Irene, Groobie, thanks for commenting. We have a tough chapter coming up, so I hope you can stay with it. Those who may be reading between your fingers should keep doing so.
Groobie, you picked up on the part about friends and their importance to this Clark. One of the things I wondered about in the parallel-world Alt-universe was how tentative Clark seemed to be and how dependent on other people he appeared. It's no wonder he behaved toward Lois the way he did during both of their interactions together.
And thank you all for accepting this slightly off-kilter writer into this wonderful sandbox full of FoLCs.
