Author's Note: Oh, a brand-new story feels so good to publish! I've had parts of this one written out for years and finally got enough of it together to put up. While X-Men are not my intellectual property, every one of these story ideas are mine. Enjoy, and please review!
Something Out of Nothing
"Have you seen the new girl?" The whispers blew through the small New England campus like an autumn gale, swirling in and out of nearly everyone's conversation. It was the middle of September, and a particularly striking student had just transferred to the college, well beyond the regular admittance date. "She's beautiful," some reported in awe, while others scoffed bitterly at the sight of her. More than one jealous female secretly brooded, I guess it's easy to get in when you look like that, even if it's been months since admissions closed. Of course, no one could know that this new student had graduated high school at the top of her class, and was coming in to the college with a 4.0 GPA. But why had a girl who was so obviously intelligent not applied with the rest of her classmates back in the spring? This question and others like it merely added to the air of mystery that she seemed to be cloaked in; the only thing that was certain was that no one had ever come through the school like her.
...
She could feel their eyes everywhere she went. When Ororo Munroe had been accepted into the college so unorthodoxly, she'd realized that coming in almost three weeks late to begin classes would be difficult, but it wasn't until actually moving into her dorm room that she discovered how alone she could feel there. "Hey Miss Thing, that used to be Amy's room," the girl across the hall snapped at her as she was carrying boxes in the first day.
"I'm sorry?"
"Don't act like you don't know. Don't act like you didn't jump at the chance to get a single when you found out someone got forced into going to rehab!"
The young girl stammered, not knowing what to say. "I…I had no idea. I never even knew that someone used to live in this room-"
"Like hell you didn't, you white-haired freak. What happened, your mama hit the crack pipe too hard when she was pregnant with you, and you came out looking like an ancient bitch? Stay out of my sight. That's Amy's room, and you swooped in and stole it from her. Now she's not even gonna have a place to stay when she comes back!" With that, the girl slammed the door shut, the sound echoing all the way down the hall.
Ororo was dumbfounded. She meekly slipped into her room and closed the door behind her, putting her box down and turning towards the mirror. I should just dye it; I've always said that. She touched her waist-length hair, thickly pulled back into a curling ponytail. People had always been quick to comment on the unique color of her hair; after all, what other eighteen year old had a completely silver mane? Although it suited her, accenting her deep brown skin and cerulean eyes, it had been hard to grow up so obviously different from the other children around her. She had kind of hoped that with all the experimenting that college students do with piercings, tattoos, and hair color that she wouldn't stick out as much, but that clearly wasn't going to be the case. She tore open the box she'd been holding and put a baseball cap on, pulling her dense ponytail through the hole in the back, hoping it would make her mane less noticeable. She adjusted it in the mirror before moving back over to her door to scan her peephole for any sign of her angry neighbor. Upon seeing that the entrance to the girl's room was still tightly closed, Ororo quickly escaped to bring up the rest of her things, hoping against hope that she wouldn't meet the offensive girl again that day.
