Chapter 9: When You’re Gone
When you’re gone, yet I’ll dream
A little dream as years go by.
--“A Fool such as I”
****
I called in sick to work the next day. To be safe, I didn’t want to go back to the Planet until I had finally gotten another dose of meteor rock. I was basically just going to wait around in the sun until I felt fast enough to make the flight to Kansas.
Deciding to do a bit of reading, I picked up Crime and Punishment. I approached the end of the novel fairly swiftly, and I was just to the point where Raskolnikov confesses his crime to the police when there was a knock at the door. Frowning, I looked at my watch and saw that it was noon.
Setting down the book, I jogged over to the door and opened it. Lois Lane entered with a whirlwind of activity.
She was babbling as she took some food out of a bag and began to set the items in a neat line on the counter. “Now, I know you’re not sick, and I figured you were staying away because of last night. I decided to let you have your day today, but you are coming in to work tomorrow if Perry has to send the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse after you. Now, I figured you probably wouldn’t feel like making any food, so I brought you some myself. Not that I made it myself, as I’m not trying to kill you, but it’s good enough for a lunch—there’s a ham sandwich, a pickle, a bag of chips, a cup of soup, and a couple of cookies. I figured you would have drinks, so I didn’t bring anything.” She turned around and frowned. “Boy, this place is grungy.”
Staring at her in amazement, I asked her, “Did you even stop to take a breath during all of that?”
Ignoring me, she just started babbling once more. “You know, I know someone who could help you find a better place. Anything would be better than this, I guess, but we can probably find you a good fixer-upper if you’re trying not to spend much. I know how it can be starting a new job and having to get an expensive new wardrobe and all that—”
“Lois, slow down,” I finally managed to get in. I had the feeling that her babbling was an attempt to cover up how uneasy it made her feel to make a gesture of friendship like this. It was surprising, but I was grateful.
She smiled at me. “Sorry.” Then her smile turned into a frown. “I knew you weren’t sick, but if I had to say how you look, I’d say you seem even better than normal. I mean, you might be a bit emotionally drained and all, but your appearance isn’t as pale as it has been sometimes.” She moved toward me as if to touch my arm but then caught herself and gave me an annoyed look.
“I, uh, I might be anemic or something,” I muttered, trying to come up with an excuse. “Thanks for the food, Lois—really, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” she acknowledged, glancing at what she had brought. “I just wanted to show you that Lois Lane can be nice sometimes. Oh!” She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded newspaper. “Here—this is for you.”
I took the paper from her and opened it up to look at the front page. The headline read:
MESSENGER SABOTAGED
SABOTEUR DIES IN FIERY EXPLOSION
My eyes went to the article itself, and I saw that Jimmy and I were listed in the byline as contributing reporters. I smiled and nodded. “Very nice.”
“It feels good to see your name on the front page, doesn’t it?” she said knowingly. “Jimmy’s been telling wild stories of his bravery. I told him that if he didn’t take it down a couple notches I would tell all those girls he was unconscious most of the time.”
I smiled. “Gotta keep him in line, huh?”
“Exactly,” she responded. “And you’ll be glad to know that Amy will be on the colonist transport to Space Station Prometheus. Oh—I almost forgot something else.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a silver locket and necklace. Then she started rambling yet again. “I found it at a little antique place. I know it won’t be the same as your old locket—it’s not your grandmother’s after all—and you will have to get a new picture, but hopefully it will work as a sort of symbol of the old one—”
“Thank you, Lois,” I broke in, grateful but somber. The fact that she had gotten it for me made me feel good—but the knowledge of what I was going to use it for made me sick to my stomach. At least she would never know what its true purpose was. “I appreciate it,” I told her. “It means a lot to me.”
She smiled a bit unsurely and then held the necklace out in her palm. I reached out, my hand hovering over hers, but I hesitated, not wanting to touch her. She started to lift her hand, and I jerked mine away.
“Oh, Clark, I’m sorry—I forgot.” She grasped one part of the necklace and held it so that it was dangling in the air. “Here.”
I took it from her and clenched it in my palm. “Thanks again, Lois.” I was glad that crisis had been averted without any hard feelings.
Lois nodded, seeming a bit uncomfortable with my open gratitude. “You know, they’ve fixed the colonist launch vehicle—it was suffering from the same problems as the Messenger—and I’m thinking about going up on it to give the Planet an exclusive personal account.”
“What?” I gaped, something striking my chest that felt almost like bereavement. She was going to leave Earth?
“Yeah—I think it would be a good opportunity for the Planet.”
“But Lois—that would be illegal! Not to mention dangerous. And—”
“A good reporter knows when to cross the line,” Lois cut in.
