iesika

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5

Friday

He was almost late, the next morning, because the goddamned cow had knocked over the goddamned bucket, and they were almost out of coffee. He hit the ground running two blocks from school behind a row of shops that wouldn't open for a few hours and covered the rest of the distance at a speed that was at least humanly possible, even if it probably would have qualified him for the Olympics.

The first thing he saw when he blew in through the doors was Clarence's hot-pink t-shirt. It wouldn't have been weird at all, considering what Kon's friends wore on a regular basis, if he weren't standing in front of a matching pink poster, decorated with a sparkling rainbow.

'YOU ARE NOT ALONE!' it read, in bold black letters, and under that, in smaller print, "LGBTS student meeting: library at lunch"

"Oh my God," someone said as they entered behind him.

Clarence was glaring defiantly at the hallway at large, but Kon noticed he was doing an excellent job of not actually making eye contact with anyone. His heart was running a mile a minute, and there was sweat beading at the edge of his hair-line. Kon crossed the hall toward him, but froze when Clarence's heartbeat skyrocketed.

Clarence was afraid of him. It all made sense in a sudden, sickening way. This kid didn't know Kon from Granny Goodness - of course he was terrified. Some great big older kid chased him down in the hall, and now he was standing here staring the kid down like he was Miller or any other dipshit dumb jock in this place.

Kon deliberately slumped down as far as he could without looking ridiculous and pitched his voice as soft and low as he could manage. "I just wanted to say sorry about Matt," he said.

Clarence's eyes widened, and his gaze jerked to meet Kon's, searching and obviously braced for the other fucking shoe.

"He seemed like a nice guy," Kon continued, still quiet. "I just thought you should know that not everybody at this school is a giant asshole. And I understand why you might not want to talk to some random dude, but - well, if anyone tries to start shit, I'm in your corner, okay?"

Clarence didn't answer - he still looked wary, but at least he wasn't headed for an aneurysm anymore.

"So…" Kon said as he backed awkwardly away toward the science classrooms, "I'll see you at lunch?" The bell rang, and Kon took the opportunity to bolt for class.

Mr. Dalton wasn't there yet, but there wasn't really anyone near him worth talking to, so Kon just pulled out his book and binder and started loading his pencil with tiny sticks of graphite. He broke so many wooden pencils on a weekly basis that Clark had finally presented him with a mechanical one made of titanium or something, with a very sympathetic look.

Baumhauer was behind him, talking to two other guys from their lab group, and all three of them were making liberal use of words like faggot and cocksucker. Kon sat there in silence and tried to ignore them for a s long as it took him to realize that weird grinding sound he was hearing was his own teeth. He turned around and glared at them. "Hey," he said, "do you mind?"

The tallest boy - Smith? Schmidt? - narrowed his eyes right back. "Mind what?"

"Mind not being a douchebag, for a start," Kon ground out. "You don't have anything better to do than talk shit about a kid who just lost someone he cared about?"

Baumhauer sneered, and Smith-Schmidt leaned over Kon's desk in a way that was probably meant to be intimidating if Kon couldn't have snapped him like a goddamned twig. "What the hell do you care?" he asked.

"I care because I'm a decent human being!" Kon said, rising up to meet him eye-to-eye. "A sixteen year old boy was brutally beaten to death a few hundred yards from here, just four days ago. That doesn't mean something to you?"

"Yes," Baumhauer said, and the look on his face made Kon want to wring his scrawny, pimply neck. "It means there's one less unnatural little-"

He was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Mr. Dalton, who gently guided Kon back into his chair with a hand on his shoulder. "That's enough of that, Thomas." He raised his voice to the class at large. "Everyone, take your seats. I'm canceling the lab."

There was the usual mixture of glee and disappointment as Kon's classmates shuffled toward their desks. Once everyone was settled, Dalton walked back up to the front of the class and braced his hands on his hips.

"Put your books away," he said. "They're obviously lacking." Kon did as he was told. Judging by the looks on his classmates' faces, he wasn't the only one who was confused. "You won't be tested on this material, but God help you if I think you're not paying attention, so everyone sit tight and listen up. This may be the most important lesson I get to give this year, and Lord knows you're obviously not getting it anywhere else."

