Hair Dyes and Flatscans
Salem Center, NY
Somewhere in the distance, Ororo could hear someone playing the piano. Strands of Chopin rustled on the air, and she hummed along. She could remember taking piano lessons when she was younger. She was still pretty good at it, and sometimes, when she needed something to calm her nerves, she would play.
She watched as Nina chased Kitty around the yard, her little legs pumping hard to catch up with the older girl. A Brazilian flag hung in the window of a room on the second floor, flapping in the breeze, curses in Portuguese falling from behind it as Roberto watched a soccer game. She saw young faces everywhere. They were the ones who truly made the mansion breathe life. And she was glad that they were healing.
Sometimes she wondered what life would be like for them if the children weren’t around. Without the children, without life, the mansion would be nothing more than stern brick, taunting glass, and severe angles; a cold, austere building that rose above the other homes in Salem Center. Beautiful to behold, but not somewhere one would want to live. Look, but don’t touch. She hoped they would never have to find themselves without the children.
“Lila Cheney, Anya Corazón, and Laura Dean!”
Ororo had barely walked through the door good as Alex’s voice roared through the mansion. On cue, three girls scurried down the stairs. Laura was holding to her too-large jeans; the patches of purple in the jeans matched her hair perfectly. Anya was muttering to herself in Spanish about how she hadn’t come all the way from Brooklyn for this. And Lila was already running her hands nervously through her dark hair.
“This is so your fault, Anya,” Lila muttered.
“You two are teleporters. Do your thing! Vámonos!” Anya said.
“Do you want to end up on Mars or wherever I randomly port to today?” Lila scoffed.
Lila still had trouble teleporting short distances. She could only port short distances when she dedicated her full concentration to it. When her teleportation manifested two years ago, her parents said she ended up in Happy, Texas. Since then, her skills had only gotten stronger. Two days after the Alcatraz debacle, she accidentally ported herself to Los Angeles. Two weeks ago, she ported herself to France. She was starting to port greater distances. To make matters worse, she was a sleep porter.
Thank goodness for Tessa, though. Tessa was the one who’d told Ororo that Lila sent out a sort of signal before she ported in her sleep, almost like a navigation signal. Lila didn’t know where she was going, but her mind subconsciously had a good idea where it was going. She’d gotten good at intercepting those mental signals while she was sleep. She’d probably prevented Lila from porting herself in her sleep at least a dozen times since she arrived at the mansion. She wasn’t a foolproof way of stopping Lila. Lila did still manage to port from time to time before Tessa could ease her mind.
“What about you? How ‘bout you take us to Liveworld?” Anya said, turning to the girl who was still holding tight to her jeans.
“Lyn would never forgive me if I sent her here to take my reaming? You know she’s already half-afraid of Mr. Summers since the last time,” Laura said with a shake of her head.
Liveworld was a manifestation of Laura’s own machinations used to protect her twin sister, Goblyn”a mutant whose mangled features prompted their father to attempt to murder the child. Laura teleported her to a place she called Liveworld. She referred to Earth as Deadworld because of the horror she’d gone through with her father, the horror she continued to go through by being “different” from most people. Still, she felt Goblyn was safer in her own world. She was right. Laura could visit Liveworld, but Goblyn transported to their realm as a result. They were still trying to understand why both girls couldn’t reside together on the same plane”a conundrum that Ororo hoped they would clear up soon.
Intricate problems like Lila’s and Laura’s made Ororo wish every day that the Professor was still with them to help them unlock these problems. Not just their problems, but so many of the other students problems as well. They had one student who might actually be two people making up one person. They had another student who couldn’t speak because his powers channeled through his vocal chords. Roberto kept burning things with random flare ups. Jono had a big hole in his chest where his psionic energy rested, and she thought it might be getting bigger.
Sometimes, Ororo didn’t know if she was really strong enough to do this job. The Professor had dedicated so much of his life to this, and she worried that she might ruin it. She missed him. She missed his guidance, his reassurance, his warmth. What could she hope to accomplish without him?
