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We’re not mind-readers. We can’t get into your head. You need to talk to us if you want us to get along like a family.

Lorna’s mother’s words echoed in her troubled thoughts as she hunched against the cramped cell’s concrete wall. The prison cot was hard beneath her, the sheets scratchy and coarse, smelling of some industrial, institutional laundry soap. She hadn’t stopped trembling ever since they brought her by patrol car to the 77th Precinct station across the street from the towering Stark Industries building. Her eyeliner and mascara were a lost cause, her tears creating muddy slashes down her cheeks. The other three occupants of the cell wore hard expressions, but kept their distance when they heard the guards muttering the words “mutant” and “convenience store bust” as they brought her in.

She used her one phone call at home. Her parents wouldn’t answer. She couldn’t blame them, but despair overwhelmed her and forced her further into her cocoon. She plowed her hands through her tousled, sweat-soaked hair as she ran through the night’s events, reviewing them as through she were watching them unfold on a choppy projector screen…

Three hours ago:


The selection of groceries was dismal, even by the standards of a sixteen-year-old girl who only had five dollars in her pocket that had to last until she found a place to stay. Doug’s was out of the question, that much she knew.

She was just so tired of running.

Her fingers ached from the climb up the tree in Ali’s back yard, where she’d thrown pebbles against her window in an attempt to take cover. The look on her face would have been funny if she hadn’t promptly thrown open the window and rasped, “Lorna, you retard! You practically scared me shitless!”

“Al, you’ve gotta let me in! I need a place to stay tonight,” she choked, her blue eyes pleading.

“You’re out past curfew,” Ali reminded her. “Your mom’s gonna go ape-shit.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I can’t go home!” Her face crumpled, and the tree branches rattled as Lorna clung to the thick cane supporting her weight. The bark rasped against the bits of her leg exposed by her ratty skirt and tights. “I…I did something stupid, Al, I couldn’t help it! I pushed my dad over the stair rails!”

“Oh…oh, Lorna, please tell me you didn’t do anything that fucked up,” Ali moaned, clapping her hand over her mouth, also painted in a slash of black lipstick. She hadn’t changed into her pajamas yet, so she was still clad in the same black Evanescence tee shirt she wore to school over faded denim shorts and black and white striped Raggedy Ann tights. Like Lorna, she enjoyed an addiction to hair dye, and her own locks were short, framing her face in a shaggy blunt cut on most days, but today it was gelled into a stiff “fauxhawk,” each black spike tipped in magenta pink tint. “What happened?” Her tone softened, and she was already opening the window more widely, reaching out to help Lorna climb inside. “You’re a mess!”

“I know,” she hiccupped, rubbing her arms.

“And you’re cold,” Ali crooned. “Poor thing! Don’t be too loud, my mom told me she expects lights out in another fifteen minutes. Told her I had homework,” Ali smirked, nudging Lorna onto the bed. Her room was at odds with her usual style. Unlike Lorna’s, Ali allowed her mother to hold sway, outfitting every surface with accessories and linens straight from a Pottery Barn catalog. The whole room was a blend of cream, pale pink and ecru. The curtains were tied back with little cast iron rings shaped like stars. Ali’s favorite teddy bear held the place of honor on her dresser, and her posters were even framed, hanging neatly alongside art prints by MC Escher and Ansel Adams.

“Mom told me she’s sending me away,” Lorna hiccupped again, smoothing back a lock of hair from her mouth. “They don’t want me anymore! I HATE them!”

“Why did they want to send you away?”

“They’ve been wanting to for a while. They gave me that stupid speech about how I’m not ‘communicating’ with them,” she mimicked, doing a surprisingly convincing impression of her mother’s best lecture voice.

“Man, I hate that speech,” Ali agreed. She sat beside Lorna on the bedspread and hugged her, leaning her head against her shoulder in sympathy. Ali was petite, but there was more strength in her small and wiry frame than met the eye. She felt solid to Lorna in that moment, like an anchor. “What’re you gonna do?”

