Superman

by Matt De La Peña

  He emerged from the haze of the exploded brick with more determination than ever. Even when they hurt him, he now realized, they couldn’t actually hurt him.

  The guy who’d wielded the brick cursed through his teeth, but when Clark spun around, he took a step back.

  “Go home,” Clark told him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’m done messing around, kid,” the man answered. He pulled a small switchblade from his waistband and leveled it at Clark’s chest.

  Clark sucked in a massive amount of air, then focused on the knife in the guy’s hand. This time he blew out a stream of ice-cold breath on purpose, as powerfully as he could.

  The blast of frosty air that emerged from Clark’s lips shocked everyone. It enveloped the knife-wielding man’s hand, and he let out a high-pitched squeal and dropped the weapon. Completely frozen, it hit the pavement, where it broke into several small pieces as they all watched.

  The man held up his frostbitten hand in horror. He screamed again, more desperately this time, before passing out. The other men turned to stare at Clark, shock etched onto their drunken faces.

  Clark was in shock, too.

  “Who are you?” one of the men said in awe.

  “I’m nobody,” Clark told him. And the minute he said it, he knew it was true. He had given himself fully to protecting this man who was in trouble. And in doing so, he had shed himself. He had become someone new. Someone without fear.

  Three of the four conscious men turned in a drunken panic and scattered in different directions. The fourth picked up his unconscious friend and dragged him away from the scene.

  Clark pulled in several deep breaths, trying to calm himself, before hurrying over to help the victim to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We gotta get you to the hospital.”

  “No, I can’t go,” the man said with a thick accent, made thicker by his bloodied mouth. “For me, it’s not safe.” He shook out of Clark’s grasp and tried to reach into his pocket for his phone. But his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t do it.

  “See?” said Clark. “You need help.”

  The man turned painfully to look at Clark. “They will take me from my family.” He began stumbling down the alley, occasionally using the wall as support.

  Just before the man rounded the corner, Clark saw a smallish woman emerge from the back door of the bar. She was sobbing. “Moises!” she called out into the night. “Moises, wait!”

  “You know the guy who got jumped?” Clark asked her.

  She nodded. “He told them not to bother me! That’s it!”

  Clark pointed in the direction of the man who had fled. “Go to him. Make sure he gets help.” He watched her hurry after the man.

  Once they were both out of sight, Clark knelt and studied the bloodstained pavement. He didn’t feel like he’d just saved a person’s life. He felt dark and cold and alone. A cloak of sadness seemed to descend upon him, even though he knew he’d done the right thing.

  Maybe true heroism, he thought, didn’t actually feel heroic.

  Maybe it felt lost.

  I’m nobody, he repeated to himself.

  Clark touched the back of his head where the brick had hit him, trying to process everything that had just happened. But it was all a blur to him now. And he knew he couldn’t talk to anyone about it, either. Not his parents. Or Lana. Or Bryan. Or Gloria. He felt more isolated than ever before. He didn’t know where to go or what to do, and as the stars shone on him from above, he stared down at the bloody concrete, and then through it, into the dark earth below.

  A loud semi drove past the alley, and Clark was still kneeling there.

  A faraway dog began howling into the night, and Clark was still kneeling there.

  The next day was a blur for Clark.

  As he sat in his classes, his mind kept drifting back to the fight behind the bar. He replayed it, over and over. Every word that was said. The blatant racism. The drunken threats. The bloodied victim staggering away, claiming he couldn’t go to the hospital because they’d take him from his family.

  Clark didn’t understand why, but he felt a connection with the Mexican victim. Maybe because he believed those men would try to do the same to him if they knew his secret.

  And then there was Clark’s freak discovery of his freezing breath—yet another power he didn’t know how to control. He cringed when he thought about the guy’s frozen, blackened hand. His bloodcurdling cries of pain. The way his skull had bounced off the concrete after he fainted. Clark had meant only to chill the man’s hand enough to make him drop the knife. But he’d gone too far.

  He was so stuck in his own head that he avoided all conversation. Even with Lana. When he saw her in the hall after third period, he quickly spun around and went the other way before she could spot him. And he still hadn’t answered the two texts she’d sent during lunch. She wanted to discuss everything happening in Smallville, but there was only one question on Clark’s mind at the moment: Had he done the right thing in the alley behind the bar?

  At the time, he would have answered yes. A man was in serious trouble, and Clark had come to his aid.

  But now he wasn’t so sure. By the time the skirmish was over, not only was the victim seriously injured, but so was the man with the frozen hand.

  Clark had once heard that the first rule of being a doctor is to do no harm. He wasn’t a doctor, of course, but by that same logic, his initial rescue missions had been disasters. He’d harmed just about everyone.

  By the end of the day, Clark was an emotional wreck. He felt like he was teetering at the lip of some invisible mountain peak. One more step in any direction and he’d find himself tumbling down the rocky face of the crag. He stayed in his last class longer than usual, pretending to read his history textbook. When everyone else had cleared out, he slipped the book into his backpack, zipped it up, and hurried out the door—only to slam right into Gloria.