Anya chuckled. “I guess dumping salt in his coffee wasn’t the smartest thing we’ve done.” The other two girls joined her in the memory, smiling at each other like a band of thieves.
“Can’t you make a really big web or something to trap him in?” Laura asked, letting go of her pants to hold her hands out wide.
“I can’t make webs, Dean.” Anya snorted with a roll of her eyes.
“Then, what good are ya?” the shorter girl teased, earning herself a punch in the arm. Laura rubbed her arm, grumbling. “Ouch! Take it easy. Superhuman strength, fragile arm. Not a good combination.”
Anya had good control of her powers, even though she hadn’t had them for long. The girl was quickly recovering from a life-threatening wound she received when she found herself in the crossfire between the Sisterhood of Wasps and the Spider Society. Miguel, the girl’s mentor, saved her life by activating her latent powers. Ororo took the girl in as a personal favor to him because he trusted them. He said there were some dodgy things taking place in the Society, and Anya was the last of a long line of Hunters. Despite her injury, she trained hard every day to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes, Ororo had to physically force her from the Danger Room. Anya wanted to be part of the X-Men. Ororo didn’t know if she had the heart to tell her that she was destined for something beyond the X-Men.
The three stopped short when they finally spied her in the foyer. “Hello, Ms. Munroe,” the three girls said in unison. They were suddenly the picture of innocence and saccharine charm, all grins and wide eyes.
“Hello, ladies,” she said, raising a questioning eyebrow at them. “Is there something you wish to tell with me?”
Anya put a finger to her chin. “Welcome home?” More big grins abound from all the girls. And when you added Jubilee and Kitty to this mix, it became a new world order of girls. There was no end to the chaos they could cause, and their newest male teacher, Alex Summers, always seemed to be the brunt of this chaos.
“Anything else?” Ororo pushed gently.
“Um… no?”
“Okay, I tried.”
Laura grabbed Anya and Lila. “We’ll be going now, but we want to hear all about your””
“There you are!” a deep voice boomed from the top of the stairwell, cutting off Laura, causing them all to turn around. Lila let out a nervous yelp and grabbed Ororo’s arm. Ororo prayed she really didn’t teleport both of them to Mars in her jumpiness. Alex came bustling down the stairs with a towel on his head, but the young female eyes took little notice of that since he was shirtless. Ororo tsked at them while secretly stealing an appreciative look herself.
“What is the meaning of this, Alex?” Ororo asked.
Alex snatched the towel from his head. “This is the meaning of this! Which one of you did this?” Alex asked through clenched teeth. Ororo covered her mouth, attempting to stifle a laugh as Alex pointed to his bright blue hair. “No, that’s not the right question to ask since all three of you probably had something to do with it. You hate me, don’t you?”
Anya slowly pulled her gold, spider-eyed goggles down. “Of course not. You’re our favorite teacher. We didn’t do nothing. Honest, Mr. Summers.” Anya gave him a toothy grin.
“No way, Anya. I want to look in your eyes when you lie to me,” he said in a sticky-sweet voice. Anya lowered the goggles until they hung around her neck. She looked at Alex sheepishly. Alex turned his attention to a concentrating Laura. “And don’t you even think about it, Ms. Dean.”
“You should’ve made the portal before he found us,” Lila muttered under her breath.
“Just tell me one thing before I scream at you. Is this permanent?” His voice was low with just a hint of a quaver.
Good one, Ororo mentally said, watching him put the schoolboy charm on them, complete with the puppy dog eyes and the sad tug at the corner of his mouth. He’d been perfecting that look for years, and it still hadn’t lost its magic. It helped he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Anya was the first one to crack. Figures the toughest cookie in the bunch would be the one who crumbled first.
“Ay! Do you think we’re stupid?” Then, Anya bit down on her lip. Oops.
“I knew you did it!” Alex turned to Ororo. “See what happens when you’re not around? Three days of this sh--“
“Language, Alex,” Ororo tutted. “Remember, you must set an example.”
He crinkled his eyebrows in her direction. He was sure these girls had heard and said worse than his near slip. “Next time you have to go to Washington, send me instead.”
