"Go By"

///chapter seven///


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Metropolis.


The city of opportunity and the heart of the every future. This was a city so lucrative and vast that those with good fortune could triple it in a day, while those with a shady rep could find refuge in its deep recesses. Making Metropolis a beacon of light to every mind who had something to gain or something to hide.


In every direction, its manicured skyline extended far into the vanishing horizon, alluding to the common expression that Metropolis’ influence ventured far beyond its city limits.


Puncturing high upon that horizon of influence stood a bronze globe tilted on its axis, slowly revolving on a spire, covered by ironed words reading, The Daily Planet.


The only other building joining its height and regality was owned by a very rich man with a very shiny head. Lex Luthor owned most of this city, and all but one pawn to his chess table.


People said that if you stared straight up to the top floor, to the executive offices of the LL Towers, you could see Mr. Lex Luthor himself, standing at the window that faced the spiraling bronze globe, clutching in one hand his desires, and in the other, a very opulent check book. The newspaper across the street was the very last chip he hadn’t been able to win, yet.


Born Alexander Luthor, Lex had since surpassed his father, Lionel Luthor, and became the world’s most powerful man after his father’s suspicious death, inheriting everything. And from the Luthor Towers, one could see just about everything.


Indeed, clusters of high rises and multiplexes bared the construction of the driving spirits that had built them.


It was spring now, the bitter winter come and gone, and now a dormant beauty gleamed to life within the shiny rows of glass patterning downtown Metropolis. Freshly pressure-washed side walks moved hurried patrons on their way where they passed shop owners who flipped advertisements in their windows. Yellow taxi cabs dotted the traffic as a chorus of whistling patrons chased after them.


Business men hollered on their headsets as they crossed intersections and women in starched power suits fluttered their manicured fingers over Blackberries, scurrying into the revolving doors of conglomerates.


Neat bundles of newspapers, Planet’s daily edition, were tossed gracefully from sparkling white trucks as stand owners gathered them up and saluted to passer bys who tossed a coin or two for a copy.


While the streets hummed with thriving business, the ports flowed with booming industry.


The elevated train looped around all of this, acting as the seam that kept Metropolis together. Beneath the train stations were the bus lines, where citizens waited, newspaper in hand, for their scheduled carriers to arrive.


They would be delivered to their destinations, every single one out of over ten million, making today a remembered yesterday, and tomorrow the only day worth looking forward to.


This was her city.


Chloe Sullivan marched up the steps into one of the central campuses nestled inside the Metropolis loop.


She and Jimmy’s efforts on the school faculty exposé had proven successful. All of their equipment, computers, printers, file cabinet were returned, their suspension withdrawn. Only a short, formal letter written by the district superintendent himself stating very briefly that the alleged allegations concerning the former Principal and other faculty were under Metropolis PD investigation.


But there wasn’t any apology. And there were no other resignations. Instead, Chloe and Jimmy conducted business as usual under the different, but equally tyrannical officials.


Small victories, Chloe reminded herself.


She didn’t expect much from a regional school board whose fiscal bonuses were signed by the initials, L.L.


Why Lex Luthor invested his attention in public schools, Chloe didn’t quite understand. She postulated that the billionaire wished to curve his future subordinate citizens while their minds were young. Therefore every pep rally or school dance was provided, and not at all modestly, by Luthor Corp. Football jerseys, years books, and school lunch trays were stamped with the same regal L.L emblem.


A reason why Chloe chose to bring a sack lunch every day.


Today at lunch she sat in their usual spot. Jimmy, with his customary fedora propped at a silly angle and his camera resting at his side, sat across from her, reading her handwriting from an index card she’d scribbled on earlier. They were interview questions, an interview for a position at the Daily Planet. The most respected newspaper in the world. One of the few still printed without Luthor’s hand in. Being that it was literally surrounded by a wall of buildings that were owed by him that was saying a lot. The Daily Planet staved off its hungry competitors with dignity, keeping true to the journalistic integrity Chloe vowed for.


The Planet was the only newspaper Chloe was applying to this last semester of high school. It was all she’d ever wanted, to call that relic, art deco building her home. It was her destiny, after all. She’d gotten a taste of it before, interning at the Planet over the summer three years before.


