Jo and Jerry: Part 4
As he sat in the plane on his way to Metropolis International Airport Clark thought about the things he had done to get this far. It was a major accomplishment for someone from Smallville. No one from his home town had ever gone to an Ivy League School.
Clark knew that he wanted to go to Metropolis University since they had the best journalism program in the country. He figured that he would love it there, because he enjoyed hard work and being challenged. He was not as sure about getting accepted to either the school or getting a scholarship. He would love to get an academic scholarship, but Met U was very selective with those. He did have the offer of an athletic scholarship from Met U, conditioned on actually being admitted. He thought it was an odd way to do things. He wished he had applied to Met U more than just two months ago, but with a January application deadline, and having been fairly certain he would go to Kansas State up until not long before then, it was not too bad. Thus, Clark still was not sure this was more than a short trip to the big city which might not result in anything major. Getting accepted to Met U was just another obstacle that he had to work to overcome. However, like the previous obstacles if he put effort into the issue, things would probably work out for the best.
Clark was used to facing issues that no one else had to. While many people might claim their lives were unique, and no two lives really were the same, Clark’s life was greatly different from anyone else’s. It was varied in ways that made everyone else seem almost the same. Well, he had to admit he could not be totally sure of that. He and his parents worked very hard to conceal his uniqueness, so there might be other people out there like him, covering up similar attributes, but he doubted it.
To begin with, these were his adoptive parents. The story that his parents had told everyone was that he was the child of his mother’s cousin Flossie who had gone off to California, and had a child there. Flossie and her half-Japanese husband had died about the time Clark had shown up, so no one in Smallville knew that story was false. The truth was that Clark’s parents had found him in a spaceship. He had absolutely no clue as to who his real parents were, and sometimes wondered if he had any parents. Maybe he was some crazy scientist’s experiment. Part of him was all for blaming his condition on the Soviet’s. Another part wanted to blame it on some rogue agents at the NIA. Mostly though, he thought that he was born on some other planet. This was in large part because he could not figure out how humans could have made someone like him from genetic experiments alone. Anyway, he just sort of felt this was the truth, without having any evidence for it.
Clark wondered why his biological parents had sent him into outer space. Although maybe he had been born aboard some star ship, and never been on a planet before landing on Earth. He wished his biological parents had included some explanation with the ship he came in. Even if they had included a reason it was most likely to be in a language he knew nothing about. Actually, there might have been a message. He didn’t know if such existed or not.
Mainly, Clark’s lack of knowledge came from the fact that his parents knew hardly anything about the ship in which he had arrived. His father had buried the ship just after they found him. When Clark was ten and just starting to develop his special abilities, they had gone to dig it up. The ship was no longer there. His parents wondered if the people who had come around just after his arrival claiming to be air force officers looking for a downed airplane, had anything to do with the ship vanishing. It added to his parents fear that if his uniqueness was revealed there would be negative consequences.
The special abilities Clark possessed had created challenges in his life. Without whatever guidance he and his folks might have found from items or writings on the ship, they had had to come up with their own solutions.
While his powers generally could be seen as pluses, they had come with a negative side as well. Take for example his sight abilities. The capacity to see fine detail was a bit hard when it first came on and he would just see a small part of his text book, too small to even read the words. That had only happened a few times and he had quickly discovered how to control that skill.
The bigger problem was what he and his parents had dubbed “x-ray vision”; Although, in reality it involved complex multi-spectral sight that did not quite conform to the current understanding of the physics of light. If he had just true x-ray vision, it would not have been nearly as bad. Accidentally seeing someone as just teeth and bones was disturbing, but not the worst he had experienced. It was when it had kicked in as him being able to see through walls and clothes, but still in full color, that he saw really disturbing things. One might not think they were all that bad, especially for a pre-teen boy, but Clark did not want to see too much of anyone. He really wanted to respect their privacy. Catching Mrs. Charnow in her wrinkly skin without any clothes on was a nightmare Clark did not want to repeat. After that incident he had spent a weekend with his parents trying to figure out a solution. He had eventually learned that if he wore leaded glasses that it would prevent the accidental disappearance of people’s clothes. He still worked on trying to make it so he could turn off this ability on his own without the glasses. Although he wore them virtually all the time, he still thought it was good to have as much control over his body as possible.
