Jerking awake, Clark realized that he was shivering. His clothes were damp from a light mist that was in the air, and the wind of the train’s motion was pulling heat away from his body.
He could see frost beginning to form, and he knew that any normal person would have been in serious trouble instead of only chilled. Grimacing, he narrowed his eyes and he relaxed at the feeling of warmth as the heat rose from his body in a cloud of steam.
A moment later he found himself slapping his pants as they caught fire.
He still didn’t have complete control of his abilities, and he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. He only had two other pair of pants, and these were now scorched. He couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to himself than absolutely necessary.
There was grit in his eyes, proof he hadn’t had enough sleep, even for him. The fact that he only needed four hours of sleep a night had alienated him from more than on foster family. It hadn’t been as bad at first; at the age of ten he’d needed almost as much sleep as any other children, though he’d had problems sleeping due to the nightmares.
Even now the sounds of squealing tires, breaking glass and twisted metal sometimes echoed in his dreams.
But as he’d aged, he’d slept less and less; despite any sleeping medications he was prescribed. He’d learned to pretend to be asleep, and to be very quiet as he left rooms that he inevitably shared with other foster children.
It left him a lot of time to read and to dream about finding a place he could call his own. He wanted the kind of home his parents had made; a stable, loving household where everyone felt safe.
He blindly reached out for his backpack, and he slipped a second, and then a third shirt on. He had a pair of pants that were too large, hand-me downs, but they’d fit over his first set.
He felt warmer immediately, now that he was no longer soaked, but staying out in the wind probably wasn’t safe. He might have been able to break a lock and slip inside a boxcar, but residual shame prevented him from vandalizing the property of others.
Owning a jacket would have helped, but he’d outgrown his last jacket, and new clothes were few and far between. He’d given his jacket to one of his foster brothers, confident that his own resistance to cold would make it unnecessary.
Of course there was a huge difference between ordinary springtime Kansas weather and being in a cold snap, wet in a sixty mile an hour wind.
He had no idea why he was so different, but all he knew was that his differences were growing. This was the first time he’d felt cold in two years, but he could remember a couple of times in his early foster homes where he’d thought he’d never get warm.
Getting removed from those placements hadn’t been his fault, and it had been a blessing. One couple had been earnest, but poor enough that they couldn’t afford to replace their heater when it had stopped working. The floor heaters they’d replaced it with had been unsafe.
He’d never been fostered by a wealthy family, although that had never really mattered to him. His own parents hadn’t been wealthy. He’d learned from a child that it was love that made a home; still, there had been a stigma in being a foster child. The other students had sniggered and whispered and as his hearing had become more acute, Clark had become deeply aware of just what they were saying.
Some hadn’t even bothered to hide what they were saying.
Newly warmed by his clothes, Clark found himself staring up at the stars using his backpack as a pillow. Snow was starting to fall and he could see the moon full on the horizon. Under other circumstances, it might even have been beautiful.
************
He woke, feeling the sun on his face. A layer of snow had covered his body and had melted into ice. With the sun on his face, however, he didn’t feel as cold as he had.
It took him a moment to realize that the train was slowing. From the height of the sun in the sky, he’d slept a lot longer than he’d expected; more than his usual four hours.
Cautiously, he sat up. In the distance he could see a city. Squinting a little, he could see signs at the edge of town, even though it was miles away.
Columbus Ohio. He knew vaguely where Ohio was, but he didn’t know anything about Columbus. If this was where the train stopped, it would likely be where he was going to stay for a while.
He was almost disappointed when the train sped up as it left town.
************
Balancing himself with the ground flashing by underneath him at a speed that seemed faster the closer he got to it; Clark grimaced as he fumbled with his pants.
The train hadn’t stopped at all, and the call of nature was the one thing he still shared in common with real human beings.
He was thirsty, but eating snow had helped, even though he’d once read something about it being risky because it lowered the core body temperature. There was nothing he could do about his growing hunger, although laying out in the sun seemed to help.
He already didn’t need to eat as often as the other kids, which was helpful, although when he did eat, he ate as much. He was still growing, and he hadn’t exactly had time to grab snacks on his way out.
Unless he wanted to see if he was tough enough to survive a jump at sixty miles an hour, he was stuck until the next time the train slowed down, which it only seemed to do in the larger cities.