That’s where she’d met James Olsen, Jimmy. The guy who compared himself to Jimmy Stewart and occasionally acted like such when nervous. They’d become fast friends, her best friend, besides her cousin Lois.


Stewart or not, Jimmy Olsen was witty, sweet and, above all loyal. He was also an aspiring photographer which fit in well with Chloe’s ambitions of being a reporter. They swore an oath back in their internship days that Sullivan and Olsen would go down in history as the journalism duo of the century. And they kept that oath, believing that one day, those grand revolving doors would open for them again.


Writing articles under a tight-lidded school paper was challenging, at best. Chloe creatively danced around editorial restrictions set upon by her faculty, only earning her meager three suspensions, one for every year. Those funny things never did stick, but nonetheless she enjoyed her time away from class where she and her older cousin prowled through the city streets, playing hooky like they’d adopted the name Ferris Bueller.


She’d grown close to her older cousin Lois. In fact, she was the closest thing Chloe had to a sister. And she loved her dearly.


Whether or not it’s true that her new sister had a noticeable influence on Chloe’s coming of age, one thing was certain. They had a blast together, those three wonderful years.


And it was more than enough to keep Chloe’s life complete with friendship and camaraderie. Lois and Jimmy were her rock. No matter how tough it became to keep her head above water when it came to journalistic politics, they were there for her. Jimmy with his solidarity and teamwork; Lois with her surprisingly sage advice and even more surprising, her tender, sisterly side.


Even if they didn’t realize it, Chloe loved them both. Neither one ever made her feel unwanted, unloved, nor like she didn’t belong; even if she did think otherwise.

They didn’t know her secret.


“You’ll do great, Chlo. Don’t worry,” Jimmy slid her interview questions back over the lunch table and smiled, “I’m sure your résumé will speak for itself.”


She looked up from her lunch and smiled back. “Thanks, Jimmy. I just hope I get to meet him.”


Jimmy peeked up from his milk carton, “Who? Mr. White?”


“Yeah, the Perry White. You have no idea how much I used to idolize him. He used to write on paranormal stuff, you know, like the meteor rocks.” Spoken from a mouthful of turkey sandwich.


“Hah, yeah. You and your alien theories.” Jimmy put down his milk and replaced it with his camera. “I don’t know about E.T. stuff, only that I used to think my bike could fly like in the movie.”


Chloe smiled. “I doubt aliens fly, Jimmy.”


Jimmy shrugged, scrolling through the stored pictures in his camera.


Chloe watched him idly, as the rest of the student body chowed and clamored in the common area. At one of the pictures, she jumped.


“Wait. Go back.” She said, leaning over the table.


“What?” Jimmy toggled back, landing on a picture of her and some guy at a coffee house table. It was taken a couple of months before.


“That’s me and…” She took the camera from his hands, studying it.


“Oh yeah, what was his name?” Jimmy leaned over, his hat resting on the back of his head.


“Clark.” Chloe zoomed on his face, hidden beneath those peculiar pair of glasses. “Jimmy, I don’t remember you taking this?” She looked up with her brows raised.


He gave a small grin, and leaned back in his chair. “Of course you didn’t. Not while you were busy looking busy. Honestly, I haven’t seen you wound up like that before.”


“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” She said, still studying the camera’s LCD.


“Nothing, nothing at all.” He picked up his messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder just as the fourth period bell rang, signaling that lunch hour had ended. “C’mon, Chlo.” He snatched the camera back, but not without a little protest from her.


As they walked down the hallway, Jimmy fingered his camera, deliberately taunting her. “So who is this Clark Kent, and why haven’t you told me about him before or mentioned him after that night?”


Chloe crossed her arms, steeling herself from giving in to Jimmy’s curiosity. “He’s just a guy from my old high school.”


She could literally see the smirk gathering on his face.


“Just a guy, huh?” Jimmy stopped at his locker, dialing the combination. “Chloe, Lois and I caught you guys in the mist of major fireworks.”


“Jeeze, will I ever live that down?” She exclaimed, throwing up her hands.


“No. Not until you fess up.” He loved torturing her like this. Chloe was so shut off and quiet about her private life. Now and again Jimmy had to literally drag things out of her. She wasn’t the only one who could cross examine. “I think he was an old boyfriend.” he deduced, shutting his locker.


