“Who’s there?”
A tense voice came from behind me a little while later.
“It’s me.”
“Clark?”
Lana sounded surprised.
“What are you doing here?”
“You see…”
I thought for a moment.
“I have this habit.
Whenever something goes to hell in my life and I need to seriously think about it, I come to a cemetery.”
I shrugged.
“And somehow those moments usually happen at night.”
I wasn’t even lying.
I’d really had that habit in my previous life, although it hadn’t been some random cemetery.
It had been my father’s grave.
I’d made many of the most important decisions of my previous life sitting beside it, and yes, it had usually been at night.
A lot of people mystified cemeteries, filling them with ghosts and supernatural nonsense in their imaginations.
Others came to cemeteries specifically to show off, acting tough for themselves or for other people, making a mess and behaving like idiots.
I belonged to neither group.
To me, it was simply a beautiful, peaceful place where a person could think.
“What about you?”
“You know how to keep a secret?”
Lana asked as she walked almost right up to me.
I nearly jumped away in panic.
But…
The unpleasant sensation from earlier wasn’t there.
I was standing half a step away from Lana Lang without writhing in pain.
Interesting.
So she herself wasn’t the cause of the reaction.
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“I’d say I can.”
Privately, I added that otherwise, I’d be dead.
“I come here at night to talk to my parents.”
She smiled.
“You’re probably going to think it’s weird that I talk to dead people.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think that’s weird.”
Privately, I added that what was much stranger was that I was technically dead too, and I was talking to her.
“There are some things you can’t tell the living.”
Lana smiled and took my hand.
“Come on.
I’ll introduce you to them.”
It wasn’t far.
We stopped in front of a very small gravestone.
“Mom.
Dad.”
Lana spoke loudly enough for the dead to hear.
“This is Clark Kent.”
She looked at me.
“Say hello.”
“Hello.”
I raised one hand in greeting.
I felt…
Strange.
“He’s shy.”
Lana crouched in front of the stone.
“Mom’s asking if you’re upset about a girl.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“And Dad’s asking if it’s because of a guy.”
She looked at me.
“Don’t pay attention to him.
He’s got a twisted sense of humor.”
Then she smiled.
“So, Clark…”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m not upset, Lana.”
I considered my words.
“I’m confused.”
I looked at the gravestone.
“Have you ever had the feeling that everything is…”
I searched for the right word.
“Wrong?”
I shook my head.
“Fantastic.
Grotesque.
Impossible.”
I looked at her.
“Like you need to pinch yourself as hard as possible, wake up, and realize this is all just a dream?”
“Sometimes.”
Lana remained crouched in front of her parents’ grave.
“Sometimes I dream that I’m at school, waiting for Nell to pick me up.”
Her voice became quieter.
“But she never comes.”
She swallowed.
“She just doesn’t come.”
Then her expression changed.
“And then my parents appear, and we go home together.”
She smiled faintly.
“In the dream, I’m completely happy.”
Her eyes became wet.
“Then I wake up and realize it was only a dream.”
She looked at the gravestone.
“They’re gone.”
Her voice cracked.
“And I’m actually alone.”
“You’re not alone.”
I said it quietly.
“The people we love who have crossed over…”
I placed a hand against my chest.
“They’re still here.”
I tapped my heart.
“In here.”
I smiled faintly.
“They’re in your heart.”
I knew how cliché it sounded.
Empty words.
The kind of thing people said because they didn’t know what else to say.
“But stop for a moment.”
I looked at her.
“Just listen.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
She looked confused.
“Listen to what?”
“Your heart.”
I raised a hand to stop her.
“Ignore the part of your mind telling you this is stupid.
Just listen.”
She hesitated.
“I…”
Her eyes became even wetter.
“I can hear…”
“Just listen.”
I nodded.
“Listen to your heart.”
“Listen to their voices.”
She didn’t answer, but I could see something changing in her expression.
“You’re not alone, Lana.”
I said it calmly now.
There was no passion or attempt at persuasion in my voice, just certainty.
In my previous life, I’d experienced loss too.
I’d known what it was like to be miserable, to be lonely.
Nobody went to a cemetery at night because life was going particularly well.
I’d found my own answer back then, my own way of surviving it.
And now I was trying to share that answer with this lost, grieving girl.
Maybe it would help her.
There was a chance.
That was enough.
“Thank you, Clark.”
After a while, Lana quietly wiped the tears from her eyes and hid them behind a smile.
“But still…”
She looked at me.
“What are you doing here?”
Her expression softened.
“What made you feel confused?”
She smiled faintly.
“You’re always so…”
She searched for the word.
“Unshakable.”
“Well.”
I snorted.
“Apparently I’m not.”
I looked away.
“There are things that can throw even me off balance.”
“Will you tell me about them?”
“Maybe.”
I sighed.