Ororo could only smile as she left Alex to mete out his punishment on the girls. She missed the flurry of being at the mansion. She was always in forward motion there. Those lonely nights in her swank hotel room had given her nothing but her regrets. She’d missed the children, her friends, the laughter, the fights. It was only three days, but it felt like a lifetime. The crash of pots and pans made her stop short. She u-turned at the base of the stairs when she heard Logan start spewing out the threats in his off-color language. She sighed heavily.
It was good to be home.
Miami, FL
“‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again.” He sang along with the radio, tapping neatly trimmed fingernails against the polished surface of the desk. He twitched his leg at a spastic, nervous pace that was far quicker than the beat of the song.
“How can you sing?” she asked softly, as if someone might overhear them speaking. She closed the folder she held, slamming it on the desk. Standing up from her desk, she walked toward him. Her fingers trembled as she turned the dial of the radio until the sound faded completely.
She scratched at the inside of her right wrist angrily, staring down at it defiantly before turning her blue eyes his way. He knew that if he turned her wrist over and pushed away the sleeve of her pristine lab coat the mark would be burned there, glaring blue-black against her creamy skin. That’s if she hadn’t taken great pains to cover it with makeup as she often did. An identical mark blazed on his right wrist, but he didn’t let it worry him, not the way she did.
“Don’t you like John Denver, sis?” he asked, offering her a gap-toothed grin. She frowned at him, and he forced himself to keep his smile steady.
“Millions of people will die. Not just mutants, but people.” She didn’t hide the distress in her voice. Didn’t he understand? Didn’t the thought keep him up late into the night? Sometimes, she’d wake screaming, seeing the faces of soon-to-be victims in her head. She’d been having these apocalyptic dreams since the mutant cure. All those mutants, all those poor, unsuspecting people.
The mutants thought this was the cure that so many of them longed for, that so many of them had prayed for. This cure was nothing more than a link in chain leading up to a series of events that would change their world forever. They worried about normalcy and being accepted when they should worry about death. It was coming quicker than she’d ever anticipated. The cure had been administered, Charles Xavier was dead, and a new dawn was on the horizon.
“Would you rather I sing Calypso? You always liked””
“Listen to me. We can’t do this. We can’t be part of this. We can leave.” She was pleading with him. Moments like these were when she could hate him. She didn’t want him to coddle her and tell her everything was going to be okay. She wanted him to wake up. She wanted him to take a stand with her. She couldn’t do it alone. She was too weak to do it without him.
“Where will we go? Our place is here, doing exactly what we’re doing now. There is nowhere for us to hide.” The first inklings of apprehension tinged his tone. She thought he was unfeeling. He was painfully aware of what they were part of, but there was nothing else for them. This was their sole purpose for being born. “Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do and die.”
“I don’t need you to quote Tennyson! I need you to listen to me!” she yelled. She needed him to support her, to understand her.
“Calm down,” he said in his most cajoling voice. He hadn’t meant to upset her. She’d been on edge lately. He didn’t want her to have a psychotic break, not now. They’d work too hard on her illness.
“You’re talking about standing by as a massacre takes place, total annihilation of everything we’ve ever known and loved. And for what? Because it’s supposedly our destiny? Destiny isn’t definite. Our destiny is what we make of it,” she growled, ignoring him. She paced the floor.
“You can’t talk like that. He’ll…” He trailed. He gripped the edge of his desk nervously.
“He’ll what?” she demanded.
He’ll take you away from me, he finished silently. Her glower softened as she stopped her furious pace in front of him, and she patted his hand familiarly. He didn’t speak the words aloud. He didn’t need to. She’d heard them, glimpsed them in his eyes. They weren’t telepaths, but they shared the kind of sibling bond that no telepathic connection could even begin to touch. Prick her finger and he would bleed. When he hurt, she hurt. And if he lost her, he’d lose half of himself.
“This is bigger than us. It always has been. We’re lessers, nothing more than minions, and you think we’re strong enough to defy it. You’ll only go on a fool’s mission if you think otherwise. This is exactly the way it has to be. There is no other way.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do anything, but what could they do?