The glasses did not prevent him from using all his special vision abilities. With the glasses on he could still burn things, as he had accidentally done one morning staring at his toast. The worst incident along these lines had been burning down the west barn, but that had been before he had began wearing the glasses. He felt horrible about that. No matter how many times his mom reassured him it had been an accident and neither she nor his dad blamed him for it, he still wished he could have avoided doing it.
Another skill Clark had, which some might think was a blessing, was having lots of strength. By `lots of strength' he meant the ability to lift cars over his head. He could think of lots of ways it could help, and, at times, it did. In fact, it meant that Clark could do his farm chores faster. Without that extra strength he might never have had the chance to work on the staff of the Smallville Post. Carrying all those bales of hay was easy for him, even if he hauled all of them at once, and he could do it quite fast. There was a downside to Clark’s strength, though. It meant that Clark could not get even a little angry without causing a lot of damage. He had replaced his bedroom door three times one summer after closing it with too much force. His parents had made him cut down a tree and process it into wood as part of the punishment for his tacking out his anger on the house.
Being able to freeze things with his breath was also good, in theory. For example, if he had to put out a fire. Then again, the only fires Clark had ever seen in Smallville, other than the ones he had accidentally started with his eyes, were intentionally set brush fires. Putting these out would get him in trouble. Actually, reacting to them at all would get you called a city slicker. A fire had burnt down one of Wayne Irig’s back sheds. Unfortunately, Clark had not heard of it until two days afterward. Clark had discovered that he had freeze breath during Easter Dinner when he froze his soup while trying to cool it down by blowing on it. He had also destroyed the piece of his mother’s best china, which the soup had been in. It was a good thing his mom loved him, Clark thought ruefully, otherwise he would have been screamed at many times for being so destructive.
The newest skill Clark had discovered was speed. Well, he had been fast for a while, but this was beyond fast. He could break the sound barrier while running. This was actually Clark’s favorite ability, although the specific reasons why were complex. They allowed him to run away from Smallville, which he often wanted to do.
The reason why he liked to run away could be traced back to events that started when he was in 7th grade. Lana Lang had decided that she liked Clark, and that everyone should know and agree that he was hers. She had told everyone at school they were going steady, even though her father had told her she couldn’t date anyone until she was 16. She was passably `pretty'. It didn’t take him long to discover that Lana’s type of ‘pretty” was only skin deep. She had no real interest in writing about the world around them, and the writing she did was overly flowery and full of praising herself and her friends while ignoring everyone else. She also seemed to valued material possessions, wealth, and power too much.
It had been when they were in 10th grade, after their second official date, both their parents had placed limits on what they could do that approached dating before then, that Clark had come to this view, although he had been thinking along these lines for a while. It was a result of her insisting they go to Antonelli’s Italian Restaurant and not Mazie’s Dinner. Clark liked both places, even though Lana preferred the food at Mazie’s, she wanted to go to Antonelli’s because it was more pricier and upscale. After he realized how obsessed with her own importance she was, Clark had tried to tell Lana that he didn’t want to date her any more. She didn't listen and insisted that he would change his mind.
The next year, when he got a part-time job working at the paper, Lana had decided the way to return to Clark’s good graces was to get a job there as well. She was only able to do so because her Dad was on the Board-of-Directors of the paper and constantly nagged Mr. Harris about giving her a job. Although Mr. Harris thought Lana had very limited talent or potential to grow as a reporter, he eventually gave up and hired her a job to quiet her father. Clark only knew this because he was able to hear Mr. Harris's grumbling through the office door. Clark's enhanced hearing was a mixed blessing as well. It at times allowed him to evade Lana more effectively, but it also at times, especially when it first started to develop, lead to sensory overload. He was glad that his family lived on the very edge of Smallville. Another one of his more powerful than normal senses, smell, seemed to only be a negative. He had yet to see any situation where being able to smell at further distances and with better accuracy than others was helpful.
