Disclaimer: The X-Men aren't mine. Boo-hoo. If I did own them, Scott wouldn't have died at the end of X3.

A/N: This is my first published attempt at fanfiction. So, I'm sorry if my plotlines are a little cheezy. Please review, but refrain from flaming me. Be nice. I mean no harm.

Chapter 1 - Radio

"Theresa! THERESA!"

I turned around and saw Willow Erickson running after me down the hall. "Well, hurry up," I called to her, tapping my foot impatiently. "I'm gonna be late."

Willow stopped beside me, panting slightly. "Haven't you heard of the term 'wait for me'?" she asked breathlessly.

"Come to think of it," I mused, "I believe I have. Why? You didn't say that, did you?"

Willow crossed her arms. "I don't know why you're so pissed at me, Theresa. You were fine this morning. Why are you all of a sudden ready to rip my head off just for asking you to wait."

I sighed. "It's not you I'm mad at, Willow, it's Mrs. Nenna. Oh, I can't stand her!"

"What did she do this time?" Willow asked me apologetically.

I interlocked my fingers and squeezed them together, an action that was my favorite form of stress relief. "I just get so damn sick of being ordered around all period!" I said through clenched teeth. "Every day, it's 'Theresa, the homework,' 'Theresa, pass out the red pens so we can correct our quiz,' 'Theresa, come here and show us what's wrong with this sentence.'" I curled my lip. "'Theresa,'" I sing-songed, almost making myself sick, "'go jump off a bridge with fifty-pound lead weights tied to your ankles.' 'Theresa, go stand in front of a Mack truck filled with shrapnel and high explosives.'" I whirled around and started walking again. "I swear, if I ever get the chance, I'm so going to kill that lady," I muttered darkly.

Willow was silent for a moment. "Well, you seem almost more miserable than me. However, it happens that I have the Royal Court of Ditz in my English class, though, so I just might beat you."

I stopped and stared at her. "How many of them are in your class?" I demanded. "You may actually have it worse off than me."

"Let me think," she said. She muttered to herself, counting on her fingers. "Ten," she said at last, "in a class of twenty. That girl that always wears the shirts that are too tight and flirts with Alex and that Mitchell guy sits behind me, too, and Alex sits behind her."

"Oh my god, you poor child." I reached over and patted her on the shoulder. "No one deserves that." I looked heavenward. "Except for maybe Mrs. Nenna…but she deserves worse…"

Willow stepped in front of me, put her hands on my shoulders and shook me. "No, no, and definitely not, Theresa. Don't even think of trying it. Don't you remember what happened last time?"

I winced. How could I not remember? "I've learned since then" seemed to come out of my mouth, though.

Last year, which was eighth grade, my Social studies teacher – Miss Kiley – had pissed me off so badly that I had vowed to get revenge before the end of the year. So, two weeks before school ended, I…uh…snuck into her room while she was off getting lunch. I took her grade book and hid it under one of the large potted plants that adorned the room and always seemed to make me sneeze. Then I took all the homework she had collected that morning and hid it behind books on various bookshelves. Needless to say, I forgot about the fact that there were little things called security cameras in the halls that saw me come and go, and I earned detentions every day until school ended. However, I got a great amount of personal satisfaction knowing that she needed to get a new grade book because hers was ruined, and knowing that she never did find the papers.

"Well, apparently you haven't, because you're about to go and do it again!" Willow took her hands off my shoulders and crossed her arms. "I'm not backing you up this time, Theresa. Distracting Miss Kiley was definitely enough for me, and I don't want to get in trouble again!" Trouble? Ha! All that happened to her was that Miss Kiley told her never to get into a philosophical discussion with her again.

The bell rang. "Shit!" I said loudly. "Now I'm late!" I shot off down the hall, silently cursing Mrs. Nenna with every tardy step I took.

I skidded to a stop in front of room 220. The door was closed and locked, so I was forced to sacrifice my pride and knock.

Mr. White, my World Studies teacher, didn't glance at the door, though he must have heard me. I knocked again – and again and again and again. Finally, the person at the end of the row by the door either took pity on me or got sick of my knocking (though I like to think that it was pity) and let me in. I slipped inside and shut the door, then tiptoed across the room to my seat. Mr. White had already put notes up on the white board, so I dug my notebook and pen out of my backpack and started trying to turn his full sentences into notes.

