Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4)(56)

As they walked, they talked about Smallville and the protests outside city hall, and they wondered what it would be like to go somewhere else. Gloria had been to Metropolis for a summer camp once. She told him it was dirty and loud, but at the same time she’d felt at home because there were so many other people like her. Clark talked about the one time his family had driven to Iowa for a hog show. But the town they’d stayed in, he told her, felt even more like Smallville than Smallville. So he really didn’t know anything else.

“The weirdest part,” Gloria said, “is sometimes I feel alone when I’m surrounded by my family. Like, when I bring up college, for example. Everyone gets quiet. Like they don’t even wanna go there. And it gets super awkward. I used to take it personally, but now I just sort of…I don’t know. I guess I’ve accepted that I’m different from them in some ways. And maybe that’s okay.”

She had just put words to the way he’d felt his entire life.

Maybe Gloria was right. Maybe it was okay to be different from your family.

He turned to her, relieved, and said, “Even though they get weird when you bring up college, I’m sure they still love you.” He realized he was talking about more than just Gloria’s situation now. “And support you.”

She nodded. “They do.”

“And you still love them.”

Gloria smiled. “More than anything.”

As they walked side by side toward the Pullman farm, Clark glanced at Gloria’s profile. He wanted so badly to confide in her the way she was confiding in him. To reveal what he really was. Where he really came from. But he kept his mouth shut. Because that was what his real life would always be now: a secret trapped inside.

Gloria stopped when they came upon the fence. “What now?”

“We’re going over.”

She frowned. “Really? You always struck me as a rule follower.”

“I am,” he said, grinning. “The people who owned the place have already moved out. And the new people aren’t here yet.” He boosted her over the fence, then followed.

Soon they came upon the frozen pond.

It sparkled under the moonlight, and Clark watched Gloria’s face light up.

“Whoa,” she said under her breath. “How’s this possible?”

Clark smiled. “I don’t know, but I had to show you.”

She turned to him then, a genuine look of curiosity in her eyes. “But…why me, Clark?”

“Because,” he told her, “you’re the kind of girl whose wishes should come true.” Clark opened his backpack and removed the four strips of metal and the twine. “Can I see your shoes?” he asked.

“My shoes.” There was confusion mixed into her smile as she pulled off her shoes and handed them over.

Clark used his strength to make sure her soles hugged the beds of his crude skates. The blade sat firmly underneath in a straight line. He then secured everything tightly into place with a good bit of twine.

“Wait a second,” she said, catching on. She glanced at the pond, then back at Clark. “Are you serious?”

He was grinning from ear to ear now. “You told me you wanted to try ice-skating,” he said, securing makeshift blades to the bottoms of his own shoes. Clark stood up and took her hand and led her toward the pond.

“I’m going ice-skating,” she mumbled to herself. “In spring. What is this life?”

They stepped onto the ice together tentatively, Clark pulling her toward him. “We should probably hang on to each other,” he told her.

“So we don’t fall,” she said.

“Exactly.”

A few steps in, though, Gloria slipped and dragged Clark down to the ice with her. They both laughed as they climbed back to their feet. The blades weren’t perfectly even, so it was difficult to move with any real fluidity. Holding on tightly to each other and taking little choppy steps, they were soon clumsily gliding across the ice on their jagged strips of metal. Gloria’s warm hand in Clark’s. Her eyes piercing his chest whenever she turned to look up at him. They skated like this for a long stretch, until Gloria let go of him and drifted a few feet away.

“Ready?” she said.

“For what?” he answered.

“My twirl.”

“Oh, man, I don’t know if that’s such a good—”

Before he could even get the sentence out, she was swinging her arms around and attempting to leap into the air like some kind of Olympic figure skater. One of her skates caught and the other flew out from underneath her, and she went tumbling toward the ice. Clark lunged forward to try to catch her, but he slipped, too, and she landed in an awkward sitting position on his back.

He craned his neck to look at her. “Saved you!”

They both laughed as she slid off his back and he picked himself up so that the two of them were sitting on the cold ice, face to face. Their eyes locked, and slowly their smiles began to fade.

“Thank you,” she said in a soft voice, placing a hand on his knee.

He brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, then traced a finger lightly down her cheek. She reached up, stopped his hand, and held it there as she looked into his eyes.

He leaned toward her slightly.

“Clark,” she whispered.