Kon shut his binder and rested his chin on his fist, intrigued. He watched as Mr. Dalton walked slowly around the desk to stand in his usual lecture stance in front of the white-board, though he didn't pick up a marker.

After a long pause that made everyone shift in their seats, he finally spoke. "I'm a scientist. I've tried my best to teach you kids what that means, but let me remind you - it means that when I'm presented with a novel situation, I gather as much information as I can before I form an opinion. In its purest form, what it means is that anything I tell you in this classroom I can and will back up with empirical evidence, so please believe me when I say to you now that homosexuality is a right and natural part of human behavior."

A few people muttered unhappily.

"No. No, you're going to listen to this. Listen to the evidence. There is not a single social animal that doesn't demonstrate at least incidental homosexual behavior. In social mammals that have a mating bond, a fairly consistent percentage of those bonds form between same-sex pairings. There have been studies done with non-breeding agricultural animals, with penguins, with apes... We don't know why it happens, but it does. Some animals, and some people, are sexually attracted exclusively to members of their own sex. Many more are attracted to both. In humans, unlike all the other animals, the related behaviors are often repressed by cultural pressure - so if anything is unnatural, it's the repression. Not the behavior."

"And you think we should be no different, no better, than animals," Baumhauer said, contempt obvious in his voice.

"We are animals, Thomas. We're just a bit more self-aware than most. I wish -" he stopped talking and leaned back against the white-board, his eyes closed. "I wish I could - I wish I had enough time - the proper resources and permissions to make you all understand how beautiful and wonderful and necessary it is that we're just another animal. That knowledge is what brought us out of the Dark Ages. It made medicine possible." He opened his eyes and looked around the room. "No homework," he said, "but I'm giving you a reading list. None of it's mandatory. I can't even give you bonus points for it. But at least I can point those of you with interest and initiative in the right direction." He picked up a marker and uncapped it. "I also want you all to know that I'm available to any student who wants to talk, whether it's about this lesson or-" he paused, his eyes scanning the room, "-or anything else."

After class, Kon walked past the front just to see if Clarence was there again. When he got there, the poster was half crumpled on the ground, so he flattened it out again and dug some tape out of his backpack to hang it back up again. A couple of people stared at him, and somebody snickered, but Kon ignored them and continued on to art class.

Jake was in his usual corner in the back of the huge room. Kon dithered around at the supply table for a minute, until Jake looked up and waved at him, and then he went to join him. "Hey," he said, as Kon settled onto a stool on the other side of the table from him. "What's up?"

"Not much," Kon said, as he pulled out his sketchbook and pencil. "I think I've decided I like biology." He froze for a second, staring down at the cover of the book, and then shook it off. He was supposed to be done comparing himself to Luthor, right? Tim liked biology, he was pretty sure. Well, he knew a lot about it, anyway.

Jake laughed as he rinsed his brush off and wiped it on a paper towel. "I guess that's good? Agri-sci sucks, man. At this level, I know most of if from the store, right? So it's really boring, but we still have all these stupid projects."

Speaking of stupid projects. Kon thumbed through his sketchbook until he found the page he needed. They were supposed to be finishing up the week's assignment, which had been to draw their own hands. Kon guessed he was mostly done, but his picture was really pretty crappy. On top of all that, the pencil was smudged, and the page was wrinkled. He glanced over at Jake's project, which was a painting in bold false colors, maybe a foot and a half square. "Oh, hey," he said, leaning across the table. "Wow, you're really good!"

The hands in the picture were large and square and masculine, obviously Jake's from all the calluses, and they were - well, not photo-real exactly, but they were proportioned just right and everything, unlike Kon's stupid drawing with its giant thumbs. They were streaked with bright colors, almost like he'd dipped his fingers in paint and let it run down, highlighting the contours and the shapes of the fingers, and splayed against a dark background that made the colors really pop out. "Um. Thanks," Jake said, and ducked his head sheepishly.

"No, really!" Kon got up and went to stand behind Jake so he could look over his shoulder. "Where did you learn how to do that?"

"Just…playing around, mostly. I've never taken lessons or anything, outside of school. It's…well, kind of dumb?"

"What?" Kon said "What's dumb?"