My opinion is that the teachers for the freshmen classes need to learn that we aren't limited to the brain capacity of sixth-graders, and that we are capable of taking notes from a lecture. They all seemed to either put the notes on the white board or projector, or, in the case of Mrs. Nenna and my health teacher, Mrs. Rand, spoon feed us the notes on pre-typed pages that they handed out. They should know that we're smarter than that!

"Theresa!"

My head snapped up almost before my mind had time to process the fact that Mr. White had said my name. "What is the capital of Lebanon?"

"Uh…" I tried to race through all my past geography lessons, but I felt that I was having a complete brain fart, and all I could think of was 'I'm hopeless.' "Um…Beirut?"

Mr. White just grunted, which I didn't quite know how to interpret. Was I right? Wrong? I hadn't the foggiest. However, he scribbled my answer up on the board, so I assumed that the capital of Lebanon was indeed Beirut, and that I must have sounded uncharacteristically smart.

The rest of the class passed by without incident. I got to be silent after my lucky answer, which was perfectly fine with me – I didn't talk much, unless I knew you, and if I didn't and I did decide to talk, I talked way too much and people got mad at me. For some reason, I just couldn't win at life.

When the bell for lunch rang, the whole class – with perfect and unplanned choreography – put our stuff away, stood up, and left, all at the exact same time. Oh, why do you never have a camera when you need one?

I shuffled down the hall and dropped my backpack in front of locker number 800. "Seven…thirteen…twenty-two," I muttered, twisting the combination lock. I pulled up on the latch. The latch came up all right, but the door didn't move, no matter how hard I tugged it.

"Oh, come on!" I yelled, kicking the thing as hard as I possibly could. That, of course, didn't accomplish anything except for making me wonder whether my big toe was still in one piece or not. "Just open for god's sake!" I punched it. On the same token, that only succeeded in hurting my knuckles, which didn't improve my mood at all.

I had been standing there for a minute or so when I finally figured out what was wrong: Someone had put several strips of packing tape across my locker door, effectively keeping me out. I scowled and ripped the stuff off and finally managed to get the damn thing open. I dumped the books I didn't need out of my backpack into it, where they fell on top of the disorganized pile that I already had going, then I slammed it shut again and marched off down the hall.

By the time I got to the cafeteria, I was ready to murder the first person I saw. I was last in line, and all that was left by the time I got there was a slice of pizza, some relatively normal-looking nachos slathered with cheese, and a very scrawny hot dog that looked almost moldy. I opted for the nachos.

"Day going any better?" Willow inquired as I sat down next to her.

My response was a noncommittal grunt. I prodded at the nachos. Now that I studied them, I discovered that they weren't nachos – they were cleverly disguised pieces of thin cardboard. There is no way that you can leave a dent on a nacho with your finger. I'm sorry, but chips are supposed to break when you do that, not squish.

"How was health?" I asked Willow, trying to take my mind off of my miserable existence.

Willow snorted. "Oh, it was health. We started class with a discussion of the female reproductive system." She grimaced. "Did I mention that I'm the only girl in my class?"

I patted her on the shoulder. "Poor soul. You have fun with that class." I remembered the tape on my locker. "Oh, and somebody taped my locker shut during third period. Any ideas?"

"Nope." Willow shoved her greasy paper plate into her empty milk carton. "Somebody went through my backpack while I was in the bathroom, though. Maybe the same person?" She shook her shaggy brown hair out of her face. "Let's talk about something less depressing."

"Alright…" I grinned. "How about the fact that after this, we get to go home?"

I laughed out loud at the look on Willow's face when I said that. "I completely forgot!" she said shrilly, which she does when surprised. "Today's a half-day! And I don't have the keys to my house!" She dropped her head down onto the table. "I! Am! So! Stupid!" she said, punctuating each word with another hit.

I put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her back up. "Don't beat yourself up about it," I said, noting my unintentional pun. "Just come home with me and call your mom."

She smiled weakly. "Theresa, you are my hero." She stood up, aimed at the trash can five feet away, and chucked in her milk carton. "Score!"

The bell – which was coincidentally just above our heads – went off with an enormous clatter. We both clamped our hands over our ears, trying to block out the horrendous sound, but it didn't work. We both ran, me having to take one hand off of my head in order to pick up the cardboard – I mean nachos – and dump them in the garbage.


"Theresa, it's time to eat!"

I looked up from the book I was reading. "Just a sec!" I hollered back. As usual, I had to make a mad dash around the room for a bookmark. I found one, stuffed it into my book, tucked the book under my arm, and raced downstairs.

