by Gwenda Bond
Right. A baseball king. The Monarchs. I finally got it.
Were my jeans and boots too regular? Should I be dressing up? But this was how I usually dressed—except for the costume shirt.
My phone vibrated across the porcelain with a new message in our chat app. I picked it up and swiped to see what it said.
SmallvilleGuy: Have you left yet? We’re on our way to the park.
I sighed. No, I haven’t left yet, I’m staring at myself in the mirror like a big nervous wuss. Obviously, I couldn’t type the truth back.
SkepticGirl1: On my way out the door. See you soon.
I hesitated, took a breath that did nothing to calm my nerves, and sent one more text.
SkepticGirl1: How will I recognize you?
There was the immediate flare of the little dots that meant he was responding, and I clutched the phone waiting to see what he’d say.
SmallvilleGuy: Don’t worry—I’ll find you.
SmallvilleGuy: And stop freaking out.
SmallvilleGuy: I can’t wait to see you.
I laughed and shook my head. This was comfortable, talking this way, pixels on a screen. Where he couldn’t behold my sheer dorky nervousness. It was cowardly to fear change, to fear making this real, but… I had to admit to myself that I was afraid of just that.
A little.
A lot.
He was important to me.
What if meeting in real life screwed us up?
It hadn’t happened yet, though, and so I shot back a flip response.
SkepticGirl1: YOU’RE probably freaking out.
I waited to see if he’d respond to that. He did.
SmallvilleGuy: A little, tbh. Let’s get this part over with.
I smiled at the phone again, then gave my hair a nervous swipe. I’d had bangs cut since I’d posted a picture online. What if I looked cuter before?
Lois Lane, stop it, you know he doesn’t care if you have bangs or not.
I put on my leather jacket and zipped it up, so as to avoid questions about my newfound sportswear love.
“Break a leg,” I told my reflection. And try not to get your heart broken. “Stupid heart.”
And then I headed out to meet my more-than-best-friend.
*
There were a lot of baseball fans in Metropolis. It was a big city and there were a lot of everything fans in Metropolis, so this should have been obvious to me. And yet, I was overwhelmed by the throng of people gathered and milling around outside the stadium. The game was still a good half hour from starting, but SmallvilleGuy had suggested we arrive early to give us time to find each other and get settled into our seats.
I tried not to seem like I was looking for someone, but I failed miserably. Several people turned away after I studied their section of the crowd too hard. I should have asked for a physical description. Who was I even trying to find—an alien with green skin and glasses, dressed in a Go Monarchs costume?
The idea of his avatar appearing in this crowd made me smile.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
SmallvilleGuy: Look to your right.
My pulse sped up, and I tried to not appear like a full-blown madwoman as I slipped it back into my pocket and turned…
And completely lost the ability to breathe, be casual, or think. Right on cue.
My SmallvilleGuy stood about six feet away, his hand lifted in a wave. He had on a Monarchs baseball cap and a Monarchs T-shirt that was not exactly the same as mine (thankfully), and… he had the nicest face I’d ever seen.
I stared at him.
Tall, black hair, non-green skin, a strong jawline, black-rimmed glasses… and muscles. Not gross bodybuilder muscles, but more muscles than I’d expected.
Farm boy, I reminded myself.
He awkwardly lowered his hand, and I realized I’d been standing there gaping at him.
Oh god. Please let the Earth swallow me.
I moved toward him, pretending I was not freaking out. I pasted on a smile.
“Um, hey,” I said, when I was a couple of feet away. I stopped before I walked right into him. Part of me wanted to. “I think you’re looking for me. I’m, uh, Lois.”
He blinked at me behind his glasses for a second. With his blue eyes. His very blue eyes.
Then he smiled at me. My heart curled up into a ball of happiness. The crowd around us ceased to exist.
“Lois Lane, I’d know you anywhere,” he said. “I’m SmallvilleGuy, aka…”
Good voice too. I held my breath like a dope and he had to know it. I couldn’t help it.
“Clark Kent.”
“Clark Kent,” I said, possibly the most pleasant words to ever cross my tongue. “It’s not the worst name.”
I’d been joking—it was a great name, a perfect name—but his eyes went wide with surprise.
“I was being funny,” I said. “I like it. It suits you.”
“Oh, right,” he said.
Please, Earth, swallow me.
He smiled at me again.
Or maybe not. Maybe let me suffer.
“Your outfit’s missing something,” he said.
“I didn’t have any cleats.” I’d checked online about what kind of shoes baseball players wore. I seriously was missing the sports gene.
“No, silly,” he said. “You need a hat. Here, take mine.”
Before I could protest—not that I would’ve—he removed his Monarchs cap and stepped nearer to me. He paused suddenly and asked, “Is this okay?”
I found myself unable to speak, so I nodded.
He settled the cap gently on my head. I would have told him my deepest darkest secrets in that moment. His face came close to mine and I thought we might be about to kiss…
In real life…
I closed my eyes…
“Perfect,” he said.
I opened them.
“Ah. Haha, I’ll take your word for it,” I said.