"All the pretentious bullshit about," Jake raised his own paint streaked hands and made ironic little air-quotes, "style, and flow, and all that. I just-" he scratched his cheek, leaving a faint blue smudge. "It's fun? Like - well, we all finger- painted and stuff as kids, right? Coloring and drawing on the ground with chalk, and your parents have to teach you not to draw in the walls and all?"

Kon nodded like he had any clue.

"I kind of feel like the other kids grew up and moved on to, like, sports and things, and I sort of got stuck. Nell's always liked it. She buys me paints and things. It's kind of expensive. So I did her some stuff for the diner. Sometimes she hangs things up in the back for me to try and sell, too."

"That's so cool," Kon said, with feeling. Bart could draw really, really well - and really fast, of course - and Tim could pop out these mathematically precise diagrams and schematics and things in no time, and draw people from descriptions, and even Cassie drew these cute little cartoon things sometimes when she was bored in meetings. All his friends could draw, and they all liked to draw, and until he'd seen what his fellow high school art students had to offer, he'd kind of been wondering about the missing programming thing again, or if his giant freaky hands were just too huge and clumsy to actually make anything except bruises.

"It's not like I think I can do it for a living, or anything," Jake quickly added. "But I can mostly pay for my own paints and stuff now, without having to dip into what I make at the store."

“No, really, I think that’s awesome,” Kon insisted. He frowned down at his own sketch. “I’m pretty useless.”

Jake shook his head. “Everybody’s got different talents. Your garden looks great.”

“That’s not me, that’s Ma. I just do what she says. I’m the muscle.”

Jake gave a little considering hum of a laugh that reminded Kon a little bit of Tim. “Well, okay. What kind of stuff do you like to do, then?”

Kon had an abrupt and absurd moment of panic. Jake had only asked about his hobbies, for fuck’s sake. He could make something up. He could. “Uh,” he said, “Ma keeps me pretty busy.”

“Yeah, but, on the weekends, or whatever. What do you do with your friends?”

Oh God, it just kept getting worse. "I…haven't got a lot of friends.” Which made him sound like a complete loser. “Here, I mean. I - mostly my friends are out of town.”

“Oh,” Jake said, “well, maybe we can hang out, sometime?” He didn’t look up from his painting, but Kon grinned at him anyway.

“Sure,” he said. “That’d be cool.”

Kon was deliberately a little late to the meeting so he wouldn’t have to mingle. Math provided a pretty good excuse, because he was so damned slow at it anyway, and then he stopped to talk to Dalton in the hall about an anatomy book. He made up something about art class, and Dalton didn’t question – just scribbled out a title on a piece of scratch paper and patted Kon on the shoulder before heading off toward the lounge.

When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he slipped in through the library door as quietly as he could and headed for the open area in the back. The librarian looked up at him with her eyebrow arched and Kon ducked his head and hunched his shoulders as he passed her desk. He could hear Clarence speaking, so he angled toward that corner, and grabbed a book as he neared the end of the stacks. With the book open for camouflage, he stepped a little closer to the end of the aisle and peered out.

The study area had been rearranged, with the tables all pushed to one wall and the chairs set up in neat rows. They were maybe half-full, and Kon only recognized a few of the kids in them. Delilah was sitting on the near end of the front row. She looked up at him when he moved closer, and her eyes widened briefly before she raised one eyebrow at him and smiled a little. Clarence was standing at the front of the group, and he paused briefly when he saw Kon to nod in greeting before continuing.

“Just look around you,” he said, gesturing at the dozen or so students that had assembled. “They want us to think that we’re alone, but we’re not. I’m willing to bet everybody here knows at least one other person who wanted to come, but was too scared to come out.”

There was a quiet murmur, and a few people shifted in their seats.

“If the teachers, and the other students, and the parents and the cops and everyone else, if they knew how many of us there are here, don’t you think they’d treat us a little different? Matt and I knew it was going to be rough, when we decided to come out, but we were really hoping we’d make it easier for some of you to step up, too.”

A thin, dark haired boy near the back crossed his arms over his chest. “Right,” he said, with exaggerated care. “Because the reception you two got had the rest of us just dying to leap out of the closet.”