I ran a hand through my hair anxiously. I was realizing just how much I didn’t want her to leave—if she did, I might never see her again. “You could be—you could be arrested,” I told her weakly.
“It’s a great opportunity,” she said, giving me a strange look.
“Lois . . . ” I didn’t know what else to say. I only knew it was a bad idea.
She stared at me for a second, more protests ready to fire from her lips, but then she abruptly turned complacent. “You know—you’re right. It’s a bad idea, really.”
She was giving in too easily, and it was making me suspicious. I was about to inquire further into her motives when the phone rang.
“Sorry,” I apologized, “I should get this.” I stepped over to the phone and picked it up. “Hello?”
“Clark, it’s your mother. I just wanted to let you know that we have the shard ready for whenever you want to pick it up. Are you feeling . . . recharged yet?”
“I’m . . . doing better. I don’t know if I’m up to a hundred percent yet, but I’ll get there soon.”
She must have sensed that I was acting a little weird, for she asked, “Is there . . . someone with you?”
“Yeah, Lois brought me some lunch.”
She paused. “Lois? Well, you’ll need to tell me more about this ‘Lois’ later.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right.”
“If you’re busy, I’ll let you go then.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Clark.”
I hung up the phone and turned to Lois. “Sorry—that was my mom. She was just . . . checking up on me.”
In a voice that was almost gentle, Lois asked, “She’s worried about you, too, huh?”
I raised an eyebrow, touched. “You’re worried about me?”
She began to backtrack speedily. “No, I’m not worried about you. Well—I mean, maybe a little. I know you can take care of yourself. It’s just—look, I really should be heading back. I’m glad to see you’re doing better than last night. Just remember—you’re expected to be back at work tomorrow.”
And a second later she was out the door with a hasty farewell.
I smiled. She had made me feel a little better—something my book of choice certainly hadn’t been doing. With a sigh, I put the necklace around my neck and tried floating. Well, it looked like I was as close to full-power as I needed to be. I would eat the lunch Lois had brought me and then fly to Kansas.
****
As I flew over Smallville, I felt a sense of nostalgia. It had been so long since I had flown like that—I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.
I landed in a field and walked up to my parents’ farmhouse, remembering how it had felt to run inside the house after school as a kid and look in the kitchen to see if Mom had made a pie or a batch of cookies. Those had been such blissful days . . . so unlike the last time I had flown to Smallville from Africa.
When I went into the kitchen, I found Mom washing dishes. I stood there for a moment, smelling the apple pie she had baked earlier, likely in preparation for my arrival. A bittersweet sensation tugged at my heart, and I yearned for the innocence of my younger days. But the past could never be recaptured—only remembered.
Mom turned around and noticed me, her face filling with delight. She set her dish aside and stepped forward to hug me. But I had set up rules against even my parents touching me—out of guilt, out of worry, out of sadness . . . or maybe something else. I wasn’t sure. But deep down there was a part of me that felt I wasn’t worthy of human touch after what had happened in Africa—there was a part of me that wanted to punish myself as I protected others from being hurt by me. I just hated the emotional toll it was taking on my parents.
And so I said quietly, sadly, to my mother, “No, Mom.”
Her face fell, and I could tell I had hurt her. Wanting to erase the pain, I said with a smile, “It smells good in here—I do get the whole pie to myself, don’t I?”
She grinned back at me. “Now, Clark, you know your father would never forgive either of us if we didn’t let him have at least a bite. He’s been in and out of here all day trying to sneak one, and it’s been all I can handle just to make him hold off till you get here.”
I chuckled. “All right—I guess I can share.” I just looked at her for a few seconds. “It’s good to see you again, Mom.”
“Oh, Clark, it hasn’t been that long,” she returned, but I could tell she was just as glad to see me as I was to see her. “But I must admit I was getting used to having you around.”
I smiled and then nodded my head toward a small white box and a bucket of paint on the counter. “Those my supplies?”
She turned to see what I was looking at. “That’s them all right,” she affirmed, sounding unenthused. “You might as well take that paint with you in case you ever need it. We have some more around here somewhere. We painted the box thoroughly earlier, so you shouldn’t have any problems taking it home.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She nodded toward my chest. “I see you have a new locket.”
I looked at it and clutched it in a fist. “Yeah. Lois gave it to me. I need to paint it.”
I took off my coat, and Mom got out some newspaper and a small paintbrush for me. As I started painting the outside of the locket on the newspaper, Mom asked casually, “So, tell me about this ‘Lois.’”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Lois Lane. I’ve admired her work for years, and I got paired on a story with her about the explosion of the Messenger.” I set down my paintbrush and dug in my coat pocket, pulling out the newspaper Lois had given me and the earlier edition Perry White had given me. I handed both to Mom, who—if I knew her like I thought I did—would be getting a subscription to the Daily Planet of her own soon. “I’m officially a part of the Planet now.”
