Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

To all the young heroines who helped bring my interpretation of TJ to life – Laura, Mary, Carrie and Grace; Amy, Jo, Beth and Meg; Anne (with an “E”), Scout, Lyra, Sal, Winnie and Calpurnia.
And for Rebekah, of course. I wish much love to my little bat.
Xoxo,
Maria

“So that’s basically my screenplay,” I say.
I am perched on the seat of my Uncle Logan’s Harley Davidson motorcycle, chattering on at his cowboy boots. His top half is under the Jeep Cherokee; he’s changing the oil. I’m supposed to be helping him. (At least that’s the excuse I gave to Papa to get out of German class thirty minutes early this afternoon. My grades are perfect in German. I already exempt from the midterm exams earlier this school year. And I will probably exempt from the finals in May. On that note, why am I taking German anyway? I’ve been speaking it fluently since I learned to talk.)
Uncle Logan, splattered in oil, rolls out from under the Jeep. He sets aside the nasty, dirty used oil filter and takes a swig from his bottle of beer. He shoots me that trademark expression of his that seems half-annoyed, half-exasperated. But I know he’s been listening to every word I said.
“It needs more kissin’,” he grunts after another long pull of cold beer.
“Uck! No!” I screech, covering my face with my hands.
I peek out at him through my six fingers to see if he’s teasing me. It’s hard to tell sometimes with Uncle Logan. He looks pretty serious right now as he chugs more beer.
I know what kind of movies he likes – those cheesy Clint Eastwood’s with lots and lots of shooting guns, death and dramatic poses. We’ll binge-watch Eastwood flicks sometimes – Uncle Logan and me – on lazy Sunday afternoons. I know Mama doesn’t like that. But she can’t really say anything about it without sounding like the World’s Biggest Hypocrite because she obsessively watches those CSI shows full of graphic murders and gore. People on Eastwood movies “die” by clutching their chest and keeling over, groaning.
“Why would anyone want to watch a movie with kissing?” I demand.
OK. I know some people – like Aunt Jeanie and Aunt Jubilee – do, but I don’t understand why. Just like I don’t understand why some people like tomato-and-mayonnaise sandwiches.
“It’s gross!” I add – on both counts, tomato sandwiches and kissing. “imo.”
“imo?” Logan asks, quirking a bushy eyebrow at me.
“In my opinion,” I say in a “duh” tone, though, come to think of it Logan, in his flannel jacket, jeans and cowboy boots, does not seem like the kind of guy who would understand that abbreviation. But then maybe he might …
Logan has raised a lot of teenagers and he seems to stay a step ahead of all their tricks and trends. For example, just the other day, he and Uncle Scott were walking across the quad to oversee school pictures in the gymnasium when Addison Parker and Daisy Daye came prissing by in the opposite direction. Daisy Daye, that sop, looked straight at Logan, grinned at Addison, and murmured in a catty voice aimed at Addison, but loud enough for Logan to hear – “swipe left!”
Logan turned to a nonplussed Uncle Scott and explained calmly: “Girl’s talkin’ ‘bout that Tinder. Saw a broad on it looked just like her Momma and I swiped right, if yah get what I mean.”
Well, Daisy turned bright red at that, let me tell you! Uncle Logan doesn’t think much of sops, just like me. It’s one of the reasons we’re such great pals. That, and he’s my Papa’s best friend, of course.
Logan grunts at the new oil filter in its tidy, white cylinder sitting innocently on the toolbox beside me like it doesn’t realize its horrible grimy fate. I hand it to his free hand, the one not holding the beer. Logan isn’t much of a talker. He only seems to speak when he has to. Meanwhile, there are those (my Aunt Kitty, for one) who think I’m a bit of a chatterbox. We’re still pals, though. Me and Logan. Me and Kitty, not so much so.
He rolls back under the Jeep on the dolly and his voice drifts out from under the carriage. “You say that now, but someday …?” He gives a gruff chuckle. “Yer ol’ man was the same way. There was a time when the elf seemed to think all girls were good for was playing practical jokes,” he says, referring to my Papa. Logan’s called Papa “elf” as far back as I can remember, just like he calls me “little elf” sometimes. And it’s easy to see why. “Then he hit puberty and that all changed!”
I frown. I’d been hearing my whole life what a Casanova Papa was when he was younger. He had, like, a hundred girlfriends once – a long time before I came along. Papa isn’t exactly a stick-in-the-mud like Uncle Scott and he’s certainly not Aunt Kitty. But he’s Principal Wagner, the headmaster of our School. It’s hard to imagine him as anything else, especially a dashing rake who left a trail of broken hearts behind him. As far as I know Papa hadn’t even had a proper date since I was born. It might sound strange to say (or even a little selfish), but I secretly like it this way. I am the only woman in Papa’s life and that’s the way I want it to be.
Logan pushes himself back out. I toss him a clean rag and he wipes his blackened work-roughened hands on it. He jerks his shaggy head at the garage door. “Final period,” he says.
Like me, Logan can hear the school bell before it even rings. His ears are extraordinary, just like mine. He’s got ears like a fox. But mine are even sharper. I’ve got the ears of a bat.
“Might wanna put some shoes on, punkin,” Logan adds with a smirk. “Yer Aunt Kitty might have somethin’ to say about that.”
I roll my eyes. Yuk! I hate shoes. Summer or winter, I cannot stand to wear them. And, really, who can blame me? My feet just aren’t made for shoes unless it’s those creepy river-shoes that have toes. And those things are made for people with five toes on each foot and I’ve got three toes each. But I’ve never missed those extra four. My feet can do twice as much as those of most people. My feet are wide, flat and dark-blue, just like the rest of me. I have cool, amazing toenails that are really more like claws. “Talons,” my little cousin Vicky calls them. Vicky has talons too, but they are exactly like the talons of an owl, long and curving as if they were made to catch and crush prey. They would be scary-looking if they didn’t belong to Vicky who is, well, Vicky – a goofy little girl with a head of pale hair as fluffy as a baby chick.
My talons are made for climbing. They can hook onto any chink on the smoothest wall. To reinforce the fact that I’m a born climber, both my toes and fingertips have little pads on them like suction-cups. This lets me scale walls and ceilings like a gecko.
My feet can also sense tiny vibrations rippling through the ground that are too soft for most other people to detect. Um, can you say early-warning detection system? But my feet are also super tough and mostly resistant to heat or cold. Tell me it wouldn’t be a crime to coop up these wonders inside shoes?
Most of the other teachers at School let my shoeless feet slide despite the dress code, but not Aunt Kitty AKA Professor Pryde. (Did I mention I can’t call her Aunt Kitty to her face even though I’ve always called all the other teachers Auntie and Uncle with no problem, even Uncle Scott?) She’s so stringent and by-the-book it makes me want to barf.
“OK. OK, I’ll get going,” I mutter to Uncle Logan, holding up my hands in a gesture of surrender. Although seventh period of the School day is study hall and what class am I lagging behind in and should study harder for? None, that’s what. I’ll spend the whole boring hour-and-a-half tutoring students like poor Harold Nguyen. Even though he’s fifteen and I turn twelve in June.
“Now,” I add with a sigh when Uncle Logan quirks another eyebrow at me.
If Aunt Kitty – sorry, Professor Pryde – catches me teleporting to class so I can have a few more precious moments of “goofing off” (even though I’m working on my screenplay which is VERY IMPORTANT) and sans shoes I’m dead meat.
“And what about the shoes, little elf?” Logan calls after me as I flip off his motorcycle and trudge in the direction of the quad.
I shoot him a narrow-eyed expression. "Don’t bet on it, bub!"
Logan rumbles a chuckle and shakes his greying head as he finishes off the rest of his beer.
^^
OK, I don’t teleport to study hall – Well, except the last few hundred yards. I got distracted … or I should say Vicky got distracted. Uncle Warren was giving her a diving lesson right over the quad. The open sky above the quad, which was usually crowded with various students hurrying and hollering, was probably not the best practice air-space for Victoria Worthington IV, who has the attention span of an ant, but the eyes of an eagle. Seriously, the kid can spot a bug in the grass from almost a half-mile up in the air which is where she was hovering with her dad, Uncle Warren, when I came scurrying across the quad’s open square of green grass five minutes before the sixth-period dismissal bell rang.
It is a gorgeous, bright spring day, “perfect for flying” as Uncle Warren would say. Uncle Warren looks like a drop-dead gorgeous human man with chin-length blond hair and eyes like the April sky. He also has an eighteen-foot-wingspan. There’s a reason he’s called “Angel.” Warren’s wings can maneuver in about any weather. Vicky, who inherited her papa’s beautiful snow-white wings (except hers are splotched with tan feathers), but not one bit of his grace and finesse, needs good clear skies to practice flying. She doesn’t need distractions, though maybe that was the point of this particular lesson – Warren was trying to teach her to focus on a specific target, which is kind of like asking a hungry dog to ignore a tasty ham sandwich.
Here’s the thing about Vicky – she’s as gawky and goofy as they come, but she flies in complete silence. And I don’t mean people with regular, boring ears can’t hear her coming. Even my super-sonic, beautiful bat ears that can detect a dog farting a mile away can’t hear Vicky on a sneak attack.
And here’s the thing about me – I live in a world of sound. Well, I guess everyone does who isn’t deaf. But my sense of hearing is eight times more powerful than a “normal” human being’s. I can hear everything within almost a mile. Everything, no matter the volume or pitch. No matter how close or how far.
Y’know when someone whispers something under their breath? Well, I can hear everything hidden under breaths. I can hear the whisperer’s heartbeat. And I can pinpoint the sound of cockroach feet scrambling over the floor under the feet of the whisperer. And if that cockroach farts, well, I can hear that too.
You might not know this, but cockroaches fart – a lot.
Sometimes having such a keen sense of hearing is awesome, like when I was three years old and I overhead Aunt Lori whisper where the Hanukah presents were hidden in my Mama’s house. (Like anyone who knows me for any amount of time, Aunt Lori knows now not to even whisper secrets within a mile of me.) People who don’t know me very well are fair game. Like Daisy Daye when she whispered to Terran Fatima that one of her boobs was bigger than the other. Of course, I’d never repeat this because A.) I’m not that kind of person (read Daisy Daye). And B.) I’ve heard it from all my aunties and my Mama that having mismatched boobs is not just common, but the norm for most women.
But I could tell that Daisy Daye was very self-conscious about it for whatever reason (probably because the media makes women look absolutely Barbie doll symmetrical). And it was nice to have something – no matter how secret – over on Daisy Daye, who is the worst.
Sometimes my super sensitive ears make things really, really bad. They aren’t something I can turn off, like a radio. When I was two years old, Mama and Papa took me to a crowded beer festival. (Papa is a craft beer enthusiast. He even brews his own brand. Don’t ask.) There were jugglers, acrobats, hawkers and an oomp-pah! Polka band complete with tuba and accordion. The other kids there were laughing and clapping along with the fun. I was screaming my head off. It was like all those different sounds were trying to pull my eardrums in a dozen different directions. It was horrible. That’s when Mama and Papa first realized how sensitive my ears were.
That’s also around the time Uncle Logan and I started to hang out together. Logan has super-senses too, but it’s his sense of smell that’s mega-powerful. Uncle Logan’s nose is better than a bloodhound’s. There are only a few things he cannot sniff out during our walks in the woods together, but even he couldn’t sense the baby fawn I’d found three days ago in a thicket where its mother had hidden it. But I could hear its heartbeat.
Like I said, it has its perks, though sometimes it feels more like a curse than a gift.
Uncle Logan’s nose is famous, but his ears are sensitive too. He gets how painful a sound that would be considered loud to regular ears is unbearable for me. And how miserable a dozen different sounds are when they’re grouped together in one area. One reason Uncle Logan avoids crowds. Me too. It’s the reason Papa and most of the teachers at School give me about fifteen minutes ahead of the other students to get to class, so my ears are (pretty much) shielded from the noise and bustle of the student body moving around as a whole.
But today I’m running late because Vicky spotted me from above and decided to dive bomb me. The kid is good. Let me tell you, when sound rules every minute of your life someone who moves without it is freaky as hell. Warren is teaching Vicky to dive. She’s a natural, but damn she doesn’t know much about landing. She pulls up just in time not to kill me, but her attack sends us sprawling through the mud.
“Vicky – dammit, er, darnit!” I snarl, spitting out freshly-dug sod.
I’m pissed because (among several reasons) she’s made me muddy my Panama City Lifeguard on Duty hoodie Aunt Lori bought for me when she and Uncle Alex got engaged at the beach last summer. It’s my favorite thing; I practically live in it even though the weather’s getting warmer. But I don’t dare cuss because I know Uncle Warren is hovering around nearby. He’s not as strict about cussing (or not, I guess) as, say, Auntie Marie. (In fact, he’s one of the grownups I’ve heard drop a “damn” or a “hell” occasionally.) But I know he wouldn’t approve of me cussing around his daughter’s sweet little innocent ears.
“You didn’t even hear me coming, TJ!” Vicky sings. Her fluffy blond hair is sticking out in all directions, making her look like a wide-eyed baby owl. Right now, she’s crowing like an overgrown rooster. “And you have the best ears around – better than a bat – and I got yoooou!” she adds with an annoying chortle.
“I couldn’t hear you because your wings make no sound – like zero,” I mumble. Yes, I can hear a tiger-moth hatching out of its cocoon. But I’ve got to have sound for my super ears to work their magic.
I’m trapped under her butt-cheek. Vicky is just four years old and I’m almost twelve. So why don’t you just push her off? you might be asking. Well, Vicky is like a bird. I don’t mean she’s a picky eater. (On the contrary, the girl has a voracious appetite and a roaring metabolism. She can eat her weight in chicken wings.) But, like Uncle Warren, her bones are hollow like a bird’s, making her a very light flyer. She’s literally light as a feather until she traps something – or someone – in her viselike grip. Then she’s suddenly like a 300-pound sumo wrestler sitting on you. Nobody can figure it out, not even Aunt Jeanie. It’s one of the many things that make Vicky such a weird kid.
“Quick, what are the names of three flightless birds!” Vicky shrills, her round face a picture of elation and smugness at having pinned me. I know better than to struggle. Vicky is going through this irritating phase where you have to answer a trivia question for her to let you up.
“Rhea, Ostrich and Emu,” I growl. “And there’s gonna be another if you don’t let me up!”
Vicky giggles victoriously and rolls off of me. Older kids are starting to swarm around us in earnest now, scurrying and hurrying to seventh period. The bell rang while Vicky was rubbing my face in the mud. I feel like rubbing her nose in it just to teach her a lesson (not much else it would do; she’s as muddy as me at this point). At that moment, however, Uncle Warren swoops down and lands on a dime. I’ve watched him fly since I was a baby, but I’m still in awe at how deftly he can maneuver, especially with a wingspan as wide as that.
“Oooh, TJ! I’m so sorry,” he says, herding Vicky away from me in that coaxing and apologetic manner Warren’s made his trademark as a dad. (Dad-mark?)
Uncle Warren’s a single dad. Not single like my papa. He and Mama are divorced. Warren’s wife, Aunt Betsy, died when Vicky was four months old. I was seven when it happened and I remember Aunt Betsy as a stunningly beautiful woman. She was a model and a psychic, like Aunt Jeanie. She and Uncle Warren were madly in love, like something from a fairy tale. I know how badly her dying messed him up – because it’s all the grownups ever talk about and it’s not like I can’t overhear everything they’re saying even when they say it in that whispered way grownups do when they talk about subjects “unsuitable for little ears.” To my uncles’ and aunties’ credit, most of them just state the facts around me which I appreciate.