The only person Clark had ever thought about telling about his special abilities was Lana, and that had been back when he was 13. He was just so impressed that the most popular girl in the school liked him that he did not think about whether he really liked her at all. Now he was glad he had not said anything. Clark just knew if he told Lana about his special abilities, she would want to use him for wealth, gain, and glory. He didn’t know how best to use these powers, but he knew they should not be used for mere personal gain.
Since Lana was the daughter of the richest and most powerful man in town, no one seemed willing to hint at even questioning her claim that Clark was her man. No one, but his folks, listened when Clark protested that he was no longer Lana’s boyfriend. Even when he proactively asked other girls out, they would say “No, I don’t want to offend Lana.”
His editor's daughter, Rachel, had once said, “Well, Clark, there is a girl that you have not thought to ask out yet.” One time when he was complaining about everyone submitting to Lana and the rest of the over-bearing Lang family, as he was writing an article on the Smallville Library extending its hours, while she was doing her math homework. He still could not figure out who Rachel could have been talking about.
In his desperation and loneliness, Clark had stated to imagine the perfect girl for him. A girl who was smart, bold, intelligent, beautiful, loving, and kind. A girl who was a great reporter, and not just a writer of empty lines like Lana. A girl who would rush towards adventure and love it, as opposed to Lana who complained about having to actually sit through the football games before writing her reports on them. Well, Lana mainly complained about having to watch Clark-free parts of football games, as well as Clark-free parts of basketball games, but to Clark it sounded like complaining about having to do her job. The girl that he imagined cared about truth, justice, and the American Way, not money, power, and personal prestige. Many a night Clark had gone to sleep thinking of the interesting conversations he could have with his dream girl. In fact, to a large extent, she seemed to fill the idea of a writing partner and best friend more than anything else. Oh, at times, his mind might wander to holding her hand, but then he would tell get distracted by the plan to uncover some crime she was talking about, and how they would then go chasing after some bad guys, write up the story, and win a Kerth Award or maybe even the Merriweather.
Along with getting the Smallville Post Clark’s parents took the Daily Planet. He would occasionally while reading it imagine what it would be like to work in a big city newsroom. Sometimes, he even went so far as to consider what it would be like if he wrote with a given writer. Clark wrote up a list of the various contributors and thought about their strengths and weaknesses. He was thorough about this. Not only did he track Norcross and Judd, who seemed to be the most prolific reporters in the area of front-page headlines. Clark also tracked the lowly writer of the obituary. He knew this bordered on an obsession, but with his eidetic memory and super-speed it was fairly easy. This last was slightly frustrating because two different obituary writers used the initials "C. G." He could tell that because one was male and the other was female; although, that had come out in mentioning being fellow alumni of specific colleges with the subjects of the obituaries. Since those were also the only obituaries by C.G., Clark wondered if maybe these were Catherine Grant and Carson Galotti dabbling in obituary writing. Since neither of those writers had styles that particularly impressed him, Clark did not expend much energy on the issue.
Clark had noticed about four obituaries signed “L.J.L.” He was impressed with her writing style and wished it would show up somewhere besides obituaries. He was glad to see she had gone above and beyond what many would think would be required in writing an obituary, spending a whole paragraph pointing out the D.A. office’s negligence in not bringing charges against Herman Snowville’s killer. Then, one day, he came upon a report about a dog show by Lois Lane. It was the best report of a dog show he had ever read; although, since he had only read five that was not saying much. He thought he could see a similar style to L.J.L., and wondered if he now had a name to go with the initials. A few days later, Lois Lane was mentioned as giving special contributions to an article by Valdez, but on reading it, Clark decided that Lane’s voice had been obscured from the article.