She snatched away her hand and stared at him in horror. She didn’t speak as she walked back to her desk and slumped in her chair. He turned the radio up, the last refrains of a song floated quietly connecting them. “It’s your choice, your choice, your choice, your choice. Peace or annihilation…”
Salem Center, NY
Bobby smiled at Marie as he entered her room. The smell of sweat and Polo for Men mixed with the funny scent”she called it “new car smell””of the unstable molecules used to make their X-Suits. She loved how he smelled after a Danger Room session. It was so manly. She took in a deep sniff when his lips brushed hers. She wished he would kiss her forever.
“Ms. Munroe’s back,” he said when they parted. He sat down on the bed beside her, casually placing an arm around her shoulders. Twenty-eight days ago, he would’ve had to be more mindful about how he touched her.
“I know. I already talked to her.” Was that the most important thing he had to tell her? Not that she didn’t care, but he never talked to her about missions or his Danger Room sessions, anymore. It was like he felt she was no longer qualified to discuss those things with. None of them would discuss anything X-Men related with her aside from Ororo and Logan, even the new teachers treated her differently as if she were some baby bird.
She learned secondhand that Bobby was taking the novices through Danger Room sessions. When she asked him why he hadn’t told her, he said that he didn’t think she wanted to know. Just because she’d taken the cure didn’t mean she didn’t want to be part of the team, but Ororo wouldn’t even entertain the thought. When she appealed to Logan, hoping he’d talk Ororo into letting her join them on missions again, he pretty much told her that she wasn’t ready for that. They treated her like a cripple without her mutation, and she hated it.
She hated to tell Bobby that she felt useless, that sometimes she thought Ororo left her in charge when they were away just so she wouldn’t feel helpless. She thought Logan tolerated her clumsy attempts at learning martial arts in the afterhours for the same reason. They didn’t want her to feel like she didn’t belong, but once again, she was left in the cold. She hated being different from everyone else outside the walls of the mansion. Now, everyone inside the mansion looked at her as if she didn’t belong.
She’d overheard Lila and the new girl, Anya, talking about her earlier. She’d gone to the room Lila shared with Anya to return the copy of Jane Eyre she’d borrowed from Lila. “Why do they keep her around if she ain’t even a mutant anymore? What a waste of space for someone who needs the room,” she’d heard Anya mumble under her breath while she used her grapple hooks to attack the picture of Brad Pitt over Lila’s bed.
“I don’t blame Marie for taking the cure. She couldn’t make skin to skin contact with people. She couldn’t even kiss her boyfriend without worrying she’d put him in a coma or something. Besides, we’re more than just a school. We’re family. We’re her family. We can’t just shun her because she’s a flatscan, now,” Lila’d said, desperately trying to save Brad from Anya’s assault.
The word flatscan slapped her hard.
“Whatev. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be nice to her. I’m just pointing out that she’s the only non-mutant in a school for mutants. Isn’t that oxymoronic or ironic or some kinda ‘onic’? She wanted to touch her boyfriend more than she wanted to save the world, to be true to herself? That’s some kinda lame shit you’d read in a grocery store romance. Woman sacrifices her self-worth for her man. Lame.” Anya had made large sweeping motions with her hands in the form of letters. L-A-M-E.
“Save the feminist rant for ethics class, Yaya,” Lila chided.
That had hurt. What did Anya know about craving another’s touch? She didn’t even realize how important something like touch was because she’d never been bereft of it. Marie had barged into the room then, indignation staining her cheeks blood red. “It ain’t my fault that I couldn’t’ve been blessed with a mutation that I could control, that I was given something that made me dangerous on the battlefield, but denied me somethin’ as simple as human contact.”
And Anya had just brushed her off like she was nothing. She’d sucked air through her teeth and rolled her eyes at her. She stood up from her bed and put her hand on her hip, attitude making her stance hard. Then, she’d added a curt, “Whatever, chica. If you can’t handle a little criticism about what you did, sunshine, then maybe you ain’t too happy with the decision you made.”