Clarence coughed, but it was Delilah who answered, turning with the others in her row to stare the heckler down. “If you think you were ever in the closet, Chase, you’re stupider than you look.”

“Oooh,” Chase said. “So says little miss butch.”

“Guys!” Clarence interrupted. The other students turned back to the front, and he sighed. “I think you’re missing the point, here. Matt was always the political one. I’m not good at this stuff. But we have to do something, and right now, I think all we can do is try to look out for each other – and maybe try to step up our visibility a little bit so they stop thinking we’re easy targets. Mel had an idea on that front.” He looked over at a short, slightly chubby Asian girl at the far end of the front row. “You want to talk?”

She nodded and stood to face the group. “I think we need to go to the dance,” she said. “All of us, and as many people from other schools as we can get date tickets for. Matt and Clarence went to the dance together at Christmas, and that’s where this whole thing started. Ideally, we can get somebody from the paper or even the TV news out to cover it. Maybe we can all wear the same flower, or something – make a statement.”

“I like that,” Delilah said, smiling mischievously. “Shove it in their faces a little.”

“Make them get used to it,” Clarence agreed.

“But we need to be safe,” Mel continued. “If we’re in a group, we’re less likely to get harassed, so it makes sense to set up a buddy system.”

“Wanna be my buddy, Hamilton?” Chase asked the boy next to him in an undertone. Hamilton flipped him off without a glance.

“You want them to think we’re running scared?” Delilah asked. “Any weakness we show-“

“I don’t think it will look strange at all,” Mel cut in. “I’m not talking about wearing whistles and matching armbands, Lilah. I just think we should all be careful not to be caught alone. Go to the bathroom in groups, for example. Maybe walk each other to class, when somebody’s got to go to shop or band or one of the other outbuildings. Who plays sports?”

A couple of people raised their hands, including Hamilton.

“Pick somebody on your team that you trust, and don’t let yourself get caught out of their sight. Katie and I are in marching band, and we’ll be on campus after school with the rest of you. And everybody keep your cell phone handy at all times, just in case.”

A boy on the front row raised his hand, tentatively. "You really think we're in danger?"

The question was addressed to Mel, but it was the blond girl beside her who answered. "Until they catch the bastard, at least. They did it at school. That means we're not safe here." She looked up at Mel, who nodded.

Clarence cleared his throat. "Even when they catch him. I'll be honest with you... I've been getting the occasional threat since Christmas, and a few just since yesterday. I can't tell you how many people have just hassled me. I'll completely understand if anybody wants to back out, but I really think we're safer as a group. Look, two people can watch each other's backs." He looked around at the little cluster of students while he spoke, his voice gradually increasing in confidence as he went on. "Ten, we can make those shits think twice. Twenty or thirty, we can change everyone's minds. We can get organized - fight back -" his eyes flickered up, past the back row, and he broke off.

"That sounds rather militant, Mr. Moore," and adult voice said, and Kon looked up through the stacks to see Principal Cross standing by the new book displays with his arms crossed. He hadn't been there when Kon came in, and Kon was embarrassed to realize he hadn't noticed his approach.

Clarence's jaw clenched; Kon could hear his teeth grinding. "Sir," he said after a moment.

Cross shook his head. "I understand you're upset, son, but I can't allow this...group...to continue meeting."

Clarence didn't say anything. Delilah jumped out of her seat, though, and rounded on Cross. "We haven't done anything!" she protested.

Cross appeared unmoved. "I can't allow any organizations on campus that would disrupt school function or threaten student safety."

"We're not the ones doing the threatening!" she argued. "Don't punish us."

"This isn't a punishment, Miss Roberts. I'm sorry. I can't allow you to meet." He made a shooing gesture at the students who were still seated. "Everyone, run on. It's almost time for class."

"When someone else gets hurt," Clarence said in a low, flat voice, "I hope you never forgive yourself. Because I never will. Even if I'm not the one who gets jumped."

Cross looked like he'd been slapped. For a long moment, he and Clarence just stared at each other, and then Clarence said, without breaking eye contact, "You heard the man. Meeting's over."

There was some grumbling protest, but nobody said much as they started collecting their things. Clarence and Delilah were fuming, and Mel looked kind of like she wanted to cry, but most of the others just looked resigned - like this was about what they'd expected.

