Loving a Luthor

Once upon a time, in a land far away….

Glass shattered. A scream pierced the thick fog that surrounded me. I stood in the middle of the chaos, hands clamped my hands over my ears. All I wanted was to drown out the shrill sound. It didn’t work. The screaming grew louder and louder…until my whole body vibrated with it. I dropped to my knees. Warmth dripped down my face…blood. I was bleeding. And the screaming? It was coming from me.

With a jolting shudder, reality snatched me back. Sweat soaked bedsheets clung to me to me like wet bandages. I bolted upright. Chest heaving as I struggled to catch a calming breath, I swiveled my head left and then right. It took a moment to register the familiar bedroom.

“Just a dream…just a dream.” I muttered, untangling myself from the twisted bedsheets.

It was over now.

Right?

The alarm clock next to my bed mocked me, flashing four o’clock am. Rubbing my palms over aching eyes, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood. I swayed slightly, still a bit uneasy from the nightmare. The thin mattress creaking under me. I ignored it.

There was no sense in laying in my own mess in a feeble attempt to go back to sleep. My body felt wrong—electric, buzzing. It was like I’d mainlined three pots of coffee and then stuck a fork in a wall socket for good measure. My heart thudded too fast, too loud in my ears, and every muscle twitched with that jittery, overcharged energy that made my fingertips tingle and my jaw clench without permission. Even my eyelids felt wired open, refusing to droop.

I padded across the cool floorboards to the open window, keeping my steps light in an attempt not to wake my mother. I snorted to myself. Fat chance of that. Calling that woman a heavy sleeper was an understatement if ever there was one.

I leaned against the window frame, releashing the way the cool autumn air cooled my fevered skin. I peered out across the landscape. There was very little to see except…Corn. It was…well, everywhere. Dark rows marching into the black, leaves rustling like they were whispering secrets I wasn’t supposed to hear. Moonlight edged the stalks in faint silver, making them look almost alive.

Smallville

My nose crinkled. It wasn’t exactly an awe-inspiring name. But, then again, that had been the point. Plain. Forgettable. It was the sort of place a person could disappear into if they were not careful. A ghost of a smile touched my lips. Mother had picked. Because of course she had. It was a place so ordinary that, perhaps, it would allow us to restart.

We couldn’t stay in Metropolis. Not after the accident. Not after what had been done. That much had been obvious. After two years of hospitals…two years of being shuffled from doctor to doctor only to be told I would never walk again…two years of seeing specialists and physical therapy…I was beyond ready to start over. To be normal again.

I cradled my head in my hand, finger tips tracing the scars beneath my hairline. They weren’t visible to the naked eye. Thank God. That would help to avoid intrusive questions. I was seventeen years old. But I didn’t feel like it. I was stuck as the fifteen year old girl that had gone driving with her star quarter back boyfriend and had woken hooked to machines that had kept her alive for the last year. Jason had lived…and hadn’t visited one time. No calls. No cards. The only flowers were brought by the hospital staff.

It had take months to regain my memory of that night. Even now, my brain was a mixed jumble of fractured memories. The doctors said I might never get some of those memories back. Back then, I had been grateful to just be alive. I hadn’t…appreciated the magnitude of it. Not until I had tried to go back to school. Not until I couldn’t place people…friends that I had known for years.

That’s when Mother had made the choice to move. Unfornuately, that wasn’t going to be the end of my problems. I had to start over. At a new school. I had lost two years so, despite me being seventeen, I would be forced into classes with fifteen year olds.

I winced at the thought. I’d already decided: I would keep the accident to myself. My secrets were mine alone—mine to guard, mine to share if and when I ever chose to. No one else needed the weight of them.

The clock on the wall chimed six slow, tinny notes behind me. Dawn light was just beginning to leak through the curtains, gray and thin. I was wide awake anyway, nerves still humming like a low current under my skin, so there was no point pretending otherwise. Might as well face the day. With a sigh, I headed downstairs.

By the time Mom shuffled into the kitchen, I’d already scrambled eggs, toasted the last of the bread, and set two plates. I sat at the scarred oak table, fork in hand, eating slowly. She appeared in the doorway wrapped in that threadbare robe the color of old dishwater, hair flattened on one side, eyes half-shut against the light.

I glanced up—just long enough to register her—then dropped my gaze back to my plate. She wasn’t a morning person on her best days, and today was no different. She moved slow, still half-asleep, bumping the counter as she reached for the coffee tin. The pot gurgled to life.

She muttered something under her breath—words too slurred and low to catch, but the tone was familiar: irritation, exhaustion, and maybe a flicker of guilt she’d never admit. The smell of burnt grounds drifted over as she poured too much water, the way she always did when she wasn’t paying attention.