Uncle Warren’s “put so much of his grief” for Aunt Betsy into raising their daughter, my aunties and uncles say in that pitying way grownups often do, usually with a lot of sympathetic head-shaking. Like a lot of single dads (and fortunately, not like mine) Warren tends to overthink, overprotect and overworry when it comes to Vicky – especially when she’s into mischief, which is all the damn time.
Right now, as he continues to apologize profusely, I know Warren isn’t just sorry I’m a mess. (Vicky’s the closest I’ve got to a kid sister and I’ve been putting up with her rowdy behavior since she was born.) But he knows as well as anyone that, because I haven’t beat the bell, that the tide of students rushing over the quad is going to be hell on my sensitive ears. Even with just a couple dozen students pushing, shoving and chattering around me, it feels like several rock concerts amped way up inside my head. I grit my teeth.
“I can fly you to class …” Warren offers, bless him. But I notice his blue eyes straying towards Vicky who is sneaking off to stalk a grasshopper. His hands are pretty full – or his wings, as the case may be.
“I got this, Uncle War,” I say as cheerfully as I can, struggling not to grimace. “If only I could …?”
Warren smiles at me. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell,” he adds with a wink before flying off after his precocious offspring who is woofing down that grasshopper like a starving baby bird. Yep. Mark that off as another quirk for little Victoria. She’s been eating insects since she could crawl – or flap. As soon as she could scurry around on all fours, her little wings were pumping, causing her to hover over the ground like a beetle. What a weird kid.
I flash two fingers at Uncle Warren in a “peace out” sign. I close my eyes. I concentrate. I try to block out all the sounds pressing in around me. Then I wink out in a flash of blue smoke.
^^
OK. Teleportation is not easy. Like, not at all. Papa makes it look easy. So easy, but hell it ain’t. For me, winking out is the easy bit. I’ve been able to do it since I was a few months old. (That makes for some interesting baby stories Mama and Papa tell about their little elf, let me tell you.) When I wink out, I usually keep my eyes closed tight. If I don’t, all I can see is a pinkish blur whirling around me, pressing in on my eyeballs. You’d think it would be loud as hell, but it isn’t really. There’s just a gentle swooshing noise like wind blowing around me.
Winking in is the hard part. Not because it’s hard to do. What’s hard is knowing exactly where you’re going and how to wink in there. Exactly being the key word. Because if you don’t know precisely where you’re headed, you’ll end up somewhere you’d really rather not be – like inside some drywall. (That happened to me when I was eighteen months old. Uncle Logan had to cut me out with his retractable claws.)
I’m eleven years old now, however, and practically a ‘porting expert, almost as good as Papa, really. Most of my aunties and uncles, like Uncle Warren, know this and trust me with this responsibility. After all, I’m taking high school sophomore classes, aren’t I? Shouldn’t I be treated like an adult in every other way?
Well, some people don’t seem to think so … I see one of their disapproving faces as I wink in in the cultural arts complex – Aunt Kitty’s, er, Professor Pryde’s frowning face. Ah, dammit, if it had been any other teacher, I groan internally. Most of my aunties would bend the School rule that students are not to use their powers without teacher supervision, especially when it comes to someone like me, who is so conscientious about her powers (and everything else) if I do say so myself.
But Aunt Kitty thinks rules bend about as well as that stick up her butt, which is not at all.
“Third time this week, Wagner,” she intones. (Did I mention she insists on calling me by my last name like a peon even though my Papa wiped her boogers when she was a little kid?) She strides towards me with her arms crossed, scowling up a storm. I spot Harold Nguyen, Lydia Myers and Terran Fatima and her gang hanging around outside the Secondary Languages Lab where we have sophomore study hall. Terran glances at me sympathetically, but does she make a move to stick up for me? No, she does not. I see that drip Daye smiling smugly behind her, blast her eyes.
“I think that makes three demerits,” Kitty says as if I didn’t know. She’s one of those grownups that like to state the obvious just to be sarcastic and obnoxious. “Meaning Saturday detention. Hmm, don’t you think the landscaper needs help on the plant borders along the math and science building?”
Oh, geez, I don’t know, I want to reply, but I don’t dare. She might dream up some other inhumane punishment. Saturday detention is bad. Landscaping is just cruel. Kitty knows how much I loathe that Fung Sway nonsense and how plant pollen is murder on my delicate sinuses. Considering it’s April, peak pollen season, I’ll be sneezing and wheezing all of next week. I swear Kitty’s secondary mutation is torturing kids.
“Well, Wagner?” she persists because Kitty can’t leave well enough alone even when she well knows she’s asking hypothetical questions.
“If you’re planning on using the same ‘scaper – considering how hideous that hack-job looks around the math and science building – I’d say he could use all the help he can get,” I reply, deadpan.
“Wow, OK, make that two Saturdays, Wagner,” she says. “Insubordination.”
She’s trying to play it straight-faced, but I can see a smirk playing around her lips. I can feel my blood boiling in my head. Yeah, some of the teachers here at School are strict, especially Uncle Scott. It’s not that he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor; he’s got zero sense of humor. It’s not his fault I don’t think. Like he isn’t trying to be a jerk. I just think he’s one of those people that wasn’t even born with a sense of humor. Kinda like how some people are born without earlobes or ten toes.
Like last week that drip Daisy came prissing into Geometry a full ten minutes late, just waltzing in like she had a right. Uck. Uncle Bobby or Uncle Warren might have let it slide if she had the decency to be ashamed, but I knew Uncle Scott wouldn’t let her off the hook. He’s got a scowl that can honest-to-God freeze water. Even seeing it directed at someone else makes me cringe. Terran, Miranda or even Addison would have had the sense to cower, but Daye is so dumb that she believes she can pull a fast one on Uncle Scott just because he wears bright yellow tennis shirts with khakis and argyle socks with high-water trousers. Daye is one of those poor souls that cannot reconcile that that fashion disaster who is her Geometry teacher is also the one and only Cyclops, general of the X-Men. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
But then she did something so stupid it took my breath away. She tried to flash her bosoms at Uncle Scott – like in front of God and everybody. I heard Miranda Diaz suck in her breath and Albert James stutter nervously. I thought I would wet my pants. If Daisy had tried to hit on any of my other uncles, she would have been trashy and awful, but the thing about Uncle Scott is he doesn’t get it. Like his wife Aunt Jeanie (who is drop-dead gorgeous, like light years out of Daisy’s league) has to tell him when she’s flirting with him. His wife. Who he’s been with since forever. It’s kind of sad, but also kind of adorable.
So the thought of a dumbass teenage girl trying to make him notice her was so incomprehensible the whole class was in a state of utter shock, but was that enough for the skank Daye? Hell, no. Did she consider how Aunt Jeanie could fry every ounce of her brain? No, because Daye has the intelligence of a cinder block.
“Ooh, Mister Summers, I think I’d do anything to make up for this tardy,” she cooed.
Uncle Scott regarded her like the idiot she is, an eyebrow climbing so far up his face I thought it would disappear in his hair. He seemed as bewildered as the rest of us – but not at what a skanky-ass hoe Daye is, but at just how stupid she is. Poor Uncle Scott. He’s been teaching kids for a long time, but just when he thinks he’s seen the dumbest of them, one like Daye comes along.
His face hardened into a stern frown. “All right then, how about cleaning the toilets in the girls’ dormitories for a week?” he snapped.
Reality actually started to seep into that thick skull of hers as she was faced with the prospect of mucking out toilet stalls for the next seven days. But what else did she expect? Or maybe she didn’t (though it was hard for me to perceive someone that stupid). Perhaps cleaning out toilets was all Daisy was fit for.
But Uncle Scott is fair – almost to a fault. He exempt Thomas Black even though he’s a jerk who teases Miranda Diaz relentlessly about her acne, but he made Joetta Watanabe take the midterm examination because she was three points short of exemption. But no teacher baits or goads on the kids here like Professor Pryde. And she gets away with it too because she’s Papa’s absolute favorite. She grew up as his little sister and has him wrapped around her little finger. It makes me sick. Like I want to throw up.
But I don’t take her bait until she gazes down at my feet and raises her perfectly-plucked little eyebrows. “And no shoes?” she coos, dragging out the last word I hate so much. “My goodness, dress code violation. We’re on a roll today, aren’t we Miss Wagner?”
I clench and unclench my fists. I want to sock her right in her smug mug, but she’s a teacher, an X-Woman and Kitty has the power to become intangible. If I did have the nerve to pop her in the face, my fist would just go sailing through thin air.
But I’ve known Kitty a looong time – since I was a baby, in fact, and I know there are other ways to get to her.
“I’m really sorry, Professor Pryde,” I say in my most sugary voice. Kitty smells a rat because she stops smirking. Pryde’s a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. “See I was telling Uncle Logan about my screenplay. I don’t think I’ve ever told you about my screenplay …?”
A look of sheer panic crosses her pretty face. She stammers: “O-Ok, Wagner, that will be all. Two Saturdays landscaping detention. Observe the dress code from now on.”
I smile to myself as soon as her back is turned. All right, I could be offended that some people avoid discussing my screenplay like the plague OR I could be the opportunist I am and put Professor Pryde in her place for a change. Out of the corner of my eye I see Harold Nguyen wink at me and Miranda Diaz give me the thumbs-up. My little smirk turns into a full-blown grin.
^^
“I-Ich mag Wurst …” Harold Nguyen stammers through his German tutoring session with me. It’s torture. Yeah, Harold’s a nice enough kid, but good Lord does he stink at second languages. It’s like all that knowledge he has about math and science takes up all the space in his brain and there isn’t room for learning how to tell a German fraulein he likes hotdogs – though that scenario does make me smile.
“It’s not funny!” he blusters indignantly at me. “Your mother tongue is crazy!”
“It is not any crazier than yours!” I snap back. Vietnamese is hard; I’ve learned a couple phrases from Missus Pham, the owner of my favorite Pho shop in town, but if I got dropped in the middle of Saigon, I’d be helpless let me tell you. “And German is only one of my two mother tongues, thank you very much!”
Harold grins a bit at me. He’s too good-natured to hold a grudge. Besides I think I am justified in my indignation. His insistence that German is my “native language” is like how some people want to make me choose between my Papa’s family and my Mama’s. Just because they live apart, they both belong to me. How could I choose one?
“Com’on, Harold, you learned English easily enough,” I say.
“I was six years old!” he states. His breathing speeds up and I sense a panic-attack coming on. “I need to make at least a high B in German, TJ! I’m already in Intermediate Secondary Languages!”
“Hey, man, try to relax,” I sooth, though I get it. With a father like Harold’s, I can see why he’s so nervous. I met Mister Nguyen at Family Day last year. He’s what my Uncle Logan calls a “rounder.” Harold’s papa is the kind that doesn’t care that his son has mutant powers – if those mutant powers help his boy get into the best medical college, he may as well. But heaven forbid Harold make anything less than a B-plus in any of his classes. His old man gave him complete hell for being pushed down to Intermediate German.
I really feel sorry for the kid. Sure, I’m taking sophomore-level classes, but I’ve always been ahead of my age academically. My Papa isn’t breathing down my neck about it.
“Look, Hare, how ‘bout I tutor you twice a week until final exams, OK?” I say, feeling regret set in even as I murmur the words. Two Saturdays of detention (landscaping, no less) and mind-numbingly boring tutoring lessons with Harold Nguyen twice a week. That means I can kiss the only study hall day I have – Friday – free to do whatever I like goodbye. But I cannot say no to someone that pitiful. Just like my Papa, Uncle Logan says.
Harold’s round face lights up like a menorah. “Thanks, Teej!” he says, although I hate that nickname. Seeing him that happy and relieved is worth it, I guess.
I shrug. Study hall is almost over. The other kids are loafing around, chatting and generally goofing. Professor Pryde runs a tight and tidy ship, but she does allow the students to socialize the last fifteen minutes of study hall if their work is done. I gaze at them all wistfully. I’m at a very strange intersection. Mama and Papa had me when they were crazy young – too young to know any better, Uncle Logan says – so my uncles and aunties at School have children now who are preschoolers. Given the way I look and the powers I have, going to a “normal” school among human kids my age is out of the question. I’ve always held my own academically among kids four or five years older than me, but my classmates have never accepted me as their peer, their friend.
Even Harold, as soon as our tutoring session is over, turns to Devon and strikes up a conversation. I’m the reason Harold has a passing grade in German, but does he invite me over to hang out? No, he does not.
Across from me, Miranda and Jordan have their heads together, discussing the Anime Club they’re starting. Lydia is chattering with Connie Dunn, making expressive motions with her hands. And Terran Fatima is holding court surrounded by her entourage: Addison, Lin and, of course, Daisy. They are chatting up John Proudstar and his best friend Tye.
John’s twin brother, James, is sitting sulkily off to the side. They’re supposed to be identical and I guess they look alike – both tall, striking with long black hair and brown eyes – but it’s hard to see the resemblance when James is constantly scowling like someone peed in his cereal. He’s trouble – hot-headed, always spoiling for a fight. There’s a reason the other kids call him Warpath. He turns his glare on me and I have to resist the urge to shrink. James has always had it out for me for some reason. Maybe because he has a problem with authority and I’m the principal’s daughter.
I glare right back at him, letting him know he can’t intimidate me, but I don’t take it any further. If we got into it here, I know Kitty would find some way to put the blame all on me.
Then the unthinkable happens. Terran looks at me and waves me over. I can’t believe it. She must be gesturing to the others around me, right? I glance at Harold, Devon, Miranda and Jordan who just blink back at me, wide-eyed. They’re a bit at the bottom of the social food-chain. Terran and her clique have never invited them over before. She waves directly to me again and my neighbors give me an expression that tells me they are thinking exactly what I am: Why the hell does Terran want to talk to me?!
At first, I suspect a trap because Daye is with her, but I push that thought aside. Terran is beautiful and popular, but she isn’t mean. She wouldn’t try to embarrass me. I glance tentatively at Miranda. “I-I think Terran wants to … talk to you, TJ!” she whispers.
“Seems like it,” I reply, swallowing.
“Uh, what are you going to do?” Jordan asks, her brown eyes round.
“I-I’m going to go over there and talk to her,” I say, trying to take on the air of calm authority my Papa has in his role as principal.
“Good idea,” whispers Harold. And adds as I stand up to approach the Popular Girls: “Good luck!”
I can feel my heart pounding. To my ears, it sounds like a tipani. I could overhear what Terran was saying to her friends, of course, about going to the Kanehoe Mall. I’ll be headed there Saturday to the Farmers’ Market, though it goes without saying the chances of hanging with the Terran Squad are zilch.
“Hola! Guten Tag!” I blurt before I can stop my mouth. I cringe internally because it sounds so cheesy and Daye’s rolling eyes confirm it, but Terran grins.
“See what I was saying about TJ being a riot?” she says to her friends. Hmm, this is new information. Terran must have said it to her pals during their weekend outings to Kanehoe Square where they like to hang out. Somewhere out of my hearing range.
