Two: M'gann
A blur of yellow and red streaks across the kitchen as Megan turns around from her bowl of cereal. She jumps at the sudden wind, but regains her senses soon enough to stop the sploshing milk with her telekinesis.
Wally, oblivious to almost ruining Megan's meal, slows to a stop.
"Hey, beautiful, what's up?" he greets the other redhead. He grabs her by the shoulders and twirls her around. Megan suppresses the milk in her bowl once again as she spins with him. She laughs at his attitude.
How can he always be so cheerful?
"Why are you so happy?" she asks him as she retrieves the spoon which she hadn't been able to stop from falling, having been too focused on saving her cereal milk.
She looks into his eyes for answers, and clamps down on her desire to read his mind.
Megan loves her life on Earth. She loves her uncle, and her team, and her school, and even the food.
The only problem, the major shift in lifestyle that she can't live with all the time, is the lack of that feeling that binds her to the rest of the souls around her.
She wants to connect to this new home which she loves so much in the same way she did on Mars.
On Mars, the word 'mind' has the same connotation as the word 'heart' on Earth. For Martians, it is the mind, not the heart, which is the soulful part of your being that encompasses compassion, and intensity, and turmoil, and every other nameable emotion.
On Earth, you keep people in your heart always. On Mars, you keep people in your mind in a true extra-psychical nature that ties you together and lets you know that they exist just as you exist, that you are not alone and are understood and are loved.
On Earth, she can't have this ever present connectedness with her loved ones (besides Uncle J'onn).
There is no mind-heart that always clings to the people who she holds dear and that hurts. It feels, constantly, like a part of her is missing. It feels like her friends are not real, merely characters she's invented in her playtime stories.
That mind-heart is her lifeblood, her way of directly empathizing with those she cares for. Without the mind link, the world feels dull and cold. It is the longing and ever present pain which gnaws within her mind-heart that makes her do what she does next.
She sets the dirty spoon in the sink and turns around to face her friend, her real friend who is there even if she can't feel him...yet. She opens her mind-heart and lets him in.
And then she feels the real way, the way that having someone in your heart is supposed to be.
She lives the day that Wally claimed made him so happy.
Wally had stood in front of his school and waited for the adorkable girl from science class who had stuffed a note into his locker.
It had said: 'Meet me at the basketball hoop. I want to talk about us.'
Megan knows the worry that this is all one huge trick as if it is her own. Wally and herself are interchangeable as the anxiety laps into excitement and then back into fear.
Will Linda come to or will she later post on Facebook about how she duped that silly ADD kid into thinking she cared?
And then the object of desire had rounded the corner, making herself open to view. She had looked beautiful because she was there, because she hadn't lied or played games.
The mind-heart flutters as it feels the memory of Linda walking toward him...her...them?
Linda's long shiny hair had framed her face just so and her graceful footfalls had reminded Wally...M'gann...who?...of how Linda must be an amazing dancer.
The dance. Why is it so important this year? The mind-heart knows; the dance is important because you had met her. Wally...M'gann...they would never had thought to make a fool out of themselves by stepping on feet, drinking bad punch, wearing silly clothes, and being cooed at by Aunt Iris.
But now? The mind-heart wants what it wants. All that had suddenly seemed so beautiful the moment you met her in class and grazed your hands as she pulled the beaker out of your grip.
You need to have that experience at the dance with Linda with all of your being.
She had reached you and grappled your hand into her own. Is this it? Can dreams come true?
The mind-heart can't take the anticipation. The blood pumps and makes you light headed.
"Wally," she had whispered, "I'm so sorry. I can't go to the dance with you."
The mind-heart breaks into a thousand little pieces. M'gann cuts herself with one of the rigid remains as she tries to disconnect from Wally's suffering.
Why can't Linda want what I need? What did I do wrong? Who was I kidding?
Inadequacy buries itself down deep into the bruised mind-heart.
Why can't I just have a good day for once?
M'gann lets the connection drop. Wally looks at her with pleading eyes, but Megan doesn't know what he needs to hear from her to make it better.
She can't know, now that he's returned to being unreachable, not fully there, a shadow of a soul that M'gann must remind herself is real and breathing and feeling and thinking.
M'gann thinks his of his words. He had said he was happy.
"It's just that kind of a day."
How can he always be so cheerful? Wally, how can your mind-heart be so beautiful?
M'gann searches Wally's eyes for what to do. She decides to pretend that the whole encounter never happened. She doesn't say anything and just makes him his own bowl of sugary cereals, one on top of another.
She hopes her mind-heart is making the right decision. As the room grows quiet, she wonders if she should have told him how beautiful he really is.
She doesn't say anything and lets him twirl her around again before he leaves.