I chewed in silence, listening to the drip-drip of the machine and the faint creak of the floorboards under her bare feet. The kitchen felt smaller in the morning light, every crack in the linoleum and every chip in the Formica table screaming how temporary this place was supposed to be. How fragile.

She finally sat across from me with her mug, cradling it like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Neither of us spoke. There was nothing worth saying yet—not about the farm, not about why we’d come here, not about the secrets I was already burying deeper with every bite.

“Are…are you driving me to school today?” I sighed, unable to bare the silence a moment longer.

Mother flinched, as if caught off guard by the abrupt intrusion of whatever thoughts flickered through that brain of hers.

I watched the grip on the coffee mug turn almost dangerous. “Do you…want me to?”

Things had been…tense between us since my accident. If I was being honest with myself, and I usually wasn’t, the tension had started long before that. But that was a truth I wasn’t quite ready to face yet.

“Yes.”

The kitchen stayed quiet, that single word hanging between us. There was no pretence in that word. No excuses. No begging. But it spoke of a longing I hadn’t dared speak outloud for quite some time. Maybe never. A longing every girl has for her mother.

Mother didn’t answer, not at first. She sat her, eyes slightly widened in surprise. Lips tight. Controlled. Her eyesbrows furrowed, grip on the mug turning dangerious. I could see the wheels clicking without her having to say a word.

She lifted the cup to her lips, took a small sip. Then another. She winced. From the heat or the taste, I didn’t know. She returned it to the table with deliberate care. The cermaic mug clicked against the table.

“I’ll need to leave early,” she said finally. Her voice was rough from sleep and cigarettes she swore she’d quit six months ago. “The new job starts at seven-thirty. Orientation. Paperwork. The usual bullshit.”

I nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at me. I pushed a piece of egg around my plate with the fork tines, making little yellow trails in the congealing butter.

“I can walk if it’s easier.”

Her eyes flicked up then—quick, almost startled. “It’s three miles. Uphill half the way. In the dark. No.”

“I’ve done worse.”

“Not here you haven’t.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger, the way she did when a headache was already clawing its way in. “The roads out here don’t have sidewalks. Drivers don’t expect kids on foot. And you’re still—” She stopped herself, but the unfinished sentence sat there anyway: you’re still not steady on your feet, not really.

I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck. Not anger, exactly. Something closer to shame, the kind that tastes metallic. I hated how she could still reduce me to that fifteen-year-old girl in one unfinished thought.

“I’m fine to walk,” I said again, quieter this time, testing the lie.

She exhaled through her nose. “You’re not dropping out of sight on the first day. Not in this town. People notice things like that here. They talk.”

Smallville. Where everyone knew everyone else’s business before breakfast and spent the rest of the day seasoning it with speculation. Mom had said as much when we signed the lease on this peeling two-bedroom farmhouse last month. We’ll be invisible, she’d promised. Plain names, plain life, plain problems. Except plain never quite stayed plain when you carried scars under your hair and nightmares that screamed loud enough to wake the dead.

I set my fork down. “Okay.”

She studied me for a long beat, like she was waiting for the usual argument. It didn’t come. I was so…tired of arguing. Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders. Not all of it. Never all of it. But enough.

“Finish eating,” she said. “I’ll shower. We leave at seven-fifteen sharp.”

She pushed back from the table. Her robe drug across the linoleum as she disappeared down the short hallway. The bathroom door clicked shut. A moment later the pipes groaned, then water hissed through the showerhead.

I stayed where I was, listening to the house settle around me. The fridge clicked on with a low, tired hum. Somewhere outside a rooster I hadn’t noticed before decided the day should start whether anyone wanted it to or not. The corn kept rustling, softer now in the gray morning light, like it was holding its breath.

I carried both plates to the sink, scraped the uneaten eggs into the trash, rinsed everything under cold water until my fingers went numb. Routine helped. Small motions. Predictable outcomes. The doctors had called it grounding. I called it survival.

Upstairs, I dressed in the clothes I’d laid out the night before: dark jeans that still felt stiff from the store tags, a charcoal hoodie, plain white sneakers. I was careful to keep things…simple. Nothing flashy. Nothing that said look at me. I pulled my hair back into a low ponytail, checked the mirror just long enough to make sure the scars stayed hidden beneath the part, then looked away.

The backpack waiting by the door was new too—black, unremarkable, the kind every other kid would carry. Inside: three notebooks, a cheap pack of pens, a water bottle, and the small orange pill bottle I hadn’t told Mom I’d stopped taking two weeks ago. The anti-seizure meds made my head feel stuffed with cotton; the anti-anxiety ones turned the world fuzzy at the edges. I’d decided I’d rather feel everything too sharply than feel nothing at all.