“It’s getting cold.”
I looked toward the sky.
“The fog will be rolling in soon.”
“Yeah.”
Lana shivered inside her jacket.
She was dressed appropriately for the weather, though, warm enough.
It was obvious this wasn’t her first nighttime visit here.
She knew what she was doing.
“I’ll walk you home.”
I stood.
“A horse is pretty good protection, but still.”
I looked at her.
“A girl, alone, at night…”
I shook my head.
“If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
I paused.
“Or Whitney would probably kill me.”
“Probably.”
Lana didn’t argue.
We said goodbye to her parents and left the cemetery together.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
Although “walking together” wasn’t exactly accurate.
I was walking, while Lana was riding her horse, and I was leading the horse by the reins.
“Lana?”
I finally broke the silence.
“Are you good at using your imagination?”
“I think I’m pretty good.”
She looked down at me.
“Why?”
“I read this book recently.”
I started improvising.
“Not a particularly good book, honestly.
But there was one idea in it that stuck with me.”
“What idea?”
“Imagine…”
I hesitated.
“Imagine that you’re suddenly an alien.”
“And?”
She didn’t understand.
“An alien, and what?”
“Nothing.”
I shrugged.
“Just an alien.”
I looked toward the fields.
“You live among humans.
You don’t hurt anyone.
You don’t have some grand mission or some not-so-grand mission.
You’re not a spy.
You’re not an invader.”
I smiled.
“You’re just…”
“An alien.”
“What a strange book.”
Lana thought about it.
“Who’s the author?”
“It’s not professional literature.”
I waved dismissively.
“Some guy with the stupid pen name Evil…
EvilPen, I think.”
I pretended to struggle with the name.
“Something like that.
I don’t remember exactly.”
I continued inventing the story.
I was reasonably confident that if Lana ever looked up someone with a similar nickname, she’d find somebody.
And if that person didn’t have a book like this?
I’d just say I’d gotten the title wrong.
“Okay…”
Lana looked thoughtful.
“So what?”
“What?”
“What is it like?”
I looked at her.
“Being an alien.”
“That’s what got me curious too.”
I stared at the distant stars, the same stars I’d come from.
“What would it feel like to be an alien among humans?”
Lana thought about it.
“I…”
She hesitated.
“I think he’d be lonely.”
She looked ahead.
“Everyone around him is human.
They’re not like him.
They don’t understand him.”
She paused.
“Does he have anyone from his own planet?”
“Someone he can talk to?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“The book didn’t have that.”
I smiled faintly.
“The author explained it in a really vague way, so I never quite understood it.
But no, there weren’t any of his people on Earth.”
I shrugged.
“Or maybe there were, but he didn’t communicate with them.”
“That must be so sad.”
Lana frowned.
“Not having anyone to talk to…”
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t live like that.”
“Why not?”
I smiled.
“He can talk to people.”
“Humans.”
“He lives among them.”
“But how can he talk to them?”
She looked genuinely confused.
“He’s an alien.”
She made a face.
“A little green guy with no nose.”
“No.”
I laughed.
“He’s not like that.”
“In the book, he looked completely human.”
“And inside?”
“I don’t know.”
I shrugged.
“The book was unfinished.”
“What a strange idea.”
Lana fell silent for a moment.
“An alien living among humans.”
She looked thoughtful.
“Something about it really got to me.”
She smiled faintly.
“Now I’m probably not going to sleep until morning.”
“Why?”
“I’ll keep thinking about how he feels.”
“Will you tell me what you come up with?”
“Sure.”
She nodded.
“Will you?”
“Of course.”
She looked at me.
“Did you come to the cemetery because of that book?”
“No.”
I sighed.
“It’s actually because of Lex.”
“Luthor?”
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“He sent me a brand-new car as a thank-you for saving him from the river yesterday.”
Lana’s eyebrows rose.
“And your father won’t let you accept it.”
“Apparently he has some kind of history with the Luthors.”
I shrugged.
“And honestly, I saved Lex because he needed saving.
I wasn’t doing it for a reward.”
I glanced at her.
“So maybe I shouldn’t accept one.”
I sighed.
“That’s what I was thinking about.”
“I usually listen to my father.”
I smiled.
“But this time I needed somewhere quiet to think.”
“Did I interrupt you?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Actually, the opposite.”
I smiled.
“You managed to clear my head.”
“Really?”
“You helped me realize that a car…”
I shrugged.
“Even a brand-new car…”
“Isn’t worth fighting with my father over.”
Lana looked thoughtful.
“And nobody knows how much time they’ve been given.”
I looked toward the cemetery behind us.
“What if I spent years regretting that I wasted time on something so stupid?”
I smiled sadly.
“Stupid arguments.”
“Yeah.”
Lana sighed.
“You’re right.”
She looked back toward the cemetery.
“It isn’t worth it.”