At the end of June, Clark came across a major article by Lane. As he read through this insightful exposure of the nature of sororities, at least those at Metropolis University of Technology, often called MUT, Clark fell in love with this writer’s style. This was excellent writing, crisp, clear, and to the point, but also with plenty of description. She made just enough allusions to outside issues to make her writing interesting, without losing most readers. Clark imagined how exciting it must have been to go through the sororities, working to find out this information and avoid being detected. He would have loved it. Well, something like it, maybe investigating fraternities as his investigating sororities this way would not have worked.
The next day, Clark took the article to his editor at the Smallville Post, Mr. Harris and asked him what he thought. Admitting he had been impressed, Mr. Harris asked Clark if Lane had done similar articles in the Daily Planet. Mr. Harris said he had not seen any. Since his boss knew that Clark made a point to note all Daily Planet writers, Mr. Harris wondered if maybe Clark had seen something Mr. Harris had missed. When Clark had said this was the first major article there by Lane, Mr. Harris had speculated that she might have come from a lesser known paper recently.
Clark wondered how that might fit in with what seemed such a marginal task as obituary writing. Would Perry White make someone who was a major writer elsewhere start with obituaries and dog shows? Probably not if they were coming from the Gotham Gazette, but probably if they were coming from a much smaller paper.
That very evening after work, Clark had started searching through all the newspapers on file at the Smallville Library trying to find other articles by Lane. When that failed, he had found a way to take advantage of his speed in his search for more articles by his favorite writer. By running at about four hundred miles-per-hour, Clark could get to the library at Wichita State University in about 10 minutes. At that speed, he went by as a blur that people could not make out, and seemed to just assume he was an optical allusion. Actually, since it was only about 50 miles to Wichita State it only took him a whole 15 minutes because he had to slow down once he got onto Wichita State property; Since there were far too many pedestrians there to keep up his high speed. If only he could move at high speeds where there were not any people, maybe by flying, but he knew that thought was ridiculous.
He hadn't found any articles by Lois Lane in any other paper. He had even looked through every college and university paper he could get copies of, and none of them had any articles by Lois Lane. He had come across a few signed “L.J.L.” in the University of Virginia paper, but they didn’t seem to have the same form, and from reading the paper more carefully Clark came to suspect they were by Larry Jacob Lee who had also done some articles under his full name.
Since he was already on the campus of Wichita State, Clark had gone and talked with some of the journalism faculty. He was not much impressed with their dedication to teaching and anyway Wichita State had a pretty weak college paper, so he decided not to go there as a student.
Since his search for Lois Lane was not producing results, Clark had transferred most of his research efforts into a general attempt to learn more of journalism. His favorite way to do this was to read the Wichita State copy of the Journal of Journalism.
Clark had kept following Lois Lane’s stories through the summer. There were two more obituaries by “L.J.L”, plus she had gotten mentioned as giving ‘special contributions’ to a Norcross and Judd article, and had reported on a boxing match. Then, in August, she had an exceptional three-parts series on the Metropolis Police and their use of under-aged informants. It was so ground breaking that it caused Perry White himself to write an editorial calling for a new civilian review board to oversee the police department in this matter. There was also an op-ed by District Attorney Clemmons and Police Commissioner Patrick O’Bannon trying to argue that there were major flaws with Lane’s article. Clark had to accept that in one case they did rightly point out where she had used a source that might lack credibility without any collaboration, but their other points hadn’t seem valid, and even that one appeared more to be a desperate attempt to attack Lane’s work than a reasoned criticism.
Clark had expected that article to be the platform from which Lane’s career would launch to where she would regularly produce major articles. However, the next few weeks only saw Lois produce a dog show article, an obituary, and three 'special contributions'. This confused Clark a lot. Why was this writer who was so clearly talented kept from developing her full potential?