Addison nods in a friendly fashion. She’s a pretty girl with straight dark-red hair and brown eyes. John even gives me a smile. He’s fit and very good-looking, especially up close. I can hear his heart beating. I blush. James makes a disgruntled noise and turns his back pointedly on me. Eh, so what. It’s not like Terran wants him there. She’s just being nice to him on account of John. For her part, Daisy is frowning like a grumpy potato. She can suck a duck for all I care.
But Terran … Terran is the prettiest girl in sophomore class, maybe even the whole School. It’s no wonder she’s Queen Bee. She wears a hijab. It covers most of her hair, neck and shoulders. My aunties told me Terran’s religion says the hijab encourages modesty, but Terran gets way more attention from the boys and the girls at School than Daisy Daye who is constantly showing off her tits and legs. Terran’s got those slanting India-ink eyes and what I can see of her hair is that amazing shiny color that’s neither black nor brown. And her hijab always has some cool design embroidered on it – today it has a neat pattern that looks a bit like a dragonfly if you squint at it just right.
“We’re going to Kanehoe Mall this Saturday and then on to Dogland to hit up the arcade and day-glow golf. You wanna come with us?” Terran asks.
I blink at them, looking like an idiot, I’m sure. I guess Terran takes my response as refusal because she glances at Addison in a disappointed way. “Told you she’d flake,” Daisy murmurs in a mean, sniffy way.
“N-No, I mean yes!” I reply, suddenly finding my voice. Then, when Terran tilts a gorgeously sculpted eyebrow at me and Addison bites her lip in a humorous way, I realize I probably sound overeager and silly. “I-I mean danke, gracias, for sure amigas!”
They burst out laughing like I’ve said the funniest thing ever. I notice Aunt Kitty lift her head and gaze over at us from her desk; she scowls when she sees me. I struggle not to glare back at her. I’ve finished my tutoring duties for the day and there’s no rule that says I can’t socialize with the other students just because I’ve never got the chance to do it before. As for going out with Terran and her squad – that’s not up to Kitty either, is it? I know Papa will not just allow me to go with them; he will be over the moon. Even though he never mentions it, I know he worries that I have no friends.
“Yep, a total riot!” Terran chuckles, patting my arm. She smells divine, like Aunt Jeanie’s special ginger tea. “We’ll meet you in the Food Court, OK?”
“Doesn’t a little kid like her need to ask her Daddy’s permission first?” Daye pipes up. She’s mad ‘cause Terran’s attention is off her for a millisecond. Even though Daye’s an insufferable cow, she and Terran have been roommates since they both arrived here at the School two years ago. Daisy’s mad jealous of her beautiful gf.
“Actually, Papa trusts me out on my own in town,” I reply, looking directly at Daye when I say it. She actually flushes a bit. Hah, there! I think, satisfied. That isn’t a lie, either. I’ve been running Saturday errands at the Kanehoe Farmers’ Market all by myself since I was nine years old. Of course, all the vendors there have known me since I was a baby (and look out for me like I’m their own) but still …
“Have fun at baby golf then,” John says, laughing. I glance at him, but he doesn’t seem to be teasing. His brown face is good-natured and smiling. I blush again which causes my blue skin to turn an unflattering shade of purple. “We’ll be hitting up the real links, ladies.”
“You and your snobby Golf Club, Johnny Proudstar!” Terran replies, socking his arm which looks as big around as her whole body. John, James and Tye have been here since eighth grade, just like Terran and her friends. But since last year, John’s hit an amazing growth spurt. He’s already taller than Uncle Scott and he’s only fifteen. Aunt Jeanie says some mutant boys do that … it’s part of their mutation. Just like my Uncle Piotr, who I’ve never even met.
John jostles her back, but I notice they’re sparring around like brother and sister. They aren’t flirting. Which is just as well because the sexes here at School are severely segregated. The only time boys and girls intermingle is occasionally during classes. And good luck to teens trying to hook up anywhere outside of classes with psychics like Aunt Jeanie and super-sensory dudes like Uncle Logan watching their every move. Even now, with Terran and John’s back-and-forth sibling banter, I see Aunt Kitty glaring a hole through them. Terran must notice too because she dries it up real fast and nods at me.
“Eleven o’clock Saturday then?” she says.
“I’ll be there and I’ll be square!” I exclaim, causing my classmates to roar with laughter again. Hey, if they want lame jokes, I’ve got a million. Who knew teenagers are so easy to impress? I see Kitty’s frown fall almost to the floor.
^^
“For the millionth time, Vicky, no!” I growl through my fangs, my eyes fixed on the television.
I hear Vicky, who is trying to sneak up on me, cower back. If she were on the wing, she’d have another shot at me, but she’s on foot because flying isn’t allowed indoors and, with the exception of flying, Vicky is unable to do anything quietly. I can hear her pouting and I don’t dare look at her. All I’d have to do to cave is look at her disappointed little face. Vicky’s big brown puppy-dog eyes can persuade just about anyone to do anything.
She’s trying to coax me into painting my talons with sparkly toenail polish and I’m having none of it. Isn’t it enough she’s made me watch Arctic Adventures with her? Arctic Adventures is this super-lame kids’ show about these baby Arctic animals who can talk and work together which makes zero sense because wouldn’t Humphrey the weasel try to eat Bethany the spruce hen?
However … I do kinda sorta like it. Not that I’d ever tell anyone, least of all Vicky.
I’m sitting on the sofa of the suite I share with Papa. It’s been my home for as long as I can remember. Well, my second home – the other being Mama’s actual literal castle. Papa’s suite is no palace for sure, but it’s pretty cozy and homey what with the shabby sofa and the timeline of photographs of me hanging on the wall. All the pictures are pretty geeky – of me when I was a drool-faced baby sitting in a highchair with mashed carrots smeared on my face or lighting the menorah with Mama and Aunt Lori the Hanukah when I was three years old.
I’m really glad Terran and her buddies can’t see them.
After final period, I headed home to wait for Papa and Uncle Warren. It’s Friday – or “Pho-Day” as we call it. We’re going to head out to Kit and Ka-Noodle, our favorite Pho joint, as we do at the beginning of every weekend as a kind of hurrah for a week well done.
But first I have to watch the little ones, my aunties and uncles’ kiddos, while Papa leads the end-of-the-week faculty meeting. Vicky is by far the most high maintenance of my little cousins. Andre and Hope are a snap. Hope’s engrossed with her toy tea-set and she’s teaching her baby bro ‘Dre about proper teatime etiquette. ‘Dre keeps ramming his toy dinosaurs into his big sister’s tea service. Instead of going ape and knocking him upside the head the way any other three-year-old would, Hope calmly explains to Andre that isn’t the proper way to take tea.
I’m half-watching Arctic Adventures (Ben the grey wolf is trying to free an Arctic hare from a snare. Wouldn’t a proper grey wolf just eat the hare?) and half-considering telling Papa about my date tomorrow with Terran. (OK, OK, it’s not an actual date. We’ll be with all Terran’s friends. Terran is almost sixteen and I’m almost twelve and she has a girlfriend besides, but still …)
“Vick, knock it off!” I snap. She has a tiny paintbrush hovering over the talon on my big toe. I was lost in thought and she almost got me.
“Awww, maaan!” she drawls. It’s a catchphrase she’s just learned and she uses it at every opportunity, much to everyone else’s chagrin.
At that moment, Papa teleports inside the suite, holding onto Uncle Warren’s shoulder to ‘port him along. They’re laughing softly together which meant faculty meeting went well. Papa’s in a good mood. I mean, he usually is his jovial self, but I need him to be in an extra good mood this evening …
“Daddy!” Vicky yelps and half-jumps, half-flies into Warren’s waiting arms like she hasn’t seen him in weeks instead of two hours ago.
“Thank God it’s ‘Pho-Day!’” Papa sings out. I roll my eyes at him, but if I’m completely honest with myself, I’ve inherited his full capacity for lame “dad-jokes.” And, if I’m still being honest, his corny sense of humor is one reason I absolutely adore him.
Auntie Marie and Uncle Remy have ‘ported in too with Papa, Marie holding onto Papa’s hand and her other entwined with Remy’s. Hope and Andre run to them. “Can we go too? Please? Please?” Hope begs her Mama and Papa.
“Peas? Peas?” ‘Dre, who is eighteen months old and hasn’t quite got the hang of talking, parrots his sister.
“Not tonight, petites,” Remy soothes his progeny in his thick Cajun accent. “But you stay up late with yah Daddy tonight.”
Hope’s face falls a bit, but then brightens like the sun at her Papa’s promise.
“I get to stay up ‘till eleven on Fwiday and watch Johnny Mack on Late Night!” she boasts to me like that’s the biggest deal. I guess when you’re three it is.
She’s a cute kid, all soulful hazel eyes and chestnut curls. Marie and Remy were approached by an advertising agent when Hope was a baby; he wanted her to be a baby model which sounds a tad creepy. She’s a laidback kid too. She doesn’t throw a fit at being told no the way most toddlers would.
I think Hope’s genial nature is due to having a Mama as feisty and high-spirited as Marie. Right now, Marie tweaks my nose and pinches my cheek.
“Hey dere, sugah,” she says in her honey-sweet Southern drawl.
No matter how old or how tall I get I think Auntie Marie will always treat me like a baby. But then she treats everyone like a baby – when you’re as big and tall as her I guess you can’t help it. Big and boxumous with a silver streak of hair flashing through her mane of auburn tresses, Auntie Marie doesn’t look much like my Papa at all and she doesn’t sound or act much like him either. I call all the lady teachers here “auntie,” but Marie and Papa have the same Mama – my Granny Raven. I’ve never seen her before, not even in pictures, and Papa never talks about her. My aunties and uncles sometimes mention her, but only in undertones so Papa can’t hear. Of course, I can hear. And what I hear is that Granny Raven looks a lot like me and Papa – blue skin, indigo hair, big amber eyes and cute little fangs. Nothing like Auntie Marie, but I never thought that was so strange. After all, my brothers – Billy and Tommy – have the same Mama as I do and nobody who didn’t know us would ever guess we were related.
“You’re growing up tall, Miss TJ. Pretty soon, it’ll be time for yah Daddy to marry yah off!” Marie teases. Teasing is what she loves to do best and she can always get away with it because she’s so big and burly, but also so charming and pretty.
“Ha, hah,” I laugh sarcastically, but I also blush a bit, thinking of John Proudstar and Terran Fatima. Then Marie cuddles up to Remy and I’m turned right off of any mushy thoughts. The two of them act like love-struck teenagers, not an old married couple who’s been together forever and a day. It’s downright disgusting … but also kinda adorable, I guess. I’d rather them be all over each other in love than at each other throats fighting all the time, for the sake of Uncle Remy’s health.
Uncle Remy isn’t a small man – he’s taller than Papa, in fact – but he sure looks tiny up alongside Auntie Marie. My uncles say she was the one who carried him over the threshold when they got married – and I don’t think they’re joking either. She’s a full head taller than him. He almost has to get a step-stool to kiss her. I once asked him when I was really little if it bothered him that his wife was bigger than him. Remy just laughed and looked at me like I was crazy.
“Where I come from, women is suppose’ to be big!” he said to me. “What good is a skinny wife? Let me as’ you that. You could stand a lil’ fatten’ up you’self, petite!” And he put two whopping pieces of fried chicken on my plate. Nobody in the world cooks better than Uncle Remy.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Marie married him.
^^
We teleport into town, Papa and me, which is about three miles away. Uncle Warren and Vicky fly there. It’s OK. The human people in town pretty much know us all by name. Most of them have known me since I was little, so I don’t have to wear my image inducer which I absolutely hate. Like, I hate it more than shoes if you want some idea of how horrible it is. It makes me look like a “normal” human girl. No blue skin covered in fuzz. No purple hair. No weeny adorable fangs. Just plain ole straggly brown hair and boring blue eyes. Yuck.
But I have to wear it when I’m going to a place where mutants haven’t been accepted, let alone protected. In our little town, most folks know me and Papa is respected as an upstanding member of the community – he’s even on the city council. People here know we’re not dangerous, Papa says. Though I think it’s bonkers anybody would ever assume that about us. But Papa says in many parts of the world mutants are … and those are very dangerous places for them. In some places, mutants are hunted down like animals and kept in cages. Papa knows because that happened to him a long time ago when he was a kid.
But tonight, of course, I get to go out in all my fuzzy glory. OK, I’m not exactly vain. I don’t priss in front of a mirror for days like some other girls I could name (*cough* Daisy *cough*) and then say, “OMG, I woke up like this!” Nope, for me, plaiting my hair and putting on pants is saying something for me, but I am proud of my fur and fangs. I know they look awesome. And I’m proud of my powers – they just make life easier, sometimes. Plus they’re super cool.
Warren has to keep Vicky on one of those toddler harnesses, y’know the kind that looks like a kid’s backpack shaped like a monkey, but the monkey’s tail is a leash. And everyone pretends it’s a cute little backpack, but everyone knows the kid is out of control and warrants a leash. Not because people in the neighborhood are wary of people with wings (Warren, like all my uncles and aunties, is pretty much a fixture around town) but because otherwise, Vicky would be zipping around all over the place and he couldn’t keep up with her.
When we ‘port inside Kit and Ka-Noodle, and Warren and Vicky swoop inside, Missus Pham greets us with a merry: “Well, here’s my favorite girls!”
Missus Pham is a tiny, tiny woman in a perpetual hair-net and loafers. She wears huge glasses that make her look like an adorable little owl. Vicky and I race each other to the shop counter to greet her (even though I’m practically twelve and too old for such nonsense).
“You two pretty girls don’t have boyfriends yet?” Missus Pham asks us.
I pull a face and Vicky shouts, “Yuk!”
“Good!” she replies, completely straight-faced. “What good will a boy do you now? You must study hard in school. You’ll have no time for a boyfriend until you’re at least thirty and a doctor.”
“Excellent advice,” Warren says with a laugh.
Kit and Ka-Noodle is hopping. It usually is, even on a dead weekday, but it’s Friday and packed to bursting. We’re all regulars here, however, plus Papa is one of Missus Pham’s oldest friends (he helped her with her Naturalization and Citizenship process), so she’s got our usual orders of Pho hot and ready – mine with extra hot chili paste and Vicky’s garnished with dried crickets.
We grab our noodles and ‘port outside because my ears are already throbbing from the noise inside the tiny shop (that would make even everyday common ears ache). We ‘port back to Papa’s suite where we all sprawl out on the sofa and beanbag chairs to discuss the day. As usual, talk turns to School. Uncle Warren starts griping about Deidra “Dizzy” Diaz, Miranda’s big sister. Dizzy’s a senior and nothing like her sweet, shy, anime-loving baby sister. Dizzy’s a troublemaker. Being raised here at School, I’ve seen her type. She’s a kid who’s reckless, but then wants to blame any “accidents” on her budding powers going out of control – like how the roof of Uncle Scott’s storage shed was blown off by hurricane force winds last month. Warren and all the other teachers here are on to her shit, but our School is a “last resort” for kids like Dizzy. Her foster parents threw her and Miranda out on the streets which is where Aunt Jeanie found them. So there’s nothing for it except to punish Dizzy by taking away privileges and Aunt Jeanie putting psychic power inhibitors in her brain so Dizzy doesn’t have full access to her wind-control abilities. Even then, Aunt Jeanie can only take it so far. If she shut off the switch in Dizzy’s head that controlled her powers, she could give her permanent brain damage.
It’s a frustrating dilemma, especially for kids like me who have a debilitating power, but try their best to control or at least contain it. Seeing a kid like Dizzy abuse her powers is like watching a fool fire off a gun like its Christmas. It’s sickening.
