“Anyway, where was I?” Bryan said after the woman had left. “Oh, right. The family business.”
Clark felt bad and waved him off. “If it’s too personal—”
“No, let me get this out,” Bryan interrupted. He stared at Clark for several seconds, his deep-set eyes filled with something that seemed oddly familiar to Clark. Loneliness, maybe? Confusion? “My dad’s company…Honestly, it has nothing to do with me. That’s his thing. My brother’s always been desperate to be a part of it. But I’m, like, my own person, you know? I want to do my thing.”
Clark nodded. But this seemed like wishful thinking. The Mankins Corporation had made Bryan’s dad rich and powerful. And Clark was sure the company’s success directly affected every part of Bryan’s life. It had to.
“Here’s the thing.” Bryan scooted forward in his seat a little and leaned his elbows on the table. “We don’t get to choose where we’re born, right? Or when we’re born. Or what family we’re born into. It all just sort of happens to us. And because of that, people shouldn’t judge us for it, good or bad. I mean, Smallville really respects my dad’s company, all the charity work he does and the advancements he’s made in farming. And I’m genuinely proud of the good it’s doing in this community. It’d be real easy for me to just jump on that wagon and ride the family name. But I wanna make my own path, find my own success. Does that make sense?”
“It really does.” Clark knew his mom and dad would love for him to take over the family farm one day. And he believed farming was an honorable path in life. But was it his path?
Bryan got a strange, faraway look in his eyes. “It’s weird, Clark. Sometimes I feel…I don’t even know. It’s like I’m a foreigner in my own house. You probably wouldn’t understand. Your family seems great.”
“They are,” Clark said. “But I still get what you’re saying.”
“Really?”
Clark nodded. Something about what Bryan had just said really hit home for Clark. His secret powers made him feel like a freak sometimes. Not just in his family, but in all of Smallville. No one else he knew could lift a truck with their bare hands. Or outrun an SUV. Or hear airplanes flying an entire county away. He wished he could open up to Bryan about that part of himself, too. Have a real conversation for once in his life.
“I don’t know,” Bryan said. “We all have our struggles. And I’m aware that most people’s are a lot more complicated than mine.”
“Yeah. Same here,” Clark said.
The food runner arrived with their dinner. He set down their plates and drinks and asked if they needed anything else. When they said they didn’t, he took off.
Their conversation seemed effortless. Bryan talked about his boarding school. How the pressure to be the best was overwhelming. Some of his closest friends would sink into a deep depression if they got a B in a class. He talked about what it was like to get sent away from home at such a young age. And then to come back. And how he was still trying to find his footing at a public high school. Clark talked about his life on the farm. How he had to get up long before school to do chores. He used to resent it. He’d imagine what it would be like to sleep in until seven every morning, like some of his friends did. But now early morning was his favorite part of the day. Sometimes he’d lie at the lip of the crater on his farm as the sun came up in front of him, and he’d feel a powerful connection to the universe. One that he could never truly put into words.
Clark felt like he could mostly be himself with Bryan. And it wasn’t awkward. Clark felt the same way with Lana, but that was Lana. He’d known her all his life. This was the first time he’d felt comfortable with someone he’d just met. Clark’s default state with new people was to be guarded. To protect his secrets. But maybe being guarded was part of what kept him from feeling like he belonged.
As Clark finished up, he caught Gloria’s eyes across the room. She quickly looked away and went back to pouring water at a table of Smallville sophomores Clark recognized. It was the cast of the new school play, which Lana had just reviewed for the Smallville High paper. They were probably getting dinner after a show.
Bryan set his fork down. “Wait, you weren’t looking at that girl Moira earlier. You were looking at the Mexican waitress.”
Clark’s first instinct was to pretend it wasn’t true. But why should he lie? “Her name’s Gloria,” he said. “She goes to school with us.”
“I know her.” Bryan studied Gloria. “Well, I don’t know her know her, but I know who she is. She seems really cool. And I heard she’s the best coder in the school.”
A busboy came to refill their water glasses. After he left, Bryan said, “Why don’t you go talk to her?”
Clark shook his head. “Nah, I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Bryan asked. “Why not?”
A wave of butterflies passed through Clark’s stomach. “I don’t know. She just seems super busy.”
“Clark.” Bryan slapped both palms on the table in front of him. “We can’t be spectators our whole lives, right? At some point we have to take a risk. Step into the action.”
Clark saw that Gloria was coming toward their table on her way to the food pass. “You know what?” he said, feeling a sudden surge of courage. He stood up. “Maybe I should.”
Bryan nodded his approval. “Just be yourself, and it’ll be all good.”
Gloria slowed several feet past their table, almost like she was waiting for him.
Clark swallowed down hard on his butterflies and took a deep breath. Too late to back out now, he thought, awkwardly beginning his approach.
When she noticed him coming, she looked up from her order pad and said, “You guys need anything over there?”