“They were gonna send me to some lame private school. One of those scared straight, rehabby-type programs.” Her lip quivered.

“I’d still be able to email you, right?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed, her tears falling again. “They’ll wanna put me in jail now! I almost killed my dad! I didn’t mean it, Lorna…I didn’t…mean it,” she moaned, falling forward and catching her face in her palms, repeating the words in a litany of despair.

“Did you two argue?”

“N-no. Me and m-my mom. My dad just came home, and…and I couldn’t help it. He was coming up the stairs. I threw him.”

“What? What do you mean, ‘threw’ him?”

“I just stretched out my hand…and he went flying! It was horrible, Al! And…the freakiest part was that I could feel different parts of him pulsing, letting me grab hold…”

“Like the last time, at school?”

“Like what happened at school,” she repeated. Ali had been the only person that noticed that Lorna was sitting there in chemistry class, mindless of the iron filings that the teacher doled out onto their lab tray slowly marching up her arm when she was zoning out, listening to her iPod under the guise of taking notes.

Lorna…Lorna! she hissed. Look! DUDE! As soon as she saw what was happening, she shook off the filings as though they had burned her, smothering a shriek. Monet craned her neck around from the table in front of her and sneered, noticing the spilled filings and Ali looking sheepish.

“I don’t know how I’m doing it, Al,” Lorna muttered, “but something’s happening to me. I can feel things…it’s like they’re pulling at me, and…it’s gonna sound retarded, but it’s like I’m this…walking magnet.”

“Wow,” Ali whistled. “Freaky…” Then the thought occurred to her. “Speaking of freaky, check this out.” Her elfin face lit up briefly as she pointed at her tiny boom box, which pumped out faint strains of Coldplay’s “Yellow.”

“Yer gonna love this…” With that, she closed her fist in an elegant gesture, as though capturing an invisible fly. The music suddenly grew fainter, diminishing in volume.

It was as though Ali were sucking the sound from the stereo. Lorna’s eyes widened, watching Ali speechlessly as her hair seemed to dance on the faint air currents, even though the window was now closed.

Her skin began to glow.

“Holy crap,” Lorna whispered. “Ali…that’s…whoa.”

“Ain’t it cool?” she drawled. She looked like a child with a new toy.

“It’s…beautiful.” Sparks of light danced around Ali like glimmering fireflies, almost like rainbow prisms thrown by a disco ball. She opened her hand, releasing the captive sound, and the stereo squawked back to its original volume. The glow dissipated, taking the sparks with it. “You never said anything.”

“You never asked.”

“I don’t walk around asking my friends at random if they’re mutants, Al.”

“Whaddever…” She waved it away dismissively. Then she turned serious. “Still love me?” Lorna nodded.

“Like I could ever stop.” Lorna sniffled. “Help me, Al.”

“I don’t have the first idea of how,” she admitted. “Worst case scenario, you could go home.”

“My folks already called the cops.”

“It might have been to bring you back. They’ve gotta be worried.”

“I can’t go home,” she whimpered. “Please, Al!”

“I don’t even have any money to give you,” she muttered, but she was already rummaging through her jewelry box. “Got a fiver left over from the lunch money I was saving to get that new CD I had my eye on at FYE,” she offered, pressing it into Lorna’s hand. “Ain’t much.”

“More than I’ve got.”

“Then take this, too.” She retrieved another small item and circled Lorna slowly, letting a small chain dangle against her collarbone as she fastened it behind her neck.

“Oh…Ali, I can’t take this!” It was a small gold St Christopher medal.

“Got it for my confirmation gift. Maybe it’ll protect you. If you stay here, I’m gonna hafta explain to my mom why I let you. Think about going back home. If you don’t, find a way to call me.”

“Thanks.” Lorna’s voice was hollow as she headed back toward the window.

“Wish you’d consider it.”

“Can’t.” She flung open the window and shouldered her way through it, leaping back out onto the branch.

“Bye, babe.”