He heard her snort, and watched as she laughed deprecatingly.


“No?” They began walking again, Jimmy studying her very carefully. “Ohhh, I get it.” The intonation of his voice caused her to cross her arms tighter.


“Listen,” she stopped, this time at her locker, “I don’t know why you’re so interested in Clark, but he was just a friend, ok?”


Jimmy sensed when he’d pushed too many buttons. While he watched Chloe open her locker, exchanging books, he made a decision to drop the teasing. So, in regular Olsen fashion, Jimmy tipped his hat and bid her farewell, winking to her in a way similar they do in those classic movies he borrowed from daily.


Chloe sighed, feeling sheepish for being so prickly. “Jimmy, wait.” She hoped he heard her through the other traffic going on in the hall.


But of course he did, turning around with a graceful heel.


She smiled in substitution of her apology. “See you in there?” A line that they both knew meant the journalism room.


Jimmy smiled easily, feeling his inner Bogart. “Of course, Bright Eyes.”


And with that, he made his exit, filtering through the student body.


She was smiling, watching as he disappeared among the crowd. Good old Jimmy.


She shut her locker, and turned in the opposite direction, walking to her class. Clutching her books to her chest, she mulled over why she’d become so upset over the same subjects over and over again. She was past Clark. Really, she was. Three years without even thinking about the guy proved it.


Right?


She rounded a corner, squeezing through stationary students.


It was funny and absurd, she knew it was, but ever since they both stumbled upon each other two months ago, Chloe had the strangest feeling Clark was following her. Well, it was more than a feeling, she saw him.


Well maybe not seen him. But she’d seen glimpses of what she swore looked like Clark. These sightings were always flashes of a blue t shirt, or blurs of a red jacket. One night while she and Lois walked home along an empty street, she was convinced she saw a guy with dark hair and glasses following them around every corner. In order to prove her point that she wasn’t hallucinating, Chloe dragged her cousin into a recess and waited for the guy to pass. He never did. Instead, they found no one there. Chloe only managed to convince Lois that she was really close to being crazy/paranoid.


But Chloe’s journalistic instincts told her to not discredit her intuition yet. She deducted every reason she thought Clark might have been following her and came up with two.


One involved the highly logical idea that Clark had become a crazed stalker who’d found a new subject, once he grew bored of chasing Lana around. It was a sound possibility, she thought. Chloe hadn’t been around Clark lately, and who knows what kind of lengths he would take to follow a girl around. He certainly followed Lana around like a puppy, the last Chloe remembered.


But reasoning within Chloe’s common sense, and further data collection from all of the sightings, she concluded that it simply wasn’t possible to make the three hour drive every day to find her, follow her, and drive back to Smallville to keep up his appearances. Besides that, she didn’t really see a strong enough motive for Clark to take interest in her. Though it was nice to humor the idea that Clark ever found her attractive enough to pursue, especially at all hours of the day and the middle of the night.


Therefore she eliminated the first theory completely and ended up at the only other reason why she was imagining him. Their recent encounter had obviously triggered the repressed feelings she had buried long ago.

Why? She asked herself, as she proceeded down the hall.


Why was it that with one brief encounter with some small town boy could tousle up the big city girl like her?


She didn’t know why. She only knew that whenever she witnessed these delusions, they were usually when she was out investigating or out on the town alone; times and places where she wished for an extra pair of eyes to watch her back. Metropolis streets were unforgiving, you know.


What really embarrassed her was that she saw these apparitions as a comforting suggestion that maybe Clark was looking after her. He did say something that he was worried about her. Worried that somebody might hurt her.


Poor Clark. If only he knew the truth. There wasn’t a reason for that kind of worry.


She proposed that maybe these hallucinations were really just a way for her to feel guilty about herself. Was it pathetic to imagine having someone around who knew the truth? Who knew her secret? Who she could find sanctuary?


Chloe inwardly grilled those questions, choosing only to tuck them away for another day. The less she thought about her personal life the better. There were other matters at hand, more important stories to investigate; truths to uncover, crimes to make known, tyrannical ivory towers to collapse.





chapter eight