That was how things stood until early in October, 1983, not much more than a month after the police investigation articles were published and just over a month before now. At that point, Clark came upon information that changed his understanding of Lois Lane and her career forever. She moved from being the writer he most wanted to emulate, to being the writer he most wanted to meet. He now felt a special connection to her, because she was like him in a way few were, even if she was doing much better at the things that made them similar.
This happened on a Saturday morning as Clark was reading, at the Wichita State library, in the Journal of Journalism, a set of articles about the rule that Kerth winners must be at least 23 when the article for which they won the award was published. The first article was by the editor of the Gotham Gazette who argued that in many ways the Kerth Awards, like the Pulitzer and the Merriweather, and other top journalism awards, were not given out just for one specific article or set of articles, but for the sum total of the journalist's work. That did not make sense to Clark, since the awards seemed fairly clear that they were only for work in the last year and he knew that a few people had won a Kerth twice.
The next article was by Nathan Manheim, Metropolis University’s fiery advisor to the Met U Scroll, and the man who had led the fight against renaming the Mary Hatch Bailey School of Humanities, Library Science and Journalism to the Cecilia Jane Dalton Luthor School. Oh, those editorials were fun; Manheim had stirred passions and not only Clark’s. Although, Clark had been tempted to run all the way to Metropolis to watch the protests against the name change, but in the end he decided there would probably be too many people there for him to arrive without being noticed. Anyway, Mr. Lang was going to be a guest at the formal luncheon with Mr. Luthor which the protest would be held around, and Clark did not feel like having to explain to Mr. Lang how he had gotten to Metropolis. Reading the letters to the editor in the Daily Planet showed Clark that many others had been moved by Manheim’s writing on the name change issue as much as he had.
In this article in the Journal of Journalism, Manheim had argued that the Kerth Awards were in fact given for specific articles, and that if the best article was turned out by a 20-year-old there was no journalistic reason to ban that person from winning the award. Manheim argued the real fear of the Kerth committee was that such a person would expose their failure to abide by underage drinking laws at the banquet. Manheim had then pointed out that this was in actuality the real motivation, since Ms. Harriet Simmons, who was 20 at the time, had done exactly that back at the 1958 banquet, although she had come as the date of that year’s winner, 22-year-old Marcus Standish. Which was why the threshold for winners had been set at 23, the organizers figured they would be less likely to face a problem like Standish and Simmons.
At the end of Manheim’s article he had included a short explanation of why this subject was being brought up. He claimed that Ramon Flores of the Kerth Committee had made a motion to rescind the age restriction, but it had been tabled without any action. According to Manheim, Flores had done this because in Flores’ view, Miss Lois Lane, the student editor of the Metropolis High School Roarer, and a part-time intern at the Daily Planet should win the Kerth for her exposé on Sororities. The first thought that crossed Clark’s mind was it was odd that they brought up the Sororities article and not the police series, but then Clark remembered that the Kerth Committee operated on a year that started on August 1st, so only the Sororities article would fall into the most recent Kerth period.
A moment later, what the article had actually said about Lois had hit him. She was still a high school student. She was a high school student, like him, and worked part time for a professional newspaper, also like him. However, she was also unlike him because she was working at arguably the top paper in the country, not a minor paper in a third-tier city.
Just finding someone so much like him made Clark want to jump for joy. He started doing that; although, he refrained from making noise, since this was a library. What added more to his joy was that she was a writer that he could admire. That truly was a wonderful day.
Once Clark had stopped jumping for joy about this news, he began to try to figure out how he could meet Lois. The first idea that crossed Clark’s mind was to just run to Metropolis, find Metropolis High School, which could not be that hard, and meet up with Lois Lane. Clark had figured he had time to do at least the finding Metropolis High School before the football game against the Davis Hollow Hogbacks later that Saturday. Looking back he had been acting far too rash at that moment.
