A Mutant Destiny

By EssentiallyRei

Chapter One: The Difference

It's a strange thing when you realize how different you are from everyone around you—everyone you know, everyone you live with, and especially everyone you love. The feeling alienates you and makes you bitter. You don't understand why you are different and why no one understands. You stop trusting not just everyone else, but also yourself. You turn to the one thing you know for certain: your difference.

My "difference" showed up when I was fourteen. I was already aware of the emergence of others like me—others with differences. Back then I was afraid of them. I only knew so much based on what I saw on the news, what I heard from my parents when they thought I wasn't listening, and of course from the rumors at school. There were so many rumors at school.

Like the rumor that explained why Jimmy Ackerman, a kid one grade older than me, stopped coming to school. His parents discovered that he too had a "difference". For weeks students speculated what his "difference" was. Maybe he could fly; maybe he shot lasers from his eyes. I always maintained that Jimmy had the ability to turn invisible and that's why no one had seen him even when they consistently rode their bikes past his house. Maybe he was still going to school, but as invisible Jimmy.

No one really found out what his powers were, or even if he had a power. Some of the kids that rode their bike past his house one day claimed that his parent's had bailed town; just packed up over night and left, never heard from again.

I was a lucky one. No one was around when I found out I had a difference. No one found out until I told them. And I did tell them, because I had to. I had no way of making the visions and sights from stopping.

Like I said, my "difference" manifested when I was fourteen. I was walking home from the bus stop, a little ways away from my house. I was always one of the last stops because my house was in the woods on the outskirts of town; the school had to get permission from the Transportation Office to put a bus stop right at the end of our driveway. The bus would drop me off at the entrance of a long dirt road, which was technically our driveway.

The small walk, a little less than a mile, was actually quite harmless. When I was younger my mother would walk me to and from the bus stop, but she stopped when I turned twelve. She said I was old enough to make the trip myself at that point. It was fine by me because I felt old enough to make the walk by myself. It spared me a few minutes of humiliation every morning from my fellow bus riders who found it funny that my mom would walk me to and from the end of our "driveway".

I don't know what I would have done if my mom had walked me home the day I found out I was different.

I had been feeling sick that day. A headache had started in my second hour gym class after I ran a couple of laps around the gymnasium. It wasn't too unusual and I thought it might go away after I ate something. I snuck a Nutri-Grain Bar into my mouth at the start of my next class. It didn't help; the headache actually got worse and my eyes became sensitive to the fluorescent lights. I ended up going to the restroom that hour and taking pain reliever. It helped, but not much.

By lunch time I was starving. I ate three times the amount of the horrible cafeteria than I usually do, using up three days worth of lunch money. I knew something was wrong with me when I even ate the mystery meat as my third helping. My friend Lucy Stakes said I looked like Goku from Dragon Ball Z devouring every bit of food in sight. I didn't know what she meant by that. My bob did not stick upward like Goku's hair.

I felt abnormally adrenalized for the next four hours. I blew through my math test like it was a big-hit teen novel. I spent the rest of the hour tapping my pencil on my desk until the teacher glared at me with a twitch in her eye. She probably didn't say anything because I was usually one of the quiet students; not disruptive at all. Yet, that day I found that movement and distractions subsided my headache. The more I moved, the less my eyes and head hurt. The more I made or listened to noise, the more I was distracted from the hurt.

However, Ms. Sajack the math teacher did pick up my test and started grading it before looking at any of the other papers. She looked disappointed when she couldn't scribble an F or a D at the top, I had annoyed her that much. It was an –A; she told me at the end of the class before I bolted out the door with unnecessary enthusiasm.

On the bus ride home I sat next to Hazael Nanders. He kept talking about the new set for Magic the Gathering coming out, but I was hardly paying attention. My head was humming and I kept tapping my feet, or jumping up when he said my name a couple of times. I felt like I was a ticking time bomb. It was a relief but also a disappointment when the bus reached his stop. He was gone so I didn't have to listen to him anymore, but he was also gone so didn't have a distraction from my headache anymore.

I was holding my head by the time the bus reached my stop. The bus driver might have asked me if I was okay as I stepped off the bus, but I don't remember clearly. I only held my humming head and started down the dirt road.

I don't know how long I walked for, but eventually I felt my head explode. Not literally, but with visions. I started seeing things in front of me that weren't in front of me. Like the woods rushing by like I was running through them low to the ground, like I had shrunk. Or I was up on a branch quickly moving my head in many directions until I fell to the ground picking up some twig. At one point I saw the back of someone's head as I flew towards it. The "someone" looked oddly familiar, but I became distracted by a different sight before I recognized the person.

Now, my father appeared before me; he was talking, but I could not hear him. My mother also appeared before me, nodding and talking, but I could not hear her.

Unlikely as it was, I felt like I was looking at all these sights—my mom, my dad, the woods, the ground, the inside of the bus, the sky for a second before I fell towards a tree—all of this I was seeing at once, and it was like it was with my own eyes. Like I had many eyes.

