I apologize so much for the delay! I couldn't for the life of me figure how to end the story. In all my maps and planning, I had figured the end would just come together. Finally, after hemming and hawing, I decided an epilogue would fit the bill.
_______
Two weeks later, Lois Lane had her dream job at the Daily Planet.
After that hellish day when Claude’s (
her) story had hit the papers, she had very nearly conceded defeat. Her story was lost, Perry White would probably never even consider her again and she was out a job. But on the plus side, she had a extraordinary new boyfriend.
Unfortunately her fabulous, flying boyfriend was also unemployed. Clark had been set to resign despite the story, but before he could even hand in the papers, he had been fired. When he had talked to the principal, Doug Scott had been apologetic but unrelenting. Scott knew that nothing untoward had gone on, but the facts were there and his hands were tied, he had said. As much as Clark wanted to argue, he knew he couldn’t. Because in his heart of hearts, he knew Lois had stolen his almost from the beginning.
And so, for a grand total of three days, they had lived a penniless, Bohemian existence. Or so it had seemed to Lois. But by the time she had actually worked herself into a frenzy at her state of unemployment, the phone at her apartment had rung. It was then, as she answered the phone in a schlumpy robe, her spoon still halfway embedded into a fresh carton of rocky road, that her life turned a complete 180 degrees on her.
Perry White was on the other end, offering her a job.
When Lois had expressed her disbelief, Perry had waved it off, saying that they were out one news reporter and that he knew she had potential. Too shocked to think clearly, Lois found herself arguing against Perry before she clammed up as reason smacked her in the face. Finally, all the while thinking Perry White was a little unwell in the head, Lois accepted, but on the condition that he consider Clark as a candidate as well. Perry had balked at the suggestion, but after a few minutes of a full blast of Lois Lane charm, Perry had caved and agreed to look at a piece of Clark’s writing.
Clark, upon hearing the news had been delighted and angry that Lois had risked her dream job with some silly stipulation about him. But upon hearing the news, he sat down by his ancient computer and called up a Microsoft Word document. He had been the editor of his college paper and had minored in journalism, but he had always thought his true calling was teaching. Now, the prospect of paying the rent with his words alone loomed large, terrifying, and exhilaratingly in front of him. He wrote for hours, only moving to replenish the cream soda by his keyboard. Finally, when Lois returned from work that day, he hemmed and hawed for one nervous moment before Lois simply moved past him and pulled up the document to read herself.
When I came to teach at Metropolis High school, somehow I expected things to be different. I expected the kids to be younger, to be simultaneously wilder and more mature than I was. After all, I was a college grad, I had done the school thing to death. There was nothing that could surprise me, I figured, because well, I had done it all.
Senior pranks? I was the one leading them at my old school. The old fashioned rumor mill? I’d been at the odd end of a few rumors myself. All the new faces? I’d been to college, hadn’t I? A place where I hadn’t recognized one single face. No, I was quite sure that I was ready to teach, to proclaim my passion for words and language at the front of a classroom and to witness their eager responses.
I now know that I had severely overestimated myself and my abilities.
Because for one, these kids were only a few years younger than myself and I couldn’t see them taking direction from me. My mindset was such that it almost didn’t seem reasonable for them to listen to me. Who was I to lecture them on mistakes they made that I had done myself just a few short years ago? I’d be better off sending them down the hall to the real teachers, the teachers with a bit of age to grant them wisdom. Eventually it was my late wife who sat me down and set me straight.
With the bluntness that could only be said by someone who truly loved you, she told me to get over myself. That I needed to stop wanting to be liked and vying for my seniors’ attention. I thought she was being ridiculous, that wasn’t what I was doing. Did I care if these kids liked me?
The overwhelming truth was that I did. And then, incredibly, her advice worked. I stopped focusing so much on me and more on them and I connected. The students and I were finally combating the normal high school afflictions such as tardiness and tough pop quizzes as a tag team effort. I wasn’t a pushover, but yet I wasn’t unyielding. The balance struck a chord with the students and that first class of seniors still holds a special place in my heart.
But the best laid plans of mice and men…
A year after that fateful senior class, my wife passed away. Those who knew me at the time could testify to the overwhelming change it wrought in me. I was never truly the same. But yet, one day, as I taught my class on the autopilot I had been running my life with, a new student walked into the class. She brought new discussion and new life to the classroom and everyone immediately took to her.
I cannot perceive the exact instant that my I woke up from the near comatose state my wife’s passing left me in, but it was sometime after this girl joined my class. She displayed enormous potential, and I took her aside to ask if she’d like to further this interest in writing. She agreed and I nodded, my work done. Or so I thought. As the days rolled into weeks, she fell into the wrong crowd. Anxious, I watched her fall from grace in the eyes of some of my students, and rise in others. I myself pleaded with her to consider new friendships, but the look she gave me was enough to send me back to my rightful place.