Downstairs again. Mom emerged from the bathroom smelling like generic floral shampoo. The faintest trace of menthol cigarettes lingered despite her trying to hide it from me. She’d traded the robe for khakis and a navy polo with the feed-store logo stitched over the pocket. Her hair was still damp, pulled into a messy knot. At least it wasn’t a mini skirt and crop top.

She grabbed her keys from the hook by the back door. “Ready?”

I slung the backpack over one shoulder. “Yeah.”

-----------------------------------------

The weathered and worn car stuttered to a stop in front of the school building. My eyes flickered out the window, apprehension and fear rising in my chest.

“Get it together, Jen.”

It was just a school. I’d been to plenty. Mother and I moved….a lot.

Mother had spoken barely a word since we’d left. She sat frigid, motionless in the driver’s seat. She whiteknuckled the steering wheel. Silence stretched between us. She seemed…older these days. Bags weighed heavy beneath her eyes that she tried to cover with layers of foundation and masacara. It didn’t help.

My lips parted. Then closed. I hesitated a moment longer before slowly reaching for the handle of my door.

“Jennifer…” She started.

I froze, fingers hovering just over the handle. I turned for a moment. Her eyes laser focus on my face, eyebrows pinched. “I…” She sighed, the tension slowly releasing from her shoulders, “Have a good day.”

That was it. No apology. No admission of guilt. Just…that. That once sentence. How many times had she told me that? How many schools had she dropped me off at with that single sentence? I didn’t say any of that. I offered her a soft smile instead.

“I’ll do my best.”

I climbed from the car. Every single eye in the courtyard swiveled in my direction. Because of course they did. I was the new girl. I was a shiny, brand new toy and every one wanted a piece. I uttered a silent prayer and began my slow approach to my doom.

The first to make a move was some bubbly brunette in a cheerleading outfit. She shoved a flyer underneath my nose. I jumped. I did that a lot these days. Traumatic and almost lethal car accidents had a way of doing that to a person.

“You should totally try out for spirit squad.” She squealed, eyes raking over my body in excitement, “You would be perfect.”

I cocked an eyebrow. Now, she had absolutely no way to know that just from one look. Still, I took the flyer, offered what I hoped was a sincere smile, and thanked her before moving towards the school once more. No sense in making an enemy on my first day.

I got the typical comment from the male population…which I absolutely ignored. I had little to NO interest in dating…for the foreseeable future at least. I wasn’t ruling it out all together but right now, i needed to focus on myself and not get swept up by some stupid highschool romance.

I had very little, if any, trouble finding the office and retrieving my schedule. Surprisingly, Mother had actually followed through on getting my registered. There had been a few times in the past where she had forgotten.

As I was coming out of the office, paper in hand, I collided with something firm. I dropped the books in hands. Because of course I had. At least that was the one thing about me the accident hadn’t changed. I was still a major klutz.

I muttered a few choice words as I bent down to gather my scattered belongings. The something firm actually ended up being a person. Smooth, pale hands assisted me in gathering my belongings.

“Thanks.” I muttered.

“You should be more careful.” The voice softly chided. I glanced up. Piercing blue eyes stared back, lips tilted into a half smirk.

He looked…familiar. As we stood, I noticed the looks the other students cast in our direction. They were not aimed at me but at him. He didn’t seem to notice, gaze directed firmly upon me.

“Every one is staring.” I commented.

He shrugged before nodding slowly, “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Sarcasm practically radiated off him like heat from asphalt.. “So…you new here?”

It was a lame thing to say. From the way every eye in the hall drifted to him, he was either really important or, like me, really new. I felt more inclined to option number one.

A smirk toyed at the corners of his lips, amusement lacing his words, “You could say that.”

I stood there a moment, sitting in the awkwardness before I extended a hand, “Jennifer Greer.” Offering a proper introduction was the least I could do after nearly knocking the poor man off his feet,

His gaze dropped to my extended palm, lingering just long enough to make my skin prickle, then flicked back to my face. “Pleasure to meet you, Jen.” He took my hand—his grip firm, warm, deliberate. “I can call you Jen, right?”

The way he said it wasn’t really a question.

For a split second, I forgot to breathe. I shook it off. He still hadn’t given his name. From the….faint sense of…arrogance, I doubted he would. His body language screamed that I should absolutely know who he was. And the fact that I didn’t had drawn a target on my back.

Now, what he was going to do with said target, I hadn’t a clue. I shifted again, clearning my throat. “So…are you a student here?”

A flicker of a smile, his body shifted as if I had suddenly become that much more interesting. “Do I look like a student?”

Ok. That was fair. Not many students would wear a perfectly tailored armani suit. Still..this was Smallville. People did odd things in smalltowns.

