So, I finally finished this yesterday (well, mostly – there’s some editing left to be done, and Carol hasn’t finished BRing the last chapter, but it’s pretty much finished). My schedule the next few weeks is very up in the air – officially, I’m supposed to be traveling for work, but since I still would prefer not to leave my DD, I’m staying home and basically living the hours I would if I was traveling. We’ll see what this means for sleeping and free time. But if it works out, I’ll try to post more times per week. I can’t imagine I’ll have time to post more than once every other day, but we’ll see how things work out.
As always, a huge thanks to Carol!
From Chapter 45
“So, what do I do?” I asked them.
“Nothing,” Mom said. “Sometimes you need to live with the consequences of your actions. In this case, the consequences are that you’re made a mess you can’t fix. You are going to have to live with the fact that you potentially, probably, stole the internship from Lois, because the consequences of fixing that are too great.”
“But that could impact her entire life,” I pointed out.
“You should have thought of that before you did this,” Dad said. “Maybe what you should be doing now is thinking of a way to make it up to her.”
“And before you think of it – giving her the full, unedited story of the Boy in Black to submit to Mr. White is not it!” Mom said.
I wanted to tell her that I knew that – I knew I couldn’t write any more articles about myself. I had to admit though, I knew I deserved that. I’m sure up until a few minutes ago, my parents thought I knew enough not to write about myself at all.
“So, what do I do?” I asked. “How do I make it up to her?”
“I don’t think that’s a question that can be easily answered,” Mom said. “It’s going to take some thought. A lot of thought.”
I nodded my head. I had potentially ruined Lois’ life as I was selfish. How could I ever make that up to her?
Chapter 46
I flew back to campus slowly. I had known that was going to be a hard conversation to have, but I hadn’t expected it to be… I don’t know. I guess I still hadn’t been thinking about anyone but myself. I had expected my parents to be disappointed in me, but I had thought I’d be able to blow it off. They didn’t know how important this internship was to me.
That wasn’t how it had turned out at all. It was like when I had that little daydream, I had forgotten who my parents were. Of course they knew how important the internship was to me. But they also expected more of me than what I’d been showing recently. And as much as I wanted to pretend this was a case of my parents not understanding, I had to admit, it wasn’t. They expected more of me because I had recently been acting like an idiot – and a selfish idiot at that.
I hated the idea that they were right, though – that there wasn’t anything I could do to make it better.
I suddenly flashed to a memory of Rachel’s living room couch. It was last spring, during one of the many times Lana was off dating someone else. I had gone to Rachel’s after school like always, but this time, only Chad and I were there. I can’t recall where everyone else was, but I remember being relieved as there were no after school specials on that day. With just Chad and me, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.
“What do you want to watch?” Rachel asked as she turned the TV on.
“What? There’s no deep and meaningful show on about some boy hanging out with the wrong kids at school and…” Chad started, smiling at me, before Rachel cut him off.
“No, but there’s a Facts of Life marathon on!” Rachel said excitedly.
“Really? No after school special?” I asked. I would take an after school special over a sitcom about four teenage girls living at boarding school any day.
“No, but this is better,” Rachel said, turning the television to the appropriate channel and sitting down on the couch between Chad and me.
I threw Chad a drowning man look and he grinned before Rachel caught us. “Oh stop it, you guys. It’s not that bad!”
Chad rolled his eyes at me, but Rachel threw us each disgusted glares and we stopped.
It had been a fairly decent show. To be fair, my interest was probably piqued slightly since the main storyline was about one of the characters taking a journalism class. Maybe Chad didn’t like it quite as much.
She felt like the teacher was being unfair to her, and then she got a tip that he was at a party where there was drugs. Something like that anyway. Angry at him for always being hard on her, she wrote the story up for the school paper. The editor was one of her friends, so she had no trouble getting it into the school paper.
The teacher was fired because of it, even after everyone found out it was a mistake of some kind. She felt awful, and went to talk to him, offered to fight for him to get his job back. She was certain that once the school board found out it was a mistake, everything could go back to normal. Only it turned out the school board already knew, they just couldn’t deal with the publicity of having a teacher potentially involved in drugs at their high class boarding school.
He gave her the same advice my parents gave me – she had made a mistake that was going to have a huge impact on his life, like mine potentially had on Lois’ life, but there was nothing that could be done. Sometimes you couldn’t fix your mistakes.
She had felt awful. But then, it was a sitcom. A few minutes later the episode was over and when the next one started, she was happy again and it was like the previous episode never happened.