As the other students left, Cross approached Clarence and Delilah. "I can't stop you meeting off campus, but I advise strongly against it. You're playing with fire, and you're going to get yourselves hurt. You can't organize anything here. No posters, flyers, petitions, pamphlets - or anything. Do you understand?

Clarence just turned and walked away. Delilah said something that earned her a detention and made Cross go red in the face.

Kon sighed gustily and slid his book back onto the shelf. He stood there staring at the spines for a moment, quietly hating Smallville High even more, until movement caught his eye through a gap in the books. He shifted a few of them aside - and raised his eyebrows.

On the other side of the shelf, Jake's own eyebrows went up as his eyes widened.

Delilah hadn’t shown up for English, and Kon had been concerned enough to tune out Ms. Harris and try to track her down by ear. He couldn't find any sign of her anywhere near the school, so she must have left campus after the confrontation with Cross. When he didn’t find her, he stretched himself a little further, just to see who he could find. Clarence didn’t seem to be around, either, but Mel was working on a group project for Dr. Marcus. Jake – and hadn’t that been a surprise – was out in the shop building, which made Kon worry just a little until he heard Hamilton ask him for a wrench.

Chase was in the bathroom near the auditorium that didn’t get used much. Kon wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe he was smoking a cigarette. According to the conversation he was having on his cell phone, he was supposed to be in gym class, but hadn’t set foot in the building since Tuesday.

Kon lost track of time, just listening, stretching his hearing as far as he could. Principal Cross didn’t leave his office, but he got two calls from parents concerned about their children’s safety, and one outright hostile call from someone with questions about the murder that he referred to the police. He didn’t mention the club to anyone.

Jake dropped something with a metallic clatter and cursed under his breath. Chase made a date to go drinking in Topeka Saturday night with some guy named Rico. Mel pulled the zipper on her backpack.

The bell rang, and Kon yelped as he threw his arms over his head. When the ringing stopped and the pain retreated, he realized everyone was laughing at him as they filed out of the room. Miller in particular seemed to find him uproariously funny.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kent,” Ms. Harris said archly as she slapped her pointer rhythmically against her palm, “was I boring you?”

Tim had tried to explain yoga to him once, back when he’d just been Robin, and Kon had found him twisted up like a pretzel in a quiet corner of the cave in Happy Harbor. He’d talked about muscle memory and his diaphragm – which had confused the hell out of Kon until he’d realized they weren’t talking about birth control – and then he’d unfolded and gone through a series of Tai Chi taolu. He’d moved slowly through them the first time, obviously concentrating on getting each movement just right, careful and deliberate, and then he’d repeated the motions so quickly the air had whistled as he cut through it, kicking and punching, spinning and crouching, and showing Kon exactly what those underwater-slow moves could do.

Tim had called it ‘physical meditation,’ and explained that it was sometimes the only way that he could clear his mind enough to think. Kon hadn’t had a clue what he was talking about until he’d moved to the farm.

Turning the soil, sifting in the compost and the ashes, took every bit of concentration that Kon could muster. For the first time since he’d returned home to find Martha in the kitchen, he wasn’t thinking about the case. He wasn’t thinking about Matt, and the look on his face when he’d been struck from behind. He wasn’t thinking about his grieving mother and guilt-ridden father. He wasn’t thinking about Clarence curled up around Matt’s pillow, or the goddamned chicken, or the club, or Cross, or Chase hiding in the fucking bathroom, or any of it.

Instead, he focused on working sulfur down into the soil around the tiny, budding cabbages and cauliflowers without damaging their fragile, threadlike roots. He sifted the soil in careful batches, feeling for the movement of earthworms through the soil, and gently drawing them up into the layer of compost he was laying down. He loosened the soil in the patch where the turnips had been, sowing it liberally with fish meal for the corn, and then he unbent himself and shook the sweat out of his face, wiping his filthy hands on his equally filthy shorts.

