THE NEW GIRL IN SMALLVILLE
by Christopher Leeson
 
Part Six: Homecoming

They passed through the double doors and made the walk to the gymnasium, a journey Claire had made countless times as Clark, but never like this. The big room had been transformed with crepe paper streamers, and with white tag-board stars hung from the steel rafters with fishing line. They looked pathetic in Claire's eyes, for her super-vision allowed her to gaze outward to real stars in space. The air around them was laden with the scent of cheap perfume, competing with the odor of the industrial-floor wax covering the floor. A backdrop for photos had been erected at the far end, already surrounded by giggling couples.

They paused by the big easel that held pictures of the dance attendees when they were much younger.

Pete extracted a snapshot from his pocket. “I brought a photo of myself from my first year at Smallville High. Should I pin yours up, too?”

Claire shook her head. “I didn’t bring any photos with me from Florida. I wasn't expecting to be invited to parties and dances.”

“Why? Don’t you like parties and dances?” her escort asked.

“Less than most girls do. My favorite hobby is reading.”

“You’re a lot like your cousin Clark that way,” said Pete while pinning his photo to the board. Next, they drifted toward the refreshment table. Already, the dance floor was teeming with students doing an energetic Watusi, with arms swinging and hips swaying to the pulsing beat.

Pete offered his arm to Claire with exaggerated formality. “Shall we, milady?”

She forced a smile and took it, as it was the expected thing.

As the pair approached the dancing area, several heads turned their way. Claire felt a rush of self-consciousness, but Pete looked pleased with himself. Claire guessed that having the good-looking new girl on his arm was earning him respect from the high school crowd.

The music soon trailed off, and the dancers dispersed in a burst of chatter and laughter.

“Punch?” Pete suggested, gesturing toward the refreshment table. His date nodded and led her across the room.

Claire surveyed the gymnasium with an anthropologist’s detachment. Girls clustered in tight groups, whispering and laughing, casting occasional glances toward the boys who stood in packs near the walls. When the Twist started up, couples hurried back to the dance floor, some close together, others maintaining a shy distance. It was like watching an elaborate mating ritual from a National Geographic newsreel.

“Have you ever done the twist?” Pete asked.

“I haven’t had the chance. But I saw this guy on TV showing the moves to the audience. Basically, you make your right foot look like you’re putting out a cigarette on the floor, while moving your hands like you’re drying your lower back with a towel.”

“Yeah, that’s the twist!” He handed her a filled cup. “So, what’s your first impression of Smallville High’s party scene?”

“Well, it’s lively, but it fortunately doesn’t look dangerous,” Claire replied dryly. “I haven’t been to many school dances, but it seems to be hard to make a gymnasium look like anything except a gymnasium.”

 Pete grinned. “I can agree with that. From my experience, gym dances are pretty standard—awkward teens, wallflowers, punch with too much sugar, and music that’s already six months out of date.”

 “I’m going to need your help to keep me from becoming a wallflower,” Claire said. “I let my aunt go overboard fixing me up, so I'd make a good impression on my classmates.”

 “You'll make a good impression on people if they see you dancing.”

"I suppose that's how it works."

 “Then we’ll have to dance, I suppose,” Pete said, extending his hand.

Claire hesitated. She had boned up on dancing by watching youth spots with her super-vision over the last couple days. But now, being asked in public to dance with a boy, she felt daunted. Still, not dancing might make her seem shy or stuck-up, and she didn't want to stand out in any way.

 “Sure,” she said, taking his hand.

Pete led her to the dance floor. The twist didn’t require them to touch, a detail Claire secretly appreciated. With no required coordination between partners, Pete and Claire began grinding down imaginary cigarettes and vigorously drying themselves with invisible towels.

“You look so serious,” Pete whispered. “Dancing is supposed to make a person happy!”

"Sorry," said Claire, "I was thinking about the next biology test. She now forced herself to relax and let the music guide her movements. The next dance was the Swim—a series of arm movements mimicking a swimmer’s front stroke, side stroke, and backstroke, using a move called the “Cannonball,” which meant pinching your nose shut and bending your knees as if going underwater. Gradually, moving to the music became almost natural.

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Pete said, smiling.

“Thanks,” Claire quipped. “What I like about dancing is that it’s easier than rocket science!”

“Which class teaches rocket science?”

“Dummy!" she said

Pete smiled, this time, with no need to force it.