No such luck for me. I didn’t get a reset button on my life. I had screwed up, likely with no way to make things better, and I couldn’t just pretend it had never happened. I gave a wan smile – even if I could, Lois would never let me.
I landed behind the math building without a sound, and made my way back towards my room. I had no idea how I was going to move on from here, but I had to find a way. I didn’t want this to be the defining moment of my life.
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I almost didn’t go to lunch with my friends the next day, but then I decided that was a bit cowardly. So I went, and regretted going the entire time.
“Oh, look who’s here,” Lois said as I approached. The venom in her voice was like nothing I’d ever heard from her before. It made the girl I first met back in September seem like a cuddly teddy bear. “Metropolis’ own…” she floundered, trying to think up a good nickname for me, I’m sure. “Whatever,” she mumbled. “You know what you are!”
“What’s going on?” Alicia asked as she took a seat next to Chris.
“Clark won the Daily Planet internship,” Josh informed her.
“And Lois is taking it very gracefully,” Chris added in an undertone.
“That’s great, Clark!” Alicia said. “Not a big surprise that one of you would get it, but still impressive.”
“Impressive?” Lois asked. “No. Impressive would be spending weeks looking for the perfect article. Impressive would be spending even more weeks writing the first draft and then rewriting it. And rewriting it. And rewriting it again.
“Impressive is not essentially repackaging an article from the Star – one he didn’t even find himself, but Chris read to us.” Lois told the group.
“Lois,” Alicia said, her voice soft. “I’m sure you’re disappointed, but you’re making it seem like Clark cheated.”
“He did!” she insisted.
“Wouldn’t Mr. White recognize it if Clark had stolen an article from the Star?” Maddie asked.
Lois didn’t reply, but her eyes were flashing. I didn’t know what to do. All of our friends thought Lois was being petty when in reality she was right. I had cheated. But I could hardly announce that to everyone, could I?
“I’m sure Perry White has better things to do with his time than read second-rate newspapers,” Lois finally said.
“That’s not fair,” I finally added to the discussion. Although, I felt like a heel in doing so as I knew I was only going to make things worse. “I never tried to pretend that I had found those people on my own. I made it clear that I was tying several articles from newspapers around the world together.”
“And how did you know to do so?” Lois asked me. I felt the tension at the table increase. I could almost feel Alicia’s desire to yell at Lois in my defense. But Chris had a hand on her arm that I’m sure was meant to remind her to stay out of this. Everyone else at the table seemed to have the same good sense, but there was no question that everyone was watching us closely.
Worse yet, Lois’ voice had started to carry. So, it wasn’t only our friends who were watching us now, but several people at the tables around us were watching, too.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “It wasn’t like I’d been playing with the idea for a long time or something,” I decided to be at least partly honest about this although I was fully aware that the rest of what I planned to say was completely fabricated. “I was just talking to my parents about how I didn’t have a topic when I remembered the article Chris mentioned. And I remembered Alicia’s asking why that doesn’t happen all the time. I wondered if maybe it does, so I did some research and found some other instances of something similar and… well, after that it made sense to make the link.”
“Well, it sounds like really great investigating, Clark,” Maddie said smiling at me.
“Yeah, man. You really pulled through in the end,” Josh added. “Lois, we’re all really sorry you didn’t win, but you had to know this was an option. You and Clark couldn’t both win the internship.”
Lois glared at Josh. “I did know that. And last semester I was even fine with it. Clark deserved it based on his med school article. But this… this isn’t the same thing. I knew when he still didn’t have a topic a week before the application was due that I had the internship in the bag.”
“And now you’re upset because it turns out you didn’t,” Chris supplied. “That really is too bad, Lois.”
“But it’s not Clark’s fault,” Maddie said, placing a hand on Lois’ arm to soften her words.
“It wouldn’t be if he hadn’t cheated,” Lois insisted.
“How did he cheat?” Alicia asked.
“I don’t know. But I know he did,” Lois said, looking at me. “I know you, Clark Kent,” she repeated her words from the classroom again. “And I can tell that you feel guilty about this. I can tell that you did something underhanded. I don’t know what it is now, but I’ll find out.”
No one at the table said anything, and after a few moments, Lois got up and left the cafeteria. I quickly followed before our friends told me how badly they felt about Lois’ behavior and I felt like even more of a slimeball than I really was.
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I tossed and turned all night, trying to think of some way, any way, to make this up to Lois. There had to be something I could do. Not that I had any brilliant ideas yet.
I skipped breakfast the next morning, not sure I’d be able to hold it down. When I finally got hungry around noon, I decided to try one of the other cafeterias on campus. Lois and I used to eat lunch together every chance we got so I knew she generally stuck to the cafeteria near our dorms, and I didn’t want to risk bumping into her right now.