“Give her some errands to run for Scott,” Papa advises Warren. “She’ll think twice before pulling another stunt … at least for a little while.”
I shiver. Uncle Scott’s detentions make Kitty’s look like Kindergarten. I’ve never had one, but some of the big beefcakes at our School start crying halfway through. One time he made James Proudstar stare at paint drying until he shed tears of blood and another time he forced Harriet Mims to listen to Stephen Hawkins count to one thousand.
“We must remember that just because we have dangerous powers that are difficult to control, that doesn’t mean we can forfeit our responsibility to control them,” Papa says, his usually jovial tone turning very serious.
Even Vicky, who doesn’t know most of the words he just used, looks up to stare intently at my Papa. This is a philosophy that’s been driven into me since I was born, but Papa still never loses a chance to repeat it – it’s that important. In some cases, deathly important.
He and Uncle Warren turn their attention to us girls and his usually light tone returns. “So how did School go today for my two little frauleins?” he asks. Papa has lived in America since he was a teen and has lost most of his German accent, but it shows itself now and then.
Vicky seems eager to talk, even thru a mouthful of cricket-peppered noodles, which is just fine by me. I want to delay the topic of my schoolday for as long as possible.
“I got ah fell-par for mah rock collect-shun!” she shouts, spraying bits of Pho everywhere.
“Victoria!” Warren scolds her.
Vicky shrugs. “Roxy gave it to me. Said it was very special because it come from the Wendy’s parking lot.”
“It came from the Wendy’s parking lot,” Warren corrects his little chick.
“Yup! Then we learned about rose quartz rocks. How they come out of volcan-NOS!” Vicky’s wings shoot out at this exclamation, causing a folding table to collapse, spilling soup in all directions. As Warren and Papa scramble for napkins, I roll my eyes at her. The kid with wings in obsessed with rocks. Go figure.
I hope Vicky’s little accident will distract Papa from me, but it doesn’t, of course. Papa has known a lot of kids. He isn’t fooled by his own little elf.
As he glances at me expectantly, I heave a huge sigh and bolt the rest of my super-spicy soup in one big gulp. I let out a rip-roaring burp. Vicky giggles and even Warren smiles, but Papa frowns at me. “TJ …” he says in that “are-you-in-trouble?” way.
Might as well get it out of the way. There’s just no hiding anything from Papa. It’s not like I can keep secrets from him what with having all my aunties and uncles watching my every move. And I’d much rather him hear it from me than Aunt Kitty who will make me look like a demon-spawn.
“Professor Pryde gave me detention Saturday …” I mutter.
“What?” Papa demands.
“Two Saturdays. Buuut,” I add quickly. “I’m holding an A-minus in only one class – Advanced Algebra – every other class is A-plus’s all the way. I got the role of Beatrice in “Much Ado” AND I’m tutoring five different kids. All of which, I might add, are five years older than me and have improved their grades significantly including Harold who now has a B-minus in German.” I narrow my eyes a bit at Papa. He’s the drama coach as well and I’m the youngest kid in Xavier’s School history to land the role of Beatrice. He’s also the German professor and I know he was ready to give Harold up as a hopeless case.
“But Kitty gave you detention,” he says, punctuating his words with his chopsticks.
“So that makes me a devil from hell?” I ask.
“Language.” Papa scowls as Vicky looks on with big eyes. I roll mine; the kid hears a lot worse from our aunties and uncles, even her own dad.
I scowl down at the remnants of green onions swimming in soup broth and try another tactic. “None of the other teachers give me detentions, not even write-ups or warnings,” I say. “Kitty …” Papa frowns at me. “Aunt Kitty,” I sigh as I correct myself. “She’s a horrible bully. She’s always picking on me. She singles me out for punishment!”
“That just isn’t true,” Papa says, shaking his head. I feel just as frustrated; trust Papa to take Kitty’s part. “Kitty wouldn’t give you detention without good reason …?” his question hangs in the air as his amber eyes burn into me.
He wins. I drop my head in resignation. “I may have been – teleporting – to class.”
“Talia Wagner!” Papa snaps.
“Only because I was late and only because Vicky jumped me!” I splutter.
“Yup! I goosed her!” Vicky crows as she slurps soup.
I cut my eyes at her and then risk a pleading look at Uncle Warren, hoping he will step in at this point and tell Papa about this afternoon’s little incident and how he kinda sorta gave me permission to, or at least didn’t stop me from, teleporting to study hall. But Warren seems very interested in his Pho. Traitor … I mutter internally.
“What does it even matter?” I grumble. “I’m practically an expert at teleportation. All the other teachers allow me to –”
“All the other teachers, your aunties and uncles, spoil you terribly,” Papa cuts me off, holding up his three-fingered hand. But I notice a smile tugging at his lips. “They always have, kleines hemd. You were the baby of the family for the longest time.”
Usually I would be rankled by this term of endearment that Papa has used on me since I can remember. It means “little shirt” (don’t ask). And I absolutely loathe it. But I remember I’m trying to get on his good side and I play along with what I hope is my most winning expression, round golden eyes and all. I’m cute and I know it and I’d be lying if I said I have never used that to my advantage.
I know things can only go two ways now. As I wait, holding my breath, expecting Papa to either give me hell (intensifying Kitty’s punishment) or soften (maybe even forgiving and forgetting it, if I’m lucky), he surprises me. His smile turns warm and sentimental. “But then before … Kitty was as well.”
I prick up my ears at this. I’m always eager to hear about the time “before” – before Papa was principal of our School, before he retired from the X-Men, before I was born and Kitty lost her status as “baby” of our massive extended family at Xavier’s School. Back when “Professor Pryde” was just a snot-nosed kid my Papa looked after like a baby sister.
“Our katzchen, our little kitten, was my own special pet,” Papa says with another shake of his head. “We all spoiled her badly. She came here when she wasn’t more than a baby and she only had to pout to get her own way.” He chuckled. “But I couldn’t help but give it to her – none of us could, you see? She would do the most outlandish things, but in the most serious and solemn way, you couldn’t help but laugh!”
He laughed himself as he turned to Warren. “Do you remember her ‘Sprite’ costume, mein freund?”
“God, yes!” Warren replied, smacking his forehead. “It was ridiculous!”
Papa looks at me and Vicky, both of us nonplussed, and explains, his burnished copper eyes sparkling with glee. “Kitty wanted so badly to join the X-Men. But she was only eight years old at the time. Professor Xavier told her she could join the team if she came up with her own costume.”
Papa and Warren collapse with laughter, but Warren bravely forges ahead to tell us girls: “So she rolls into breakfast one morning wearing striped leggings, a mini-skirt, suspenders and a mask, covered head-to-toe in glitter and wearing roller skates!”
“Her face was like stone when she told Cyclops, ‘Sprite reporting for duty!’” Papa’s words are punctuated by another howl of laughter from both Warren and himself.
“I thought I would die laughing!” Warren hoots. “Even Scott cracked a smile!”
Whoa. Kitty chipped thru Uncle Scott’s tough shell? Damn, I had to admit I was impressed. It was kinda funny. Kinda like how I dressed up in Aunt Lori’s headband and cape when I was five and proclaimed: “I am the Mistress of Magnetism!”
It was fun to imagine Aunt Kitty as a dead-serious little kid doing something so amazingly ridiculous. I wonder why Papa is telling me this, but then I notice the twinkle in his eye. I would never tell this story around School to the students there – nobody in my family would. (No matter how tempting it seemed. Even scary Professor Pryde would never live it down.) But Papa knows how much I love knowing everything about everyone. Having something over on ol’ Pryde is the ultimate prize.
As the grownups’ laughter dies down a bit – which Vicky joined in not because she gets the joke but because she’s four and laughter is as contagious as the stomach bug to someone her age – they all loll around in a dazed state. I decide now is the best time to ask timidly: “Soooo … does this mean I-I, um, don’t have two Saturdays’ detention?”
Papa grins at me, showing off his sharp fangs. “Not a chance, liebchen. Make it three Saturdays.”

Chapter Text

“We need sweet red peppers, not hot, OK? Tumeric, we’re low on turmeric. Oh, and mochi! Lots of mochi!” Aunt Jeanie says as she ticks off the items I need to buy at the Farmer’s Market.
It's the morning of Saturday, May 1st - May Day - and we’re standing at her kitchen window that looks out on Diamond Lake. I can see the spring blossoms drifting dreamily by on the breeze and ducklings bobbing around on the Lake waters.
May Day always comes in a riot of flowers and babies. Babies everywhere – there are ducklings as well as cygnets on the Lake by the School (ushered around by their bad-tempered Mamas). Uncle Logan and I creep up on baby bunnies to watch them hopping around in the woodland clearings. And there are baby kittens in the abandoned greenhouse that is covered in wisteria blossoms. The tiny petals shower down on us like purple snowflakes. The weeny blind kittens are all calico – all descendants of Misty, the famous cat of Professor Charles Xavier who founded the School decades before I came along.
And, of course, there are babies in the School Mansion where I live with Papa and my aunties and uncles. There always are. The X-Men are the best at what they do … Well, after the bunnies maybe. This spring it’s Aunt Jeanie.
Aunt Jeanie is short and pretty and plump – especially now that she’s eight months pregnant. But it’s not just her belly that looks swollen to pop; her toes, fingers and even lips look puffy. I’d feel sorrier for her if she didn’t make us all suffer along with her, especially poor Uncle Scott who is constantly running around trying to satisfy his wife’s constantly changing cravings. Back in February, when we got a clean foot of snow, Aunt Jeanie wanted nothing but watermelon.
Now it’s mochi – sweetened slabs of rice paste. Jeanie can easily polish off five pounds a week.
“Bok choy, honey, you know how much we usually get. Buy it from Tiffany – her aunt is still at home sick, I think. And several bundles of cilantro,” Jeanie says.
“Are you giving me Uncle Remy’s shopping list or your list of pregnancy cravings?” I ask.
Aunt Jeanie gives my tail a tug, something I wouldn’t let just anyone do. Uncle Remy usually dictates the week’s shopping for the School kitchens, but today he’s on a trip to the Natural History Museum with the Junior Beta Club. Aunt Jeanie is the School physician, but she also takes up tasks around the School when the rest of the staff is stretched thin.
She gives me an affectionate smack to send me out the back door of the boathouse where she lives with Uncle Scott. Papa and I can only teleport to our destinations in about a three-mile radius, so I need to trudge to the edge of the Lake to wink out. Big food-safe containers are waiting for me there to haul the groceries back in.
I know Aunt Jeanie's bright green eyes will be tracking me as I walk away - especially after I mucked things up so badly last night with Papa.
"And don't forget the MOCHI!!" Jeanie hollers when I've almost reached my favorite beech tree at the Lake's edge. John and James Proudstar, Tye and Jason Zevon are strolling by as she shouts it and they all break out into giggles.
"Yeah, TJ, don't forget the mochi!" John Proudstar mimics Jeanie. But his brown eyes are dancing in a good-natured way. He isn't mean-spirited like some other boys.
Nevertheless, I blush purple all the way down to the roots of my hair. I glance at Aunt Jeanie still waving at me from the back door. Sigh. Yes, I love her and all my aunties, but sometimes they can be as embarrassing as all hell.
^^
The Kanehoe Farmer's Market is an institution. I've been going there almost every Saturday that I'm with Papa for as far back as I can remember. I know almost every vendor there and they all know me - the blue girl who is their very best customer. I can 'port back the massive orders I buy there to the School kitchens so I'm the ideal choice for this job.
I’m early; the Kaneohe Square Mall commons, where the Farmer’s Market is held every weekend, have barely opened up. It’s imperative I get my purchases done before the noon rush. The gaggle of shoppers and vendors all talking and haggling at once would be murder on my poor ears. Plus, I get the pick of whatever I want. This “early-bird” has her choice of worms.
Now there is only the gentle hum of the vendors as they set up and set out their wares; it sounds like the buzz of bees in a distant hive. Right now the bees are calm; I don’t want my ears to be here when they get stirred up.
I nod and wave to the other vendors as I pass them, but I make a bee-line (ha, ha) for Mister Sam Cummings’ mochi cart.
“Sam, Sam, the Mochi Man!” I sing out as I stroll up to his stand. Slabs of mouth-watering mochi are laid out for display – lemon, coffee, chocolate and (new!) pumpkin spice flavors.
“What on Earth am I to do when that aunt of yours has her new baby?” Sam, an elderly man with an impressively-groomed silver mustache, says to me as I purchase several pounds of rice paste. “I hope she keeps her taste for my mochi after she gives birth.”
“With all the mochi Aunt Jeanie’s scarfing, my little cousin will come out extra sweet,” I banter back because it’s nice to keep a good rapport with the folks handling your food. “And he’ll probably have my Aunt Jeanie’s sweet tooth too, so you’ll have another customer there!”
“Let’s hope so,” he says with a wink, throwing in an extra slab of coffee-flavored (Jeanie’s favorite).
I slip him a small bag. “Aunt Jeanie says twice daily. More if the pain is really bad,” I tell Sam.
Sam smiles his thanks at me. Buying food for the School kitchens isn’t my only chore on Saturday mornings. I distribute Aunt Jeanie’s prescriptions as well. As well as being the School physician, she has a free clinic every Sunday and Thursday open to the public. But she also makes rounds to check up on patients and dole out medicines – or she did until her legs and feet got so swollen she could hardly waddle around.
It’s one of the School’s campaigns to cast mutants in a positive light with our human neighbors and so far it’s working.
Sam holds my order as I call on Tiffany Kawakei.
“Here for bok choy I guess?” She smirks. Everyone here is familiar with Aunt Jeanie’s wild craving swings. “Cilantro too?”
“Yup, I also need sweet red peppers, butter lettuce, onions and eggplant,” I reply. I hand over a tiny bottle. “For your auntie. For her nausea from the chemo. Aunt Jeanie wants to see her again on Thursday to check her esophagus.”
Tiffany clutches the bottle in her hand like it’s really important. She is an orphan who lives with her old auntie. I know the humans who come to Aunt Jeanie’s clinic, like Tiffany’s auntie, cannot afford medical care otherwise. I don’t get it. My Mama is the monarch of a kingdom. When someone there is sick and cannot pay for treatment, the government steps in and pays for it. Why can’t the government here care for its poor? The grownups say it’s all very complicated, but it seems simple enough to me.
“Thanks, TJ,” Tiffany murmurs. She’s about my age with a pretty round face, black eyes and a Queen t-shirt. A nose ring sparkles in her nostril in an exotic way and her strong brown arms are covered in henna tattoos. I get the feeling her auntie lets her do whatever she wants so long as the work gets done. Boy, do I ever envy her! I’ve begged to get piercings since I could talk. It’s fine with Mama, but Papa has other thoughts.
I shuffle awkwardly as Tiffany fills my order. As usual, I’m filled with wistfulness and bemusement when faced with someone in my peer group. Could we be friends? She and her auntie, like most of the humans around here, are cool with mutants living among them. Aunt Jeanie has been overseeing Missus Kawakei’s cancer treatment and she stitched up Tiffany’s forehead when she gashed it open two years ago. I look at her white scar and try to think up a conversation.
“You … um, like Queen?” I ask. Uncle Bobby loves their songs, so I know all about them.
“Yeah,” Tiffany replies. “Hold on – coming Missus Delahara!” she calls to an old lady inspecting the honeydew melons.