I was the biggest dope in dopeville.
“You changed your hair,” he said.
“You noticed.” I couldn’t help smiling.
But instead of taking the moment to kiss me, he held up two tickets. “We should probably get inside. My parents will be wondering if we got lost.”
I accepted the ticket he gave me. “Yes, go inside. Watch sports ball,” I said.
He laughed, and there it was. A little piece of us, joking with each other. Maybe this wouldn’t be a disaster. If I could stop being the most awkward human who had ever lived.
And his parents. Oh god. Will I live through today?
“Lois… did you just ask if you’d live through today?” Clark asked me.
Clark. Asked. Me. Clark. I knew his name.
“Of course not, Clark,” I said. “That would be so embarrassing. I’d only ask something like that if I was totally freaking out.”
“Right.”
We smiled at each other and joined the ticket-holder line.
CHAPTER 15
We made it through the ticket line and into the stadium without my inserting foot into mouth again, through some sort of miracle. Now we paused at the top of the aisle in the section where his parents were already seated.
The field stretched out beneath us, and in the stands there were all the things I’d expected to see at a baseball game—hot dogs, beer vendors, foam fingers.
“Where are we?” I asked, wondering why we weren’t going down the steps to our seats.
Clark stepped up next to me. Clark. Would I ever get used to knowing his name? He peered down at the tickets.
“My parents can be… intense, sometimes,” he said. “They’re a little protective.”
“You’re talking to the girl whose dad is a general,” I said. “I get it.”
Though he was hardly making me feel better about meeting them.
“I know.” He raked a hand through his hair, the gesture familiar from the time we’d spent together in Worlds. But so much better to see in person.
I kinda wanted to run my hand through his hair too. And, boom, my cheeks heated with the embarrassing line of my thoughts.
“It’s just,” he said, apparently not noticing my flushed face, “they may interrogate you. I asked them not to, but…”
“Clark,” I said, “I’m pretty good at interrogating people myself. It’ll be fine.”
If only I actually felt that way.
Someone behind us cleared their throat. “Excuse me,” a man in a full Monarchs costume with a foam finger on one hand and a beer in the other said.
“Sorry,” I said, and touched Clark’s bare arm. It was like an electric shock. We looked at each other, and then the guy obnoxiously stepped around us.
I smiled again, for real, my hand still on his forearm. “Do I make you nervous?”
Who was I and how had I made that sound so confident?
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to,” he said. “You’re too good a journalist for that.”
I laughed, delighted, and stepped away. “Where are our seats? I’m ready to face the Kent Inquisition.”
“Right this way,” he said, gesturing for me to go first. Then, close to my ear, “Famous last words.”
I grinned, and was still grinning when he said, “This is our row.”
I spotted two empty seats next to a couple a few seats from the end, and I let Clark take the lead into the row. We were near the bottom of the second section from the field.
“Good seats,” I said.
“You have no idea if that’s true,” he said over his shoulder.
“Busted.”
Then we reached his parents.
They stood up to let us slip past them. I shimmied past with a tentative smile, stopping on Clark’s other side and turning to face them. His mom was around the same age as mine, maybe a few years older. She had warm brown hair and lines at the corner of her eyes that suited her, like they were from sun and a life she’d enjoyed. The flannel shirt that was over her Monarch’s T was well worn. Clark’s dad had similar lines around his eyes, plus darker brown hair and a plaid shirt that managed to neither match nor clash with his wife’s. Clark didn’t favor either of them, except they all radiated the same kind of, well, goodness.
Clark glanced from me to them. “Mom, Dad, this is Lois Lane, my… um…” he paused, and I willed him just to say girlfriend. But his cheeks had gone a light pink and I knew I’d have done the same thing, not been brave enough to say the word out loud yet.
Sharing the same space was too new.
“Lois, we’re so pleased to meet you,” his mother said, rescuing him. “You can call me Martha.”
His dad removed his cap. “And I’m Jonathan.”
I hesitated, my hand going up to the cap on my own head.
Jonathan laughed. “No, the man takes off his cap, you can leave yours where it is.”
I took it off anyway. “That hardly seems fair,” I said, waving it in the air, unsure what to do.
“She’s got you there, Jonathan,” Martha said. She added, “Looks like Clark’s cap to me.”
Annnd like that, I was blushing again, worse than Clark. “He, um, loaned it to me.”
“Forcibly,” he said. “Lois doesn’t know anything about sports.”
“We’ll just have to teach her,” Jonathan said, kindly, and moved back into his seat.
Martha did the same, and I sat down in the seat on Clark’s far side. A buffer for which I was grateful.
I gripped the side of my seat so hard I thought I might break it. “Did I pass?” I murmured.
“So far, so good,” Clark said. “But you don’t have to worry about passing. Now, tell me about yesterday. I want the long version.”
“Here?” I asked, looking around.
There were people on all sides of us. People who mostly weren’t paying attention to us, including Martha and Jonathan, who were chatting with each other. (I suspected just to postpone any planned interrogation.) The players were in the dugout but the game hadn’t started yet. Music blared out across the field.
