Sorry for the long delay. Real life sort got hectic for awhile. It still is, really, but is slowing down slightly.
As always, thanks to Carol for the great job BRing!
From Chapter 29
“Okay,” I admitted. “It's a little surprising. But only as I thought Paul was a jerk. Not because it's really surprising that he finds you attractive. So when are you seeing him again?”
“Not until next semester,” Lois said. “He lives in Florida somewhere, and is going home over break. But we exchanged addresses and he said he'll write to me.”
“That's great, Lois,” I said. I meant it, too. Or sort of. I just couldn't help feeling that this was the first time I had heard anything about Paul that didn't make my skin crawl, and so it was hard to be sure he was really not a jerk after all.
Chapter 30
Coming back to school after winter break was very different than arriving in September had been. First off, the way I arrived was different. When I came in September, Mom and Dad had been pretty firm that they did not care that I could fly myself to Metropolis. It was their right as parents of a student starting college to drive me to school and help me get settled into my dorm room. Besides, my dad claimed that he wanted to see what all the fuss was about anyway – which was a lie, since he had been the one who urged me to come here in the first place.
So, we had piled Dad's pick-up high with my stuff, thrown a tarp over it in case of rain, and drove from Kansas to Metropolis. I have to admit, as much as I had complained about having to sit in the jump seat in the back of the cab when we could have taken Mom's car (although her little compact would not have fit my stuff), I was glad they had insisted on driving me. Coming here in September had been oddly frightening. At the time, Metropolis seemed like no more than a big city where I likely wouldn't belong and where I certainly didn't know anyone.
This time while it was actually a better time for Mom and Dad to take a long road trip as there was a lot less to do on the farm in February than in August, they were happy to let me fly back. More than that, though, it wasn't so scary coming back. As weird as it was, Metropolis, or at least the little corner of it populated by Metropolis University, was starting to feel like home.
The break had been great and I had enjoyed the time in Smallville, particularly at first when I was still feeling bummed about the break up with Maddie. Then after moaning about it to Chad and Pete for the umpteenth time, Pete had suggested I call her. Of course, I never really told them what went wrong which frustrated them, I'm sure, but I could tell they didn't really care. They just wanted me to get out of my slump.
So, I had called her on Christmas Eve. It was a weird conversation at first as after the usual pleasantries I hadn't known what to say. But I decided to be honest with her, at least up to a point. I told her I was sorry, that I knew she deserved better, but I also didn't think I could be the person she deserved. That didn't change the fact that I cared about her, though, and I missed her.
We ended the conversation well. Clearly, Maddie had gotten over some of her anger in the time since we had broken up, and while I think she was disappointed that I still wouldn't tell her whatever it was I was keeping from her, it no longer hurt quite like it had. I wasn't delusional enough to think we'd ever be best friends, and I had to admit that made me a little sad, but I thought that it would be easier to continue to be friends with her when we got back than it had been. At least we wouldn't feel the need to avoid each other and lunch wouldn't be filled with these awkward silences whenever our eyes caught each other.
I had talked to Josh a few times over the break and Lois as well. Like me, Josh seemed to enjoy his time catching up with high school friends (and of course, the lack of school work for a month didn't hurt). Lois seemed like she was enjoying the break less, but then she had less high school friends to catch up with. She and Josh had gotten together for lunch once, though, and she'd even ended up on some sort of school trip with her sister to New York. She hadn't gone to see Steve while there, but apparently Alicia had been in town visiting Chris, so they had gotten together.
It really was starting to seem like our little group of friends was really that – rather than a rag-tag group of freshman that happened to meet up when they didn't know anyone else. I had my suspicions that Steve may not really be friends with the rest of us through college once he and I no longer lived together, but at least the rest of us had come to care for one another. Even Alicia and I were friendly now. Not close enough to talk during the break, but she had seemed so much softer since she started dating Chris and her anti-Kansas thing had worn off. It turned out that when she wasn't busy putting down Kansas, she was a pretty nice girl.