My shoulders droop. Well …
I make the rest of my whirlwind rounds: the beekeeper, the butcher’s boy, the Hernandez’s who sell the freshest fish around – them and their seven children – and Missus Tuffuti, who gathers the tiny mysterious lava-berries to make jam.
As I check off the items on my list I teleport back-and-forth to the school campus with the orders. Finally, I pay Missus Tuffuti (as well as slip her an ointment for her severe eczema).
Now I can take a breather … and grab grub at the Food Court. OK, I know I don’t have Papa’s permission to hang with the Terran Squad (I didn’t dare ask him last night after the Aunt Kitty fiasco), but he also didn’t tell me NOT to, right? Besides, Aunt Jeanie or Uncle Remy (depending on who dictates the shopping list to me) gives me a little extra for a pretzel and a bubble tea.
I ride the escalator up to the mall’s second story. I’m allowed to ‘port the market orders back to school, but I can’t go ‘porting around the mall. Most people here know me and would hardly bat an eye at me popping out of thin air (literally), but I don’t want to frighten some hapless haole (tourist). It’s generally all right with me, but it does make me feel sorry for (most) people who have to travel via other means. Like, how tedious, right?
There are other rules I can bend, however. Al, the Saturday morning security guard nods me through. He, like a lot of people, lets me slide on the whole “no shirt, no shoes” requirement most places seem so fond of. I’m in my PCB hoodie, of course, but my feet feel as free as the spring sun. I wiggle my toes happily, feeling the vibrations around me. I saunter around towards the Food Court. It’s pretty much deserted here, but I can hear the Farmer’s Market warming up downstairs into a full-blown symphony of chaotic noise. Phew, I’m glad I’m out of it!
I head over to my favorite bubble tea shop, Tapioca Town, and order an extra-large tea and spicy pretzel, my usual.
“Where’s lil’ Vicky?” Sandra, the pretty blue-eyed girl behind the counter, asks me with a smirk. “You snuck up on me today without her.” Every single person who works at Kaneohe Mall knows Vicky and her hyperactivity – almost as well as they adore her. She is a sweet kid, I admit. Annoying, but sweet. She tags along with me sometimes on my errands. Those are memorable occasions.
“Aw, she’s with Uncle Remy,” I reply, giving Sandra the raised-eyebrow-you-know-kids look. “And the Junior Beta Club.” I take a big bite of pretzel. “Nat-trail His-Story Muhseum," I mumble, trying not to spray crumbs.
“Ouch,” Sandra chuckles and I grin back. No telling what havoc Vicky is wrecking right now – on poor Remy’s nerves most of all.
I notice Sandra glance over my shoulder as I slurp down bubble tea. She's polishing a blender as I munch and I feel a bit like one of those Humphrey Bogart characters in those pokey old films Uncle Logan watches. I follow her eyes - though my ears have already told me that Terran, Addison and Lin have entered the Food Court. They are laughing together softly. Daisy Daye is conspicuously absent.
Sandra must notice my wistful expression because she asks, "You gonna hang with the T-Squad today, little elf?"
"Maybe - uh, I mean, yeah!" I choke on a tapioca ball. "I mean - yes! I'm sure we'll hang out!"
Sandra gives me a wry smile. "Well, good thing because here they come."
I feel the slippery tapioca slip down my throat and hit my stomach as I whirl around on my stool, trying to look cool. I feel like a gigged frog. "Hi ... Hola ... T-Town!" I blurt out to Terran's pretty face.
I don't have to look at Sandra's face to see her expression. I'm no telepath, but I can almost hear her thoughts: Real smooth, Wagner ...
Luckily, Terran finds me as hilarious as she did yesterday and she cracks up. I can tell Addison and Lin aren't as impressed, but of course they laugh along with their Queen Bee.
"There's our lil' ray of sunshine!" Terran chortles.
"A dispersed ray of light being as she's primarily on the blue side..." Lin adds in her dreamy way. She isn't being mean about my blue fuzz - Lin is just always rambling on about weird things. She's one of those pretty girls that you don't even realize are that pretty because she's usually so quiet she gets lost in a crowd. That's part of her powers. And what's so crazy is that she could ever get lost in a crowd - because she has two gorgeous antlers (sort of the like the antlers of a stag) poking out of her long pretty black hair.
She also talks to animals. Like an honest-to-God Disney princess. Like little quails and chipmunks are always scuttling around her ankles or squatting on her shoulders. It sounds kind of adorable, but it can actually be a bit unsettling; you never know when a squirrel is going to pop out of her hair.
"Where shall we go?" asks Addison. She looks earnestly towards Terran. Addison is all right - she's NOT the loathsome Daye - but she does hang on all of Terran's words and laugh at all of her jokes, no matter how bad. I actually feel a bit sorry for her and her behavior makes me wonder if that is part of what being a teenager is all about. I certainly don't hope so.
"How about Hot Topic?" I elect. "Oh, or Bun Bun's! They always give out the best samples!"
Addison and Lin blink at me like I'm nuts. I realize I committed a pretty severe faux pas - trying to take control from the alpha female. But Terran just laughs her pretty tinkling laugh and waves graciously at me.
"Yes! Yes! I haven't been to those stores in ages," she remarks.
Ages? I wonder. Like, not since she was a ... little kid. I burn beneath my fur.
I lead the way, letting my toes detect every vibration as we walk along. My ears are starting to buzz, but it's not painful. I still have a good thirty minutes before the mall's noise level really heats up and I have to leave.
I see Hot Topic ahead and my heart starts to speed up. I'm secretly excited - I haven't been there in forever. They have the coolest Funko Pop dolls and I'm dying to add a new one to my collection. But I try my best to play it cool. I know dollies are so embarrassingly little-kid. I could always get one and say it's for Vicky. She plays with all my stuff anyway, so it's not exactly a lie.
"Teej?" Terran asks. I'm so startled, I almost forget to feel a glow at her new nickname for me. Then I cringe. I'm so syked about Hot Topic and Funko Pop dolls, I've committed another breech of polite teenage girl society - ignoring the Queen Bee. I don't miss the glance Addison and Lin exchange or their simultaneous sharp intakes of breath. But Terran doesn't look worried. In fact, she's smiling - a nice one, not a mean one.
"Johnny Proudstar?" she says in that "I'm-repeating-myself" voice. "Do you like him?"
My face burns (and not just from being caught ignoring the Alpha Female). Addison and Lin must notice because Addison makes an amused sound in her throat. Really what is the use of fur if the other girls can still see me blush? (In fact, my indigo fuzz just makes me stand out more when I get embarrassed.)
"O-Oh, well ... yes. Si! I mean, he's a nice enough dude," I murmur. "Easy on the eyes too." (Oh Lord, did I say that? I said that.)
Terran giggles. "I mean do you mind hanging out with him and his friends for a bit?" she asks. Her dark eyes dance in a way that tells me she knows what I thought she meant by the question.
"Um, huh?" I stammer.
I was so lost in thought, I completely forgot to notice John Proudstar and his friends lounging around the Piercing Pagoda drinking Slurpees. But oh my God, there they are: John, his brother James and the twins Jason and Tye Zevon. All of them are laughing in that intimidating adolescent-boy-way and very, very male. I freeze. Aren't they supposed to be at Golf Club right now?
"How are the links?" Terran asks John as she swans up to the boys. She gives him a playful slap on the chest.
"Not bad," he replies with a chuckle. "The view's a lot better here though."
To my utter amazement, Addison slips her arms around his waist and kisses his cheek.
"How did you give Mister Logan the slip?" she coos.
I can honest-to-God hear the demerits Professor Pryde will be churning out. I must be gawking because John winks at me.
"We didn't," he laughs. "Our little pal here did."
Everyone is looking at me with varying degrees of amusement (and perhaps a dash of admiration too). My heart starts to pound in my throat. "I-I didn't mean to!" I sputter.
I'm super sincere. I didn't mean to help John and his friends slip past Uncle Logan. I do know that my teleportation portals create a kind of dead-zone for Logan's super senses. It would have been easy for John and his friends to piggyback on one of my 'ports to take the groceries back to the School and then wink back to the mall. I remember them waving to me when I left Aunt Jeanie's house. Some sneaky boys could have hidden themselves behind all the parcels I took to and from the Farmers Market and got to the mall alongside me with Uncle Logan none the wiser. Lord knows I was so distracted this morning with my thoughts of Terran's Squad that even my ears wouldn't have noticed them. Once I'd 'ported them in the mall, even the gentler morning noise there would have drowned out any sounds John and his friends made as they shimmied up the escalators.
Hell, Tye's mutant power is cloaking himself and anyone else around him from sight or hearing. My keen ears can usually detect even him, but when I'm very focused with no distractions.
Now, I'm in trouble - and more than a little pissed off at the guys' trick. But John's warm brown eyes, the exact color of semi-sweet chocolate chips, melts away whatever angry feelings I might have towards him and his crew.
"Hey, Teej, don't be sore," he says in a cajoling voice. "We didn't mean anything by it. We did keep our date with the Golf Club. Now we just want to have a little fun with our girlfriends."
"Which includes you," Jason adds with a smirk and a smile. My face blazes. I know he means a friend who is a girl, not an actual girlfriend, but it still makes me blush. He's not John, but he's still much older than me - fourteen - and handsome as all hell with his blue eyes and brown hair.
"Yeah, bud," Tye says, giving me a friendly nudge on the shoulder. "Y'know Teej gets us the hookup!"
"She's the best!" Terran gushes.
"Seriously, who else could do it?" Lin surmises.
"Who else is clever enough to trick Logan?" says Addison.
I know it's wrong and I feel bad for Uncle Logan, but, like ... wow. I've never had friends, like real friends. Real kids to hang out with that aren't my half-brothers or little cousins. Like these are actual teenagers. Cool kids. And they are including me as part of their tribe. That has certainly never happened before. No lie, it gives me a bit of a buzz.
True, John and his friends did sneak off campus, but are they really doing anything so wrong? I mean Uncle Logan hates chaperoning Golf Club; he's always grumbling about it to Uncle Scott and Papa. I'd say I'm actually doing him a favor.
"Y-yeah, I guess it's cool," I say, returning their smiles with a shaky one of my own. "I mean if we get back in time for supper."
Terran grins at the others like I'm the funniest person in the world. Geez, I never knew I was that funny. My aunties and uncles only laugh at me occasionally and only when I mean to be funny.
"Ooooh, don't worry, little blue," she chuckles. "We'll make curfew."
Little blue? Not as cool as 'Teej,' but I guess it'll do.
"So what shall we do?" I say.
Make out, that's what we'll do. Well, what they'll do. Good Lord, when I dreamed of hanging out with the cool kids I imagined a lot of things, but watching them make out behind the plant terrace in the Kanehoe Square Mall was not one of them.
There are more tongues, grunts and sighs than I know how to process. Jesus, it's downright embarrassing. My aunties and uncles will show affection, but it's usually quick kisses and hugs - in front of me, at least. My poor ears hear plenty of what they do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, so I suppose they feel it's right to tone it down when they're actually in my sight. Even within my all-hearing earshot, they're careful to keep their love PG-13 at most. I know they have plenty of "fun" making babies when I'm away at my Mama's.
But this? Seeing it all up close. Uck, if this is what it means to be a teenager I'd rather not grow up.
I'm trying to look at everything - anything - but their writhing impassioned bodies. My face has gone so hot that I'm cold now. God, I want to walk off, go to Bun Bun's, eat fifteen cinnamon rolls and try to forget what I'm seeing. (As if I ever could.) Finally, I say to Terran, "Um, I, uh, I'm going to stand watch, OK?"
Terran, who is so tangled up with Jason Zevon I doubt the jaws-of-life will pry them apart, simply grunts "Yeah, all right." before going back to sucking Jason's face like a popsicle. I shudder. As I wander away to crouch behind some elephant ears on the plant terrace, I catch James Proudstar's eye. He's gazing at me with the same sullen expression he always has on, but I catch a flicker of something else in his eye. I wonder if he's as miserable and mortified as I am. For the very first time, I feel a little (and just a little bit) sorry for him.
As I peek out of my leafy hideout, with the horrifying sounds of sucking face behind me, I spot something strange. I see a kid – a girl – hunkering down outside the Gap. She has pink skin and fluffy purple hair pulled up in two puffs, pretty obviously a mutant like me. But that isn’t what makes me gasp in amazement. With the School so close it isn’t unusual to see mutant kids rolling around town and the human people, the locals at least, aren’t much fazed by it. The thing is I’ve never seen this girl before and I know all the kids at School by name. Who is she? If there was some human family around town with a mutant daughter, especially one who stands out this much, I’d probably know it.
But her behavior, and that of everyone around her, is even more surprising. She’s cowered down like a scared puppy, shaking like a leaf. Her clothes are raggedy. She’s homeless, I guess, which is unusual in this town. Folks bad off generally have relatives or Good Samaritans to take them in and keep them off the streets. Hell, the School even has a human vagrant sheltering there now and then until they can get back on their feet.
But the people passing around this girl don’t even spare her a glance. A kid on her own, especially one looking like her, would get a great deal of attention – and probably an inquiry as to where the hell her parents are. It suddenly strikes me that she might not have parents! Or she could be running away from them. Sadly, that wasn’t unusual for many mutant kids like the Diaz sisters. Their parents either don’t know how to deal with their budding (often destructive) powers or they simply throw them out fearing the prejudice of their neighbors against their kids being so different.
Like a lightbulb flicking on in my brain, I realize that it’s up to me, as Principal Wagner’s daughter, to offer her at least a temporary home at the School. Swallowing any nervousness I might have, I creep out of my hiding place. I know a lot of kids who come to the School running away from their homes who are as skittish as all hell. Give a scared desperate kid super powers they have only shaky control over (at best) and it’s a recipe for disaster. I’m careful to approach the pink girl in an unhurried coaxing way like Uncle Logan taught me to approach a wild deer or a fox in the forest. I don’t want her to spook and bolt or, worse, lash out at me in fear, not in such a crowded place. Not to brag, but, as Kurt Wagner’s daughter and the X-Men’s niece, I could probably defend myself; the hapless humans all around us, however, are another story.
“Huh-Hey there …” I say, trying to make my voice confident and take-charge yet gentle, the way Papa does.
The girl glances up at me and that’s when I’m floored by what I can only describe as an invisible lightning bolt. I tumble head-over-heels across the spangled mall carpeting. Well, that certainly gets the attention of the innocent bystanders.
“What in hell?” I hear someone mutter.
“You OK, kid?” someone else calls out.
“TJ? Are you hurt?” another person, Missus Donna over at Bun Bun’s, hollers clear across the upstairs mall commons.
Not wanting to cause a panic, or further upset the pink girl, I spring up and paste on my most charming smile. “Humph! Clumsy me!” I say, loud enough so everybody can hear me and I switch my tail back and forth in a good-natured way that makes me the picture of glowing spirits.
I see Donna shrug and go back to shoveling mini-pretzels in a bag for a customer. The proprietors of the Piercing Pagoda, Mister Don and his daughter Aimee, glance at one another and murmur: “Wagner’s kid,” in amused tones.
I look around for the girl. She’s gone! No wait – she’s booking it down the east corridor towards the escalators. No way she covered that much ground that fast unless she has super-speed powers like my Uncle Pietro or … she’s a teleporter like me?!
