A/N: Set in early Season 4: Senior Year at Smallville Senior High School. Lana is with Jason; Chloe doesn't know THE SECRET; Pete has moved to Witchita. Lois has moved out of the Kent house – for the first time.

All of Stasi's windows were open and the radio in the dash of her lifted Chevrolet Silverado was turned way up, playing fast-paced country music as she tore down the Kansas two-lane on her way to her new home. Her long, red, hair flew around her head like a fiery halo, occasionally whipping into her face only to be banished by a quick wave of her hand. She happily sang along, drumming on the steering wheel, enjoying the scenery: cornfields as far as the eye could see with the occasional red barn and light- colored farmhouse interrupting the vast green and gold.

She noticed a ripple in the field to her left and narrowed her eyes to follow it as their trajectories approached each other. Suddenly, there was a man in the road in front of her, eyes reflecting the color of the sky looking back at her, and she breathed an expletive as she slammed her foot on the brake, skidding. She felt the back wheels begin to slide to the left and turned the wheel to compensate, evening out the vehicle as it came to a stop.

She took a shaky breath, then, with her heart pounding in her ears and pushed the driver's door open with a visibly trembling hand, jumping out to address the person she'd almost hit. When she rounded the bed of the truck on spaghetti legs, she was alone on the road. Holding her breath in dread, she ran to one side of the road and to the other to see if she'd winged the guy on the road and if he was laying in the roadside drainage ditches, but there was no one to be found. She climbed up into the truck bed and shielded her already sunglass-shielded eyes from the sun to survey the surrounding countryside and still saw no one.

"Sonofa…" she muttered in exasperation. "I know I wasn't imagining…"

She jumped down and returned to the cab. After sitting for the span of a half a song to calm her nerves, she turned the wheel to put the vehicle back into the correct lane and continued down the road at a much slower rate.

~Smallville~

Martha Kent felt a sudden breeze blow through the kitchen and grabbed a receipt that threatened to fly away. She waited a moment and her son bounded down the stairs, moving toward her.

"Hi, Mom," he smiled, kissing her temple as he walked to the refrigerator and get the bottle of milk out.

"Hi, Clar-Hey!" she admonished as the bottle travelled to his lips. "Clark!"

He gave her the same beautiful smile he always did when she stopped him from drinking out of the bottle and reached for a glass, protesting nonetheless that it tasted better without.

She rolled her eyes and finished entering the last receipt into her ledger.

After drinking from his glass, he asked. "Dad home yet?"

Martha smiled. "No."

Clark wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his blue eyes dancing. "Great!" He set the glass down on the counter and, in a flash, he was out the door.

Martha knew what her son was up to. Tomorrow was his father's birthday and each year since Clark became a teenager, he'd pick a day to do as many of Jonathan's chores before he could get up in the morning or home in the afternoon. This year, Clark had finished all his father's chores this morning and was gone to school before Jonathan could get up and admonish his son, good-naturedly. This was the first time Clark was trying to do both morning and afternoon.

Martha knew why this was important to Clark. It was very difficult for a farmer to get a day off and his father worked so hard. Clark's special abilities put him in a unique position to be able to do his own chores as well as his father's.

By the time Jonathan walked in the door from his errands to the hardware store and bank, Clark was pouring himself another glass of milk, sitting at the kitchen table. One look at his smiling wife and son and Jonathan Kent knew what had happened. "Now, Clark, I appreciate what you're doing, but-"

Clark just grinned. "Now you and Mom can go out on a picnic by Crater Lake."

Jonathan frowned, then looked at Martha who smiled in a way that told him it was part of their plan for his birthday. "The two of you do realize that my birthday isn't until tomorrow, right?"

"But if we waited until your birthday, it wouldn't be as much of a surprise."

Jonathan raised his hands in surrender and went to give his wife a kiss. Then he tousled his son's hair, planting a kiss on the top of his head.