“Bye.” Her voice was carried off on the breeze as she made her way back down to the ground, and she blew Ali a kiss once her feet touched the grass. Upstairs, Ali wrung her hands, praying the future didn’t hold anything more frightening than Lorna had already endured.

Her prayers might as well have been in vain.

Call it a case of the wrong place at the wrong time. Lorna felt her stomach growling as she ducked into a convenience store, regretting that she hadn’t had dinner at home or anything more than a handful of chips and a sip of soda at Doug’s. His astonished face still haunted her. She riffled through a rack of snack foods, contemplating a package of Twinkies and a bin of Slim Jims. She wondered how many of either she would need to get full…

“Everybody DOWN ON THE GROUND! NOW!” Her heart thundered to a creaking halt in her chest. The first speaker had a sawed-off shotgun leveled at the head of the cashier, still young enough to have acne. He screwed up his features, whether in an effort to keep from crying or peeing his pants Lorna couldn’t tell. His partner came in behind him, his shaggy blond hair poorly concealed by the ski mask over his face; scraggly dreadlocks dripped down the back of his neck in stark contrast to the black sweatshirt he wore.

“Empty the register…”

“Please…”

“I said EMPTY IT, ASSWIPE! Do I LOOK like I wanna dance? C’mon, let’s dance!” He cocked the gun and aimed it sky-high, blasting a hole in the popcorn ceiling. Plaster bits showered all three of them. Lorna cringed, wondering when she had the foresight to hit the floor face-first, practically hugging the grey linoleum tile. Her empty stomach was forgotten; she wished she didn’t feel like pitching up its meager contents. She heard the harsh ding of the cash register and the clerk hitting the no sale button, jerking it open and being roughly shoved aside as Blondie leapt over the counter and helped himself to the take. “I didn’t say I wanted fries with that, dumb ass! This ain’t fuckin’ McDonalds, now MOVE!”

“C’mon, c’monnnnnnn…” urged the taller of the two, hesitating a moment before he decided to double back to the refrigerators in the back. He yanked out two twelve packs of beer, performing a last-minute check of the store.

Please don’t come over here. Oh, God, please, don’t let them notice me-

“What’s goin’ on, baby doll?” drawled a voice that sounded no older than her own. He nudged her with the cold, hard barrel of his Glock, and she suppressed a tiny moan into her sleeves. She avoided looking at him, cringing away when he bent down to get a better view himself.

“Damn, baby, easy on the war paint! Got ourselves a little Joan Jett!” he crowed. “She’s before yer time, honey bunch!”

“That was my mom’s lame ass music,” the other man grunted. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

“She’s coming with us. Gonna have a party, babe!”

“Nononono, p-please, you don’t want to do this, youdon’twanttodothisyoudon’t…”

“UP! NOW!” he thundered, jerking her hastily to her feet. His eyes were mean slits beneath his hood. “Bet yer tasty, baby. Owwwwww!” he leered, as though he were hooting from the window of a passing car at a sweet piece standing on the corner.

She felt her heart stammer and skip as her feet stumbled along after him, trying to drag themselves in some semblance of purchase on the tiles. Her eyes flew over to the clerk, who was cringing behind the counter, his hands wrapped tightly over his ears.

“Help me,” she whimpered, barely audible.

Her last sight was of his slender, pale hand reaching up to press the panic button.

Too late. Too late. Too late… Her lips couldn’t form words, and she bit them shut, too terrified to scream. The Glock pressed itself into her ribs, bruising her through the thin denim of her jacket. She was hauled into a dilapidated Dodge Dart so old that the paint was worn down to primer, and the driver side door was rusted a mottled burgundy-brown. She was dragged by the hair and savagely kicked into the back seat.

She knew it was the last anyone would see of her if they started the ignition.

The doors slammed, and she considered her options. She could scream. She could attempt to blind them, hit the driver with something before they could aim their guns at her, attempt to make them swerve off the road…

They gunned the gas before she formed a coherent thought.

“Nice,” Blondie remarked, shrugging off the ski mask and letting the twelve packs slide to the floor.

“I gotta piss.”