"Theresa!" my mom bellowed again just as I reached the bottom of the steps. "There-" She saw me. "Oh, there you are. Come set the table."

I groaned, but followed her out of the kitchen. I didn't argue with my parents. Not usually, anyway.

There was no sign of my older brother Chris in the kitchen. Sighing, I pulled some napkins out of the holder and went about setting the table. Willow had been picked up by her mom about an hour ago, and I was still wishing she were here to talk to.

"Hey Mom, can you turn on the radio?" asked Chris as he walked in the back door.

"Sure, honey," Mom said absently, reaching up and hitting the power button of the radio that resided on the top of our refrigerator. "Theresa, can you get some flour out of the freezer? There's no more in the can."

As I walked by Chris and into the other room, I dropped a handful of silverware into his hands. "Merry Christmas!" I said cheerily. "And Happy Birthday!"

All I got from that was a scowl deeper than the one he usually directed at me.

When I came back, bag of flour in hand, my brother was sitting in the comfy chair and listening intently to the radio, just like he did every night. I dropped the bag of flour onto the counter, then picked up the silverware – which was lying on a corner of the table – and proceeded to distribute it about the table. I hadn't really expected Chris to do it, but I sometimes have this little thing that lives inside my heart that I like to call 'hope'.

I heard the computer chair rolling, and a few seconds later my father walked into the room and sat down at the table. He started chatting with Mom, and Chris gave him a glare to match the ones he gave me. I guess he couldn't hear the radio. Neither could I, for that matter. I decided at that point to be gracious, so I turned it up.

"There has been another vote on the Mutant Registration Act today…"

As quickly as I had turned it up, my father turned it off. "That's not good dinnertime listening," he said cheerfully. Both Chris and I glared at him that time, and he flinched visibly.

"I was listening to that," Chris said quietly. It was the first time I had heard him speak in about a week.

"Why do you listen to that, anyway?" my mother asked him. "All anybody talks about on the news now is the mutant problem, and that's not very interesting, since we don't like mutants and we know that the vote is going towards registration, and definitely not as wholesome as good old fashioned dinner table talk."

I decided at that point that the scowl was going to be stuck on Chris's face permanently, and that his glare would eventually fry someone's brain. "I'm not hungry," he growled. Then he marched out of the room and up the stairs. Mom harrumphed and followed him.

"Honestly, how rude," Dad said, drumming his fingers on the table. "Do we get glasses, Theresa, or are we going to have to lap up our water out of bowls like dogs?"

"Oh, sorry," I said, reaching up and opening the cabinet where we kept the glasses. "Maybe you shouldn't have shut off the radio."

He shook his head. "He shouldn't spend so much time listening to that stuff," he said. "For all that he cares about that Registration Act, even though it's going to go through and there's no point in listening to updates, somebody who didn't know him might think he was a mutant himself."

I turned my head from the sink and stared at him. "Why don't you like mutants?" I asked quietly, almost sounding like my brother. "Why do you care so much about the Registration Act anyway? Why do you think that it will pass?"

"Well, honey, because mutants are dangerous and terrible people, and – "

I never got to find out what he was about to say, because at that moment, screaming erupted from upstairs and stopped all conversation.

"Am I not allowed to decide that I'm not hungry and I want to sit up here and listen to the news?"

"Well, Chris Andrew, you are going to have to sit down there at that supper table with the rest of the family, without the news, even if you're not hungry!" I didn't think Mom had ever gotten that mad at someone before, except for maybe me when I was six and had cut up all her bras and used them to make doll clothes.

"You know what? I hate you! I hate you all! You and Dad and Theresa! You're all trying to make me into something I'm not! Why can't you let me be myself for a change?" I heard something slam against the wall, and though I couldn't begin to guess at what it was, it sounded heavy.

"You're one of them?" my mother shrieked.

"Why do you care, Mom?" Chris shouted back. "Why would it matter? Wouldn't you treat me just the same? Wouldn't I still be your son? Wouldn't I? Huh? HUH?"

Then the shouting stopped. Everything in the house was silent. Everything was motionless. Could Chris really be a mutant? However, if he was, I couldn't blame him. My parents hated mutants with as much passion as…well, a cat hates swimming. That was the best analogy I could come up with.

But, as funny as it sounded, I felt rather close to him as he came down the stairs. I could almost feel the anger and the pain at what had just happened, the fear of being disowned, or worse, killed. Then I shook my head, and the feeling was gone as quickly as it had come.

Needless to say, the rest of the night was spent in almost total silence.