The place in front of the chalkboard, away from the students. I found myself in the predicament of being too close, and yet too detached from the situation. I knew all of these students personally, but my position as a teacher prevented me from taking sides and providing an ear to bend. And it was about that time, I realize now, that I began to grow dissatisfied with my situation.
Now I know of many teachers who balance that fine like between friend and educator with the poise of a ballet dancer. They make it look effortless, deftly moving between companion and tutor. I, on the other hand, have never been good with my feet. When I dance, I fall too much and make too many mistakes. And thus, I fell as I tried to straddle the line.
I grew too emotionally attached, too top heavy on the side of “friend” and unable to make the leap back into the safer territory of being a “teacher.” When the news broke that my prodigal student was actually an undercover reporter sent to investigate suspicious gang activity at my high school, I had to resign from my job. Metropolis High had been a safety net for me for too long already, catching me every time I was nearly jarred awake from the bleak half-life I was living.
And there it was; the whole truth in a simple pallet of black and white. It took only one person, in the most unexpected of places, to turn my life around. She had taken her own perspective out for a while and was looking at the world through the eyes of the student she portrayed. In much the same way, it took looking through a new perspective to throw myself out of the slump I had stumbled into.
That chance to change for the better hit me when I least expected it, a shot from left field. But whatever the situation, that chance is out there, standing in the shadows. All you have to do is reach out and take it. Lois, being Lois Lane, couldn’t let the puff piece slide. She tore it to shreds, editing a sentence here and deleting whole paragraphs there. Eventually Clark retreated from the brutal bloodbath and made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. Only then, from the safe distance of the kitchen, did he call over to ask if Lois had finished.
“Not yet, Clark. You made it sound like you were some soundless waif before you met me,” she said mildly, no trace of spite. “I recognize my importance as a whole, but we’ve got to get this shaped up before we send it to Perry.”
“You do realize that up until a few weeks ago, I was the one editing your papers?” Clark said, leaning against the wall. Lois had spent quite a lot of her time over at his place since Claude had broken her story and now they existed in a sort of easy companionship.
“Yes, and your spelling and grammar is flawless,” Lois said, giving him a brilliant smile over her shoulder. She highlighted another whole chunk of text and started typing furiously. “But you’re no good at these puff pieces. Hard news is your thing, I can tell.”
“Lois, I like writing feel good stories as well as the hard hitting news ones. It’s great to cover both ends of the spectrum,” Clark said, coming over to retype a section Lois had just deleted. “And I liked that sentence right where I had it, thank you very much.”
As they squabbled over sentence placement, Clark leaned over and dropped a light kiss on her hair, sighing in a sort of bliss. This was what he had been missing. The soft smiles, the deep friendship. It hardly even mattered that the story that had brought them together in the first place had been stolen. It had taken a while for both of them to agree on that, however, but now, even Lois didn’t bristle quite so much when the subject arose. On that day, Lois had been spitting angry, spouting off mindless and frankly terrifying threats to Clark, who was standing in as a substitute for Claude in Lois’ mind. But now Lexy Hartness was awaiting trial and the drugs had been all but cleaned out of Metropolis High. Beth Warner’s parents had the sort of closure they had all but given up hoping for and Lois had her sexy English teacher.
And when the facts were stacked up like that, she could hardly be expected to keep on her bitter rants about castrating certain new journalists at the Metropolis Star. Besides, Lois bit her lip as she continued to critique Clark’s story, Clark had really already taken care of Claude Malfois.
Clark had been an incredibly calming influence on her, she reflected. Had she been the BC (Before Clark) Lois, she might have very well tracked down Claude’s apartment and let loose a pit bull on the inside. Or she might have published an expose on STDs and the poor souls who have them, while inserting a large photo of Claude as the dominant item on the page. Anything to retaliate and to make him feel the same anger she felt that day she opened the paper and saw her story with his byline.
But even so, Lois had not been so thoroughly calmed by Clark’s presence that she didn’t still have these mad dog impulses. But a few days after the story had been published, she and Clark had been walking when they saw Claude outside the Star’s building. He was leaning up against the wall, chatting up a beautiful blonde woman. Lois had nearly raged across the street to give him a piece of her mind, but Clark had grabbed her arm and ducked with her into a nearby alcove. At Lois’ protests, he clamped a hand over her mouth and shook his head.
“I haven’t taught at a high school and learned nothing these past years,” Clark had breathed into her ear. “Prepare yourself; this is going to be very, very childish.”