She beamed at me, her eyes a little watery, and I could tell she was fighting the urge to hug me. She turned away and sat at the table to read the two articles while I finished with the locket’s outside and left it to dry. I sat next to her at the table and waited for her to speak.
“I’m so proud of you, Clark,” she said at last when she had finished reading.
I shifted uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”
The emotion left her voice—likely because she could sense my discomfort—and she said, “So, tell me about Lois Lane. You were partnered with her—that’s it?”
I laughed. “Just being with Lois is an experience, much less working with her. I think she has a nose for danger—it’s that investigative journalist in her. She’s—well, she’s controlling, uncompromising . . . stubborn . . . passionate. It reminds me of what Han Solo says in A New Hope—‘Either I’m going to kill her, or I’m beginning to like her.’”
Mom smiled. “Well, it sounds like she’s made quite an impression on you.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I said, shaking my head. “Lois doesn’t so much leave impressions so much as bulldoze paths.” I chuckled to myself. That was an apt description of her if I’d ever heard of one.
“Do you like her?”
“Of course I like her, she’s—” I stared at her, suddenly realizing how she’d meant it. “Mom—”
“I just asked a simple question,” she said. “What you do with Lois is your own business.”
Fortunately, I was spared a reply by the opening of the door and the entrance of my father. “Clark!” he exclaimed as he came over. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I just got here a few minutes ago,” I told him. It was good to see him again, too.
“You staying for dinner?” he asked, sounding hopeful.
I turned to Mom, who was giving me a pleading look. “I guess so,” I answered. I had a feeling Mom wouldn’t have given me a choice.
“Great—that means I’ll get home cooking,” Dad stated gladly.
“Not that he needs it,” Mom muttered.
I just rolled my eyes. “It’ll be the last time in a while. It’s great seeing you both again, but I just came here for the shard. The next time I come, it’ll be on a plane . . . . And I’m not sure when I’ll be able to afford that.”
Mom sighed, and I didn’t miss the look she exchanged with my father. “Clark . . . ”
“What?” I asked warily, knowing I wouldn’t like what she was about to say.
“When you told us you needed to be exposed every day to that stone in order to strip you of your powers, we didn’t like it, and we didn’t agree with your decision, but we chose to support you and help you however you needed us to. And as long as you think that meteor rock is the best option for you, we will continue to help you with it. We’ve helped you by giving you that first locket and chipping off bits of that horrid rock, and we’ll buy a hundred more lockets and chip at that stone a hundred more times if we have to. You may want to use that meteor rock to help make you ‘normal,’ but, Clark—normal for you isn’t normal.”
I sighed. “Mom, I could really hurt someone with my powers—”
“But just think of all the people you could save,” she countered.
I shook my head slowly. “Mom, if I used my powers to help people—even if I didn’t hurt them—it could jeopardize the ones I love . . . . ” I stood and walked over to the window to look outside at nothing in particular. “Thanks, Mom,” I said softly, “I know you just want to help. But I’ve made my choice.”
She gave a heavy sigh, and I felt a stab of guilt. Changing the subject, I turned around and asked how the farm was doing.
We began talking more, and it was almost like old times . . . . Except somehow the topic of conversation continuously veered toward Lois Lane and my work with her. I wasn’t sure if it was me or Mom who kept bringing her up, but somehow or another I managed to brief Mom on almost every moment I had spent with Lois. I omitted, however, what that jerk Claude had done to Lois, knowing it had been told to me in confidence, but I certainly had a few choice words to describe him in my head.
Dad eventually had to go outside to do some more farm work, so Mom and I just continued talking. She caught me up on what was happening with the farm and Smallville in the few days since I had been gone. Not much had been happening with the farm, but Smallville was abuzz with gossip—apparently, some wealthy man from San Francisco had just moved to the small community and was the talk of the town. She asked for a few more details about Metropolis, and I gave them to her. After some time had gone by, Mom suggested an early dinner, and I agreed.
She began getting out her cooking supplies, and I went up to my locket and felt its exterior with a thumb. The paint was dry, so I turned it around and put a white coat on the locket’s inside. When that was done, I put my brush down and approached my mother.
“Mom, I need a picture of Grandma for my locket. Do you have one I can use?”
“I think I have one,” she said, frowning as she tried to recall where it was. “You take over the cutting here, and I’ll go look for it.”
I began chopping up vegetables at human speed. However, I didn’t feel I had to be particularly careful with the knife since I was presently invulnerable to everything but the meteor rock, so I was finished when she returned with the photograph and a pair of scissors.
