I have superpowers. Oh, come on - stifle the mock astonishment. Why should it surprise you so much if I did? This is Smallville, after all - land of the weird, home of the strange - and being the local authority on the "Wall of Weird" material that runs rampant in this… no, not leafy little hamlet… I need a different descriptor, something not so done to death… Cow town? So cliché… Sleepy little burg? Ugh, let's table characterizations - Smallville epitomizes them all. Except that it doesn't - which is why superpowers should be no surprise to you - come on, I know you've been following the news. You are big enough to admit to reading the Torch, aren't you? Yeah okay, no need to be too scathing… not like I'm the editor or anything.

Whatever. So yeah. Superpowers. Me - I have them. Or at least one. No, I can't turn people into popsicles, and my ability to teleport seems to be on the fritz… wow, that would be useful at Lutho… nevermind. But I do have an unmatched ability to transform a perfectly healthy, natural boy/girl friendship into an episode of My So-called Life in the blink of an eye. Why didn't that show last longer? Thank God for DVD sets. This way I can sympathetically watch Angela lust after Jordan Catalano over, and over, and over again - except she at least got the whole boiler-room experience. Sometimes I think I'd kill for a little boiler-room experience… except this being Smallville, I'd probably want to avoid rooms where things boil. Just seems like asking for trouble.

So yeah, back to my super-ability to alienate guys. One guy in particular, of course - don't raise that quizzical eyebrow at me, I know you know which guy I'm talking about. God knows why, though. Okay, aside from the fact that he's prettier than basically anybody (including Lana! Heh heh heh… ahem) and he has those lips… even with that really weird haircut he had a couple of years ago (seriously? The bangs? I know the guys from Queer Eye would have had a field day with him… oh, geez, run that thought through the mental dishwasher on "super-scrub"… uh huh), he's just… I don't know. Unshakeable. Like no matter what he does to me, or… uh… doesn't do… no matter what he says, despite the wildly bipolar duplicity he shows sometimes - okay, kind of a lot of the time - I can't stop letting my mind run down that dead-end road. And my heart blindly follows. How impaired it that? I know wanting him is futile, and painful, and yeah, flat-out stupid, but I just can't stop.

And then I do things. Not usually by own volition, to my credit. Or perhaps to my shame… I don't know. But it's almost always because some cosmically cruel twist of fate forced my hand - forced it very literally one time - and then there he is as always - the one really consistent thing about him - telling me he just doesn't feel that way. "Not yet," he said last time, which is - well, that's just crap. A load of grade-A fertilizer, which he obviously know something about, because he dumps it me often enough. Not yet? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's just guy-speak for "yeah, you kind of make me want to gag, but I don't want to burn this bridge in case you turn out hot next year…" or something.

Okay, you're right, that's probably not Clark's motivation for the "not yet" line (but don't tell me no other guy thinks that - it's a total string-along), 'cause he's such a "nice boy," but there's no chance of "yet" ever happening - you can just tell. Well, I can just tell. After all these years of "not yet" and the occasional "almost," I'm pretty much the authority on Clark Kent double-speak. "I just don't feel that way, Chloe. At least not yet." Translation: "I'm inexplicably hung up on Lana Lang, and when I finally spring myself from that trap I'm skipping right over you." Wow, it hurts to be so damn perceptive. That's one of my other superpowers. Here's the complete index:

1) Superhuman ability to create awkward tension (i.e. foot-in-mouth disease)

2) Superhuman ability to get inside people's heads and know what they're really saying (i.e. the truth is never out there)

3) Superhuman self-denial (i.e. the last shall be first, the first shall be last - unless you're me, then you're last either way)

4) Invisibility (i.e. stuck in the glare of the light shining off our illustrious Ms. Lang. And now Lois? The way he smiled at her…)

The worst part is, I don't know if he's even worth the trouble, and in the end he probably isn't. But, being awkward, perceptive, self-denying and invisible, I'll never get the chance to find out. I might get close, but some natural (or unnatural) disaster will inevitably intervene and I'll be where I always am. Looking around and wondering…

Where did he go?