Between dances, they ladled more punch and munched on treats—mostly pastries from the local bakery. When they spoke, they carefully avoided sensitive topics. It was hard for Claire to get her mind around being on a date with a boy.

The next dance was the Mashed Potato, whose simple moves involved clicking heels and making side kicks. Some couples got into trouble when they tried to dance too fast, but Claire, accustomed to super-speed, had no difficulty keeping pace.

They left the dance floor when the song ended. On the way back to the tables, a commotion erupted near the gymnasium entrance doors. The principal’s voice crackled over the speaker system:

“Attention, students. I’ve just been informed that there’s been an accident on Highway 7. A tanker truck has overturned, and there’s a chemical spill. Emergency services are responding, but as a precaution, we’re going to keep everyone on the school grounds until further notice.”

Murmurs rippled through the crowd as students scattered across the large enclosure to talk excitedly to one another. Claire tensed, her enhanced hearing already picking up siren wails from the edge of town.

“Highway 7!?" exclaimed Pete. "If the chemicals pour into the reservoir, the whole town will be cooked!”

He didn’t need to expand the thought. Miller’s Creek ran along Hightway 7 and fed directly into Smallville’s reservoir—the town’s major water supply. If toxic chemicals contaminated it, the whole town would have to alternate water sources for weeks, maybe months.

A strange look came into her date’s eyes. “You wait here and be safe,” he said. “I want to go to my car radio and find out what other stations are reporting!” He hurried off. Claire looked after him. Pete was always rushing off in tense moments. He'd been doing that for as long as she’d known him.

But his retreat had provided her with room to react to the emergency. A toxic spill would plague Smallville for months if she didn’t act immediately. The contamination would make life and business hard for everyone in Smallville, including her parents.

She hurried toward the girls’ bathroom, her mind racing. It had large windows and, she could exit the school unseen, just as Clark had gotten used to doing from boys’ bath rooms. She had fortunately brought Super-Sister costume with her, compressed to the size of a handkerchief inside her clutch purse.

Thought still angry at the town, letting Smallville get poisoned was more revenge than she wanted to take.

Claire looked at the costume in her purse, and then looked at her own reflection in the lavatory mirror—the elegant dress, the styled hair, the corsage on her left shoulder. Even now, it was hard to believe that that appearance was now her own.

Claire changed clothes in a blur of speed. She took the man-made material of her dress out the window with her, and hid it at super-speed inside the utility shed standing on the lawn outside the gymnasium.

Cloaked by speed and darkness, Super-Sister arrived at the accident scene in seconds. The tanker truck had jackknifed across Highway 7, coming to rest on its side, bleeding pungent fumes and green toxicity. The tank's leakage formed an expanding pool was runneling toward the nearby creek. Emergency vehicles were still arriving and creating a perimeter, their flashing lights illuminating the grim faces of firefighters in chemical suits moving in to contain the poisonous streams.

Claire hovered above, assessing the situation with super-vision. Hairline fractures spider-webbed across the tanker’s main compartment. It was only minutes away from a catastrophic rupture that would dump thousands of gallons of industrial chemicals directly into the watershed.

She descended in front of the incident commander, who looked up in surprise.

“Wellll! You’re that new super-girl, ain’t ya?” said a uniformed man.

“Yes,” Claire replied. “Let me help. That tanker’s about to rupture.”

The commander—a veteran firefighter named Reilly—eyed her skeptically, his thumbs hooked in his turnout gear. “We got us some chemical hazard protocols to handle this, Missy. You got the same grit as Superboy? You sure you won’t go gettin’ yourself hurt?”

Claire said, “I can fly through stars! Caustic chemicals can’t hurt me. Are the chemicals explosive or combustible?”

“Naw, but they’re nasty-toxic! Real foul stuff.”

“I should be able to weld the fractures with my heat vision and then move the tanker away from the creek.”

Reilly hesitated, weighing his options. Claire could sense his reluctance to trust an unknown super-being—especially an unfamiliar female one. But his tone, oddly enough, sounded like a teacher concerned for the safety of a child.

“Boss!” one of the hazard techs called out, his vowels flat and hard. “Da pressure’s climbin’ fast in dere. Deese chemicals are startin' to jet, and any second now, da whole ting’s gonna bust wide open. We gotta move it, yeah? We gotta go!”

Reilly’s jaw tightened. “All right,” he barked at Claire. “Missy, do what ya can. But if I tell ya to stand down, you do as you’re told—we clear?”

