At school the next day, Pietro cornered Brenda at her locker.
"You got any more of those books?" he asked.
"Books?" Then she remembered. "Oh. Yes, I have most of them."
"Can you lend me a couple? They're good."
Out of the corner of her eye, Brenda saw Kurt watching her with the pale-haired speedster. Hastily she said, "I have to go. I'll see you in Geometry."
"Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever." And he was gone again.
"Vhat vas zhat all about?" Kurt asked.
"Just homework," she said.
"Right."
Throughout the rest of the day, she was watched very closely by the other X-Men. Some of them weren't even properly sneaky about it. Evan, for instance. He went right up to her desk in History, before the bell rang, and said, "You really should stay away from those Brotherhood guys. They're real jerks. Especially Pietro."
"Pietro?"
"Yeah, I heard you were talking with him at your locker. What's up with that?"
Brenda almost laughed. He thought she had a thing for Pietro? That was about the silliest thing she had ever heard. "No! I mean, he asked me about a homework assignment. That's all. He is a jerk, now you mention it."
"You sure?"
Brenda nodded.
"Okay. Well—"
The bell rang, and Evan hurried to his seat before the teacher came in.
In English, she found a note on her desk: COME OVER TONIGHT.
She looked back. Todd waved at her from his seat three rows behind.
Carefully, she wrote CAN'T. TRAINING AFTER SCHOOL, folded the note over, wrote TODD T. on it, and passed it back.
Before it reached its destination, someone snatched it away. It would have been bad if it had been the teacher, but they would have gotten out of it with, at worst, a detention.
The person who had intercepted the note was a cheerleader, one of the legions of girls that followed Duncan Matthews around. Brenda wasn't sure of the name—Courtney or Brittany or something—but she knew the girl had it in for Todd.
"What's this?" Courtney/Brittany waved it in the air like a flag. "Toady's got a girlfriend!"
Todd slumped down in his seat, hiding his red face. "Shut up," he mumbled.
"Who is it, huh? Who's your little girly-whirly-friend, Toady?"
Everyone around them was laughing and making kissing noises. Brenda decided she had to do something . . .
But someone beat her to it.
"Leave him alone, Kristy," Rogue said, leaning across her desk to give the girl a death glare.
"Ooh!" Kristy turned on Rogue. "Is it you? Did you kiss him?"
"Mahnd yer own business."
"You wouldn't want us to tell Jean Grey," Brenda chimed in, "where Duncan was last weekend. When he was supposed to be looking at colleges?"
Kristy went pale, then red. "How did you know—"
Rogue smiled. "You shouldn't park in front of the 7-11 if you don't want to be seen."
The irate cheerleader turned away and stalked off, throwing the crumpled note to the floor. Todd scooped it up just seconds before the teacher came into the room.
It wasn't over. Brenda knew that without having to read the other girl's thoughts. She had just made her first enemy here. Well, there was a time to be Miss Nicey-Nice, and a time to stand up and fight. Jesus may have said turn the other cheek, but He never went to high school. Someone had to teach those brats a lesson, and it might as well be her.
Lunchtime rolled around, and Brenda was surprised to see Pietro and Lance waiting for her outside the cafeteria. "Hey, Bren, we've got a surprise for you," Pietro announced.
"What? Did you make me lunch?"
"Better. We set something up in the next room—oh, don't worry, nobody goes in there this time of day. We'll be safe . . ."
Brenda wasn't sure she should go with them. It wasn't as if she didn't want to, but all the warnings she'd received had made her wonder if there really was something to fear from these boys. What if this was some kind of trick?
"C'mon," Lance said, taking her by the arm. "No one's gonna see you. What are you afraid of?"
Good question. Was she more afraid of getting caught breaking the rules, or . . . or trusting someone she had been told couldn't be trusted? She looked at them; they seemed sincere enough.
"All right."
Todd was pacing back and forth across the empty classroom. "She's not gonna come," he moaned.
"She'll come," Fred said, in between bites of his enormous lunch.
"She won't! I know it!"
"But she likes you!"
This confused Todd. "Whaddya mean, she likes me? How can you tell?"
"I just can."
"Oh yeah? And you've had how many girlfriends?"
Fred just kept eating.
"I'll tell you how many—zero. So don't tell me—"
Todd heard the door open and dived under a desk. "Aaahh! I'm not here!"
"Todd, is that you?"
He poked his head up and saw a familiar face. "Brenda?"
"Why are you hiding under the desk?"
"I thought you might have been my science teacher. I kinda skipped class."
"I noticed."
"I refuse to dissect anything that looks like it might be related to me . . ."
"Uh oh," Brenda said. "That couldn't be good."
"If anyone comes looking for me, I ain't here, okay?"
Brenda saw the paperback sitting on the teacher's desk. It was a Pratchett—Soul Music, one of her favorites. But she didn't have time to start another one when they were still in the middle of—
Todd slapped The Colour of Magic down on the desk in front of her. "I marked where you left off," he said, "so we can read some more."
"Whose is that?" She nodded towards Soul Music.
"I got it out of the library," Pietro admitted. "Never been in there before. They have a whole bunch of these."
"Do they?" Brenda's admiration for the school went up a notch.
"Yeah. This one's pretty good so far. The best one, though, is The Fifth Elephant."
"I'm reading that now! Don't tell me how it turns out!"
"OK. But did you get to the part where that one dwarf—"
"Don't tell me!" Brenda insisted.
"All right, all right! I got up through that one so far. What's Jingo about?"
"Uh," Todd interrupted, "we don't have all day here!"
Pietro rolled his eyes. "Sheesh. We try and do you a favor . . ."