His foot slipped and he grabbed rusty metal on his way down. He felt his heart race. It was bad enough that he was a runaway and possibly a murderer; the thought that he’d be found dead from peeing off the side of a train, his pants unzipped was mortifying.
He found a more secure foothold and he arranged his clothes, zipping all three pairs of pants even as he hauled himself back up onto the platform.
He could have peed off the side of the platform, but the thought of being seen doing that was even more humiliating. There were cars driving by on a highway in the distance, although he doubted they’d be able to see much with regular human eyes.
Still, he was cold and hungry and soul sick, and stuck on the train, there was nothing for him to do but sit and dwell on everything that had gone wrong.
Thoughts of what he could have done differently overwhelmed him; he tried to think of something else, anything else, but it was difficult. The future was a scary, black mass on the horizon, and the more he thought about it the more anxious he became.
He was a child with no driver’s license and no identification other than his social security card, which he couldn’t use because it might raise suspicions. He couldn’t own property, and he couldn’t hold down a job. He had thirty dollars to his name.
He’d never felt this helpless, except on the night his parents had died, and at least then he’d mostly felt numb. This was scary because his mind wasn’t insulating him from it. Just thinking about the future made his breathing quicken and his heart race.
Thinking about the past made his heart hurt. All he could do was wish that he’d wake up and find that it had all been a dream. That he’d wake up and find that he was still living with the Goodman family and everything was as it had been for the past three months.
It had been a better place than he’d seen in a long time.
He’d learned long ago not to fantasize about a life where his parents hadn’t died. Those thoughts were well worn; his parents would have gently guided him through the hard times with each ability as it had appeared. They’d started the process with his strength and his hearing, and there wasn’t any reason they couldn’t have done something similar with the other abilities.
Instead, he’d been forced to lie, to be shifted from family to family as a new, unwelcome ability appeared and caused some sort of problem.
He’d heard things that he shouldn’t hear and had been accused of spying. He’d destroyed things because of his strength. He’d set fires; this had gotten him trips to a psychiatrist.
Dr. Moon had been nice, but the medications he prescribed hadn’t affected Clark at all, and because Clark couldn’t be open or honest about the real sources of his problem, Dr. Moon hadn’t been able to help much. He’d learned to fake improvement at the same time as he’d learned to control his heat vision, even if only clumsily. He hadn’t gotten a lot of time to himself to practice using it.
They’d thought he’d had ADHD because he couldn’t focus on classes; being able to see through walls and hearing everything that was going on in a five block radius of the school had made concentration difficult. Having x-ray vision kick in while he was trying to take a test didn’t help.
Those medications hadn’t affected him either. Clark had refused to sell them, despite being pressured by foster brothers because he’d been raised better than that.
A small part of him wondered if he’d have more than thirty dollars to his name if he’d just bent the rules a little. Unfortunately, he’d seen what happened to his foster brothers and sisters when they’d bent the rules. The system hadn’t had much mercy.
Foster kids didn’t have wealthy parents to hire lawyers to either get them acquitted or get them a slap on the wrist. They were unwanted, the detritus of society and without a family to speak up for them, they sometimes had harsh sentences.
Clark had overheard one social worker talking about the statistics; forty to fifty percent wouldn’t complete high school. Sixty-six percent of them would be homeless, go to jail or die within one year of leaving the foster care system at eighteen. Thirty five percent would go to jail while still in foster care.
Seventy five to eighty percent of the youthful prison population had once been in foster care.
Clark had been determined that he was going to be one of the ones to beat the odds; instead, here he was.
He sighed and stared off into the distance, where the snow was falling even harder.
In the day the cold didn’t bother him much, but if the train hadn’t slowed down by nightfall he’d have to think of something else, even if he had to break into a car. He was colder at night, more than could be attributed to the simple lack of heat from the sun.
He ignored the growling of his stomach.
He’d learned long ago that missing a meal of two wasn’t going to kill him.
************
The sun had set as the train began to slow again. Clark squinted, and miles ahead he could see a sign. Metropolis…that was on the coast and probably was going to be the end of the line,
Metropolis was a huge city and it’d be easier to lose himself in the crowds than it would in a small town. He’d always imagined himself moving to a place like this anyway- Washington, New York, maybe Las Angeles.
Hunger was the final point in deciding. Whether this was the final destination of the train or not, Metropolis was going to be his home.
Clark found himself relaxing, now that the decision was made. The future, although still dark and scary felt a little more secure.
