A/N: This chapter isn't really filled with excitement, but I think it will be really enteresting to follow Marie's journey prior to arriving at the mansion, because I've never seen it done before and I'm all for breaking the norm. Not to fear though, there will only be two or three more chapters before she bumps into Wolvie. After that, expect a lot of interaction between John, Bobby, and Rogue. Plenty of fluff with ensue with bits of angst thrown in for good measure. Enjoy!
The outside world whizzed past so fast it became a blur of color; bright blue for the sky, emerald green for the grass, tan for the wheat fields, and dark gray for the never-ending speedway. Lightly calloused hands are anxiously groping at the steering wheel, breathing deeply to fight off the nerves. There's a lady in the passenger seat. Ms. Harris, the widow. In this small of a town, it was impossible not to know every single person who lives within it, even the crones at the DMV. Sweat was collecting between the smooth material of the steering wheel and the nervous hands. The image was so clear, like watching a movie. But then something went wrong with the film. The reality of the scene began to break, disrupt. Suddenly Anna Marie D'Ancanto wasn't looking through the eyes of the driver anymore. She was looking at him. At Cody. Cody Robbins. The boy she had hurt. The boy her parents had driven to the hospital. The boy in the coma. . .
The movie kept switching back and forth now. Malfunctioning. It went from the pleasant image of Cody driving his dad's red pick-up truck as it really happened just three weeks ago, then shifted to a horrific alternate. The truck sped up. It was going way too fast. And Cody's face….his face….It was all wrong. His green eyes weren't warm or glittering in jest, they were dull and lifeless. His skin was turning blue. She could see each and every one of his veins as they swelled under his flesh. And then the video snapped back to normal again. In an instant it was as if the 'glitch' had never happened. She was only seeing Cody driving during his test, like she was watching a video camera attached to his forehead or something. The sun shining, the trees darting by as the truck sped down the road. But the truck was speeding up. They were going way too fast! They had to slow down! And Cody was freaking out again. His hands gripped at the steering wheel urgently, his foot dropped down like a heavy stone onto the pedal. Cody's body was twitching and his veins were popping out again. The bluish green lines throbbed through his tanned flesh. His eyesight was diminishing. He was blacking out. Marie didn't know what was happening anymore. She couldn't see, but, god, could she feel it. The pain was nearly unbearable. She heard Ms. Harris screaming. A moment of enlightenment hit her. She knew the ending to this movie before it came. Cody was going to crash into a tree or another car….it was all her fault.
Marie's eyes snapped open and if her throat hadn't been so raw from crying, she would have been screaming Cody's name. She was thankful that the best her vocal cords could manage was a weak and strangled noise of protest, because the last thing she wanted to deal with was her parents rushing in to check on her.
Ever since that traumatic afternoon, her parents had been walking on eggshells around her. They would check in on her every hour on the hour like any good, concerned parents would, but their mannerisms poorly masked the fact that they were scared of her now. Of what she had done. What she could do. Her mother had slipped up several times the first three days, almost touching Marie countless times, only to cause her daughter to shriek until the woman was safely two feet away again. Her father, on the other hand, wouldn't even walk past the threshold of her room. He would just linger in the entrance, telling her when dinner was ready or asking if she needed anything. He could never quite look her in the eyes, and she could guess why. None of them had said it, no one wanted to admit it. The 'M' word had never been something allowed in her house. Just like gay marriage, it had always been a topic off-bounds under their roof.
Marie swallowed hard at the thought of her parent's rejection. Her throat ached from the action. It stung until she reached over for the glass of water on her nightstand. Drinking the last of the cold water greedily, she set the glass down again and collapsed back onto her mattress. Marie curled herself into a ball, willing herself to fall back to sleep. Feeling exposed and helpless, she tugged her red comforter closer to her chin, shivering despite the thick Mississippi heat.
After fifteen minutes of trying in vain to drift back to sleep, Marie huffed and rolled over onto her back. She glanced at the clock: 3:47 a.m. Brown eyes move to gaze at the ceiling without focus, a frown fixed upon her rosy lips. During the first week, Marie had been too scared to sleep for more than an hour at a time. Her dreams haunted her until she had given herself a bad case of insomnia.
Becoming frustrated with her own lack of sleep and the obvious fact that tonight was not her night to make up that missed sleep, Anna Marie kicked the thick comforter off of her body, down to pool around her bare feet. She sat up, earning a loud creak from her mattress. She stared warily at the computer that sat across the room. She had left it on before drifting off, so now it stared back with an unwaveringly bright glare.
Anna Marie decided that if she couldn't sleep, she could at least put a dent in the homework that was piling up during her absence from school. Her parents had been gracious in letting her skip school for a week after Cody's incident, but she was starting to worry that their leniency was beginning to dwindle, whereas her pile of homework was multiplying.
The insomniac left the warmth of her bed for the cold plastic of the chair that sat in front of her wooden desk. Anna Marie leaned across the wooden surface to shuffle through the stack of papers that littered the cluttered space. She leaned back against her chair again when she had found the yellow folder she had been searching for. Cursor hovering over the Microsoft Works Word Processor icon, Anna Marie hesitated. Her buddy list was still open and one of her friends from school was online.
Why anyone would willingly be awake at this hour was beyond her, but she was itching to talk to someone who wasn't her parents about the mess she had created. Her bottom lip quivered as she mentally debated whether or not to send the girl a message. She and Anna Marie weren't all that close, but they were civil enough….but what if she had heard about Cody already? What if everyone at school knew? Certainly, they had been informed about Cody's condition. He was one of the favorites in their grade amongst all of the teachers and students, but what excuse had they been fed about how he ended up that way? Had they been told it was all her fault or did they not know that she had anything to do with it? Anna Marie's uncertainty swayed her and she decided to pass on IMing anyone that night.
For the next two hours. Anna Marie tried her best to make some headway on her essay about Emily Dickinson. She didn't get past the introduction…English had never been among her strongest classes…She huffed in frustration, needing to take a break to keep from pulling her hair out.
The troubled teenager clicked open her internet browser, typing in the URL to her email account. AOL's main page loaded after a minute and a half, her computer wasn't the fastest on the market, to reveal no new messages. However, before she navigated away from the page, intent on playing some games on Pogo to relieve some pent up stress, something caught her eye. In the news slideshow, an update on the 'mutie' situation had been posted.
Her curiosity got the best of her, and even though she knew it was a bad idea to begin with, she clicked on the article. From there Anna Marie read every bit of information she could get her hands on until she scared herself so much at the prospect of being one of these so publicly hated creatures that she knew she wasn't going to be able to sleep peacefully ever again. About the time she came to this conclusion, the sun was shining through her windows.
A/N: Well, there it is. A special thanks to my beta, Knight of the Living Dead. She's the most amazing fishy ever. Please post reviews, they make me more excited about the story, thus way more updates are posted. :D