“Ok…so are you like a teacher or something?”

He shifted again, stepping just a bit closer. By this point, we had defiently begun attracting some…unwanted attention. Whispers began to spread…as did the crimson in my cheeks.

“Do…do you really not know who I am?”

My face blanched.

Okay… that told me he was definitely someone important. I hesitated, struggling for a moment. I did not want to admit I had no idea who he was, but pretending felt even more ridiculous. From the whispers drifting through the other students, he was clearly someone important in this small town. No one even spared me a second glance—which, I had to admit, was oddly refreshing.

Oh, the hell with it. “N-no… I really don’t,” I finally admitted. “I’m sorry.”

The side smirk returned. “Oh no—please. No apologies necessary.” He gave a slight, almost theatrical dip of his head. “I’m Lex. Lex Luthor. At your service.”

Luthor. The name rang a bell somewhere in the back of my mind. It took a moment, like trying to catch a half-forgotten dream. Then it clicked.

“Luthor… as in LuthorCorp?”

For just a moment, the smile slipped from his lips before settling back into place—this time a little less confident, a little more measured.

“Ah,” he said lightly. “So you have heard of me.”

“No—well, not exactly. I’ve heard the name LuthorCorp before, but I can’t really place it—” I stopped myself, realizing I was rambling. I always did that when I was nervous. Or excited. Or both.

“You see… I was in an accident a while back.” I gestured vaguely toward my head. “So sometimes….things get a bit…wonky.”

Oh God. Why did I just say that out loud.

The second the words left my mouth, I felt the air rush from my lungs. Heat crept up the back of my neck. I defiently hadn’t meant to reveal my greatest tragedy to someone I’d had one conversation with. There was nothing I wanted to do more than turn on my heels and flee. But…I didn’t. I stood my ground.

There was no deny just how pathetic it sounded. head injury, wonky, memories don’t line up. It was like I was auditioning for the role of “damaged new girl in town.” Heat flooded my cheeks now, not just creeping, but burning. Great. Now he probably thinks I’m some fragile porcelain doll who can’t even remember why his family name matters. Or worse—he’ll pity me. I hate pity. I’ve had enough of it to last three lifetimes.

I forced my eyes to stay on his face instead of dropping to the floor like they wanted to. Don’t ramble more. Don’t explain. Just… stop talking. But my brain, traitor that it is, was already racing ahead. What if he pressed for more answers? Answers I didn’t have.

He studied me for a long moment, head tilted, expression unreadable. The silence stretched just long enough for every worst-case scenario to parade through my head.

Then the corner of his mouth lifted—not quite the full smirk this time, softer, almost… curious. “Wonky,” he repeated, tasting the word like it was something rare and interesting. “I like that.”

I blinked. No pity in his tone. No awkward backpedaling. Just that quiet, amused curiosity, like I’d handed him a puzzle piece he hadn’t expected. His hands disappeared into his pockets. His head tilted to the side slightly, as if suddenly examining me in a new light.

“So you’re new here then?”

Disaster averted. For now, anyway. I shifted my backpack to my other shoulder. “Am I that obvious?”

There went that smirk again, “Smallville is a small town, Jen.”

Ah. Fair point.

“So…what brings you to smallville?”

Before I can answer, a voice cuts through the silence.

“Lex Luthor. Harassing the new students already? That’s practically a welcoming committee violation.”

A girl with dark blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail appeared beside me. I flinched. I couldn’t help it. She was… unnecessarily loud.

“Good afternoon, Chloe. I wasn’t aware casual conversation now qualified as harassment.”

“Oh please,” she said, walking over and planting herself beside me. “You’re the richest guy in town and you run a multi-million dollar company. When you stop random teenagers in the hallway, people start asking questions.”

“Wait. Hold up.” My head swiveled from Lex to Chloe, my brain doing a hard reboot, “Run that by me again.”

Chloe blinked at me. “Which part?”

All of it. Literally all of it. Up until about ten seconds ago, Lex had been filed away in my brain under “mysteriously confident bald guy who probably has interesting hobbies.” Maybe famous. Maybe one of those local big-deal types everyone in town knows.

You know. Like the mayor. Not “casually owns half the town” famous. I looked back at Lex.

The expensive suit suddenly made a lot more sense.

“You’re the richest guy in town?” I asked slowly.

Lex lifted one shoulder in a mild shrug, “That’s a bit of an overstatement.”

Chloe barked a laugh. “It’s really not.”

My brain was still catching up. Great. Fantastic. Not only had I revealed the one thing about me I’d sworn to keep to myself but I had done so to someone who actually had the power and influence to possibly use that information against me.

“Well…crap.”