“I don’t think we’re being spied on,” he said. “Just keep your voice down.”
So, as quietly as I could, I related the trip out to see Boss Moxie, the revelation about the Contessa’s title being very old, and the confirmation that Donovan was involved. It was amazing what a difference it made, to switch to talking about the story. I didn’t feel nervous anymore. Our conversation flowed easily. He listened, breaking in when he had a question.
Things settled into a rhythm that was almost comfortable. Except for when I looked at him and remembered he was right here and then I felt like I might throw up out of excitement and nerves and the force of reality.
“You still haven’t told them about the pictures of you? The stories?” he asked when I’d wrapped up.
“I will, when the right time comes,” I said, feeling guilty.
“Speaking of telling, TheInventor’s reaction to the news about the list was weird,” Clark said.
My skin chilled. “How so?”
“This isn’t going to make any sense, but I got the feeling he was shocked but not surprised.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t. What did he say?”
“He was completely thrown, but only for a minute. Then he said he’d do some looking into it.”
Shocked that Clark had found out about it, more like. But I couldn’t say that. The time hadn’t been right to tell him about my suspicions and where the list had come from—and this certainly wasn’t it.
Proof came when an announcer’s voice boomed out above the park, and Clark stood to clap as his team was announced. My knees felt a little weak, the glow of our conversation dimmed by the secrets I was keeping. So I stayed put.
My mistake.
Martha leaned over behind Clark. “It really is so good to meet you, Lois. You seem like a serious person for your age. Clark said as much.”
“I am,” I said, trying to relax. “My mom used to tell me I act like everyone’s problems are mine.”
Martha nodded. “Clark’s the same way. Your family’s close to the city?”
“Right in Metropolis, about twenty minutes away from here by subway,” I said. “We moved around a lot growing up. It’s nice to have somewhere that feels like home.”
Clark turned his head to catch my eye, and I smiled, letting him know I was okay. So far, this interrogation was on the lighter side.
“I wondered if maybe we could have dinner with your folks, meet them, while we’re here in town,” Martha said.
Argh. I saw Clark’s posture go stiff.
“My dad’s away on, um, business,” I said.
“That’s fine—your mom and, is there anyone else? Siblings?” she asked.
“My little sister, Lucy.” I did not like the direction this was going, but what could I do? The train was officially speeding toward me, and I was caught on the tracks.
“We’d love to meet them. Wouldn’t we, Clark?”
Clark finally eased back into his seat, so he was between me and his mother. “You may as well give her your mom’s phone number,” he said. “She won’t take no for an answer. Believe me, I’ve been up against her.”
I searched for a way out. I could clamber through the aisle above ours and bolt from the park. I could fake my own death and never reemerge. I could…
Clark’s eyes sparkled. I could tell he was imagining the various escape scenarios playing out in my mind.
“He’s right, you know,” Martha said. Her smile took any bite out of it.
I could… hand over my mom’s num
ber. Which is what I did, scribbling it on a piece of paper from my notebook and handing it to her. “Could you maybe wait until tomorrow to call her?”
Martha accepted the piece of paper and gazed at me with brown eyes that I discovered could be as sharp as they were warm. I had zero doubt that she knew the time request was so I could explain to my mother they were even here. At last, she said, “Sure. I’ll wait.”
I collapsed back in my seat. “That was exhausting,” I said to Clark under my breath.
“I warned you.” He smiled at me, though. Even his teeth were good. “I can’t wait to meet Lucy. And bribe her to tell me all your secrets.”
I pushed his shoulder. “Mean.” Also, “She’d tell you for free. The brat.”
His laugh flowed out of him like a melody. And at that thought I knew I’d gone full sap.
I didn’t even care.
His left hand was stretched out along his leg, pretty close to mine. I caught his eye and laid my own hand on the seat palm up next to my leg. I didn’t dare breathe or say anything except to hope—
He reached over and took it in his. Boy, was I glad to be alive. Thank you, Earth, for not swallowing me before this happened.
My stupid heart beat fast enough to travel a mile a minute, faster than speedy Todd could run. I pretended to watch the game, but my thoughts were as wrapped up in his hand holding mine as my fingers were. It was hard to think about anything else.
This was fine, because despite Jonathan and Clark’s valiant and occasional attempts to explain to me what was happening on the field, I was mostly soaking up the afternoon. I liked all of it—the park and the loud music and thunderous applause when the home team hit the ball, the warm sun shining on my arms and the way Clark’s cap shaded my face from it, the delicious smell of hot dogs in the air and the one I ate. After which Clark held my hand again, and I caught Martha nudging Jonathan while they smiled like protective but happy parents at the sight.
But the thing I liked best about baseball, I decided, was that the games lasted forever.
At least, so it seemed. The ninth inning rolled around—even I knew that was the last one—and there was a crackling hit. The score was tied, but this might give the Monarchs that last point they needed to win. Clark was on his feet instantly, and I was caught up enough to jump up too.