"By the way," Jonathan looked down at his son. "Did you cut through the Wilson farm on your way to or from school?"

Clark's eyes widened, slightly. "Yes."

"Did you happen to see a large, blue, pick-up truck on the road? One that, say, might have hit you?"

"Clark?!" Martha exclaimed.

"It didn't hit me. I may have startled the driver, though," he looked sheepish for a moment before his blue eyes looked at his father in earnest. "I stopped only long enough to make sure the driver wasn't hurt."

Martha looked at Jonathan, who explained. "A young woman tracked down the sheriff, who was at the bank when I was, and reported that someone jumped into the road in front of her. She was, apparently, worried that she'd hit the person, but couldn't find any evidence that anyone had been there."

The elder Kents looked at Clark, then, who looked sheepish. "I was in a hurry."

"Clark!" Martha scolded. "You'd better hope she didn't get a good look at you and remember, if you run into her again."

Clark shook his head. "Don't worry, Mom. I was moving way too fast for her to have seen my face."

~Smallville~

Chloe Sullivan walked into the office of The Torch, the high school newspaper she'd served as head writer and editor for the better part of four years, to find a girl with wild red hair sitting at a desk, spinning a pencil.

"Can I help you?"

The other girl looked up. Her blue eyes were rimmed with dark eyelashes and a thin line of black eyeliner under reddish eyebrows. "I don't know, are you the famous Chloe Sullivan, Editor-in-chief of The Torch?"

Chloe grinned. "I don't know about the famous part but the rest is me."

The redhead stood, revealing herself to be shorter than Chloe by about four inches, and offered her hand. "Anastasia Reynolds. But I won't answer to anything other than Stasi. Unless you really want to call me 'Photo-goddess', then I'll answer to that."

Chloe smiled. "'Photo-goddess'?"

Stasi smiled. "I have a plethora of samples to backup that claim." She held up a USB drive.

Chloe looked intrigued. "You're a photographer?"

"Yep. Just transferred to your illustrious institute of secondary education and am seeking gainful employ."

Chloe nodded, then took the jump drive. She put it into her computer and sat down, offering the other girl a seat. As she moved through the photos, she found she was impressed. "These are really good."

Stasi grinned. "It is my one vice: pride in my eye. But the rest of me is quite humble, I assure you."

Chloe grinned. "Welcome to The Torch, Stasi." She offered her hand.

Stasi stood and took Chloe's hand. "Thank you, Chief."

Chloe laughed. "Just Chloe."

Stasi grinned. "If you insist."

~Smallville~

The lens settled into focus. Stasi took a deep breath, let it out, and then held it as she pressed the trigger. Breathing normally again, she moved her hand over the aperture ring to the focusing ring and zoomed in closer to her subject. She focused to sharpen the image, controlled her breathing again, then pressed the trigger again.

"A penny for your thoughts?"

Stasi looked up at Chloe from where she sat on the bleachers, overlooking the various students taking physical education classes on the track and field below, and chuckled. "Oh, these thoughts are a LOT more expensive and, probably, require proof of identification."

Chloe laughed and sat next to her.

"Look," Stasi said. She pulled the camera away from her face and turned on the small LCD screen on the camera.

"It's digital?" Chloe looked like a kid in a candy store.

Stasi grinned. She pushed the button to show pictures that were in the hard drive of the camera.

"Ah," Chloe grinned as she saw the primary subject. "Don't even think about it, my friend," she took on a sympathetic tone. "That subject has broken many a pining heart."

Stasi looked over at her. "That's fine. I am not looking for any entanglements. Let me be one of the conquests in his wake." She chuckled.

"It's not that he's had conquests," Chloe corrected.

"Seriously? Huh," Stasi said, resuming her pose of looking through the viewfinder. "A good photographer has to check for light and focus from time to time. For sanity's sake, I select a piece of eye candy. That is definitely eye candy."