I tried calling out to my mom or dad who seemed to be right in front of me, and my voice was working perfectly, strong and vibrant; yet no one and nothing was responding to my call. I tried closing my eyes, and the sight of the dirt road did disappear; but all the other sights were still there. I couldn't focus and I felt like I couldn't close my eyes at all.

I didn't understand what was happening, so I did the only thing I could do. I willed my body to run, not knowing which vision in front of me would respond. I kept running, feeling my body move—the movement made me more self-aware. I could feel the dirt under my feet so I knew I still must be on the dirt road, even though I couldn't tell with my eyes, there being too much movement of random sights before me. My feet eventually smacked against something hard and I felt myself fall forward. After that I blacked out.

That was the day I learned I was different. That was the day I found out I was a mutant.

My parents must have found me wherever I tripped, hit my head, and became unconscious, because I awoke on the couch in the living room. My mom was right over me with my head in her lap as she held a bag of ice to the side of my forehead. When she saw me awake she gasped and said my father's name.

"Hank, she's awake. Oh, thank god. Are we taking her to the hospital? What did the doctor say?"

My dad was on the phone; I could hear him in the background asking questions like, "How long does it take for the swelling to go down?" Apparently I had a nasty bump on my head; it was a surprise that they didn't take me straight to the hospital when they had found me. They only called to see what they needed to do.

"Tessa, how do you feel, honey?" My mom asked sick with worry.

I barely answered, mumbling the words, "What happened to Jimmy," meaning Jimmy Ackerman. I wanted to know what happened to him and why he had stopped coming to school. I don't know why I thought it had anything to do with me and what had just happened.

"Oh, no! Hank, she doesn't know what she's saying," my mom panicked. "I think she has a severe concussion. We need to get her in the car right now and take her to the hospital."

My mind had started to race with my own kind of worry, because I knew what was wrong with me. Especially as I stared at Mom, but I could also see through my mom's eyes as she stared at me. I could see myself through my mom's eyes. It was a horrible and dreadful thing being able to see the realization on my own face—the realization that I could see through other people's eyes like they were my own; but there I was, wide-eyed and fascinated that I was able to see myself through my mom.

Thinking back, I wish I could have slapped that fourteen year-old me, because the next words out of my mouth were, "I'm a mutant."

My mom froze and stared down at me with horror. After a moment of blinking at me, and I at her, she said, "No," with a whisper. "You've hit your head. That's all. There's nothing wrong with you."

"Mom," I said firmly, staring at myself with my mom's eyes as I said it, watching my mouth move as the words, "I am most definitely a mutant," came out.

"No," she said more angrily. "This isn't funny, Tessa. You could be seriously injured right now. Quit joking around."

There wasn't much else to say but, "And what if I'm right? What if I am a mutant? Are you and Dad going to take me to the hospital where they'll find out? And when they do, they'll micro-chip me, maybe even lock me up, and then tell the news. Everyone will know. The face of your daughter will be on the news like a criminal's. Do you want that to happen, Mom?"

My face as I said these things surprised me. It remained calm. Watching me through my mom's eyes seemed to help keep me under control.

By this time, my dad was off the phone. He had grabbed his coat and was saying, "The doctor said we should bring her in just in case." My mom didn't move. "Beatrice, we need to go," he insisted as he finished putting his coat on. "Just take the ice bag with us."

"Hank," my mom said softly. It sounded like there was a sob lodged in her throat. "We can't. We can't take Tessa to the hospital."

"Of course we can," he said not understanding. "It's okay. I'll carry her to the car if she needs help." He looked at me. "Do you need help getting to the car, Tessa?" It was when he looked at me that my point of view changed; I could see myself from his eyes now, not my mom's. I guess it was that my mind's focus went from my mom to my dad.

My mom finally burst into tears. This confused my dad quite a bit.

"Beatrice, what's wrong?" he asked, kneeling down next to us. It was weird seeing him move his eyes from me to Mom, again and again. The picture of mom crying and me lying in her lap looking as still as an alerted bunny, was actually quite comical. Thankfully, I didn't laugh. Like I said, seeing myself through someone else's eyes seemed to make me more aware of my expressions, and I managed to remain completely calm.

Since my mom was preoccupied sobbing into her hand now, I bravely answered for her. "I'm a mutant, Dad. If we go to the hospital… who knows what they'll do to me."

My dad tensed to the word mutant more than my mom had. His eyes focused on me more intensely like he was looking at me for the first time. The one interesting thing about my ability, which I was only just beginning to understand, is that I cannot feel any sensory from the eyes that I "borrow"—as Professor Xavier described it when we finally had the pleasure of meeting. It is only their sight that I borrow.

So as my dad looked down at me, I could only see what he was seeing; I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. His expression, however, which I could still see through my own eyes, was deadly.