I’d never met another teleporter besides Papa. I didn’t know there were others. I lope after the pink kid, calling after her: “Hey, wait! Stop!” No way I’m going to catch up to her on foot. Knowing I’m breaking the rules, I close my eyes and wink out. When I wink in, I’m at the bottom of the escalators. A couple shoppers jump at my appearance, but I ignore them. I’m standing right in front of the pink girl with my hands palms-up, but my feet planted firmly on the ground, showing her I’m harmless, but bracing for another … attack? That bolt of energy that stunned me must be connected to her somehow; I just know it.
She draws up like she’s ready for Round 2, but then her green eyes widen in surprise when she actually takes me in. I really get a good look at her this time. Her eyes are as green as Aunt Jeanie’s, but with hardly any whites showing around the irises. Her pupils aren’t black, but only a shade of green darker than her irises. Just like mine! Except mine are amber like Papa’s.
I think I know what’s going on in her head. The same thing I’m thinking: Whoa! Someone like me! Not just another mutant, but, like, a teleporter – with bright-colored skin and weird eyes! Damn, her little ears are even pointed like mine.
But then she says something even stranger: “Y-you can see me?”
“Huh?” I say, mystified.
Her eyes dart around, so wide with fright I actually see the whites around her irises.
“These people,” she makes a jerky gesture towards the mall patrons streaming around us – around me – several of them giving me dirty looks for blocking the escalators. “They’re like … ghosts,” she stammers. Suddenly, a stocky woman sailing down the escalator steps off the bottom rung – and right through the pink girl!
The woman doesn’t seem to notice, but she glares down at me blocking her path. “Excuse me?” she snaps.
“Uh …” I murmur.
The woman scowls and pushes past me rudely.
I look back at the pink kid. She’s shaking … I realize I am too.
Then the people walking around us start to look hazy, transparent, like they’re made of fog. “What’s happening?!” I gasp. Is this what she meant about people like ghosts? But I’m not a ghost…
Suddenly, a man walks through me! It feels like being dunked in ice water, but that doesn’t even compare to the sheer terror freezing my guts.
Everything seems to be melting around me. Or fading out. The shoppers, the store clerks, the shops, everything. But then some things seem to be fading ... in? Horrible things. Desolate streets, burning cars and buildings and - I gag as my stomach gives a heave.
Are those - oh God! I've never seen a dead body before except in movies, but those look really faky and waxy like a mannequin. These look very, very real. And they smell real. Real bad, like dumpsters, cat vomit and ripe diapers left out in the sun, but somehow even worse. The stench mixes with the rank odor of burning tires and general filth like the port-o-john's at the festivals Papa takes us to. But this is a million times worse.
My head is starting to spin I'm so overwhelmed by all this, plus the paralyzing fear of what all this means. Where the hell am I? Or am I someplace else at all? Or am I actually safe and sound back at the mall and just majorly tripping out for some reason?
The sights and smells are making me stagger and gasp, but not the sounds ... because there are no sounds! That doesn't make any sense. Everything makes a sound, no matter how faint, except Vicky maybe when she's sneaking up on me. And this sort of thing should be making lots of sounds - sounds straight out of a horror film probably.
But for someone like me, whose whole life revolves around sound, it's way scarier without it.
Right as I start to black out, I hear a sound. A voice - Aunt Jeanie! She's calling to me: "TJ! TJ, come on, fight it!" Fight it? Fight what? I wonder. But I unconsciously grasp at the sound of her voice like a life preserver.
And just like that, it drags me out of this stormy sea and back to reality. My reality.
^^
I wake up not on the floor of the Kaneohe Square Mall, as I expected to, but in the School infirmary. In a hospital bed taped up to all kinds of tubes and wires. Yeck! I even have one of those gross breathing masks on.
Papa is leaning over me, holding my hand, and when I come to I hear him take in a breath and let out a sigh of pure relief and gratitude. His amber eyes are wide and they aren't twinkling the way they usually do. In fact, there's something in them I haven't seen there in a long time - fear. Fear for me, his only child.
"Hey," I croak. My voice sounds weird, faint and far-off, like it doesn't belong to me. "Can I have a pretzel?"
"A pretzel?" Papa says. He grins at me, showing his long white fangs, but the skin around his eyes don't crinkle up the way they usually do when he smiles. I see him dash away quick tears with the back of his hand. "Kleines hemd, you may have all the pretzels you like when you're out of bed. Right now, how about some good, hot mushroom soup?"
"Uck! No way! I hate mushrooms," I reply.
"Don't say 'hate,'" Papa chides me gently. He'd rather me cuss up a storm than use that word.
"OK, I seriously despise mushrooms ..." I murmur before I drift back off into la-la land.
^^
When I come to again, I expect Jeanie to be the one checking up on me. After all, she is the School physician and she can't resist fussing over a sick person any more than a bird can resist flying.
To my utter shock, I see my mother's face hovering over me. Oh shit! I think. I really must have done it to get my Mama over here. My Mama doesn't hate Papa or my aunties and uncles here at the School, but she also doesn't hang out around here just for fun.
"Talia Josephine ..." she murmurs. Double shit! Triple shit! Nobody calls me by my full name unless I'm in deep, deep shit. But she's stroking the white lock of hair that flops down over my forehead, the same way she used to do when I was little, so maybe - just maybe - she'll let me off the hook just this once. I put on my most winsome smile.
"Don't give me that look, young woman. You're still in a great deal of trouble," she scolds me.
But her voice is soft and her hands are soothing. And she's very, very pretty. Mama's pretty old - like in her thirties - but she doesn't look a day over twenty. Big soulful blue eyes, smooth skin the color of walnut and tons of tightly-curled ringlets of mahogany hair. I've had more than a few strangers mistake her for my older sister!
Since I can remember, I've been a tad embarrassed by my Mama's good looks. Like embarrassed for myself. When I'm around Papa it doesn't bother me so much because we look so much alike. But with Mama ... it's hard to think a scruffy tomboy like me is her only daughter.
But she's still my Mama, good looks and all, and now I'm letting the musical sound of her voice lull me back into unconsciousness when a thought jerks me back awake like a bucketful of ice water.
"Where is Aunt Jeanie?" I say. Jeanie's voice was the last thing I remember before I blacked out at the mall.
The look on Mama's face tells me something is not right. When Papa is upset, he gets really quiet. When Mama's upset, she starts hollering at people. Now, her silence is scary.
I try to push myself up in bed. Big mistake. The room tilts precariously and I flop back on the pillow like a sick goldfish.
"Noch sein, fraulein!" she orders me. Mama's good at bossing folks around. She is a Queen, after all. I might have argued with anyone else - Papa even, but now I lie still.
Mama tucks the covers under my chin and plumps my pillow. Normally, I would have scoffed at her fussing, but now it feels nice.
Papa pushes past the curtain shielding my bed from the rest of the Infirmary wing. He looks thinner, somehow, and has several days of stubble on his face. I'm usually begging him to grow a beard because it makes him look so dashing, but I'd rather he do it under different circumstances.
Papa's large amber eyes are filled with happy relief once again as he crosses my tiny room to kiss my hand. Again, my parents are being so fussy, but I don't shrug it off. I feel too tired and muddled. But my fatigue doesn't quell my curiosity. Nothing much can do that.
"Where is Aunt Jeanie?" I ask again, this time to Papa. Of both my parents, he is the most likely to humor me despite being principal of the School.
He and Mama exchange that look they sometimes do when they're both around me, which isn't often. It's times like these I'm reminded that my parents don't hate each other, but they aren't exactly friends either. They definitely only tolerate each other's presence because they both love me.
I know they wouldn't be happy living together and Lord knows I don't want Mama and Papa to be miserable. Plus, I can't complain. I'm pretty happy with the arrangement of living part-time with Papa and Mama. Neither has ever shunned me or made me feel unloved - or tried to make me choose between my family on Genosha or my family here at School.
But there are times like this, when I see them communicate with just a glance, that I wonder how things would be if they'd stayed together. How different would my life be?
"Jean is ... not well-" Papa begins, but he's cut off by Uncle Logan pushing back the curtain. Logan rarely gets excited - he's seen too much, lived too long - but the smile on his face at seeing me is so sincere I can't help grinning back, as crummy as I feel.
"Well, well, looks who's back with the living!" he says, striding over to shake my hand. He's joking, of course, but he looks as relieved as Papa does.
"Ha, ha," I reply to his teasing.
He's followed closely by Uncle Scott. I grin up at him too, but then I stop immediately when I see the expression on his face - it could turn someone to stone.
Uncle Scott and I have always gotten along well enough even though he can be a bit stiff. I know I’m in hot water for aiding and abetting the Terran Squad and Johnny Proudstar’s gang on their mall escapades. But I didn’t think Scott would hold a grudge, especially since I’m in big trouble with Mama (whose punishments make Uncle Scott’s seem lenient let me tell you).
But the look on his face makes me want to hide under the covers.
Logan, sensing trouble, moves toward Scott and tries to put his hand on his shoulder. Scott shrugs him off angrily. Papa gets up. “Mein freund, please …” he says imploringly, laying his hands on Scott’s wrists. Uncle Scott and Papa practically grew up together; they’re as close as brothers. But Scott just turns away to stalk back behind my curtain.
I feel that horrible churning feeling in my lower belly like I’m about to have diarrhea. Something is very, very wrong. I can feel it.
I gaze seriously at Mama. “What happened to Aunt Jeanie?” I’m practically twelve, way too old to cry, but I feel my throat closing up and my eyes stinging with tears.
Mama’s beautiful face pales to the point even her rich brown lips turn ashy. She’s a tough lady, but her blue eyes fill up with tears. Mama and Jeanie were best friends when they were girls. Still are.
Papa walks back over to the bed. He gently touches Mama’s shoulder, one of the few touches I’ve seen them share. “TJ, Terran and her friends found you unconscious at the bottom of the escalators. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for more than a week.”
I feel the blood drain away from my face as my stomach turns to ice. “Wha-Huh?”
Mama’s crying now, the tears running down her cheeks in dark streaks. “ Mein Gott,” she gasps. “Oh, TJ …” I suddenly realize the horror they’ve been put through – that I’ve put them through. I sink back on the pillow, dazed. The memory of the pink girl races through my brain.
“When we got to you, you were unresponsive,” Papa says in a husky voice full of unshed tears. His amber eyes glisten with fear. “Jean …” he swallows, unable to go on.
Logan, coming forward to pat Papa soothingly, takes over. “Jeanie thought it was from all the noise – you were overstimulated, little elf. Your brain shut down.”
“Oh …” I say faintly, staring at the grownups. Yes. I was supposed to bail before too many people crowded the mall with their noise. That is important. But I’d never had a reaction this bad before. Then I hazily remember something else … something with the pink kid. What was it?
My brain feels stuffed with murky fog, making me unable to think much beyond this moment.
“B-But Jeanie …” I croak.
“Jean reached into your mind to try and bring you back,” Papa said, glancing up. Aunt Jeanie, a powerful telepath, can do that, but it’s never not risky, even for someone as skilled as she is. “She fell into a coma as well.”
My mouth goes dry and I swear my heart stops beating.
“Only for a few hours,” Mama says, patting my leg in a reassuring way, but her face is still ashen.
“W-What about her baby?” I ask, forcing out the question in a small squeak.
“He’s going to be all right,” Mama says, smiling for the first time. “But it was touch and go for a while. The effort it took Jean to pull you back took a toll on her mind and body. She’s strong enough to withstand it, but her baby …”
“But he’s going to be fine! You said so!” I almost shout in a panic.
“Ja, he will be,” Papa says comfortingly. “But it was a close thing, liebchen.”
I collapse into Mama’s arms and suddenly I’m sobbing, the awful kind that stuffs up your nose and makes your eyes dry out. But I don’t care. I’m so full of terror and relief and – guilt. Dear God, Jeanie’s baby. Her little mochi baby.
Jeanie and Scott had been trying for years to have another kid after their daughter Rachel was born. But every pregnancy ended in miscarriage except for this one … And I had almost cost them this baby.
No wonder Uncle Scott looked at me that way. I wouldn’t have blamed him for doing worse.
“Shhh, com’on kiddo, it’s not your fault,” I hear Logan murmur as Papa strokes my hair.
But it is my fault! If I hadn’t tried to run around with the cool kids. If I hadn’t chased that pink girl. If –
I cry and cry and cry into Mama’s bosom until I finally cry myself to sleep again.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Uncle Logan is an early riser, so we're two of the first to arrive in the School kitchens the next morning. On Saturday mornings, the students are on their own as far as breakfast goes. My aunties, uncles and cousins gather in the kitchens for a family breakfast buffet. This is my absolute favorite time of the week. During the school-week I just grab a bagel or a banana from the School cafeteria and bounce out before the noise level rises too much. On Saturdays, I get to set down in a quieter environment to a home-cooked meal.
The delicious aroma of strawberry crepes, my favorite, hits me even before Logan and I reach the kitchens' doors. OK, Uncle Remy might be a sappy mushball, but he sure can cook!
Inside the kitchens, my aunties and uncles are chatting softly around the small round tables that are set up there for quick impromptu meals. Uncle Remy is working the kitchen range. Hope, wearing an apron so long it reaches her shoes, is attentively watching her papa work. Marie, with little 'Dre on her hip, shimmies up to Remy to collect the latest serving of crepes - and steal a kiss. She doesn't have to; he enthusiastically returns her smack. Those two ... But, remembering Logan's words, instead of rolling my eyes, I smile in a long-suffering way.
Vicky is watching Uncle War whisk eggs to scramble, her round face pleading. "Can I pull-leez put green food coloring in the eggs?" she begs.
"The last time you made Green Eggs and Ham, Vick, you turned Uncle Kurt's fur green," Warren replies with the patience of a saint.
Papa walks up to them and tugs on Vicky's ponytail. "Ja, I kind of liked it. It made me look a bit like the Hulk!"
Papa would let Vicky turn his fur all the colors of the rainbow if she wanted to.
I spot Mama and Aunt Jeanie tucked away at a corner table. Their lips aren't moving, but I know they're "talking" via Jeanie's telepathy. If someone is willing, Jeanie can send thoughts just as well as read them. Her and Mama don't want certain ears (i.e. mine) overhearing their conversation.
But I see Jeanie reach out and gently squeeze Mama's hand. Uncle Logan is always saying how speech is more than just words - or telepathy in this case. Something is up. And I've got a feeling it has something to do with me.
Someone is clearing their throat behind me. I jump. Distracted, I hadn't heard Aunt Kitty approach. She glares at me, but I take my own sweet time moving out of her way. I'm not on her watch right now. And she has no more authority over me than any one of my other aunties.
She walks past me, with her nose in the air and not a word for me, to talk to Uncle Scott. I watch her chortle in that annoying way of hers. Ick, what a faker!
^^
Rubbing a bellyful of crepes and scrambled eggs, I 'port down to the hanger bay with Papa and Mama. We trot down to the subterranean hanger where the Blackbird, the X-Men's jet, crouches like a sleek, massive bird of prey. Mama's Genoshan royal plane is parked alongside it. They look a bit like Mama and Papa, I think, one dark and a bit mysterious, the other stouter with a burgundy tint.
Papa's whistling as he walks along with my duffel flung over his shoulder. (A lifetime of living between two households has taught me to pack light.) I side-eye him. Papa's rarely this upbeat when Mama comes to pick me up. But he's grinning at Mama in a conspiratorial way. I don't like it; I don't like it one bit.