After he got out of the library, Clark had started to run towards Metropolis at the highest speeds he had ever gone. Soon, he realized that if he took off his glasses he could use long-distance vision to plot out his course so he would not hit anyone at all. He reached a speed of over two-thousand miles per hour, but decided to slow down when he came towards a high school in Metropolis. It was however Ralph Waldo Emerson High School. This trip had still taken 30-minutes, Clark had to be back for the game against Davis Hollow in an hour and a half, and he knew seeking high school by high school would just take too long. Thinking about it, with Metropolis 300 times the size of Smallville, he might have to hunt down 299 more high schools to find the one named Metropolis High School. Even if the average high school in Metropolis had 3,000 students, which would be roughly twice the size of Smallville High School’s enrollment, that would still be about 150 high schools in Metropolis. Either way as Clark thought about it more, the shocking thing was that a school was named Metropolis High School as if it were the one and only high school in Metropolis. He realized that finding Metropolis High School would be best done with a map, specifically the detailed ones he would occasionally get from AAA.
Clark didn’t manage to get a map before the game. Partly he ran out of time, and partly that would mean going to the AAA office run by Mr. Stanfield, and Mr. Stanfield was such a big Smallville football fan he would close down early on game Saturdays. Trying to figure out how to go and meet Lois Lane excited Clark more than anything had since he learned he could run fast. The prospect of meeting the writer who he most looked up to, at least of those who might even vaguely be thought his peers, was making it difficult to concentrate on what was happening in the football game. He only realized this, when his coached yelled at him for not acting fast enough and getting sacked. This was not good. The Smallville Spartans shouldn’t be doing this poorly in a game against their much smaller rivals from the more rural western portion of the county, the Davis Hollow Hogbacks.
Clark had decided to compensate for his most recent failure by focusing on getting this next pass off with precision. In his excitement to get it right, and return to thinking about how to go meet Lois, Clark forgot to rein in his special abilities. Clark saw Randy Diggers down at the other end of the field. The Spartans had been pushed back to the 8 yard line by the sack, and Diggers had been being his normal crazy self and was actually standing in the end-zone, waving that he was free. There was no defender within 20 yards of him, because who expected anyone to make a successful 92-yard pass? Clark had decided passing the ball to Diggers was his best option, so he shot it off. It soared through the air. As a shocked Diggers caught the ball, Clark had looked over to see that his parents were giving him stern looks. Oops, maybe he should not have done that.
Clark had been able to convince his parents that it had not been a deliberate show off of his special abilities, but his father had still given him a long, firm lecture on the need to avoid showing himself. His father didn’t want government agents to come dissect him like a frog. Clark had decided to avoid asking how the government agents would find a way to cut him up. His parents had also made Clark promise to not use his special powers at all, in any way, anywhere, for the next two weeks.
Dejected, Clark realized that this meant that he had have to put off his meeting with Lois. After some thought, he had decided it was probably a good delay, since it would give him a chance to learn more about Metropolis High School and anything else that might help him better understand where Lois was coming from. He had been forced to do continue his studies in the Smallville Community College Library and the Smallville Public Library as opposed to going all the way to Wichita State. His parents were also not letting him use the truck at all, they were so displeased with him.
During this time, he learned that Metropolis High School was the oldest public high school in Metropolis, originally started in 1832. Prior to that, the city had only had private academies offering high school level education. In 1909, it had begun a limited enrollment policy so that only students who scored highly on the admissions test, had good grades, wrote excellent application essays, and came well recommended by their junior high principal got in. Well, at least, that was the way it worked now. It had been different when selective admissions first started in 1909, then they had more depended on being part of the right class. Clark discovered that an estimated sixty percent of Metropolis High’s student body had at least one parent who was a Met U faculty member. This caused Clark to wonder if either of Lois’s parents was on the Met U faculty.
