Just a Boy

By Dandello <momkat@dandello.net>

Rated: PG Submitted: 12/2007

Copyright Oct 21, 2007

* * *

"Lois Joanne Lane, just choose one!" Ellen Lane shouted. She was ignoring the looks she was getting from the other mothers in the costume store. Ten-year-old Lois didn't care. "You know Aunt Esther wants to take you and Lucy trick or treating tonight," her mother said in a lower tone. "And I absolutely will not allow you to go as a... a storm trooper!"

"Why not?" Lois asked. They were in Kansas City, Kansas, visiting her mother's sister for the week. While Lois was fond of her aunt, it was a fondness based more on the fact that Aunt Esther made few demands and always had chocolate on hand. Esther and her husband Colin had no children of their own and doted on her and Lucy much as they doted on their three champion terriers.

"Lois could be a storm trooper and I could be Princess Leia," Lucy suggested brightly. She had already taken the white nylon dress down off the display hook. "See... and now Luke can come rescue me from the evil Darth Vader!" Lucy's eyes got wide. "You could be Darth Vader! Mom, I can be Princess Leia and Lois can be Darth Vader!"

"No!" their mother said.

Lois folded her arms over her chest. "Maybe I'm too old to go trick or treating. Maybe trick or treating is for little kids like Lucy."

"I'm not a little kid!" Lucy yelled, pouting. "Mo-om, make her be Darth Vader."

"But I don't want to be Darth Vader. I want to be a storm trooper."

Her mother yanked a frilly dress with cheap silver braid off the rack and handed it Lois. "You're going as a princess!" She turned to Lucy. "And so are you...! God I need a drink. Damn your father for deciding to go to that blasted conference instead of coming with us."

"Mo-om!"

"I think you'd make a pretty princess," a dark haired boy said quietly.

Lois looked up sharply and he ducked his head. He was a little older than she was, she decided. A fifth grader, probably. He scuffed the toe of one sneaker along the floor, avoiding her eyes.

"You do?" she asked.

He nodded, brown eyes peering looking at her through dark eyelashes.

"What are you going as?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"If I have to be a princess, maybe you should be a prince?"

"There aren't any princes in Smallville."

A woman with light brown hair came around the corner of the display rack. There was worry written across her face that cleared when she caught sight of the boy. "There you are, honey... Have you found something yet?"

He shook his head. "Mom, maybe I'm getting too old to be going out trick or treating."

"Honey, you're going with the Harrises and the Cutters. Somebody's got to keep an eye on the littler ones. And if we don't hurry, we're going to be late getting home."

Lois spotted a black cowboy hat and mask on the next display rack and picked them up. "If there aren't any princes where you come from, maybe there are heroes?"

"The Lone Ranger?" the boy's mom said with a smile, taking the hat and mask from her. "How about it, honey? You have a blue shirt and I bet you can borrow Eddie's toy gun belt..."

"Okay," the boy agreed. "I'll go as a hero."

The boy's mom headed toward the cash register and the boy followed her, giving Lois a shy wave. "Bye, your majesty."

"Bye, hero," Lois said giving him a tiny curtsey as she watched him leave.

"Lois, who was that?" her mother asked. She was holding two princess costumes in her arms complete with plastic tiaras.

"Just a boy. From a place called Smallville."

Table of Contents

Start