And with that, his eyes glowed red. Lois watched in fascination, but Clark shook his head slightly and motioned for her to watch Claude. He was looking at Claude’s feet. Claude started fidgeting and then a moment later he hopped a little. Lois swerved her head to Clark and then back again. Now Claude was outright howling, clutching his feet and hopping wildly on the sidewalk. The girl he was with fled while the other people on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth.
Claude started walking away from the Star, muttering and walking lightly on his barely burned feet. Lois clapped a hand over her mouth to contain her giggles as she and Clark followed from a safe distance. A few minutes later, Clark once again pulled her into an alcove and blew in Claude’s direction. Claude started shivering as the gusts of icy wind hit him. He frantically looked side to side, contemplating how he would write these odd weather phenomena in the next morning’s paper.
Lois smiled as she shook her head out of her musings. They had followed Claude all the way home, playing juvenile pranks on him the whole time. It was silly and inconsequential, but miraculously, it made her feel better. And it didn’t put her in trouble with the law or slap her with a libel suit.
Once Lois had shaped up Clark’s story, they had whisked it off to Perry White. Clark had paced the apartment like a caged animal, awaiting Perry’s judgment. Finally, Perry called Clark Kent in for an interview.
The next day, the newly partnered investigative reporting team of Lane and Kent hit the streets. And despite Clark’s relative inexperience and Lois’ impulse to dive right into every story, they managed to score exclusive after exclusive. Four years later, Clark Kent had won a Meriweather, Lois Lane had a Kerth under her belt, and the reporting team had won a Kerth together.
And it was on a not so special day, four years since Lane and Kent had been hired at the Planet, that Lois Lane came face to face with Claude Malfois for the first time since Claude had hauled her out of the water tower. They met on the corner of Fifth and Madison, next to a newsstand boasting a front page article by Lois Lane and Clark Kent.
“Ms. Lane!” Claude had said, reaching to kiss her hand. “It’s been far too long.”
A long dormant anger stirred in Lois, but she calmed enough to look him in the eye. “Hello Claude.”
“I seem to remember you as a green reporter, but look! Here you are at the Planet,” Claude’s eyes flicked over to the stand. “It was a fine paper in its day.”
Before Lois could sputter out a rebuttal to this, there was a long familiar whoosh and then a red, blue and yellow costume materialized next to her. His face did not appear in its usual ease, however, and instead looked tight and tense.
“Ms. Lane,” he said cordially. He rounded on the man next to her. “Are you bothering Ms. Lane, Mr. Malfois?”
“H-how, Superman! How did you know my name?” Claude took a half step backwards as Clark took one forward.
“I’ve made it a priority to find out Ms. Lane’s friends,” he said lightly. His voice hardened somewhat. “And the people who have ever wronged her.”
Claude gulped and took another step back.
“But you have no reason to fear, right Malfois? You and Ms. Lane are real buddies, huh?”
Claude nodded, but Clark gave Lois a wink and turned his face into a frightening mask of anger. “You had better hope you’re not lying, Mr. Malfois. If you didn’t remember, I can always tell when someone is lying by their heartbeat.”
Clark’s hearing picked up a nearly inaudible “tell me about it,” from Lois and he had to fight to keep the smile off his face.
“You don’t want to find out what happened to the last man who wronged Lois,” Superman half turned to Lois. “Who was that guy again? That jerk who snubbed you in the hall in eighth grade?”
Lois turned her snort of laughter into a cough and quickly nodded. “Yes. But you might be confusing him with the guy who turned me down freshman year when I asked him to the dance.”
Superman scowled. “The swine! Metropolis General Hospital probably has room for him in the new Superman Foundation wing. I’ll be sure to …visit…him. Call the hospital and tell them to make room for one more, all right?”
When Superman turned back from Lois to Claude, the man was gone.
Letting loose a howl of laughter now that Claude had left, Lois grabbed him and rested her forehead against his spandex clad forearm. “You, my husband,” she said very softly, “are hysterical.”
“That felt good,” Clark sighed and looked around at the nearly empty street. “That creep deserved more than the mild jokes we played on him all those years ago.”
“I love you, Superman. But don’t tell my husband.” she said very quietly.
“I love you, Lois Lane, student from Metropolis High,” he grinned at her. “But don’t tell my wife.”
________
And thus ends Teaching Indecency! I appreciate all of you who ever left feedback, and especially those who stuck around even though they were wary of the direction the story was taking. It's a relief to have this guy all written, and now I'm going to give it a good, long edit before I send it off the the fan fiction archive. There are many small and large aspects I'd like to change and tweak. But you guys have been amazing and never failed to inspire me. Thank you so much!
Laura