So, while I wasn't looking forward to going back to class, I was sort of looking forward to getting back to my friends. I had flown in a couple of days early so no one would notice the strange kid who seemed to come from out of nowhere with a suitcase, but after dropping it off in my room, I had gone back to Kansas until the break was over.
About the only stressful thing on my mind as I unpacked my bag was the paper for Professor Halkuff's class. I knew it was ridiculous – classes hadn't even started yet, but I knew Lois was already working on it. She was determined to make sure she didn't lose the leg up she already had on the second recommendation. Whereas I felt much more confident than she did in getting one of the two letters, I still felt like I needed to hand in something good or maybe they'd change their mind. Besides, just in case they handed our papers into Mr. White with our recommendations, I didn't want my second article to be a flop.
Add to that the fact that I knew it was only a month or so before we'd need to start working on our application for the internship itself, and I really needed two great story ideas. Right now, I had none, and I wasn't sure it was safe to assume another story like the med school one would land in my lap.
I had been mulling over the idea of more of a human interest piece for Professor Halkuff's class. I knew it would need to involve some investigating since her class was in investigative journalism, but I thought it might be good to balance out the articles Mr. White might see with something a little less hard hitting than my last article had been. I was fully aware that a softer piece for the actual application would not be at all acceptable.
During the break, I had talked to my parents a bit more about my experiences as the Boy in Black. Maybe it was the timing of it – since it happened the same night as my first kiss with Maddie and that night was one I replayed often over break, but I kept coming back to that little kid who had been in so much debt for drug use. Mom had suggested that perhaps my paper could be an investigative piece on the presence of illicit drugs in elementary schools. It was certainly better than most of the ideas I had come up with myself.
Once I was happy that my room was mostly in order, I decided to go out and grab something to eat. Classes didn't start until the next day and so far there had been no sign of Steve. I'd called Josh, Lois, Maddie, and Alicia when I'd arrived to see if anyone wanted to get together for dinner, but hadn't heard back from any of them yet.
I wasn't gone long – I had decided to just go to the dining hall for lunch and have a sandwich, but when I came back, Lois was sitting in the hallway outside my door. “Steve still not back?” I asked her from down the hallway as I approached.
She didn't respond right away, so I waited until I got a little closer before speaking again. “Hey,” I said as I got my key out. “I'm guessing Steve isn't here yet.”
Lois was still staring at the ground, but shrugged. “No one answered when I knocked,” she said.
“Do you have a cold?” I asked her. She had sounded nasally, and I was pleased to have noticed – glad that a month away, even with the occasional phone call, hadn't meant that I had forgotten what her voice sounded like.
“No,” she said as she got to her feet to follow me inside, but when she passed me by, I realized why she had sounded nasally anyway.
“What's wrong?” I asked her, taking in her red nose. She didn't appear to be crying, but it was clear that she had been a few minutes ago.
She sniffled before taking a seat on my bed. “You were right,” she said.
“About what?” I asked, completely confused.
“Paul,” she told me, sounding miserable.
“What about Paul?” I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach. On the one hand, Lois hadn't seen Paul over the break as he had been in Florida, so what could he have really done? On the other hand, I did think Paul had a gift for being a jerk and Lois was crying… Like Dad said, "If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and quacks like a duck – it's probably a duck.' All signs seemed to point to Paul being a duck. Well, not really a duck, but…
“I called him when I got here and we made plans to meet for lunch,” she told me.
“Had you talked to him over the break?” I asked her, although I had asked her before and she had said no. Still, it had been a week or so since we had last talked.
“No,” she said, sniffling again. “But I still didn't think it was a big deal. He was busy catching up with friends or whatever…” she said.
I wanted to point out that I had been busy catching up with friends and had still found the time to talk to her, and I wasn't even interested in her in that way, but I decided to stay quiet. That wasn't something she wanted to hear right now and I doubted it would be helpful.