Martha had brought out the seedlings while he was working, so he floated them over to where the peas had been and started carefully transferring tomatoes, cucumber, and crook-neck squash from paper cups to small depressions in the ground. The little plants had been occupying pride of place near the front windows, waiting for their shot at the sun and the rain. Martha had nursed each one carefully until it was strong enough to stand on its own, and now that they were out in the world, they were going to be Kon’s responsibility. He tied each stem to a leg to the trellis with a piece of twine, and then when it was all done, he flopped over backward onto the cool, soft grass and just stared at what he’d done, as exhausted as if he’d gone ten rounds with Metallo – though maybe not quite so sore.

Under his ear, he could hear the worms thundering through the soil. If he concentrated, he could feel the brush of tiny hairs against the dirt as they inched their way forward, churning the soil as they went and never, ever stopping.

What was he doing? Kon wasn’t a detective. He knew he wasn’t stupid, but compared to people like Tim and Dick, he might as well be a drooling imbecile when it came to this stuff. He didn’t have the training, or the experience, or the equipment for fixing a problem like this. Kon was the muscle. He always had been. Tim would figure out what needed to be done, and then Cassie would point Kon at the bad guy, and he’d do his best to beat it into a pulp while they did whatever was necessary to resolve the situation.

Bart had used to fill that role, too. Robin and Wonder Girl would give out orders – in small, concise sentences – and Impulse would dart in and tie the villain’s shoes together or deliver the explosives or just confuse the hell out of whoever they were fighting for long enough for Kon to get a good punch in. Bart had changed, though, long before Kon had died, and now he was smart, too, with the knowledge he needed to back up his snap decisions. It had taken Kon a long time to adjust to the fact that Kid Flash wasn’t the same kind of hero that Impulse had been. Kon hadn’t wanted to be the only kid left on a team full of grown-ups.

Well, who said he had to be left behind? Impulse had grown up. They’d thought that was impossible, but he’d done it. He’d stepped – no, run – right off of the easy path and into the fast lane, and now he didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do, or where to run, or any of it. He’d been the Flash when he’d died, carrying the full legacy of that lightning bolt like he’d damned well earned it - and he had.

Kon had been counting on Tim to sweep in and solve his problems, but that wasn’t going to happen. Tim was busy, always busy, and he had his own crazy city to look after anyway. Smallville was Kon’s home. It was his responsibility. It was his to protect, even if he had to do it alone. If that meant he had to change what kind of hero he was, then fine, he would change. Superman didn’t wait around for someone to tell him what to hit. Why should Kon? And if he’d gotten any kind of debilitating genes from the Luthor side, they sure has hell weren’t going to be stupid ones, were they?

It wasn’t like Kon had never seen a master detective in action. He’d been Tim’s backup more times than he could count, holding off the screaming hordes of evil while Tim swabbed and tweezed and collected and questioned. Maybe Kon didn’t know how to turn fingerprints and carpet fibers into a positive ID, but he could sure as hell collect the evidence, couldn’t he?

Heh. He could use Tim as a glorified lab tech. That would be a nice reversal.

“Okay,” he said, and rolled over to look up at the clear blue sky. “What do I know?” A couple of crows cawed, somewhere behind the barn, but that was the only reply. Kon closed his eyes and thought, carefully avoiding assumptions, just like Tim had told him.

Matt had been killed in the locker room after the last class of the day. He was gay, which may or may not have been the motive for the murder. He’d been hit, hard, in the head, killing him instantly and knocking him to the floor – but the killer kept hitting him, with his – or her, Kon corrected, mentally – hands and feet until he’d been a pulpy mess. It had been over fast, and nobody had heard a thing – unless there were witnesses and they just weren’t talking, which might be true if some terrifying crazy meta had threatened them.

He’d had history with his dad, but the dad was off the hook because he wasn’t a meta. He’d had a boyfriend, who he’d been very close to, and according to his mother, at least, faithful to. His best friend had a bad temper, and had been the one to find his body. He’d been out of the closet. He’d been, well, kind of a small kid, on the thin side, and not very physically intimidating.

“Shit,” Kon muttered. It could have been anyone. It wasn’t like the locker rooms were ever off limits to anybody during school hours, and even after, they were open for the sports teams to come and go during practice. And practice never started right after school, but a lot of the guys would suit up to run or lift weights while they waited.

Kon’s eyes flew open.

Index |
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