wouldn’t have been able to take the high road with Clark. It never would have worked. He needed time to develop, time to lose some of that naiveté that made him so appealing.
The thought of being the one to teach him some of those things had an odd appeal, but they weren’t worth the risk. Clark had a good life, and he’d never made any promises to Lois. Lois would have to do her best to move on.
A thought occurred to her. The best way to ensure that Clark was alive was to make sure that by the time he came to Metropolis that Lex Luthor was already behind bars.
She’d work on saving the world too. There were some things that could do, even now that might make things work out a little better for everyone. People just had to be warned in time.
Lois had a purpose. By the time she got her second chance with Clark, he’d have long forgotten her. She’d have saved the world and stopped any chance of either of the two men in her life being killed the same way as they had before.
It took her almost an hour to realize that she was near Metropolis.
She’d been driving in a fugue state for two days.
This was more than just a spiked drink.
******************
Lois pulled up to her father’s house, only to see her sister’s car in the driveway. Her sister had been better at wheedling favors and gifts; she always had.
Tiredly, she grabbed her bags and quickly checked her stash of cash. It hadn’t been touched.
She turned and was startled to see Lucy behind her.
“Where have you been?” her sister demanded. “You’ve been gone five days. You missed new year‘s eave.”
“I went on a ski trip, “ Lois said.
“I don’t see any skis,” Lucy said quickly. “And I called all of your friends. Nobody knew anything about a ski trip.”
Lois waved her off tiredly. “I’ve had a long trip.”
“You missed your interview.” Lucy said.
“What?” Lois dropped her bags and turned to Lucy.
“That internship with the Daily Planet. They called to tell you that the position has already been filled, so not to bother rescheduling.”
Lois gaped. She’d completely forgotten. She’d thought she already had the internship.
Scowling, she grabbed her bags and shoved her way into the house. She’d always been able to wrap Perry around her little finger. She’d get the position, if they had to open a new one up for her.
***********
Lois stepped out of the Daily Planet with a defeated feeling. She’d forgotten how much less accommodating Perry was to someone without a track record, or a wall full of awards to her name.
She was a seventeen year old nobody without a writing credit to her name.
This was going to change everything. In the space of a week she’d derailed her entire career.
What would happen if Clark applied for the position at the Planet and she wasn’t there waiting for him?
Damn it.
**********
“I’d like to invest in Luthercorp,” Lois said, trying to sound as professional as possible. She’d worn the suit she usually wore to funerals.
“How old are you?” The man in the suit looked bored.
“I’ll be eighteen in October.”
“We can’t sell you anything without your parents’ permission. We couldn’t hold you to a contract until you were eighteen.”
“Thank you.” Lois said, gritting her teeth. She couldn’t exactly walk up to her father and ask him to invest five or six thousand dollars of gambling money.
************
“I’m still not sure why you want me to go through all this,” Lois’s grandmother looked disconcerted. “I’m perfectly healthy.”
“I’d like to keep you that way,” Lois said. “Come on. You promised.”
What followed was an experience of cold tile floors, metal stirrups and a doctor who knew enough o warm her hands.
When Lois had been eighteen, the whole process had been humiliating and painful. With her new experience, it was somewhat easier, though surprisingly still more painful than she was used to.
The mammogram was something else entirely.
Lois followed her grandmother who stormed out of the office.
“Those people are butchers! I’m never doing hat again…I’m too old to have someone sticking my breasts into an orange juice squeezer!”
Lois listened to her grandmother rant and hoped it would be enough.
************
Stepping outside, Lois felt a moment of triumph. Her first paycheck! It wasn’t large, certainly not by the standards she was used to, but she’d gotten published. Her name was in a paper, even if it wasn’t the Planet.
Normally, she never would have considered writing for the Metropolis Star, but they accepted Freelance work there, and she needed the experience. Without that internship, she was going to need an established body of work to get herself a job at the Planet.