“Here you go, Clark,” she told me as she set the items on the counter. There was a sense of distaste in her voice, but I knew exactly what the problem was and didn’t inquire. It wasn’t the locket she hated; it was the shard I wanted inside it.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said softly. I picked up the scissors and cut out my grandmother’s face from the picture, making sure it was just the right size for the locket. Then I set it next to the necklace and helped my mother further in the kitchen. Her mood began to improve as I jested with her a little, and when the food was almost done, she told me to go fetch my father. I was able to find him without any problems.
Dinner was sort of awkwardly quiet. We talked some, but it felt as if there was much left unsaid. The atmosphere got more pleasant when it was time for dessert, and I could tell Dad was savoring every single bite of his apple pie.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said with a smile. “This was absolutely delicious. It definitely beats what I’ve been eating in Metropolis.”
“Any time you want a home-cooked meal, you just come and visit,” she said firmly. I refrained from arguing with her, though I knew I wouldn’t be returning any time soon.
Mom stood up. “I guess I’ll go put the shard in your locket, Clark. I’m sure it’s dry by now.” She grabbed the white box and the locket and left the room. She would try to get as far away from me in the house as she could so the shard wouldn’t affect me and prohibit my return flight to Metropolis. I knew she’d do that even without me requesting it.
When she came back, however, it wasn’t just with the locket. She also had the all-black outfit I had used several years ago for a few rare but necessary rescues. The outfit consisted of a pair of pants, a long-sleeved shirt, gloves, shoes, socks, and a ski hat, every item of which was solid black. I used to just pull the whole ski hat down over my face, not needing eye holes since I had x-ray vision. She set all the items on the table, and as I grabbed the locket and put it on over my head, I looked at her questioningly.
“I think you should wear these things when you fly back to Metropolis, Clark,” she said in a firm voice. “You can’t be up to full speed yet, and you should try not to be conspicuous.”
I considered what she had said as I stared at her. Though her face betrayed nothing, I suspected an ulterior motive. Still, I agreed anyway, “Okay, Mom.” There wasn’t much harm in taking the clothing with me.
After we were done eating our second helpings of pie, we went into the living room and talked for a little while longer. Finally, I went into my old bedroom and changed into the black outfit. Holding the ski hat and a black bag with a few personal items in it which I hadn’t been able to fit in my suitcase when leaving Kansas the last time, I approached them and said, “Mom, Dad . . . thanks for everything.”
“We love you, Clark,” Mom said softly.
Knowing she wanted to hug me but that I couldn’t let her, I turned away from them and replied, “I love you both, too.” And then I was out the door, pulling the ski hat down over my face and taking to the air with my bag clutched against my chest.
****
The Hotel Apollo wasn’t nearly as welcoming as my parents’ home, but I didn’t allow myself to dwell on that when I arrived. Instead, I sat my stuff down and turned dutifully to the locket around my neck, preparing to expose myself to the shard hidden within.
But I found myself hesitating.
The colonist launch was in the morning . . . . And there was a good chance that Lois was going to be on board. Did I want that?
No. No, I didn’t.
As much as she got on my nerves, there was a part of me which yearned to be with her. She brought out in me a feeling of life that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. When I was with her, I brooded less often. I would verbally spar rather than keep my comments to myself. I felt—well, I felt hopeful.
And that was one of the reasons I wasn’t going to stop her from going on the transport vehicle, I reflected bitterly. I needed some distance from her—I was starting to develop feelings that were very dangerous for someone who couldn’t touch others. It would hurt when she was gone—but it was for the best.
Still, even though I wouldn’t stop her from going up into space, I did want to be available in case anything happened. I had a bad feeling about the launch . . . . Dr. Baines just had to have someone working over her, and that someone was probably very unhappy.
Part of me thought it was Luthor. Who else could stand to gain from the destruction of the Messenger as much as he could? If he had been able to put his own space station in place, he would have made billions of dollars from the patents of vaccines developed . . . . And people would have lauded him as the savior of the space program.
But I had no proof of his wrongdoing . . . . And in truth, I didn’t want to think the man I had saved from bleeding to death in an alley was guilty. That would mean that Luthor was responsible for the deaths of Commander Laderman, Dr. Baines and her lackey, Dr. Platt . . . and possibly even others. And it would also mean that if I had not saved Luthor, then those people might still be alive.
An invisible hand squeezed my heart, and I pushed those depressing thoughts out of my mind and gazed down at the black gloves covering my hands. At least I had my all-black outfit now. I would be able to get close to the transport vehicle in the morning to make certain that the launch went smoothly.
So why did the thought of the transport’s launching into space make my heart ache?
I opened my palm and let the locket inside fall against my chest. For tonight only, it would remain closed.