“I ain’t ashamed of my decision to take the cure, but I ain’t gonna stand here an’ let you talk about me either.” Marie stared back at the girl hard.
“I look at you, and I see living proof of the reward for conformity.” Then, she’d pushed past Marie, taking the extra effort to shove her out of the way when there was more than enough room for to pass.
“I’m sorry, Marie,” Lila’d said, looking genuinely apologetic.
“We’re gonna be late for our Danger Room session, Cheney!” Anya had called. Lila had offered Marie one last apology before scuttling after Anya. She’d tried to fight back her tears as she listened to the two argue about Anya’s attitude toward Marie. At first, she thought about running behind Anya and kicking her in the stomach or something equally as spiteful, but maybe Anya was right.
“Are you still letting what Anya said bother you?” Bobby asked over her thoughts.
“The girl hates me,” Marie said, relaxing in his arms again. She just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Anya would show up in the mansion when she started to question her decision take the cure.
Bobby turned her face toward his, and she relished the feel of his fingers against her skin. It was these small, intimate moments between them reminded her not to be sorry for her decisions. But still, she was conflicted. Why couldn’t she have had a mutation that allowed her the luxury of human touch? Why couldn’t they have found some way to help her control her mutation?
“She doesn’t hate you,” he said with a shake of his head.
“That’s easy for you to say. You ain’t the one on the receivin’ end of all her bull.” From day one when Anya arrived solemn-faced and cursing up a Spanish storm, the girl made it clear what she thought about Marie and her willingness to give up her powers.
Marie tried to make her understand. Anya said she didn’t want to understand. Anya told her that she’d been given those powers for a reason and that’s she’d gave them up for nothing. That wasn’t true. Was it? She touched her hand to Bobby’s and tried to reassure herself that it wasn’t. She needed this. She needed to be able to touch, to feel. Why wouldn’t someone just tell her that it was okay she’d made this decision?
“I think in her own way she admires that you were strong enough to take the cure. She told me you had big cojones for doing it.”
“Obviously, that wasn’t a compliment. For God’s sake, she said I didn’t belong here, an’ she didn’t even flinch when I confronted her about it. So, yeah, you’re right. She doesn’t hate me. She just doesn’t like me much either.” Bobby pulled away from her a little. She sighed inwardly. She hadn’t meant to take such a harsh tone with him. Bobby just didn’t understand the complexities of girls.
She let out a soft moan, putting two fingers to her temple, forgetting momentarily about Anya. “You still having those headaches?” his voice sounded too thick in her head, making her rub her temple harder. She started having them about two days after she took the cure.
“A side effect of the cure or something,” she said with a small laugh. “It’s a small price to pay.” She wanted to believe that. They started small, barely noticeable, but they’d built up in pressure during the last few weeks. Sometimes, they didn’t bother her. At other times, the pain would literally paralyze her, making a still scream freeze in her throat.
“Maybe you should talk to Ms. Munroe or Dr. Reyes.” Bobby eyed her warily, holding her a little tighter in his arms.
“Yeah,” she said, not meaning it. Didn’t they already have enough to worry about without her adding to the slush pile? Yeah, let’s make Marie the Cripple priority number one. God, she had to stop thinking like that. She knew they worried about her welfare as much as they did everyone else’s.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you.”
She appreciated Bobby’s concern, but she wished he wouldn’t say things like that. She knew what he was thinking because she’d thought the same thing in the intense pains of the headaches she suffered. What if the cure was a poison? What if one of the doctors who’d worked on the cure introduced something into the cure that would react violently to the mutant gene? Honestly, sometimes, she did feel like she was dying when she had those headaches. She had blindly”maybe stupidly”trusted these people and their cure, after all.
“Bobby, if I ain’t know better, I’d think you cared about me,” Marie said with a teasing wink, trying to smooth over the tension that chased his words. She didn’t want to be depressed. Forget Anya. Forget the headaches. She just wanted to enjoy him, but she couldn’t get Anya’s words out of her head. She recalled the quote that Anya had referenced. She remembered it from Literature class.
The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you…
… except yourself.