I ate quickly, barely tasting my food. I had to find a way to make things better. I just wasn’t sure what that was.
I spent two days ignoring my friends in an effort to avoid Lois, and I felt nauseous the entire time. This was worse than when I was waiting to hear the outcome of the application because there was no set end date. When would I come to terms with the fact that I had screwed up? What if I never did?
Finally I had an idea. I wasn’t sure my parents would approve of it since it involved lying, but it felt like at least it was fair, even if it was dishonest.
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“Mr. White?” I asked, hovering in the doorway.
“Clark,” he smiled at me. “It’s great to see you, son. Are you here to get started on your blood tests and all the paperwork? You’ll need to go see John in human resources. I’ll introduce you.”
“No,” I said, still feeling sick to my stomach. “I came as I wanted to talk to you.”
“Is everything all right?” he asked, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.
“Sort of,” I said, finding myself at a loss for words. How to say this without arousing any suspicion? “Mr. White, I’m really grateful to you for giving me this opportunity,” I started. “But I don’t think I can take it.”
His eyes got wide, and when he spoke again, his southern drawl seemed a bit stronger than before. “You can’t take it?”
“I really want to,” I assured him, “but there’s been a small emergency back home, and I think I’m going to have to spend the summer there.”
“What sort of emergency would have you turning down the chance of a lifetime?” he asked, his eyes slightly narrowed. The look almost made me back out. I’d just take the internship and deal with the guilt later. Then I realized – it was too late. No matter what I did now, I had lowered my standing in Perry White’s eyes.
“I just… I really do need to go home, sir,” I said.
Mr. White shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, son, but I spend a lot of time reading those applications. And particularly for the freshman internship, I only accept people with a real passion for what they are doing. It was clear to me when I read your article, all three of your articles, that you have a passion for journalism. You have a desire to make things right in the world, and have chosen a pen as your tool to do so.
“Look, Clark, I’m not in the habit of trying to get people to take this position, but this year I had two remarkable applicants cross my desk and it was difficult to make a choice. You and Lois Lane have more talent now than half my newsroom has with all their education. Whatever has you running scared, you need to ignore it. Or fight it. Whatever you need to do. I expect to see you bright and early on June 1st.”
“But, Mr. White,” I said, feeling like if I didn’t get out of here and to a bathroom soon, I might just start retching in his office, “if that’s the case, why not just take Lois?”
Mr. White looked at me for a moment with clear, wide eyes that made it clear to me why he had been such a great reporter in his day. That look made me want to tell him all my secrets. “I won’t say I didn’t think of it. I considered breaking tradition and offering two internships this year. But I changed my mind. The freshman internship has only been for one student for longer than I’ve been editor. Lois, I’m sure, will apply again next year, and I’ll be happy to have her as a sophomore intern.”
“But you could take her instead of me this year,” I pointed out, although I was starting to fear that I was going too far.
“I could,” Mr. White said, with a tone that made it clear he was starting to wonder why he hadn’t done that to begin with. “But you had the stronger application. So, I chose you. Now, git. I don’t have time for this. This is the real world, son, not college. I expect to see you here on June 1st. If I don’t, don’t bother applying to the Daily Planet again.”
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I really couldn’t fix things. Well, I guess I could, but only by destroying my life. Was that a price I was willing to pay? And would it even work? Would Mr. White see me again, or just ignore me, and if I didn’t show up, no one would get the internship.
Besides, maybe turning down the internship was only continuing to be selfish. Mom and Dad had given up so much for me. It wasn’t easy harboring a… science experiment/castaway alien/mutant/whatever I was. But they had done so. More than that, they had raised me as their own, and did everything they could so I could live a normal life. How would they respond to my giving up my one chance to get the job of my dreams?
I couldn’t sleep. I was too upset, too wound up. Pulling on my black outfit, I crept out of the dorm. Even campus was quiet at four in the morning, though, so I had no trouble getting down to the math building without anyone seeing me.
I floated among the clouds for awhile, but even that didn’t provide the peace it normally did. This was the defining moment of my life, I knew. How I handled this situation was going to change my life forever. But I had no idea what the right answer was.
I was trying harder than I’d ever tried anything before to figure it out, though. Even harder than I’d tried for the Planet internship. Or at least that’s what I told myself. It’s the only way I could forgive myself for what happened. For the voice that rang out when I gave up my quest for inner peace and landed.
“So that’s how you knew to tie those stories together!” she said, her voice a mixture of anger and wonder. “I knew you cheated!”