“Shoulda done that first,” he countered, laughing like they’d just gotten away with TP’ing a tree in their neighbor’s yard. He leaned over the seat and leered at Lorna, who was still shivering and huddling in the back, flattening herself against the grimy, peeling vinyl seat.

Before he could say anything else, Lorna saw the flash of red and blue lights behind them, illuminating the cracked windshield.

“SHIT!”

“GO!” He gunned the motor, flinging Lorna even further against the seat, where she clawed for purchase, never considering the seatbelts. She didn’t want to stay in the car one minute more, even if it meant being flung free. Anything was better than whatever they had planned…

“LET ME GO!” she screamed, her vocal cords tearing with the effort! “LET ME GOOOOOO! NOOOOOOO!” She beat her fists against the driver’s seat, and found herself shoved back and the gun pointed at her face, but this time, Blondie’s nostrils were flaring, and she could see the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark.

“If they catch us, I’ve got nothing to lose, bitch!” he spat.

Lorna had nothing to gain…

“Let me go,” she rasped, her voice and eyes hollow, and before his eyes, her hand stood up on end, the spirals of colored strobe from the police beacons casting an otherworldly glow over the greenish mop of waves. She covered Ali’s medal with her hand, gripping it protectively, like a talisman.

The car had been careening and swerving through the building traffic as they reached the off-ramp toward God knew where. Green highway signs loomed up ahead, and Lorna concentrated, holding her breath as she reached out for the first concentrated mass of heavy metal atoms she could touch, projecting from the center of her being…

The car. The car lurched, the tired bouncing and warping in the wheel wells as its driver cursed roughly, spittle flying from his lips.

“What the fuck?”

“I said let me GO,” Lorna intoned, fisting her hands at her sides, every muscle in her body locked.

When the policemen filed their report the next day, their lieutenant’s notes would reflect that the doors flew off as though someone ripped them from the frame and flung them off like the backing from a label, sending them skittering across the road into the path of oncoming cars.

It was a pile-up the likes of which Westchester had never seen. To Lorna, everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The doors slid beneath the wheel of an oncoming Toyota pick-up truck and sent it cartwheeling through the air. Frosty wind blew freely through the car, buffeting the carriage and occupants, battering them nearly senseless. The car began to skid, and Lorna’s captor attempted to correct the spin, flooring the brake…

The car rolled…over and over it tumbled across the concrete, finally stopping its fearsome flight when it crashed through the iron-gated window of a neighboring pawn shop.

Glass and crunching metal. Those were the final sounds that Lorna heard before she mercifully blacked out, aside from the screams…

She awoke to a bright light shining into her eyes, gentle fingers probing her, making her wince as they grazed a particularly nasty cut over her brow.

“Can you speak, kiddo? Can you tell me your name?”

“Please…” She hardly recognized her own voice. That timid, breathy sound didn’t issue from her throat.

“Talk to us, kiddo. We’ve got an ambulance on the way…”

“No. You can’t.”

“The heck we can’t,” he huffed, scratching his stubbled chin thoughtfully. “You’re no older than my daughter if you’re a day.”

“I don’t need it,” she insisted. She struggled, leaning up onto her elbows as if to demonstrate, even through every movement felt as though she were being squeezed in an iron vise. Her feet crunched against shattered glass.

“She’s in shock,” another officer muttered. “Stay where you are. We can’t move you until they get here…”

“I don’t need it!” she sobbed, glaring up at him and slapping away the hands that tried to hold her down. “Leave me alone! Don’t TOUCH ME!”

“There’s no way she should even be conscious after a wreck like that,” murmured a voice behind her. Lorna couldn’t absorb the impact of his words. She needed to get out of there.

“You’re not taking me anywhere,” she insisted. She felt it again. Pulling at her. She became aware of every bit of metal within a thirty-foot radius. Rings. Watches. A steel guitar hanging on the moldy particle board wall. The twisted bars flayed back from the ruined display window.

Pens. Spiral-bound notepads. Badges. Belt buckles. Gold fillings. Screws holding stems onto wire-rimmed spectacles.