  She bounced off him like a Ping-Pong ball, and her books went flying.

  Clark instinctively shifted into super-speed and caught both Gloria and her books in a single motion. He then dropped down on one knee, cradling her in his right arm, inches above the hard tile floor. At least he had more control over his powers now.

  She looked up at him, startled.

  Clark stared into her big brown eyes, transfixed. When her lips parted in surprise, an intense feeling came over him. He’d never wanted to kiss a girl as much as he did in that moment. He didn’t kiss her, of course. He simply remained frozen with her in his arms.

  Gloria cleared her throat. “Clark, do you think you could, uh, help me up?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He lifted her upright. “Sorry about that.”

  “I think it was my fault.” She put a hand to her chest. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Hey, Gloria?” Clark ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you think we could maybe talk for a minute?”

  “Sure.” She looked up and down both halls before turning to him with the beginnings of a grin on her face. “What are your general feelings about licorice?”

  Clark frowned. “Licorice?”

  “Licorice.” She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a fresh pack. “I won this in my psych class this morning, and I’ve been looking for someone to share it with.”

  “Actually, I love licorice,” he told her.

  “Cool. Follow me.”

  Clark’s heart pounded as they walked through the hall. He couldn’t believe he’d just asked Gloria to talk. Maybe this was a positive side effect of feeling so lost: you might as well say what was on your mind.

  Gloria led Clark outside and over to the soccer field. He sat beside her in the grass, and they both pulled off their backpacks and set them by their feet. Gloria tore open her licorice pack. She pulled out two strands and handed one to Clark.
The men’s soccer team was on the field below them, running through a series of dribbling drills. “Your brother, Marco,” he said, pointing down the hill.

  She nodded. But Gloria’s mind now seemed elsewhere. She was troubled by something, which was exactly the way he’d felt all day. He could guess what had Gloria so upset. He stared at the side of her face, wondering how it might feel to live on the south side of Smallville these days. The Mexican part of town. Where your loved ones could up and vanish at any moment. “So, who do you think is responsible for what’s happening in your community?” Clark asked.

  Gloria smiled politely and shook her head. “You don’t want my actual opinion.”

  “No, I really do—”

  “People like you, Clark!” she barked, her eyes suddenly bright with anger. “Perfectly nice Smallville residents who open doors for you and invite you to their church, then turn around and vote to allow cops to stop you just because you’re brown.”

  “There’s no way Smallville will let that become law.”

  “Yeah….We’ll see.”

  Clark swallowed, nodding, and turned his attention back to the soccer practice. He felt small sitting beside her now. And guilty. But he didn’t blame her. If he were in her shoes, he’d be angry, too.

  Actually, he was angry.

  “You’re right,” he told her. “People like me are sitting around doing nothing while families are being torn apart.”

  Gloria let her head fall into her hands. “I’m just sort of messed up right now,” she admitted. “About everything. Last night my uncle got beat up real bad at a bar.” She looked up at Clark. “Some neighbors rushed him into our apartment…and it was awful. He’d lost teeth. He was covered in blood. And he swore he didn’t do anything.”

  Clark froze.

  “His girlfriend told us that if some random guy hadn’t come along to break up the fight, the attackers might’ve killed my uncle Moises.”

  The assault last night…

  That had been Gloria’s uncle.

  Clark couldn’t believe it. “That’s awful. I hope he’s going to be okay. I swear, Gloria, everyone claims we’re experiencing some kind of heyday in Smallville right now, but I think it’s the opposite. We’ve never been more divided.”

  After a long pause, she looked up at him and said, “Do you wanna know the real reason I was so upset that day you found me in the classroom?”

  Clark’s phone buzzed just then, and he glanced down to see who the message was from. Lana. He looked up at Gloria again. “Because of the people who’ve disappeared.”

  “That was part of it,” she said. “But there was also a much more selfish reason.” She hesitated.

  Clark sat up straighter, understanding that what Gloria was about to share was important to her. And he wanted her to know that made it important to him, too.

  She reached into her backpack and pulled out a wrinkled letter and unfolded it. “A couple weeks ago, I found out I qualified to be one of the two valedictorian candidates for the senior class.”

  “Wait, but that’s amazing.”

  “I had to decline.”

  Clark was confused. “Why?”

  She handed him the letter. “All that extra attention might’ve led the school officials to dig around in my background. And my mom…she wasn’t born here. We’re a mixed-status family. With the way things are going right now, I couldn’t risk putting us in any kind of jeopardy.” Gloria pulled her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees.

  Clark’s heart sank. Gloria was one of the two smartest and most deserving candidates, and nothing should have stripped her of that opportunity. He could feel his blood starting to boil as he read the short letter. He handed it back, shaking his head. “That’s not fair, Gloria.”

  She shrugged, folding the letter up. “But maybe that’s what getting older is all about, right, Clark? You start to realize just how much of the world is unfair. And how few people care. It’s not about justice, right? It’s about power. And the people where I live…we don’t have any. Not yet.”

