The following school day that Monday started as any other, yet everything felt as if it had a greater weight to it. When getting ready that morning, Anna's backpack fell off her bed, and she jumped as if a gun had been shot. She was aware of every single word said by her fellow X-Men and exactly the way they said it. The cadence at which they would speak and when they would pause to take a breath. She noticed the bus stopped short of where it normally did that morning and that the bus driver was wearing gloves while driving while she normally didn't.
Looking out the window of the bus as the world raced past her, she felt her eyes begin to water and didn't understand why. Her breathing became more shallow and it felt as if someone was sitting on her chest. When she felt a hand rest on her shoulder she jolted and snapped her neck back.
"What?" She felt her throat croak through a wall of flem. She hadn't even noticed Kitty was sitting next to her.
"Are you okay?" The other girl was sitting like she normally was, her backpack resting on her lap and a tumbler of coffee in her hand.
"Yeah, I…" Anna's eyes lingered on Kitty's backpack. She noted portions that had been stuffed to bursting, and areas where the pockets hadn't been filled and the fabric was slack. She almost jumped again when she felt Kitty's hand in hers.
"I know," Kitty gave Anna's hand a reassuring squeeze. "But whatever happens, we face it together. All of us."
Words ran through Anna's mind, yet none of them slipped past her lips. Only a tight lipped smile and a nod acknowledged what the other girl said before she returned her attention out the window. However, this time the world beyond didn't seem to slip by quite so fast.
She wasn't sure what she expected once they got to school. If it was wanted signs with her face on it or burning torches, they weren't there. Still, there were whispers between her peers in the hallways. Phones held in front of clusters of friends and pointed at, and she swore she saw one of them crossing their arms over their chest like she had at the end of the fight. But conversations were always just out of earshot and gestures too vague to understand. What felt like every few seconds she felt the need to check her phone under her desk for any news updates. Silent videos with captions rolled through her feed of talking heads giving their opinions over the same few clips she saw over and over again. Everytime the one with her removing her helmet came up, she swore she could make out her cheek bones or the cut of her hair. Cold sweat gathered at the base of her neck and crown of her forehead.
"Miss Marie?" A man's voice called to her.
"Yes?" She said with a start before even seeing where the speaker was. Her heart competed for room next to her tonsils as she looked up and saw Mr. McCoy leaning against the whiteboard with his hands on his hips.
"I asked you a question, young lady. Are you paying attention?"
"Uh -" She could hear snickering off to her left where Taryn Smith, Bayville High's resident bitch, sat.
"Who was the woman who is credited with discovering and naming radiation?"
Anna felt her eyes go wide. She looked at her desk and saw she didn't even have her textbook out. "Um…"
"She was mentioned in your weekend assignment, if that helps."
The weekend assignment? Did she even do any of her assignments? Was there time? Surely she had some time. But what time was there outside of what happened? But the whole weekend wasn't the incident. What did she do for the rest of the weekend? What did she have time to do? Did she even have her backpack? Of course she did, where would it have gone? But what if she didn't? Then it wouldn't be her fault that she didn't do her assignment.
Wait, what did he ask?
Mr McCoy's gaze softened. "Miss Marie?"
"It's Marie Curie, Mr. McCoy." Stated the naizily voice of Taryn.
"Thank you, Taryn, but I was asking Anna."
"Well, it's clear she doesn't know and she's just holding up class as usual, so I thought I'd help her out," Taryn said between smacks of bright pink gum.
"I appreciate your dedication, Miss Taryn, but how about you let me worry about the pace at which you're taught."
A few more smacks of gum filled the silence before Mr. McCoy returned his attention from Taryn and side-eyed Anna. He mouthed "put the phone away, please," before continuing. "An interesting factoid is that Marie Curie's belongings were so irradiated after her death that even to this day, direct exposure is considered deadly!"
Anna did as she was told and pocketed her phone. While it burned like an ember in her pocket she pulled out her text book and rested it on her desk. It wasn't till the bell rang did she realize she never even opened it.
"Miss Marie?" The exact words she was hoping not to hear from her teacher's mouth after the bell rang.
"Ooooh," Whispered Taryn as she and her band of harpies passed Anna by and out the door.
"Miss Marie, would you mind staying just a moment, please?"
Anna crammed her book back into her bag and half-carried, half-dragged the thing in front of Mr McCoy's desk before wordlessly plopping it down in front.
Mr McCoy removed his glasses and gently folded the arms shut. "What's going on, Anna?"
"Nothing," She said a little too quickly.
"Right. A whole lot of nothing is what I was getting out of you today. Normally, you are so quick to engage in class. You've never been one to be glued to your phone or not know the answer."
Anna's eyes continued to stare at his desk. Maybe she would get lucky and disappear into the wood grain.
McCoy ran a hand down his face and sighed. He propped his chin up with a curled fist. "There was a reason you didn't do your assignment this weekend, wasn't there? A reason that might have to do with what's on the news?"
This time Anna gave up and tried to disappear into the wood grain and into the trophy on her teachers desk. She could turn into just about anything by touching it. Maybe all she had to do was hold the trophy and then she too could be a foot tall and be made of gold.