“So, what happened?” I asked. “Did he show for lunch?”
She nodded. “And at first it was great. He told me he had missed me, and kissed me and it was… just nice.”
She trailed off, so after a moment of silence I prodded her on. “But…”
She sniffled again, “Then he asked me if I had any ideas for a new story for the paper,” she said. “I was surprised since he doesn't usually take my ideas seriously, but then I thought maybe he had changed his mind.”
“But he didn't,” I guessed.
“No, he did,” Lois said, sounding slightly bitter. “Or at least it sounds like he has. I didn't really have any ideas. I started to tell him about my idea for Professor Halkuff's article, but I decided not to at the last minute. I didn't want him to use it for the Titan before I have a chance to hand it in as an assignment.”
“You have an idea for Professor Halkuff's paper already?” I asked.
She gave a small smile. “Yeah. As long as we're allowed to use things from around Metropolis again. Over the break, I heard some guys talking at a diner. They're building a new apartment complex in Suicide Slum and it sounds like it's not up to code.”
“Suicide Slum?” I asked. What sort of name was that?
“It's the… not so nice part of Metropolis,” Lois said with a small smile.
“I thought this area was the not so nice part.”
“Well, it is. If you're a middle-class yuppie. But Suicide Slum is really not nice.”
I laughed at her smirk. “So, I'm guessing there isn't enough money for the apartment complex to be built up to code in that area.”
Lois shrugged. “I'd have to find out if it's true or not, but I did check and there is a new apartment complex being built there for low income families.”
“Well, I don't see that as Titan material anyway,” I said.
“Exactly,” Lois agreed. “I didn't see how it would help Paul anyway and even if it did, I thought I needed it for class more. So I told him I didn't have any ideas. And then things got… weird, I guess.”
“Weird how?”
“Paul asked how I expected him to keep dating me if I wasn't giving him anything,” Lois said, her cheeks flushing.
“Giving him anything?” I asked, simultaneously not surprised, but appalled at the gall of this guy.
“Yeah. I didn't understand what he meant at first, so I asked and he said…” she trailed off, sniffling again. “He said that Michelle always provided him with good stories he could publish under his name.”
“Wait,” I said. “Who's Michelle?”
Lois shrugged. “She's a sophomore on the paper. I always thought she wasn't very good as she never seemed to get anything in the paper. But it turns out she has been, just under Paul's byline.”
I closed my eyes so Lois couldn't see how I felt about this news. Not that I was sure what I felt. Revulsion, maybe? Disgust? I wasn't sure, but whatever it was, I thought it was probably better for Lois not to see it.
“Anyway, so I asked him what he was talking about – why Michelle would be letting him steal her articles and he said it wasn't stealing. That was the deal. He was dating her and in return she provided him with articles.”
“I'm sorry,” I said, placing a hand on hers. “I didn't…”
She shook her head to cut me off. “So I asked if Linda was providing him articles, too. Told him I didn't even realize he was still dating Linda, let alone dating Michelle, but I now guessed he was and he just shrugged and said she wasn't providing articles but was providing him other stuff and since I wasn't willing to do that type of thing…”
“I hope you smacked him,” I said without thinking about it.
Lois gave a small giggle. “I wish I had. I just sort of sat there for a minute before saying that I wasn't planning to give him either and if that meant he didn't want to date me than he wasn't the person I thought he was.”
“Good for you!” I said, happy that at last she had not just let Paul walk all over her.
“I guess,” Lois said, shrugging again. “He called me a frigid cow and walked away.”
“Do you care?” I asked her. “You meant it, didn't you? You don't want to date someone like that.”
“I don't,” Lois said, “but I can't just stop my feelings for him. I keep thinking he's… nicer than that or something. I know now he's not, but… I just wish…”
“That he was more like you thought he was?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. “I was thinking more that I just wished he was more like you.”