  Clark’s heart ached for Gloria. But it ached for himself, too. He was afraid to let anyone know who he really was, for the exact same reason. To protect his family. “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “Me too. But I wish for a lot of things. I wish my parents didn’t have to worry about money. I wish I was going to college next year.” Gloria smiled wistfully. “I wish someone would take me ice-skating.”

  “Ice-skating?” This last one surprised Clark. His phone buzzed again, but he ignored it.

  She nodded. “I’ve always wanted to do that. It seems so…American. Gliding across the ice with your friends. Maybe doing a little twirl or going backward.” She laughed at herself and tucked a long strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to unload all that on you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Clark told her.

  She placed her hand on top of his and gently squeezed, then crumpled the letter and stood up. “Well, I better go. My uncle Rene is organizing a rally this weekend in front of city hall, and I promised to help run the meeting tonight.” Gloria handed Clark another strand of licorice before stashing the rest and shouldering her backpack.

  Clark could still feel the warmth of her touch on his hand. “What are you doing with that?” he asked, gesturing toward the crumpled letter.

  She glanced at the ball of paper in her hand. “Tossing it. I’m not sentimental when it comes to stuff like this.”

  “No matter what happens,” Clark said, pointing at her with his strand of licorice, “you should feel really proud, Gloria. Valedictorian. That’s amazing.”

  When she smiled at him this time, he felt it all the way inside his chest.

  “Clark, you may be the kind of guy who runs women over in school halls, but you’re also a really good listener. Thank you. And if you ever need me to repay the favor, come find me.”

  He chuckled a little, beaming.

  “Seriously,” she said. “Doesn’t matter when or where. I’ll drop everything.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” And then another bold thought occurred to Clark. “And, hey, maybe one day we’ll go ice-skating.”

  “And do leaps and twirls?”

  Clark nodded. “All that.”

  “Count me in.” She waved, and Clark watched her start back toward the school building, stopping only to toss her crumpled letter into a nearby trash can.

  Before Clark left, he decided on a whim to pull Gloria’s letter out of the trash. Just in case she might want it in the future. He smoothed the paper and slipped it into his backpack, then checked the messages on his phone.

  There were four, all from Lana:

  Hey, let’s talk at lunch.

  Clark, where ru???

  I’m sorry if I made things weird last night. But stop ignoring me!

  Hey, I stopped by your farm because you were IGNORING me. You need to get over here ASAP. Your parents just invited Montgomery Mankins INTO YOUR HOUSE!!!

  The first thing Clark noticed after sprinting home from school was the shiny black car parked outside the farmhouse. It was a fancier, more modern version of a Lincoln Town Car, and anyone who lived in Smallville would have recognized it immediately. It was the car Montgomery Mankins was chauffeured around in.

  Inside the house, Clark’s mom and dad were seated at the dining room table across from Montgomery and a man who wore a business suit and had a briefcase open in front of him. He was shuffling around some papers while Montgomery spoke.

  “…really think you’ll find it more than generous,” he was saying. He paused when Clark entered. “Clark, good to see you again!” He stood and reached out to shake Clark’s hand. “Please join us. I’d like the whole family to be present for this.”

  “We’re talking about the value of the farm,�
�� Jonathan said. “You’re welcome to sit with us. But just so you know, Lana’s upstairs waiting for you.”

  “She claims you were ignoring her?” Martha said.

  “My phone was turned off.” Clark looked at his dad. “Everything okay?”

  His dad nodded. “We’re having a good conversation.”

  “Okay.” Clark eyed Montgomery and his associate as they passed a few papers back and forth. “I’ll see what Lana wants.”

  As Montgomery held a document out toward Jonathan, Clark left the room, but in the hallway outside the kitchen, he stopped short of the stairs to eavesdrop. He could see a portion of the table reflected in the antique mirror hanging on the wall.

  “It really is a very generous offer, Mr. Mankins,” Jonathan said, looking over the sheet of paper the man had just handed to him.

  “Please call me Montgomery.”

  “But like I said on the phone,” Jonathan continued evenly, “this place just isn’t for sale.”

  Montgomery nodded and folded his hands together on the table. He looked at his associate, who pulled another sheet of paper out of the open briefcase and handed it to Montgomery. “Ah, here we go,” he said. “Option two. If I can’t buy the land, then what if I were to lease a percentage from you? We have this alternative offer prepared, which I’m sure you’ll find quite satisfactory.” He slid the paper to Jonathan and Martha.

  Clark watched them look it over with genuine intrigue.

  Martha glanced up at Jonathan, who said, “Wow, this is a great deal. But I can’t help wondering, Mr. Mankins: Why us? Why this farm?”

  “I want to be completely transparent. According to our research, your property has the ideal soil for a new hybrid crop we’d like to start growing outside the lab.” He took the paper back from Jonathan and read it again. “This way, you keep the land, and we pay you rent for access to just a small percentage of the field near that old barn we saw out there. So the bottom line for you is…more money for less work. And the farm stays with the family.” He turned to his associate and chuckled a little. “Mark, who the hell drafted this offer? Saying it out loud like that…I’m having second thoughts.”