“We’re good.” Clark was surprised by the shakiness of his voice. Could she tell? “I just wanted to say…the other day at school—I’m sorry for disturbing you like that.”
At first Gloria looked sort of confused, but then her big brown eyes flashed with recognition and she smiled. “Wanna know something weird?” she said. “I’ve been hoping to run into you.”
“Me? Really?” Clark’s heart was beating faster now.
Gloria nodded. “I feel like I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
He frowned and shook his head.
“I don’t know why I rushed out like that. It was nice of you to check on me.” She tucked her pad into her apron and slipped her pencil behind her ear again. “You’re Clark, right? Clark Kent?”
“Yeah.” He’d never heard anything quite so perfect as the way she said his name. “And you’re Gloria.”
She brushed a few strands of hair out of her face. “Anyway, it’s nice to run into you again,” she said, glancing toward the kitchen. “But I probably have an order up.”
“Oh, for sure,” Clark said. “I’ll let you get back to work.” He could tell she was about to go, and he wanted just a few more seconds. “But…make sure to come get me if you need help with that one table.”
Gloria looked at him, confused. “Help?”
Clark motioned toward the Kellers and the Smiths, who were consumed by their card game. “They look kind of rough. I’m just saying…I’m here for you if things get out of hand.”
Gloria looked over her shoulder at them. “Ooh, I see what you mean.” She turned back to Clark, pretending to take him seriously. “They do look a little dangerous. If one of them acts up, I’ll definitely flag you down.”
“I’ll be right over here.” He pointed back at his table.
“You’re a real gentleman, Clark.”
He shot her his best gentlemanly grin. It made her laugh a little before she turned away and hurried over to the food pass, where an annoyed cook in the back was trying to squeeze another order onto the crowded hot plate.
Clark felt like he was walking on air as he headed back to h
is table. He plopped down in the booth across from Bryan in a kind of daze. He’d had minor crushes on other girls over the years. Even dated a few briefly. But he’d never felt anything like this.
Bryan was grinning from ear to ear. “You were great, man.”
“Really?” Clark asked. “I felt like I should have talked more.”
“No way,” Bryan said. “That’s part of your charm, Clark.”
“Well, I appreciate the pep talk. I probably never would have spoken to her.” Clark noticed that Bryan had only managed to eat a few bites of his steak. And it looked like he’d already thrown in the towel.
As if reading Clark’s mind, Bryan looked down at his plate and said, “Guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach. But I saw a guy sleeping in the alley on the way over here. Let’s pack this to go and hook him up.”
Clark glanced at his own plate, which was empty, and wished he had something to contribute.
Bryan looked around for their server, saying, “When you grow up in my family, charity’s sort of in your blood. My dad’s horrified that anyone in Smallville is living below the poverty line. I don’t know if you heard, but he’s opening a food bank slash homeless shelter slash treatment center downtown.”
“Really?” Clark thought about this. “Is Smallville even big enough for that kind of thing?”
“That’s the beauty of it. It’s not just for Smallville residents,” Bryan said, shaking his head. “The plan is to have people coming from as far off as Metropolis to get help.” He nudged his plate away. “That’s one thing I really respect about my dad. He doesn’t do things like that for the attention. In fact, he thinks publicity can sometimes take away from the cause itself.”
Clark was impressed. He made a mental note to tell Lana about the shelter next time he saw her. It’d be tough for her to question Mongomery Mankins’s character after learning that he wasn’t even taking credit for some of the charity work he was doing.
On Monday night, after doing all his chores around the farm after school, Clark sat down at his desk to study. But he was having a difficult time concentrating. He kept reading the same passage in his applied physics textbook over and over, but the material wasn’t sinking in. He’d get halfway through the second sentence and his mind would drift to his conversation with Gloria at the diner. He was staring at the words, but all he could see was her sliding her pencil behind her ear. And her smile. The way her eyes had lit up when she laughed at his joke.
Clark rubbed his temples, trying to concentrate on the pages of his textbook. To stare intently at the information, which had something to do with electromagnetic propulsion. He forced himself to absorb each word, one at a time, trying to make sense of it in the context of the chapter.
But then a strange buzzing filled his head.
A warmth rose up through his legs and chest and into his arms and fingertips. And his whole body became strangely rigid as a terrifying flash of bright red filled his vision.
He pinched his eyelids closed, leaping out of his chair and tumbling over a laundry basket full of clean clothes that he’d forgotten to put away. He clawed at his eyes as he scrambled to his feet, yelling. His back slammed against the wall.
Was he going blind?
The backs of his eyelids were on fire, and when he first opened them he couldn’t see a thing.
The world had gone black.
In a few seconds, though, the burning subsided. And he could see shapes. And then colors. As he slowly regained his vision, he sat back down at his desk, trying to catch his breath. He’d never felt so relieved in his life.
That’s when he realized his textbook was on fire.