"You don't need to tell me." He said after a beat. "But I wanted to at least ask if you were alright."
For the first time since starting class that day she met her teacher's eyes. She heard the words come out of her mouth before even thinking them. "Will that be all, Mr McCoy?"
McCoy sucked in a swift breath through his nose, bit his bottom lip, and gave a single nod. Following a pregnant pause, he replied, "Yes, Miss Marie, that will be all."
Anna slung her backpack over one shoulder and spun on the spot towards the door. She felt a cold enter her chest as heat rose to her neck and ears. Next she knew the door was slamming shut behind her.
"Well… it could be worse," Kitty said after mindlessly probing a formerly perfect mound of snow white mashed potatoes for a while with her fork.
"Worse?" Evan glanced around from under the brim of a ball cap Anna had never seen him wear before. Fingers twisted around and stroked his chin. His face looked in one direction while bloodshot eyes scanned the immediate area in the opposite direction. "I'm not sure how."
"Will you guys calm down?" Kurt shrugs his shoulders and smiles. "Nothing has happened. Well… not since yesterday, right?" He said over food he had hardly touched.
"I mean," Kitty pauses to probe her potatoes again while her eyes look into a dimension beyond our own. "Not, like, physically… I guess. Like, no one has accused me of anything or whatever."
"And you, Evan?"
"If they think we have superpowers, they aren't going to come after us outright, Kurt. They'd do it more subtly. Like spike our food or water and come after us when we're weak."
With that lovely thought, Anna noticed Kitty slowly set down her fork.
"There's nothing linking us to what happened, Ev." Kurt flashed a low-watt smile. "We're fine. If anything was going to happen, it would have by now."
"Nothing linking us besides us being there…" Evan mumbled as he continued to eyeball people from their table as if he were eyeing them down for some high noon duel.
"You're with me, right, Anna?"
Hearing her name mentioned was the first thing to bring her down to her body in a while. All day, she had felt like she was floating outside herself. Like someone had ripped the controls from her and she could only watch as this person tried to navigate her day for her.
"Has anyone seen the Brotherhood guys?" She heard herself say. It was something she'd noticed before they'd even sat down at their table, but for one reason or another, she hadn't had enough energy to manifest into words till that moment.
"I was wondering that too." Evan's chin stroking had migrated down to his neck. He was starting to show signs of patchy stubble. "Probably dipped because of the heat."
"What heat?" Kitty said with a certain rise in her voice as if she had spotted a cockroach. "It's not like they were there!"
Anna shrugged. "I think it's more of an excuse. Those guys always kinda had both feet out the door education-wise."
Evan leaned in, "I bet the Brotherhood is circling the wagons. Now that word of mutants is out, they're ready for the normies to lash back."
"The 'normies'?" Kurt air quoted. "Sure, you didn't mean 'muggles,' Evan? Come on, dude. Now non-mutants are 'normies'?"
"What are we supposed to call them?"
"How about what we've been calling them, 'people'. Just like us, the Brotherhood, everyone - we're all just people."
"I've got a feeling that's going to change real soon, Kurt."
Anna couldn't remember the rest of the conversation. It's not that she didn't want to be a part of it or listen, but she couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on her. Watching her. Judging her. All of them knew everything she did and thought.
"Sorry… ah," The Mississippi slipped through as she felt herself stand from the table, and the subsequent weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She heard the others say something, but she couldn't understand it over the ringing in her ears and the struggle to find her footing. She found herself next tossing her lunch, tray and all, into a trash can before shoving open a random set of doors to the school. With every muscle in her body tensed, she struggled to see anything beyond what was directly in front of her. It was when she finally found a set of stairs did she sit and feel the flood gates open.
Strangled breath wheezed from her throat, and hot tears welled in her eyes. She covered her face with the cool leather of her gloved hands.
This wasn't what she wanted. None of it. Every day, a living nightmare. Some days were better than others, sure… maybe, but now it is over. It was only a matter of time now before everyone found out who she was and who her friends were. All she wanted to do was to exist and now it was only a matter of time before the hammer came down again and again and again till she was nothing but dust.
Her lungs burned while her body felt ice cold. Anger mixed with despair and overwhelming and all-consuming fatigue. In a spike of adrenaline, she ripped off her gloves and tossed them as hard as she could. She was tired of feeling them touch her. She was tired of protecting the world from her. A world that hated her. A world that could go to hell.
Slowly, the burning began to ease up, and it became just a little easier to breathe. She could start to feel her arms again as well as the cold clamminess of her goose-pimpled flesh. The last thing she did was release her eyes from the protective cocoon of her hands. The world beyond was bright and harsh, and she could feel the weight of recent tears in the corners of her eyes.
Finally, she dared to open them, and what she saw wasn't what she expected. She didn't know exactly where she was in the school or even how exactly she got there, but there it was as clear as day on the wall opposite where she sat. It was a black and white printed image of her, or at least what she knew to be her. To everyone else, it was the mutant that took down the giant in a contest of strength. It was a still of her facing the camera with her arms crossed in front of her.
You couldn't make out her face beyond her short hair, but you could clearly see the crossed arms and battle-worn suit. At the very bottom of the still written in large bold text was the word "X-MAN".