Chloe nodded. "Well, you'll get no argument there. Just watch that you don't fall for him. He's as available as the gold in Fort Knox."

Stasi looked over at Chloe and grinned. "I have no heart to lose, Chloe. Rest assured. What can you tell me about Fort Knox over there?"

"His name is Clark. He's a senior. Farm boy. Quarterback. Super sweet and, of course, cute. And completely unavailable."

Stasi looked at Chloe. "Ouch," she looked hard at Chloe. "You were one of those pining hearts, I take it."

Chloe looked back a Stasi, surprised. "What? Oh," she shook her head. "No, I crushed on him a little, but that's history. Once you meet him, I'm sure you'll understand why, but, no, we're just friends. He's my best friend, in fact."

"Wow." The redhead shook her head and refocused on Clark's group. "So, no sticky fingers with Eye Candy? Such a shame."

Chloe smiled. "That's funny. Not hilarious, mind you."

"So, stay away from the Apollo?"

The blonde laughed. "Yeah. Unless you come up with way better material."

"Better writers, right, Chief. I'll just stick to pictures."

"You don't have to call me Chief…"

~Smallville~

Clark Kent walked into The Torch office to find someone else at Chloe's desk. He frowned, suspicious that someone might be trespassing in his best friend's precious newsroom. "Excuse me," he called, guardedly.

She looked up and a smile spread across her face. "Well, hello, Eye Candy," she said.

Clark's eyes widened. Then he frowned. "Excuse me?"

Leaning back in the swivel office chair, she grinned. "Sure."

Momentarily confused, he frowned. Recovering, he asked. "Who are you?"

Swinging the office chair to the left and right, she looked him up and down. "I'm the new photographer and you are the piece of yumminess that jumps in front of moving vehicles without signaling."

Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, then alarmed, Clark's blue eyes widened. "What?"

"I was driving the truck that almost hit you on Highway 90."

He glanced around the room, nervously. "Ah – What?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I have a photographic memory. I never forget a face," she grinned. "And I was convinced I'd hit yours, so there's that for making an impression."

Clark looked away. "I - ah – "

"Name's Stasi," she interrupted. "And just in case you didn't know, everyone has secrets. Yours is safe with me. No worries."

Clark's eyebrows rose. "Mine?"

She looked over at the Wall of Weird, a large section of wall that held newspaper clippings of unusual happenings that have occurred in Smallville since the meteor show years earlier. "There are a lot of unusual things that happen here, Eye Candy. Apparently, yours is, as of yet, undiscovered. I won't tell anyone that you move at Warp speed."

He shook his head with a nervous grin. "I'm telling you," he protested, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

She looked into her camera and grinned. "Whatever you say, Eye Candy."

Clark frowned. "Could you stop calling me that?"

"Nope," said without looking up. After another heartbeat, she smiled and glanced up at him. "How can I call you anything else? I've told you my name, but yours is still a mystery." She straightened. "To me, at least."

Clark rubbed his hand on his jeans. "Clark."

She rose from the chair and gathered up her books and camera. "Now I can stop calling you 'Eye Candy'," She moved past him on her way out the door. "At least out loud." She looked up at him and winked as she left the room.

Clark was still frowning when Chloe walked in.

"Hey, Clark!" Chloe smiled. "What's up?"

"You have a new photographer?"

"Stasi." Chloe acknowledged. "She's a really great photographer. And quite a character."

Clark's eyebrows rose. "A character? I guess you could say that."

Chloe smiled. "Oh, yes." She looked curious. "I haven't been able to get her backstory yet, but she seems wise beyond her years and quirky."

Clark nodded.

"You should get to know her," Chloe said, suddenly.

Clark's eyes widened with surprise, then he looked at Chloe sidelong. "What?"

"Well, she seemed interested and she might be the right thing to help you get past the past."

Clark pressed his lips together. "Chloe," he said with a groan.

Chloe shrugged. "Just a thought, Clark."