He panicked, thinking his bedroom might go up in flames. The whole farmhouse. And his parents weren’t home to help control the blaze. He pounced on the crackling textbook, tamping down the flames with his bare hands. The heat from the fire pressed into his palms, but it didn’t hurt exactly. At least he didn’t think so. It felt more like tiny needles pricking his skin, like when his arm would fall asleep in bed and he’d wake up, turn over, and feel the blood slowly spreading back through his veins.
Once he’d smothered the flames in his textbook, he stamped out a few embers that had fallen onto the rug next to his small desk. Smoke rose up near the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm in the hall. It wailed and wailed until he raced out of his room and leapt up to disarm it. The piercing sound of the alarm quickly subsided, but now Clark heard something else.
The revving of an engine outside the house.
His parents were at a town hall meeting about the proposed stop-and-search law, and he didn’t expect them back for hours. Alarmed, Clark hurried back into his bedroom to look out the window, but he didn’t see anything in the darkness.
Weird, he thought, staring out at the still farm.
When he finally turned away from the window, he looked at his applied physics textbook. It was ruined. He turned one of the charred, blackened pages, and it broke off in his hand.
Had he really just started his textbook on fire with his stare?
Clark shook his head, trying to will away this possible new power. Being able to see through walls seemed mostly like a good thing. Same with his super-hearing. And his speed and strength.
But shooting lasers out of his eyes?
So much for studying, he thought, looking down at the scorched rug near his desk. And how was he going to explain these burn marks to his mom?
She was going to kill him.
He picked up his cell to call Lana. She was in the same applied physics class. Maybe he could borrow her book tomorrow after school. He knew that the information in this chapter would be on the final, and he needed to ace it in order to secure an A in the class. Clark was just about to call Lana when he heard voices outside.
He set down his phone and went to the window again.
Nothing but darkness.
His super-hearing was picking up a conversation a good distance from the house. He slipped on his shoes and hurried outside to investigate.
When he was halfway across the farm, he spotted a man dressed in jeans and a cowboy shirt moving toward the old barn with an ax.
Clark froze. “Hey!” he shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Now he saw two more men, dressed similarly, emerging from the crater in front of the old barn. One was carrying a metal-detector wand. The men looked at Clark, and he looked at them, and for several pregnant seconds, no one moved. Clark felt his heart pounding in his chest.
Intruders were on his property.
And one had an ax.
For the first time in his life, he felt a flicker of legitimate fear. It wasn’t a fear of the men, exactly. That they might hurt him. No, he feared for his parents. What if he were across town right now and his parents were home? What would they do? How would they protect themselves?
An anger swelled inside Clark, and he shouted, “Get off our property! Now!”
As the men scurried, Clark felt another buzzing in his head. A warmth rising, quicker this time. A flash of red filling his vision.
Just as he went to turn his head, another laser shot out from Clark’s eyes, torching the dry grass to his right. A small fire sprang up, and Clark quickly stamped it out.
His powers were out of control at the worst possible time.
Clark jogged toward the hay shed, where his dad kept many of the farm tools, and rummaged around, looking for something to scare the men off with. He emerged with an old, rusty scythe. He perched it on his shoulder and began marching toward them. One of the men was backing up in an old white pickup truck that looked vaguely familiar. The front grille was badly dented, and the driver’s-side door was painted gray.
These guys were burglars, Clark reasoned. They’d come here to steal farm equipment. It was something that occasionally happened in Smallville.
“You hear me?” Clark shouted across the dark farm as he closed in on the men. “Get out of here! Before I call the cops!”
One of the men emerged from behind the old barn on a dirt bike and darted directly at Clark, the lone headlight nearly blinding him.
Clark quickly retreated into the hay shed to run through his options. His powers had gone haywire, so he didn’t feel safe using them. Besides, he didn’t want to give himself away. But it was clear these men weren’t going anywhere if he didn’t do something. The one driving the pickup seemed ready for a quick getaway. A second was now hacking at the padlock on the front door of the old barn with an ax. And the man on the dirt bike was waving around a bat as he zipped across the farm. He was clearly trying to buy the other burglars time to steal what they could.
Clark had to think of something fast.
After the guy on the dirt bike had passed by the hay shed a second time, Clark quickly gathered three freshly rolled bales of hay and sent them rolling in the direction of the truck and the man hacking at the lock on the old barn door. As the large bales bore down on Clark’s targets, he raced across the farm toward the small front-end loader his dad had recently purchased.
In a fraction of a second, he had the loader roaring to life and was driving it directly at the man on the dirt bike. The first hay bale exploded against the pickup truck, nearly tipping the vehicle on its side. The second narrowly missed the man with the ax just as he broke through the padlock.
The man panicked and dove into the bed of the truck, which ground into reverse, then shifted forward, clunking over a long, uneven stretch of dead grass and off the Kent property.
The man on the dirt bike noticed the others retreating and swerved back toward the main road. Clark stopped the front-end loader and hopped down to watch the battered pickup and dirt bike speed down the road, out of sight.
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