As Papa hugs me good-bye, I whisper in his ear: "So you ready to tell me what's up?"
His smile only widens. "Let's just say you're in for a surprise when you get back."
"And don't even think about asking me," Mama puts in. "Because I'm not telling either." Huh, as if she ever would.
"I'll just suffice to say it's a good surprise," Papa adds.
Well, then ...
There's nothing for it now but to settle in for the long twelve-hour flight to Genosha. I'm not much one for puzzles or games on trips, so I sleep or read the new book Aunt Jeanie gave me.
Mama intermittently talks to me and her aide and pilot, Robert, who has been working for her since I was five. He gives me a packet of soft mints and, at lunchtime, a sourdough-and-avocado-hold-the-mayo sandwich, my favorite.
"It's a good thing you're the one making these trips and not Tommy," he jokes with me. I grin at Robert. My little half-brother Tommy can't set still for the world. A one-hour car ride might kill him, let alone a twelve-hour flight.
As the green mountains of Genosha appear outside my window, I get the same thrill of excitement I always get when I arrive here - even though I've been making this commute since I was about three. I can soon make out the elegant tapering buildings around Magda Square, named after my maternal grandmother, and the energy tower soaring above the Genosha City proper. As we get closer, I see the island's famous seals hugging the rocky beaches and the force-field encircling the entire island in a soft blue haze.
Children splashing on the pebbly shores pause to wave up at us. I wave back even though I know they couldn't see me. We fly over the Wharf Market where people are doing some brisk trading and shopping or just sightseeing. And I see the Teleportation Hub is humming with folks from both on and off the island coming to visit or trade.
Aaaah, home sweet home. Well, home sweet second-home.
We're flying towards the sheer cliffs upon which the Genoshan Palace and the energy tower stand. As if by magic, a giant hole in the cliff face opens and the plane flies inside. There's nothing more than a gentle bump as Robert expertly rolls the jet to a smooth stop in the palace hanger bay.
"Now, don't get too over-confident as far as your jet-lag goes," Mama warns me, like she never has before. "It's good to stay up and about right after the trip, but don't accept any of Tommy's ridiculous dares."
"Um-huh, yes, Mama," I say, not really listening. My eyes are trained on the three figures awaiting us: my half-brothers Tommy and Billy and my stepfather Vision. I wriggle with itchy excitement.
"Too late to fidget now," Robert teases me. "Jump off."
Mama nods at me and I 'port off the plane to the hanger floor. Eight years old, twins, but as different as night and day, my half-brothers are waiting for their dad's permission to run and greet me. I'm unable to hide my smile I'm so glad to see them.
Tommy is dancing from foot to foot. That boy never stops moving, not even in his sleep. Even as a baby in Mama's tummy, he kicked all day and all night. Poor Mama never got any rest. But her pregnancy was just a warm-up exercise for how life with Tommy was going to be once he was born.
Tommy is a speed-demon like my Uncle Pietro.
Almost as soon as my feet touch the tarmac, my little bro bolts towards me. Tommy can run so fast my eyes can barely track him as he sprints in my direction. He's fast ... but I'm faster.
I teleport just as he pounces at me and he lands on the hanger floor with an "Oof!"
"Sorry, bro, gotta be faster than that!" I crow. Tommy's that kid who's good at everything (except being still and following the rules), so I think it's my duty to take him down a peg sometimes.
He scowls, looking all the world like Uncle Pietro, but then his face lights up with a grin. Not even Tommy, who can be temperamental, can stay mad at me for very long. He's too happy to see me.
As I pull him into a bear-hug, I almost drop him in my surprise. The kid's grown at least an inch since I saw him last. That's one bad thing about having two homes; you can't be in both at the same time, so you're going to miss some things - birthdays, graduations, and your little brother shooting up like a weed.
He whispers slyly in my ear: "There's a surprise and I know it, but I'm not going to tell yoooou!"
Tommy. Always having to one-up somebody.
Billy and Vision come strolling towards me at a far more gracious pace. Billy is frowning, but not because he's unhappy to see me. He's just a super-serious kid. Quiet too. Mama jokes that she didn't know she had two babies in her belly when the twins were born because while Tommy was tearing around in there Billy hardly ever made a peep.
He's handsome though. While Tommy has loose locks like me, Billy is a curly-top with the same big, liquid eyes as Mama. I always get the feeling he's going to break some hearts in the near future.
"What's up, Big Bill!" I say, calling him by the nickname I gave him when he was a baby. He was the smaller of the twins. Still is. Short like Mama.
"Are you going to tell me about the surprise?" I whisper to him as we hug it out.
I watch his blue eyes go wide. "B-But we aren't supposed to!" he says. I grin and tweak his ear. Billy can't break a rule anymore than Tommy can resist breaking one.
"Welcome home, TJ," Vision says in his usual calm way.
I'm as glad to see him as the twins. I like how he never forced his status as stepdad on me; he's never made me call him "Dad" or treat him like a bio father. And I love him all the more for it. He's not my dad, it's true; he's my Robot Dad. Vision is an android and the way he and Mama met is one hell of a long story.
But he loves me and I adore him. And he's the only cook I know who can give Uncle Remy a run for his money.
"Is it true there's a surprise for me?" I ask as I throw my arms around him. It might be one of Tommy's pranks, after all.
Vision has the best poker-face on the face of the Earth, so I can't tell by looking at him. "Why don't you teleport inside the palace and see?"
"I can beat you!" Tommy shouts.
"Fat chance!" I holler in reply.
"Don't yell, please," Mama snaps as I wink out and Tommy takes off in a flash.
^^
OK, Mama's palace isn't a "Disney Princess castle" with buttresses and crown molding and friezes and whatnot. It's more like a glorified administrative office with living space for us kids and Robot Dad. I mean, it's hard for anyone to think Mama is a stuck-up, disconnected monarch for very long when her "reception room" for visiting world leaders usually has some of the twins' stray socks and street hockey equipment lying around.
Genoshans have just called the place "the palace" for so long that it's stuck and, let's face it, I loved to pretend as much as any kid that I lived in an honest-to-God castle when I was little.
But Vision does try to keep things tidy, especially in the palace foyer and especially when we're expecting company. When I wink in to the entrance hall and see it spiffed up (complete with a vase of fresh daylilies - Mama's favorite) I know the surprise must be a good one!
"Uncle Pietro!" I say as he emerges from the living room just off the foyer. "This is a nice surprise!" I wrap my arms around his neck and give him a nose-bump, just like I did when I was a tot.
He chuckles one of his rare laughs. I've always had a knack for tickling grumpy Uncle Pietro. "TJ, you really need to come around more. I could get used to this!"
"Well, I can't help that I have the most charming, handsome uncle in the whole world," I say with mock seriousness.
Actually, Uncle Pietro - short, silver-haired and perpetually impatient - isn't very charming. He can be a bit bad-tempered, but he isn't mean. And he's got a major soft spot for his niece and nephews. Mama's always complaining how he lets us get away with whatever we want.
Tommy appears just a beat behind me. He's getting faster, but still not fast enough. "Oh, he ain't the surprise, TJ!" he grumps, sore that I whooped him again in a race. "That's just Pietro."
"Uncle Pietro and don't say 'ain't,'" another familiar voice chimes in.
Aunt Lori appears, followed closely by Uncle Alex. As I run to them I cry out: "Yeah, Tommy, it ain't "ain't;" it's "Aunt!"
She rolls her beautiful green eyes at me. "Oh, TJ, you get more like your father every time I see you."
I guess she means Papa's cheesy sense of humor and not ... everything single thing else. But I don't mind her teasing. I'm just too happy to see her.
Aunt Lori is Mama and Uncle Pietro's little sister - though "little" should only be used to describe her age in relation to theirs. Because every other thing about Aunt Lori is big, big, BIG. From her hair which is the color of ocean waves and hangs down well past her butt to her long, long beanpole legs. Even her fingernails are extra long and pointy. (I was a bit scared of them when I was little; I thought they looked like the Wicked Witch of the West's.)
Uncle Alex, unlike his older brother Uncle Scott, is a bit on the stocky, short side. He follows Lori around like an adoring blond shadow. Dunno what it is about mutant men and their big-and-tall wives ... but like Remy and Marie, even I'll admit they make a pretty cute couple. And the fact that Alex worships my big beautiful auntie is as plain as the nose on his face.
Pietro doesn't agree. He's scowling up a storm - like more than usual even. If it were up to him, his sisters would die old maids. He detests Uncle Alex and Mama says he didn't like Papa much better during the short time my parents were together.
Mama says Uncle Pietro spent most of his childhood taking care of her and Aunt Lori all on his own when they were kids and he doesn't trust anybody else to do it. Well, I have several thoughts on this: For starters, Mama and Lori are grown women now and both are more than capable of protecting themselves. But Mama says her ornery twin brother doesn't see things that way.
Gosh, siblings are so weird ... it almost makes me glad to be a part-time only child.
Mama, Vision and Billy stroll into the foyer to greet the newcomers. Mama kisses Lori on the cheek and greets Alex warmly, but Pietro just turns away without a word for him. Lori flinches and Mama pinches her lips together. I can tell they're embarrassed.
Finally, Vision breaks up the silence and the tension between the grownups in his friendly good-natured way.
"Well, you can't tell me you humanoids aren't hungry!" he declares, spreading his arms wide. "I've cooked a regular banquet and I won't have my labors going to waste."
We kids cheer, Mama, Lori and Alex grin and even Pietro cracks a smile as Vision herds us off towards the dining room. For some reason, Uncle Pietro, who despises all his sisters other suitors, has never had a problem with my Robot Dad.
^^
I slap my full belly appreciatively and let out a groan as I push my chair back from the dinner table. Vision's world-famous vegetarian lasagna and two kinds of cake rest in my stomach and I feel as swollen as Aunt Jeanie.
It's times like these when I eat one of Vision's feasts that I can see why Mama picked him - well, that and him being such a charming handsome devil.
We sit around the table, groaning, in a stupor. Alex sighs: “That was the best one yet, Vis. My compliments to the chef.”
And he leans over to clink his water glass to my stepdad’s. Vision’s amber eyes glow appreciatively at the praise.
“Now are you ready for our surprise?” Aunt Lori announces suddenly.
My half-brothers and I exchange thrilled glances. We thought one of Lori and Alex’s visits, which are pretty rare, was the surprise! I see the other grownups – Mama, Vision and Pietro – glance sharply at Alex and Lori, so I know they’re as shocked as us kids.
Lori looks at her boyfriend and they share a shy smile as they squeeze hands under the table. Alex looks like he’s practically melting with adoration as he gazes at my beautiful auntie. Although they are brothers, Alex and Scott don’t look very much alike, but when Alex moons over Lori the same way Scott does Jeanie I can definitely see a resemblance.
I’m starting to suspect what’s up. But I still give a whoop of pure surprise and joy when Lori puts her free hand, the one not holding onto Alex, in the air to show everyone the sparkling ring on her finger. Tommy, I swear, shoots straight up in the air and Billy, who is usually so reserved, sits there gawking at them with his mouth hanging open. His fork clatters to the table with a crash. Mama reaches right across the table, knocking dishes aside, and pulls Lori into one of her bone-crushing bear-hugs. Mama doesn’t really hug that often, but when she does, boy, does she make it count!
Vision is smiling ear-to-ear, another rare occurrence. He slaps Alex on the back, almost knocking him down. “So you finally talked her into it, eh, man?”
Alex grins sheepishly. “Well, actually, Lori’s the one who askedme.”
I’m practically bouncing up and down with excitement as Tommy, Billy and I throw ourselves on Aunt Lori and Uncle Alex. Everybody thought they were waiting until after their graduate studies to get hitched. But now they can barely keep their hands off of each other. Hell, you couldn’t fit a crowbar between them right now.
For all my happiness, I have to sigh … Guess I’ll be getting a new crop of little cousins here on Genosha as well as back at the School.
As we kids congratulate the happy couple, I notice Mama and Vision lean together and squeeze hands. One thing I’ve always liked about my mother and stepfather is even though they’re very much in love, they aren’t all soppy about it. A gentle hand in the small of Mama’s back or a quick peck on her cheek is about as demonstrative as Vis gets, but you always sense that they have each other’s backs no matter what.
I’ve never felt any bitterness over their bond – or the fact that Mama and Papa don’t share that – the way some people seem to expect me to. Vis makes Mama happy. Plus she makes him happy. And Vision’s such a sweet guy I think he deserves that. Why on Earth would I begrudge him and Mama any of that especially when they aren’t so all-fired mushy about it?
One person not congratulating Lori and Alex (surprise, surprise) is Uncle Pietro. He’s standing off to the side tapping his foot the way he always does when he gets agitated. It pecks the floor faster and faster until it’s just a blur and I swear it’s going to make a hole in the wood.
Finally, he huffs off without a word for his baby sister – but with a withering glare at Alex that I am amazed doesn’t turn him to stone. I can tell Aunt Lori is hurt. Her green eyes are wide and sad as she stares after Pietro. And her bottom lip trembles slightly. Lori looks big and tough, but she’s really just a huge softie.
Mama hugs her tight around the waist. Lori must have gotten the height gene from her mama’s side of the family because the top of Mama’s curly head only reaches her shoulder. Mama and Pietro share a dad (Gran’pa Erik) with Aunt Lori. Same way I share a mama with Billy and Tommy.
Mama’s lips pinch together the way they always do when she gets really mad. Uh-oh. An angry Queen is more than I bargained for tonight. By the way everyone gets really quiet (even Tommy who can’t keep his mouth shut for one hot second) I guess they hadn’t either. Mama’s a holy terror when she’s mad. Aunt Jeanie assures me Mama’s got a better hold on her temper than she did when she was a kid. Boy, am I glad of that! Because she’s pretty damn scary as it is.
She’s also pretty much the only one brave enough to give Uncle Pietro a piece of her mind when he’s being an especially obnoxious jerk. I see her take a step to follow her twin brother, but before I really know what I’m doing I dash out into the hall after him. Pietro’s bushy silver eyebrows shoot up when he sees me; I know he was expecting Mama.
Then his impressive eyebrows furrow down in their usual scowl. “Guess I’m going to get lectured by an eleven-year-old. Great…” he mutters which fires me right up because every single person knows I’m practically twelve.
“Well, I might as well talk to you the same way I do my little brother ‘cause you’re acting no better than Tommy!” I snap back at him. (Something I’m never, never supposed to do to grownups, although I think exceptions should be made when the grownup is being a total and complete jackass.)
Pietro looks like I scratched him. He looks so much like Tommy when I beat him at a race that I almost laugh out loud. I expect Pietro to go off. (He’s almost as hot-headed as Mama, but he has a weaker grip on his temper, so he tends to blow up more often but in smaller less-terrifying spurts.) But then, unexpectedly, he starts laughing. It’s so strange seeing my grouchy uncle with a smile on his face that I admit I stare.
“I guess I better do right if I’m behaving no better than Thomas!” he chuckles and I give him a toothy grin in reply.
I grab his arm and he lifts me off the floor and swings me around the way he did when I was a wee elf. Pietro is short but very strong. (I am, however, very pleased to note that my six toes barely skim the floor. Maybe I’ll be as tall as Aunt Lori someday!)
I don’t want any more call-outs on lecturing my grownup uncle like Mama would, but I can’t help saying: “Y’know, Alex adores Aunt Lori.” (In case you haven’t noticed, I add silently.) “And they’ve been together practically forever. Don’t you think if he wanted to dump her he would have before now?”