Giving in, and out of sight of his folks, Clark had used a little super-speed to go through the faculty listings in the Metropolis University Catalogue that he had ordered. Considering that Met U had over 7,000 faculty members and the catalogue listed every single one, along with descriptions of all courses and the requirements of all majors, it was a very massive book. From this he learned that there were four Lane’s on the Met U faculty. One in the English department, one in the Sport Medicine program in the Medical School, and two who were the directors of the ballroom dance program in the School of Fine Arts. Clark guessed the last two were married to each other, and of the other two, the one in medicine was male and the one in English was female. So one or both of Lois’s parents might be on the faculty at Met U. Clark really had no way of knowing. He had felt bad about breaking his promise to his parents, and so had made extra sure to not use any of his special speed abilities as he did more research.
Over the coming weeks, Clark had discovered that Eliza Lane of the English Department had written several novels as well as scholarly articles, and was 75 and unmarried. So, she was not likely to be Lois’s mom. He eventually also learned that the medical doctor, Sam Lane, had a building named after him on Met U campus. The article from five-years ago in the Daily Planet, mentioned that Sam and his wife, whose maiden name was Ellen Bagdi, were the parents of two daughters. The article failed to mention the names of ages of the Lane daughters. Maybe that was Lois’s Dad, but there was no way to know for sure.
Clark was actually a little glad his parents had insisted he avoid all uses of his special abilities. Since that high school record-breaking pass, Clark had seen a major increase in public attention and not just from people in Smallville. Showing up at Wichita State at odd times might have caused unwanted questions. With reporters wandering out to the Kent home, lifting up the tractor while his father worked underneath it, as he did from time to time, might have also been noticed. So, when the two weeks were up, and Clark was finally ready to use the map he had bought from Stanfield, he needed to make sure he did not draw any attention to his trip.
The need for timing the trip … well, plus the need for spending lots of time working on his article on Smallville politics, and various school commitments, both to football, as well as the earliest basketball practices and the debate team, had meant that Clark had not actually figured out a time to go to Metropolis until just last Saturday. If he had a school newspaper to work on, he might not have found any time at all. Smallville High did not have a school paper. They did have a literary magazine, which Clark contributed to, but the next article was not due until after Thanksgiving. Although he had started it, he had not spent much time on it, and was putting off the intense work on the article until later.
Earlier in November, Clark had been contacted by Met U with an offer to come tour as a guest of their football team. Considering that Lois was in Metropolis, he had jumped at the offer and accepted immediately. Anyway, the journalism program there was the best in the country. This had been true before the arrival of Manheim, and from Clark's perspective was even more true now. However, just because Lois was in Metropolis did not mean he would ever see her, unless he arranged for that before. So, he had determined to take a trip to make his initial meeting with her before that.
Clark’s dad had tried to convince him that seeing Lois a few days early was not worth the risk of getting caught on such a long-range trip. Clark pointed out that seeing Lois during his time touring Met U was an unlikely prospect and so if he wanted to see her he needed to do it before. He did promise his dad to not rush into a meeting with Lois unless there was no one else there. At this point, his mom had joined the conversation.
“Clark,” she had asked. “What do you think of Lois as a woman?”
“What do you mean?” Clark had responded, slightly confused as to why his mom was asking this.
“Do you have any romantic intentions with regard to Lois?” She probed further.
“Don’t be silly, Mom,” he had said. “She is a great writer. I want to meet her to learn from her, and to connect with her on an intellectual level. Romance is the furthest thing from my mind.”
His parents had agreed to him going, but warned him to try to be seen by as few people as possible.
Clark had to admit that after his mom asked that, he had thought a little about whether there might be some romantic possibility with Lois. Although since he had never seen Lois, it was a bit hard to have romantic feelings towards her. He wanted to say he was not shallow, but for all he knew she was the physically most ugly person on the planet. He doubted it, and had started to imagine what she did look like, and it was a very nice image, but he had no way to know if it connected with reality.