Pistols…

“What the hell’s happening to her ha-“ The first officer’s voice was cut off as she cast out her hand, flinging him backward, plummeting back into a glass display case. She cringed, hating the look of shock and disbelief etched across his features. She cried out, sobbing as she remembered the look her father gave her, pleading with her as he hovered over the floor…

She felt a sharp thud against the crown of her head before she once again blacked out.

That brought her here. At least in the ER, they’d had the foresight to offer her a small plastic cup of cranberry juice and a packet of crumbled saltines.

Her x-rays and a CT scan showed no fractures or broken ribs. No skull injuries or ruptured arteries. She’d barely been touched.

Both robbers were dead, scarred beyond description. Lorna took no solace from that fact.

“Ali,” she mourned, tugging on the tiny St. Christopher medal and twisting and untwisting the chain until her knuckles ached with the movement. She stared through the iron bars until her vision blurred.


School for Gifted Youngsters


Ororo nursed cup of chamomile tea, savoring the fragrant steam as she readied herself for bed. She lay atop the cobalt blue damask comforter, rereading the hard copies of Forge’s emails that Hank retrieved from his account.

“Looking forward to meeting the staff and discussing those upgrades I recommended. Give my regards to all. Forge.”

The rest of the dialogue string went on for about five pages of banter, quotes from Hank’s favorite poets and philosophers, and more technical jargon than Ororo had the patience to read. She was more visual, earning more from watching Hank work with his capable hands, or Scott diagramming out the schematics one piece at a time.

She missed Logan growling at her to hand him tools from the box or to shine more light where he made his adjustments to his beloved bikes.

The phone by her bedside rang as if on cue, stirring her from memories of his voice.

“Hello?” She omitted the school’s salutations; this was her private line. She’d learned early never to give her name unless necessary.

“I’m here,” rumbled a scratchy, sleepy voice at the other end.

“Your ears must have been burning.” She set down the emails beside her and sat up, abandoning her cushy pillows.

“Just wanted ta let ya know I made it,” he replied gruffly. “And ta tell ya goodnight, ‘Ro.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, her hands cradling the phone as if it were fragile. She didn’t ask where he was.

“I’ll call again before I take off.”

“Good night, Logan.”

“Later, ‘Ro.” She settled the handset back on its base and sighed, retrieving her tea cup.

Now, at least she could sleep.


Alberta, Canada:

Logan eased himself back on the crisp white sheets, relishing their cool feel and the faint scent of Tide within their folds. Heather always knew how to make a nice bed, he mused, staring up at the ceiling in the dark. Across the room, his duffle lay opened, his discarded clothes spilling out from the gaping zipper where he’d stuffed them before.

He’d already polished off the sandwich in his pack earlier, three stops ago in his way up into the hills. He reached for a small yellow box sitting on the nightstand.

He lifted the skinny straw to his lips, skraking the bottom of the juice box until he finished the last drops. He glanced at it, made a sound resembling a chuckle, then tossed it into the wastebasket. Two points.

He knew he couldn’t sleep easy. At least he could cling to the sound of ‘Ro’s voice, and if he imagined hard enough, he could almost see her murmuring those words from his doorway, a faint smile on her lips.


Amtrak train, northbound:

Erik had never been fond of trains. Nights of being cramped in the transport cars, piled together like cattle and flanked by the Reich’s best and brightest as he and his parents were moved to Auschwitz came back to him with vivid clarity. He still remembered scraping his fingers over the rough weave of the yellow Star of David hastily stitched onto his worsted wool jacket as he gripped his mother’s hand. His father’s hands stilled him, clutching him snugly within the press of their bodies, as if to shelter him.

His father’s coat smelled like smoke and the lingering aroma of his mother’s chicken stew. She’d burnt it the night they were taken, filling the entire salon of their home with the scent of singed fat.

He picked at a packet of crumbled saltines, attempting to distract himself from the myriad odors of so many bodies crammed into the coach class car.

He knew he’d never sleep.





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