"He’s kind of quiet,” the man said. He was heavyset, with a day’s growth of beard. He looked at Clark suspiciously. “What’s wrong with him?”
His wife was looking quickly through the file. “There isn’t anything wrong with him, Earl- just a set of dead parents.”
“That’ll be the first- all they ever send us is a bunch of cripples or sick kids,” the man’s voice was gruff.
His wife looked up quickly at the agent. “They’re all perfect little angels. It just gets a little hard to deal little Jamal’s asthma and Estevan’s bad leg. The other three can be a handful.”
The agent smiled at her impersonally. “We wouldn’t ask you to take another one, but it’s late.”
This wasn’t the agent from Smallville; this was the other one. Clark knew enough to be able to interpret the meaning behind his words; he was tired and ready to go home and wanted to unload Clark.
The woman glanced up from the file. “You didn’t bring any clothes?”
They’d brought nothing with him but the clothes on his back. He didn’t even have a picture of his parents to remember them by.
The agent shrugged.
“This is the fourth time,” the woman complained. “I can understand if you’re trying to get them away from their crackhead parents, but you could have packed a bag!”
The agent didn’t seem particularly contrite.
“Fine,” the woman said. “We’ll just have to make do.”
She signed the paperwork and handed it back to the agent.
A moment later he was out the door, and Clark was alone in a house of strangers.
***************
“I’ll help you turn the mattress,” the woman said. “The last boy was a bed wetter.”
She didn’t have to tell him; Clark could smell it himself. The mattress was stained, but he doubted the smell would have been noticeable to a normal nose; the woman had at least tried to cover it in cleanser.
Two other boys lay quietly in their beds; although they pretended to be asleep, Clark could hear their hearts racing.
“This will have to do,” the woman said. “We’ve got some clothes left by other kids; maybe some of it will fit.”
Clark nodded quietly, wondering where the other kids had all gone to. Maybe they’d ended up in government labs or someplace worse.
Kids in Smallville just knew that once you went to Wichita, you didn’t come back.
The woman shut the light off and the room was plunged into darkness.
The room was quiet for several long minutes. Clark stared at the ceiling. He was exhausted, but somehow sleep eluded him.
“Hey,” he heard a voice from the darkness. “New kid.”
Clark was quiet. Maybe they’d think he’d already gone to sleep. It was hard enough to deal with the enormity of the changes in his life without dealing with all the questions.
They were going to ask what had happened to his parents and he didn’t want to talk abo0ut it.
The others were silent for a long moment and then the same voice said, “Guess you think you’re too good for us.”
Clark stared at the ceiling and didn’t speak. It wasn’t that he was too good for them; it was that he didn’t care what they had to say.
His world was collapsing around him. His parents were dead, and other than Aunt Opal, there was nobody left to even care.
It hadn’t taken the others long to stop trying to make friends with him; while they’d all been through similar things, none of them were old enough to have adult understanding and empathy.
What was worse, they’d all had brothers and sisters while Clark had been an only child.
The casual bullying and bickering that was normal to them was outside Clark’s realm of experience. T
This was in addition to the differences in social class and in life experience. Clark had never realized how sheltered his life had been, how good his parents had been to him.
These children had parents who had problems with drugs and alcohol. Three of them took Ritalin during the day, but at night were constantly moving in the evenings. They ran and yelled, and this only enraged the man, who would yell angrily, but would rarely get up from his chair.
No one was actively abusive, and Clark could tell that the woman actually wanted to help, but there were too many children and not enough room.
His parents’ farm had been quiet, isolated and peaceful. He couldn’t remember either of his parents ever raising their voice unless it involved calling them in for dinner.
Clark found himself isolating further and further, his mind going over and over the night his world had been destroyed.
He should have run faster. He should have been stronger.
If he’d only realized what was happening faster, had reacted faster; if he’d taken the shortcut on the way to the road.
He fantasized about having been strong enough to get in front of the truck and stop it, to have pulled his parents car out of the way. He imagined flying to the hospital with his parents; the doctors telling him that he’d gotten them help in time.
He imagined healing them with his hands.
He wasn’t a human being and he was discovering that he could do things no human being could do.
Why not that?
Maybe he’d learn how to turn back time; make the world spin backward on its axis. Maybe he’d be able to do that one day. In any other child this would just be a fantasy, but Clark wasn’t entirely certain he might not be able to do at least some of the things one day.
Unfortunately, the more time he spent in his head, the more he retreated from the rest of the world. All his energies were going to creating imaginary scenarios in his head, leaving nothing for anyone else.
“I think he might have autism,” the woman was saying.
Clark lay quietly in bed. The others had finally fallen asleep, even the three hyperactive boys, although they’d required medication.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said absently.
Clark could almost imagine that he was seeing through the wall, watching the man stare at the television and the woman sitting heavily on the couch, exhausted. If Clark had had any empathy left, he’d have sympathized. The three hyperactive boys were enough to exhaust anyone on their own, even without having to haul Estevan around. Jamal had had another asthma attack.
“He doesn’t talk to anybody,” the woman said.
“You watch too much Oprah,” the man said. “That boy will be fine. I wouldn’t mind trading the rest of them in for more like him.”
A bunch of children who were neither seen nor heard. It sounded like heaven to Clark.
He sighed and rolled over, not noticing the blackening scorch mark on the wall where he had been looking.