She’d gotten it all on her own too. There weren’t many news stories she remembered from this far back. She hadn’t paid as much attention before she became a reporter herself. But she had the skills, both in writing and investigating, and it made all the difference.
Lois grimaced. At least it would be better than high school. She’d already spend a week of interminable days there. The people she’d once found fascinating were children, boring, and the things they found important were at best trivial, and at worst asinine.
She was stuck as student body president. At the time it had seemed like a stepping stone to greater things. Now it was just one more drag on her time.
At least she’d dumped Joe Malloy. The first time he’s slapped her on the derriere, she’d punched him in the face.
She was just lucky none of the adults had seen it. It would have started raising too many questions, and might have involved a parent teacher conference.
The last thing she wanted right now was a confrontation with her father. They were avoiding each other, and maybe that was for the best. The only other alternative would be to move out, and that would require her to get some sort of low paying job.
She absolutely refused to return to Weenie World, like she had the first time around. Wearing a giant weenie on her head had been humiliating enough before she knew better.
Lois would have expected things to be easier this time around. Instead, she was having trouble keeping her temper. Miss Pomerantz the gym teacher in particular irritated her.
The petty cruelties of the teenagers around her bothered her far more than they had before. At seventeen Lois had been like the rest of the teens, so self-absorbed that although she noticed the people more popular than she was, what happened to people lower in the social order hadn’t bothered her much.
Seeing that girl being assaulted in the cafeteria…Annie, Annette, whatever her name was, had been the last straw.
Her first story had been about bullying in school. She’d put a hard edge to it, and the editor of the Star had put it on the third page.
She was on her way.
**************
Julie and Peggie and two of the other girls chatted amiably behind Lois as they walked up the drive. Despite their friendships, Lois wouldn’t have bothered to have them over if it hadn’t been for student council business.
She’d already had a talk from the Principal, who hadn’t appreciated her article she couldn’t afford to get on his bad side. The specter of wearing a weenie hat loomed large.
The pain of not seeing Clark was fading a little, helped by the knowledge that at least he was safe and happy. She’d see him again, she had to have a little faith. If she cried to herself a little at night, it wasn’t anything anyone had to know.
At least had been proud for her. In the past three weeks they’d gotten closer than they’d ever been. She’d been thrilled about the article, and had encouraged her to keep working. Lois had put her money into a savings account, and everything was starting to settle down.
She’d survive high school. She’d done it once, she could do it again.
Lois slowed to a stop. Her grandmother’s car was in the driveway, but so was her mother’s. Her mother never came to visit her father.
Lois started to pick up the pace, and the girls behind her had to hurry to catch up.
When she saw the three adults sitting around the kitchen table, she turned to the others and said, “Why don’t you guys go up to my room and get started.”
The girls glanced at each other then nodded. The tension in the room was tangible.
Lois stepped into the kitchen and slowly sat down.
Her father began. “You took your grandmother to get a mammogram last week. They found something.”
Lois felt her vision graying at the edges.
**********
“Lois? Are you listening to me?’
Blinking in confusion, Lois looked up. She felt a moment of horror.
She was in her freshman dorm room, and Linda King was sitting across from her- Linda King the traitor, the rat.
She’d lost six more months, and she didn’t even know what had happened with her grandmother. Lois felt bile rising in her throat as she tried to swallow.
Being there for her grandmother had been important to her. If she’d made it, Lois wanted to have been a part of that. If she didn’t…Lois had wanted to wring every last precious moment out of the time they did have together.
“What? “ Lois gritted out. Linda apparently still thought they were friends. She didn’t realize that Lois knew exactly what sort of woman she was.
“Midwestern is playing Metropolis tomorrow night. Are you going, or aren’t you?”
Frowning, Lois wondered why Midwestern sounded so familiar.
Midwestern was a school in Wichita….the one that had given Clark a football scholarship.
“You couldn’t stop me,” she said.
If she wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to her grandmother, at least she’d be able to see Clark again, even if only from a distance.