Rather than reminding him again of her indestructibility, Claire simply nodded. She was determined to do what she had to do, no matter what the local fire chief thought about it.

Super-Sister took to the air again and positioned herself above the damaged tanker. Using her super-vision, she identified each point of structural failure and began applying pinpoint beams of heat vision to weld the fractures. The metal glowed red, then white-hot as it melted and fused.

As she worked, a new sound reached her ears—a low rumbling from beneath the ground. With her attention divided between delicate welding work and this fresh development, she almost missed the subtle shift in the earth beneath the tanker.

“Everyone back!” Claire shouted as realization struck. “The ground is unstable!”

Her warning came just as the saturated soil allowed the tanker to slide downhill, pulling asphalt and dirt with it in a growing avalanche. Emergency workers scrambled backward as Claire abandoned her welding and dove to grab the tank.

The eighteen-wheeler’s weight was nothing to her Kryptonian strength, but its awkward shape and the slick chemicals coating it made it difficult to seize a secure grip. As she struggled to stabilize it, one of the hazard technicians lost his footing on the muddy slope and tumbled toward a contaminated puddle.

Claire faced an instant decision: secure the tanker or save the technician. With a frustrated grunt, she set the tanker down on a stable section of ground and streaked toward the falling tech, catching him inches before momentum could roll him across the poisoned ground.

“I’ve got you,” she assured the man, lifting him and placing him on his feet behind the emergency line.

But in those few crucial seconds, gravity reasserted its hold on the truck. It was sliding again, its massive bulk picking up momentum as it headed for the creek.

Claire flashed back, grabbed the truck’s front axle, and dug her heels into the ground. Her boots sank into the mud beneath her, but she held firm. Its weight was nothing compared to her strength, but the physics of shifting terrain made the operation touch-and-go.

With a last surge of determination, she lifted the tanker entirely, hovering a few feet above the treacherous ground. “I need somewhere to put this!” she called to Chief Reilly.

He pointed to a flat, paved area well away from the creek. “Take it to the park! Containment pools are being set up there!”

Claire carefully transported her awkward load to the designated area, setting it down with precision atop the plastic containment barriers the emergency team had rapidly deployed.

As soon as the tanker was no longer an immediate source of contamination, she returned to the creek bank and used her super-breath to freeze the chemical trail that had almost reached the water’s edge.

Then she dove into the muddy ground and, by shoving, created a dike of mud to block the flow-way of the deadly chemicals. That would give the rescue team time to deal with the contained toxins.

“Are you able to contain things now?” Super-Sister asked the members of the wide-eyed hazard team.

Chief Reilly approached at a fast trot, looking less skeptical than before. “Good work, Missy,” he acknowledged. “This could’da gone wrong-side up without you pitching in!”

“Just doing what needs to be done,” Super-Sister replied, concealing her dislike for being called “Missy.”

“You’re really Superboy’s sistah?” one of the younger firefighters asked.

Claire hesitated, then answered vaguely. “Something like that. “But I can’t talk now. I have an emergency to handle elsewhere.

“Woman’s work is nevah done,” the young worker quipped with a broad, admiring smile.

Super-Sister inwardly winced. Here was yet another male who thought she was pretty!

“Wait!” Reilly called as the super-heroine was preparing to take off. “Whacha call yourself? I need a handle for the report.”

“I keep my identity secret, Chief. Just call me “Super-Sister,” she said. That name left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, but she needed to protect her secret identities. If people learned that Superboy had turned into a girl, she’d live the rest of her life in humiliation.

She backed away into the clear and sprang into the sky, her cape snapping. She needed to speed back and make it look as if she had never left the homecoming dance.

Super-Sister felt dazed by a tangle of emotions. Hopefully, this successful rescue would prove her the equal of Superboy — a recognition that her pride demanded.

With scant loss of time, Claire recovered her party clothes from the utility shed and slipped back indoors through the bathroom window. She flashed into her party dress. If lucky, with the confusion in the gymnasium, no one would have noticed her absence. A quick glance at the mirror warned her that her cheek was smudged and the wind had made a mess of her hair.

She clenched her teeth. People would more easily notice a girl in dishabille than they would the almost-invisible Clark Kent. Higher expectations for girls weren’t fair, but those were the cards she’d been dealt.

A hyper-speed washing and combing made her presentable. Finally, with a deep breath, Claire pushed open the lavatory door, walked at merely human speed down the short hall, and stepped through the pneumatic door into the decorated gymnasium.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 7