Brenda sat down and began to read Soul Music. She would save The Colour of Magic for another night. Soul Music, with its abundance of pop culture references, would go over well, she thought.
Todd had more fun in a thirty-minute lunch period than he ever had in his life. It was the first lunch period he'd ever had where he didn't have to worry about being stuffed in a locker or covered in his own food. And that was a good thing. The story was just a bonus.
When the bell rang, it was like the spell ended.
"Wecandothistomorrow," Pietro said. "Thisroomisn't—"
"Slow down," Brenda admonished him.
"This room isn't used between twelve and one," he said, slowly enough to be understood. "If you can sneak out of—what's your fifth-period class tomorrow?"
"History," she said.
"That's no good! McMarsters has eyes like a hawk! What about tomorrow night?"
"But won't Ms. Darkholme be home?"
"Yeah, but she'll be out of commission for at least another couple of days. The big hairy guy'll be gone, so we can do what we want."
"I'm not sure I can manage it again."
"They keeping you under house arrest now?"
"Guys!" Todd urged them. "We gotta get to class!"
Creed, meanwhile, was pacing the hospital corridor, waiting for Raven to be released. He wasn't expecting sunshine and lollipops, but when he finally saw her, she had a "don't-mess-with-me" look on her face.
"Aren't you glad to be out of this place?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes.
It was something he wasn't used to, her being so quiet. She wasn't the most talkative of people, but she was never like this, not even when she was angry with him.
"You'll feel better," he said, "when you're at home in your own bed."
But if she did, she sure didn't show it. She couldn't speak, but she did everything else she could to make his life miserable. She was forced to communicate using a note pad and a bicycle horn, and Creed wasn't sure which was more annoying.
He went to get himself a bottled water from the fridge, and that damn horn went off again.
Mumbling curses under his breath, he shuffled to the bottom of the stairs, and bellowed, "WHAT?"
Raven held up a sign that said: MAKE ME SOME ICE CREAM. MY THROAT'S KILLING ME!
Creed sighed and went back to the kitchen. "I swear," he muttered to himself, "that woman is going to drive me to the nuthouse one of these days!"
Balancing the ice cream bowl in one hand and the water bottle in the other, he trudged up the stairs to her room, where she sat up in bed and coughed incessantly.
"Here's your—" he started to say, before noticing that Mystique was coughing her lungs out. "Ah. You're really in rough shape, I see."
She gave him a look that said You THINK? It was one of the few times in his life that he was at a loss for words. He'd never seen her looking so miserable . . . even when she'd lost their baby. He gently placed the ice cream dish on the bedside table and went to her, looking into her eyes. One hand came up and smoothed out her hair.
She tried to speak, but couldn't say a word.
"It's okay, Rae," he said. "I'll stay here as long as you need me." He held her against him, feeling the warmth radiating from her body . . .
The door flew open. "Mystique!" Toad wailed. "Lance won't give me the remote con—" He saw them together, realized what was up, and stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare. Then, after he picked up his jaw off the floor, he said, "I'll just come back later."
"You do that," Creed growled. Mystique, of course, said nothing, but she glared at him meaningfully.
Toad sidled out of the room, and then ran downstairs. "Oh man, oh man! You won't believe what the Boss Lady and the babysitter are doing!"
"I'm watching this!" Lance shouted at him. Then the words sank in. "What are they doing?"
"It looked like they were . . . kissing."
Fred and Pietro looked up at that, sure that they'd heard him wrong. "No way," the speedster said.
"Kissing?" Fred grimaced. "Yeuch!"
"No, no, no! It's a good thing! Maybe this is the break we've been looking for! Maybe they'll be so wrapped up in each other that we can do whatever we want!"
"I don't think so," said a voice behind him.
Toad jumped back. He hadn't heard anyone behind him. That man could move.
"You're still grounded," Creed continued. "As for the rest of you, I'm watching you, so don't even think of trying anything!"
The boys looked at him, then at each other, then went back to their TV program.
Mr. Creed stayed on the rest of the week. He finally left Monday night, when Mystique was up and around again. She went back to school on Tuesday.
In the meantime, Todd had started leaving notes for Brenda in the crack between the gym water fountain and the adjacent wall. It was too risky for them to meet face-to-face at school anymore (except for classes, of course), because she was being watched.
Wednesday morning she found this:
MYSTIQUE'S DOING PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES ON WEDNESDAYS NOW. IF YOU CAN GET OUT, CAN YOU COME OVER? (P.S. BRING SOUL MUSIC)
She thought about it. She had started working at the bookstore on Monday and Wednesday nights, and Saturday afternoons. She was sure Nick would cover for her again.
Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she scribbled OK. PICK ME UP AT THE SHOP AT 6:30. Then she put the note back in the hiding place.
At six-thirty sharp, she saw Lance's car pull up in front of the shop. She looked over at Nick, who gave her the high sign. They had worked it all out: if anyone called or came in looking for her, Nick would explain that she'd gone round the corner to fetch him a cup of coffee. She would be back by nine, and Scott would pick her up out front at nine-thirty.
It was a perfect setup, and for almost six months, no one questioned it. In December, just before Brenda went home for Christmas, they had a little holiday party*, and were almost discovered, but the boys were able to keep Mystique distracted long enough for Lance to sneak Brenda out the door.
Brenda was very happy at the Institute. Her extra training sessions had paid off, and Logan was now teaching her the use of throwing stars (if she didn't slice her fingers off first). She sang in the choir at St. Catherine's, and had made friends with a girl in her French class named Trisha.
Then one night in March, just before Easter break, she got some news that would change everything.
*see "Waiting for the Hogfather