Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(18)

Clark motioned toward the Kellers and the Smiths, who were consumed by their card game. “They look kind of rough. I’m just saying…I’m here for you if things get out of hand.”

Gloria looked over her shoulder at them. “Ooh, I see what you mean.” She turned back to Clark, pretending to take him seriously. “They do look a little dangerous. If one of them acts up, I’ll definitely flag you down.”

“I’ll be right over here.” He pointed back at his table.

“You’re a real gentleman, Clark.”

He shot her his best gentlemanly grin. It made her laugh a little before she turned away and hurried over to the food pass, where an annoyed cook in the back was trying to squeeze another order onto the crowded hot plate.

Clark felt like he was walking on air as he headed back to his table. He plopped down in the booth across from Bryan in a kind of daze. He’d had minor crushes on other girls over the years. Even dated a few briefly. But he’d never felt anything like this.

Bryan was grinning from ear to ear. “You were great, man.”

“Really?” Clark asked. “I felt like I should have talked more.”

“No way,” Bryan said. “That’s part of your charm, Clark.”

“Well, I appreciate the pep talk. I probably never would have spoken to her.” Clark noticed that Bryan had only managed to eat a few bites of his steak. And it looked like he’d already thrown in the towel.

As if reading Clark’s mind, Bryan looked down at his plate and said, “Guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach. But I saw a guy sleeping in the alley on the way over here. Let’s pack this to go and hook him up.”

Clark glanced at his own plate, which was empty, and wished he had something to contribute.

Bryan looked around for their server, saying, “When you grow up in my family, charity’s sort of in your blood. My dad’s horrified that anyone in Smallville is living below the poverty line. I don’t know if you heard, but he’s opening a food bank slash homeless shelter slash treatment center downtown.”

“Really?” Clark thought about this. “Is Smallville even big enough for that kind of thing?”

“That’s the beauty of it. It’s not just for Smallville residents,” Bryan said, shaking his head. “The plan is to have people coming from as far off as Metropolis to get help.” He nudged his plate away. “That’s one thing I really respect about my dad. He doesn’t do things like that for the attention. In fact, he thinks publicity can sometimes take away from the cause itself.”

Clark was impressed. He made a mental note to tell Lana about the shelter next time he saw her. It’d be tough for her to question Mongomery Mankins’s character after learning that he wasn’t even taking credit for some of the charity work he was doing.





On Monday night, after doing all his chores around the farm after school, Clark sat down at his desk to study. But he was having a difficult time concentrating. He kept reading the same passage in his applied physics textbook over and over, but the material wasn’t sinking in. He’d get halfway through the second sentence and his mind would drift to his conversation with Gloria at the diner. He was staring at the words, but all he could see was her sliding her pencil behind her ear. And her smile. The way her eyes had lit up when she laughed at his joke.

Clark rubbed his temples, trying to concentrate on the pages of his textbook. To stare intently at the information, which had something to do with electromagnetic propulsion. He forced himself to absorb each word, one at a time, trying to make sense of it in the context of the chapter.

But then a strange buzzing filled his head.

A warmth rose up through his legs and chest and into his arms and fingertips. And his whole body became strangely rigid as a terrifying flash of bright red filled his vision.

He pinched his eyelids closed, leaping out of his chair and tumbling over a laundry basket full of clean clothes that he’d forgotten to put away. He clawed at his eyes as he scrambled to his feet, yelling. His back slammed against the wall.

Was he going blind?

The backs of his eyelids were on fire, and when he first opened them he couldn’t see a thing.

The world had gone black.

In a few seconds, though, the burning subsided. And he could see shapes. And then colors. As he slowly regained his vision, he sat back down at his desk, trying to catch his breath. He’d never felt so relieved in his life.

That’s when he realized his textbook was on fire.

He panicked, thinking his bedroom might go up in flames. The whole farmhouse. And his parents weren’t home to help control the blaze. He pounced on the crackling textbook, tamping down the flames with his bare hands. The heat from the fire pressed into his palms, but it didn’t hurt exactly. At least he didn’t think so. It felt more like tiny needles pricking his skin, like when his arm would fall asleep in bed and he’d wake up, turn over, and feel the blood slowly spreading back through his veins.

Once he’d smothered the flames in his textbook, he stamped out a few embers that had fallen onto the rug next to his small desk. Smoke rose up near the ceiling, setting off the fire alarm in the hall. It wailed and wailed until he raced out of his room and leapt up to disarm it. The piercing sound of the alarm quickly subsided, but now Clark heard something else.