As he ran to Metropolis, Clark had thought over Lois’s articles since he had learned she was a high school student. She only had four “contributions by” articles in the Daily Planet since he had read that article in the Journal of Journalism, and only one of them had been a front page article helping Norcross and Judd.
When he had arrived at Metropolis High School Clark he found the building was open, probably due to ten or so extra-curricular activities going on there. He to find his way to the room where the Roarer was headquartered, but since the door was locked, stood a bit down the hall in the shadows and wondered what to do next.
After waiting there a few minutes, he had heard two approaching females mention things that indicated they were connected to the newspaper. He moved into a doorway so they could not see him, seeking to keep his word to his parents that he would avoid being seen by more people than necessary.
As the two women came to the door, one spoke to the other. “What do you think Lois, can my father pull off a strong new football team at Met U this coming year? Is Clark Kent going to be as helpful to the team as some claim?”
“Maggie,” the woman who was evidently Lois had responded, “I really don’t care. All I can say is that Clark Kent is likely to be just as egotistical and self-centered as the last quarterback I dealt with. I just hope he gets exposed as a liar before it breaks someone’s heart.”
Clark had not heard any more of the conversation after that, he was too crushed to listen any more. It sounded like Lois would hate him just for being a quarterback. She seemed to have found him wanting without ever meeting him. He had waited until the door closed behind Maggie and Lois on their trip into the Roarer office, and then ran home.
Initially, Clark told his parents he was quitting football. Once he had explained why, his mom had said this did make it seem that he had a romantic attachment to Lois. His dad had cautioned him against being so rash.
“Son,” Jonathan had said, “It sounds like Lois was hurt by some very specific incident. You have no way of knowing what or when it was, or how long ago it was. Her dislike of football players may only be temporary. Don’t build your life on trying to please someone you don’t understand.”
Clark knew this sounded like good advice, but he was still convinced his parents did not really understand how much of a connection he felt to Lois. He wanted to connect with her so much, he had been half tempted to break into the Roarer office just to read more of her articles. It would have been a stupid idea, but it had crossed his mind. His parents did not understand what Lois meant to him, and since he could not exactly express it in words, or be exactly sure what that was, he had no way to help them understand better.
Clark was still hurt by what Lois had said. However since his desire to go to Met U and learn to be an excellent journalist there pre-dated his having ever heard of Lois Lane, he decided to still make the trip. Hence, he was now on a plane where the pilot had just announced their final descent into Metropolis International Airport.
After getting his luggage, Clark saw a woman wearing a suit in the colors of Metropolis University. The jacket and short skirt were the light green of the school and the blouse the white. His heart skipped a beat as he looked at her. The suit was hanging open, in a way that showed how slender she was, her waist covered only by her tight blouse. He half wondered if she was a cheer leader, she just looked so good in every way. The idea was somewhat logical, it would maybe make sense to use them in recruiting football players.
However, he did not care what she was. All he knew was she was the women he would love for the rest of his life. Although, another part of him was saying, “What about Lois?”
The main part of his brain wanted to respond “Lois who?”
Her dark hair fell freely to her shoulders. Part of him wished he could run his fingers through her hair. It looked so soft and inviting, and he could smell a lavender shampoo on it. Her eyes were the color of chocolate, and seemed to just draw him in. He was in love for the first time in his life. Totally smitten by this girl he knew nothing about.
She came towards him and seemed to have him in her sights. He just hoped his green and white tie was the right choice for the occasion. It was the most restrained tie he had, and he just wanted this woman to approve of it. He wanted her to approve of everything about him, just as he did of everything about her.
The lady was continuing to move toward him, allowing him to smell even more of her inviting perfume. For the first time ever he was glad his sense of smell was better than that of anyone else he had ever met. From her continued approach and making eye contact with him he was pretty sure that this was probably the university’s agent. If so, Met U had skyrocketed to the top of the short list of colleges he was considering. Who was he kidding, Met U was now the only college he was considering at all.
“I’m Jo,” said the women who was coming towards him.
***
End of Part 4
