Chapter Four:
Now

She kept walking, kicking at the dirtroad with her ratty sneakers.  Whenever she went walking, truly walking, it was the same thing.  She discarded her colorful, original- and sometimes homemade- clothes for baggy, worn jeans, a sweatshirt and her three year old sneakers.

She smiled looking down at the dirty old Nikes, little holes littering the toes and the sides.  The right one was missing the bottom half-inch of the tongue and the left…

The left's heel was worn thin from the time that she, Clark and Pete went after Mr. Duchman's van, trying to find out if there were heads in the metal box like they'd suspected.  Midnight, just her and Clark sneaking around and then they heard Pete's pathetic attempt at a bird's call, the warning that they were about to be discovered.

They shut the doors and ducked just as Mitchell Duchman, whistling, rounded the corner, crossed over to his van, got in and started the ignition.

Clark opened the doors and jumped just as the van started.  He called out to her as the van started to peel away-

What Duchman was doing leaving the warehouse so fast we never did discover.

-and Chloe tried to jump.  Three times.  But van was going too fast and her heel…  The asphalt he was driving over was rapidly thinning the rubber.

Duchman had made his right too quickly and he threw Chloe out of the van and onto the-

Street, she thought.  In a million different universes, in a billion different worlds, I either died that night on the pavement, or lost the use of more than one limb.

She knew the grace of being Clark Kent's friend.  He saved her that day.  Inexplicably.

And she never asked how.  It wasn't that she didn't wonder.  But it was like the time the two of them and Pete were swimming in Crater Lake and Pete was about thirty yards from them.  Pete went under.  Didn't come up.  Clark went under.  Came up seconds later thirty yards away from Chloe with a sputtering Pete in his arms.

He had gotten to him before the boy even started to drown.

They never discussed it and Chloe knew for a fact that it was something Pete thought about all the time.  It was something that had crossed her mind many times.  In a corner, a small recess on her 'Wall of Weird' there were five pictures set in a montage.

They were simple objects, really:  a tennis shoe and a picture of Crater Lake were the oldest.  The two newest were a picture of the orphan Annie symbolizing Clark's mysterious adoption and a picture of splintered wood, representing the door that Clark smashed the bully through; the one that was threatening Pete.

Her favorite, though, was the middle-child.  The Porsche.  It grew in symbolic matter and presence every time she set her eyes on it.  She knew the mystery also intrigued Lex.  Wondered what the rich, over-grown kid would do if he ever laid eyes on the montage and, without knowing four of the five pieces of the puzzle, landed it in one bite.

She knew he could.

If he ever saw it, would.

Clark had seen the montage.  He conveniently never asked about the pictures and Chloe figured she knew why.

He knew he was one of her many mysteries.  He continued to hang out with her because he loved and trusted her.

I could never hurt him and he knows it.

Besides, it was better then putting a picture of her best friend up there.  For multiple reasons.

Staring at the cloudless night sky, she sighed and shoved her hands deeply into her back pockets, letting her mind travel back not to the Porsche but to it’s owner.  To Clark's owner.

Or at least the owner of his heart.

She still couldn't believe what she had witnessed.  What she had sort of walked in on, but not really.  She had arrived at the same time, choosing to keep quiet and thereby picking voyar mode and optioning out her usual main character status.

She ran her fingers through her hair, taking a deep breath and letting the memories return.  She had to figure something out for herself.