Pietro twitches uncomfortably. I suddenly realize how much it must sting to be a grown man and get called out on your B.S. by a practically-twelve-year-old. He runs his fingers through his spiky hair which is the color of sunlight on snow.
“I-I guess I’m more worried about Lori growing up and moving on than I am about Alex not treating her well,” he says in this very slow tedious way like it hurts him to get the confession out.
Mama is always telling me that folks tend to open up around me or seek me out to talk to. (“Just like your father,” she says.) Generally, I roll my eyes at that, but if even Uncle Pietro, who is as prickly as a holly bush, will talk about his feelings with me then maybe there is something to that. Or it may be that me and Uncle Pietro have always been tight. I was the first of his sister’s kids after all. I mean, he loves Tommy and Billy, but he sure as hell ain’t gonna talk to them this way!
I wouldn’t exactly call myself a therapist, but I decide to bring up a delicate subject to Uncle Pietro. I mean, what the hell? “Mama says you took care of her and Aunt Lori when you were all kids. That must have been tough …”
Pietro sighs. “Yeah, it was – harder than you can imagine, TJ. Wandering from place to place. Wondering where our next meal would come from or where we’d find a roof over our heads at night.” That tough steely glint comes back into his blue eyes like he’s putting back on his armor to shield his true feelings from the world. I only got a quick glimpse of how truly vulnerable my uncle can be, but that was something, wasn’t it?
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand …” he growls. And he’s right. How could I understand anything about being hungry, cold or homeless? Hell, I barely understand the prejudice some humans feel towards mutants. I can’t even grasp these things the way Papa, Mama and all my aunties and uncles do.
But I sure see one thing crystal clear …
“Maybe not,” I reply, crossing my arms across my chest. “But I do understand one thing – maybe you got so used to taking care of them that you feel threatened when they grow up and have their own families. Like you don’t have a use anymore.”
Pietro’s mouth drops open. Well, now he looks just like Billy.
“Which is B.S.,” I say quickly before he can recover. “Because where the hell would I be or Tommy or Billy without you? Do you actually think Mama or Vis would teach us as much or let us have as much fun as you do?”
Now Pietro doesn’t just chuckle. He lets out a booming laugh I’ve never even heard before.
“Good God, TJ! I can’t decide who you sound more like – your dad or your Uncle Logan!”
I narrow my eyes, but then decide to smile and laugh along with him. “Well, now, that’s a compliment!” I say.
He lifts me up to set me on his shoulders and I ride happy and proud back into the dining room. There, Uncle Pietro murmurs congratulations to Aunt Lori whose eyes shine with forgiveness and love for her older brother. He still doesn’t even look at Uncle Alex, but I guess it’s better than nothing. Mama smiles up at me and my toes tingle in an unfamiliar way when I see the pride in her dark blue eyes. I’m so used to being her wayward tomboy of a daughter. I know Mama loves me, but she doesn’t exactly gush over me either.
Tommy, meanwhile, frowns. He hates it when someone is getting more attention than him.
But Billy is gazing at me with the same thoughtful expression as Mama’s. When Uncle Pietro sets me down on the floor my baby brother sidles over to whisper in my ear.
“Meet me in my room before bed; I’ve got something important to tell you.”
I glance at Billy’s serious round face in surprise. It’s always Tommy who’s up to surprises, secrets and tricks. But if Billy says something’s up, I should probably take him at his word. I wiggle my pointy ears at him, a code we’ve had since we were tots meaning “Roger that!”
He gives me one of his rare smiles, breaking up the tension some, but I still wonder what secret serious-minded honest-as-the-day-is-long William Maximoff is keeping …

Chapter Text

I ‘port into Big Bill’s room as soon as I pull on my pajamas and as soon as I can slip away from Mama and Aunt Lori. They’re not exactly overbearing, but they tend to demand I spend at least some “girl time” with them on the rare occasions when all three of us are at the palace. Though of course she’d never say so, I get the feeling Mama gets lonely around just Vis and the boys.
“Ugg, did they make you get a pedicure?” Billy teases.
I stick my tongue out then hiss: “No!” And he grins. He knows as well as anyone how much I hate someone touching my feet. When we were all much smaller, Tommy would make a game of seeing if he was fast enough to tickle my toes. On the off-chance he got me, I’d teleport-ambush him and give him a nurple. Yes, I know that’s mean, but he was asking for it.
“You know I’m not into that stuff anyway,” I tell Bill as I flop down beside him on his bed.
He shrugs with that mischievous little smirk on his face – just about the only thing that makes me realize he’s related to Tommy. “Maybe if you had a sister or some girl-friends you might be interested in pedi’s or mani’s or makeup?”
I have two things to say to that:
“First of all, nope, never, nada, nein. On both the girly-girl stuff or getting a sister,” I state firmly.
Mama’s made it quite clear she was done having babies when the twins were born. (I think Tommy was the main reason for that.) And, well, we all know the chances of me getting a sister from Papa are pretty slim.
“Second, I got plenty of girl-friends back at the School.”
“Aunties don’t count,” says Billy.
Okaaaay … seems like I’m not the only Maximoff with a knack for getting to the heart of a matter. I’m reminded of my ill-fated attempt to hang with Terran’s squad. Had Mama told my little brothers anything about that? No, or I’d never hear the end of it from Tommy who is physically unable to keep his trap shut once he hears a juicy tidbit of gossip.
I’m annoyed by Billy, but I don’t give him a nurple like I would Tommy if he said such a thing. One reason is Billy says things in such an earnest way that it’s hard to imagine he’s teasing me. He’s just calling things like he sees ‘em.
Anyway, why the hell are we even talking about this? “Don’t you have something to tell me?” I grump. “A big secret?”
“Not a secret exactly,” he replies. “It’s actually about Doctor Strange.”
“Sorcerer Supreme?” I ask with just a hint of sarcasm tingeing my voice.
Billy, oblivious (or ignorant) to my bratty tone, nods at the poster on his wall of Doctor Strange, his absolute idol. Ol' Doc's surrounded by pictures of Harry Houdini and promotions for Rob Zombie films and occult horror flicks like "The Hornet's Revenge!" and "Serial Killer Whale." Geez, who would guess that my gentle, quiet little bro has a dark side?
But those who know him know that Billy has always shown great promise as a sorcerer. Since he was a baby he's been able to fire off "hex-bolts," just like Mama, freezing anyone in their tracks. (Which are super-useful when you have a twin brother with super-speed powers.)
Big Bill's never used them on me - or anyone for that matter except Tommy and only when his twin is being especially aggravating. Tenderhearted Billy would never bully anyone.
"Yep. Doc Strange has agreed to take me on as an apprentice," he says somewhat shyly.
I'm so surprised I'm sure my eyes bug out of my head a little.
"Bill, that's great! I mean, that's your dream!"
I'm not kidding either. Though it's not at all like Billy to boast, I know he's got big dreams of being a Sorcerer Supreme himself one day - And training under Doc Strange would be his best route to get there.
Although if it were up to me I'd have said no thanks. I've met Doctor Strange a couple times and he's a bit of a pompous windbag ... though I could see how he'd get along well with thoughtful Billy.
My baby bro picks bashfully at his comforter which has tiny little ravens printed all over it. It reminds me of how he'd beg and beg Vision to read him "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe every night when we were little.
"Well, I think he only agreed to take me on because he and Mama are such good friends and because they've known each other so long," he replies.
I roll my eyes. Billy is as modest as Tommy is a braggart.
I'm happy for him and all, but I suspect he didn't arrange this private sibling meeting (away from our brother) to just mention this.
"Aaaand ...?" I drawl out.
He grins. "Aaaand," he mocks. "I get to have lessons with Illyana Rasputin too."
I'm so shocked my toes curl. I don't know what surprises me more - that Billy gets to train under the scariest sorceress around or that he doesn't seem very afraid to do it. I personally would be petrified. I've only met Illyana - Doctor Strange's former apprentice and the Sorceress Supreme, the most powerful sorceress on the planet - once. She was short and a bit on the skinny side, but there was something in her cold blue eyes that made my fur stand straight on end. But, of course, I wouldn't breathe any of this to my baby bro.
"T-That's, um ... good," I say gingerly.
Billy chuckles. "Whaddaya think I'm scared?" he asks, blue eyes sparkling.
"Uh, aren't you?" I blurt out.
"A little bit," he confesses. "I mean, Mistress 'Yana is scary, but then she's supposed to be, isn't she? She's tough and strict, but she's actually pretty cool so long as you don't get her riled - And I plan not to get her riled!"
Okaaay, I get his logic, I guess, but I now have this very strange newfound respect and admiration for my soft-spoken little brother ... And a super-secret (kinda cowardly) part of myself is tremendously happy it's him and not me under "Mistress 'Yana's" tutelage.
"But there's something else you should know, TJ," he continues and his breath starts coming in excited little gasps the way it always does when he gets really worked up. He reaches into his pajama pocket and takes a hit off his inhaler.
"Huh ... huh ..." he wheezes and I massage his back. "'Yana is a teleporter like you!"
"Uh, is not!" I interrupt him indignantly.
"Is too!" he insists. "She can 'port to another dimension!"
"But she can't 'port from place to place like me and Papa!" I say stubbornly.
Billy waves his hand like he shooing away my argument like a pesky bug. "Well, that's not even the point."
"Then what is exactly?" I say. I'm starting to wonder exactly where this conversation is going ... and losing my patience with it too.
"Well ... uh, I sort of heard about you and the pink kid," he says in this super careful way like his words are walking across eggshells.
"Mama told you?!"
I feel a mixture of betrayal and fury. Mama wasn't sworn to secrecy or anything, but I'm mortified she'd tell my baby brother about that! I almost died ... and what was worse, I could have hurt Aunt Jeanie and little Nate in the process.
"No! No, she did not!" Billy assures me, reaching out to grasp my arms and keep me seated. "I ... heard her telling Mistress 'Yana about it."
"Wha? ... But? ... 'Yana?! Y-You were eavesdropping?!" I'm seriously starting to freak out now. I might need a hit off Billy's inhaler.
"I wouldn't do that!" Billy says, his lips pinched together in indignation. He looks so much like Mama I have to laugh. It helps me calm down a bit.
He starts laughing too until we have to lean on each other.
When we recover, he adds: "It was just hard not to overhear when I'm right under their thumbs all day!"
Fair point. "Sorry ..." I murmur.
He shrugs at my apology. Good-natured Billy rarely wastes time arguing. "Anyway, Mistress 'Yana might be able to help if, y'know, this pink kid is from ... another place."
"Hmmm ..." I hum, stalling, chewing my lip and thinking hard about what he said. It actually makes sense, sort of. "But 'Yana teleports to a dimension with, like, demons and stuff, right?" I say, hoping I got that right.
Billy nods.
"But, uh, w-when I met this kid ..." I start to say and then my voice cracks. I feel a hot dangerous stinging in the back of my throat.
Okay, so I thought telling this stuff to Aunt Jeanie was tough? Try telling it to my little brother! I mean, I don't think of myself as a hardass exactly, but I've always been the scrappy big sister of my Genoshan family. It's hard showing weakness in front of Billy ... But, then again, it's better him than Tommy.
Bill gently presses his hand on my arm and I remember when he was a tiny baby how he was fascinated by my fuzz. He couldn't keep his pudgy little hands off of it. I felt like a big ol' teddy bear.
Comforted by the memory, and Billy's encouragement, I take a deep shuddering breath. "T-The place I 'went to' wasn't full of demons or whatever." Certainly would have been better if it was. "It was full of ..." I make a distressed signal with my hand.
Billy nods. "Yeah ..." he murmurs. He gets it and I'm relieved I don't have to go on.
"But I still think Mistress 'Yana could help," he says stoutly.
And I'm surprised by how grownup he looks. I mean, Bill has always been a bit on the solemn side, but now I realize I'm starting to see him as more than just my baby brother.
"She's seen some tough stuff too in her own dimension - I mean, the one she 'ports to," he explains. I roll my eyes, but he ignores me. "Maybe she can help you with this one ... And maybe that pink girl too."
Well, his plan makes so much sense, plus he's just so damn earnest, that I at least have to consider it, right?
"Hmmm, well ..."
"Unless you are scared of Mistress 'Yana," he adds, eyes sparking with that Maximoff mischief. I sock him on the shoulder, but gently.
Suddenly, my ears twitch at a flicker of sound. It's just there for a heartbeat, but it's there in the room with us. And it's definitely unwelcome.
I know how some people say twins have a telepathic link, but it's always seemed that it's me and Bill that have that unspoken bond instead of him and Tommy.
With a quick glance at Billy, I wink out and then wink in to pounce on Tommy before the little sneak speeds out the door. Tommy's so fast, he ran in the room without either of us seeing him. But there isn't much that can get past my ears. Before he can struggle, his twin brother freezes him with a hex-bolt.
"Spy!" Bill hisses.
I let go of Thomas and he drops onto Billy's red shag rug like a rock. Unless Billy releases him, the hex will hold Tommy frozen in place for at least an hour.
"This is a private conversation!" I say angrily. "No sneaks!"
"And no snitches!" Billy adds.
Then, to my surprise, he releases Tommy from the hex-hold. I guess he doesn't want to aggravate Mama with our quarreling. She has had a bit of a day - we all have, come to think of it.
Tommy leaps to his feet, green eyes snapping furiously. "Then why not just ask me to join? I guess I'm part of this family too!" he whines.
My fingers are just itching to twist him a nurple, but Billy regards his twin coolly.
"First, this is sorcerer business, ok, bro?" he responds, holding up one finger. Okay, so that's a bit of a stretch; I'm not a sorceress or even a sorceress apprentice by a long-shot, but I ain't arguing with Bill on this one. "Second," he says, shooting up another finger. "When have you ever kept your pie-hole shut?"
"Well, I guess you'll never know!" Tommy barks back and turns to zoom off.
I expect Bill to stop him with another hex-bolt, but instead he halts him dead in his tracks using the most sugary voice I've ever heard from him or anybody for that matter.
"Tom-meee, I would not say a word if I were you," he coos.
Tommy, sensing trouble and no doubt as spooked as I am by Bill's suddenly saccharine tone, turns around, eyes wide as an owl's.
"Or Mama might find out about those pictures of naked people you keep under Daddy's potato bin," Billy says with a smile.
Tommy's brown skin pales. Then he slaps his scowl back on and shouts "Bluff!" as he bolts out the door. But I can tell if anyone hears about this private conversation they won't be hearing about it from Thomas Maximoff.
"Dude!" I blink at Billy.
I wouldn't have thought sweet little Bill could handle our rambunctious brother with such ease. He's growing up fast - in more ways than one.
"Very nicely done," I tell him and he smiles shyly. "Uhhh, naked pictures ...?" I add in bemusement. Hmmm, seems like Bill's not the only brother growing up way too fast.
"Yeah," Billy shrugs. "I don't care, but Mama might."
(Huh, I'll bet!)
"Anyway, it's good for some blackmail," he adds with a grin.
"Rascal!" I say, ruffling his rust-colored curls. "And here I thought Tommy was the demon in the family."
"I thought it was you," Bill replies, looking so innocently at me with my pointy ears, cute little fangs and bifurcated tail that my mouth drops open.
I grab him and twist him a nurple. It's not even a very hard one, but Billy howls until Mama hollers at us to stop.