It was raining. And dark. It felt like being at home again. I always find rain calming and I concentrated on the sound of it hitting the windows to try and stop the tremors in my hands. Class had started just five minutes ago, my first in this strange little school. Ms. Munroe, a beautiful African lady with stark white hair and a slight accent had shown me to the room after everyone had already arrived. I'd smiled and tried not to look too uncomfortable, but it was hard with all those eyes staring at me, and I felt huge and clumsy next to such a petit woman. And just when I thought it couldn't have been any more awkward, my teacher turned out to be the guy I'd thrown the contents of my stomach all over last night. My face went hot and I started sweating, and not in a ladylike fashion. Naturally, I was seated in the front of the class so they could all burn holes in the back of my head with their stares. I know I'm overreacting, there are only about 12 other people in my class, but twelve's enough.
Maths lessons could go one way or another, either you got a good teacher and it was fun (at least I find math fun sometimes) OR it could be tedious and mind numbing. This looked to be the former. Mr. Summers seemed to be a good teacher; he was smiling and wrote on the board at an angle instead of completely turning his back to us. He'd set us a few problems in the book and discovered that half the class has forgotten how to add fractions.
"You can't add apples and pears and get an applepearifruit, just like you can't add fourths and fifths and get ninths." He was saying, coming around his large oak desk to prop himself up on its edge. He was wearing a dark blue shirt today, tucked neatly into khaki trousers, with a brown leather belt and shoes. "So, you throw the apple on the floor and stamp on it" He trod savagely on his imaginary apple " And you throw the banana on the floor and stamp on that too" He jumped around violently, crushing the poor make-believe banana into a pulp, "And you get the squishy pulpy junk from both and slap it all together and stir it up, and measure that." He concluded. I was giggling and so was the rest of the class. "In other words, you need a common denominator."
Someone tapped my shoulder and a square of folded white paper tumbled down my chest and landed in my lap. It read 'New Girl' in messy writing on the front. My face went all hot again and I opened it, concealing it under my desk our of my teacher's view.
What's ur name? Where u from? What's ur power? I'm Rogue, would you like to eat with @ lunch 2day? John thinks ur cute =0P Kitty says Hi too. W/B
I grinned and flipped the paper over, smoothing it on my notebook to hide it, and started writing. Suddenly the paper was coming off the desk of its own accord, my pen pulled out of my hand and landed neatly in my pencil case, and the note floated up and over the heads of the students next to me, and straight into Mr. Summers' hand. My mouth hung open and he flipped the paper over and read the note quickly.
"I'm sorry. This is Angela, our new student. And I'm sure she'd be glad if you'd show her around at lunch, Rogue, but I thought you'd learnt your lesson after last time. Pass them in Hank's class."
"Sorry Mr. Summers." Rogue, I assumed, said in a Southern accent. I'd heard those on in the movies, she sounded like the wife of one of those old plantation owners. I looked over my shoulder at her; her voice hardly matched her looks. She wore all black, long silk gloves that went past her elbows and a low cut shirt that showed a little more than I'd ever dare to. Her hair was almost like mine though, dark brown and cut a few inches below her shoulders, but she had two white – blonde streaks framing her face. Strange.
"And you're chewing! Spit it out." Summers chided, waving a blind arm in the direction of the bin.
Rogue spat a wad of pink bubble gum into her glove and held it out to him, smiling wickedly. Summers rolled his eyes (oh so blue…swoon, haha) and his lips tightened in annoyance. I watched the gum; it was getting flatter, melding to the silk. Rogue screeched and pulled it off before it became permanently stuck, got up, and stomped over to the bin to throw it away.
Summers grinned and wrinkled his nose at her. "Moving on."
~
"So what do we have next?" I walked, trying to look everywhere and at everyone at the same time, with Rogue and Kitty on my left and Jubilee on my right, then Bobby and John leading the way. They kept turning and asking me questions while I was trying to talk to one of the girls and answer their questions as well. Kitty was smaller than Ms.Munroe, and Rogue was just a little bigger. I took an immediate liking to Jubilee because she was almost as tall as me, and not a skinny as the other two. She stopped me from feeling like the giant of the group. Bobby and John were both taller than me, both slim and showing signs that they worked out quite regularly. I thought John was cuter than Bobby and he was quieter too. I could tell already they were best friends, Bobby seemed to bring John out of his shell, and John seemed to keep Bobby in line when he needed it. They were also flirting incessantly and had dubbed me 'British Chick'; I was rather flattered. My accent was a source of much entertainment for them; I'd had to repeat myself several times just so they could giggle over it. I kind of liked the attention.
"We've got English, then Biology –"
"Oh shit, Kitty can I copy your homework?" Bobby turned and pleaded. Kitty rolled her eyes and dug a spiral notebook out of her bag.
"Then it's lunch." Rogue finished, she seemed to have appointed herself my official welcomer and guide. It was nice, I could see myself fitting in here eventually. They were a group that stuck together through everything because they all have the X gene, and since I did too I'd been welcomed in like a long lost sister.
"Ugh..Biology. I have issues with science.." I groaned.
"You'll like it. Hank's a good teacher " Said Kitty, " I mean the actual science stuff gets icky, but he likes discussion more. Our level science is boring to him, he prefers to discus the issues."
"Sounds cool." I said, debate was always fun. "What's after lunch?"
"Individual training, and History." Rogue answered, "Do you know who you'll be training with yet?"
"Nope."
"We'll ask at lunch. When'd you get here?"
"Last night." Then I remembered about the underground hangar, "Why's there a plane under this place?"
Rogue giggled and Bobby and John turned around to us, "That's the Blackbird."
"Oh well, that clears it all up." I said.
"The X-men's plane." John clarified.
"Still clueless here." The X-men sounded like some kind of superhero group, right up there with Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk.
"Our teachers double as this mutant crime fighting team, called the X-men. They go on missions in the Blackbird." Bobby explained. I laughed because it couldn't be true, even if I HAD seen the plane.
"It's true! Mr. Summers is the field leader; he flies the thing and plans all the missions and everything, then Ms. Munroe and Wolverine and Hank are on the team too." Said Kitty.
"Then how can they be teachers too? They'd get hurt too much or be on missions all the time." Teachers don't double as superheroes, at least not in the real world.
"Most of the missions are just to recruit new students; their powers manifest and they get hurt or hurt someone else and the X-men have to go save 'em. Then there's the Brotherhood, who are mutants too but they hate mankind and like to cause trouble. They come in limping sometimes, or especially irritable after a late night, but they don't get hurt too much to teach us. And they only go on a few missions a week." Rogue explained.
"So my teachers are superheroes."
"Exactly." Said Jubilee.
~
Professor Xavier and Hank McCoy alternated teaching our English class, but today, while Hank was busy in his lab; the Professor was away on business, leaving us with no teacher. Ms. Munroe popped her head through the door and said she couldn't find us a substitute, and to work on whatever we wanted. Free period. She warned that she could hear us through the wall and to behave. Bobby whooped loudly because he hadn't done his English homework either, and grabbed for Kitty's English book so he could copy. I borrowed Rogues and read over what they'd been learning. I knew about half, and the rest I was mildly familiar with. I was relieved I wasn't miles behind everyone else.
By the end of the period, Kitty, Rogue and Jubilee knew everything there was to know about my school, London, and had listened to me say 'tomato' and 'garage' more times than I cared to remember. I'd asked them more about the X-men, and what they did at the school outside of lessons. The first Friday of every month they bribed Mr. Summers with cookies for a ride to the movies, and sometimes Ms. Munroe would take them to the mall, or Xavier would let them get a cab. But there was also plenty to entertain us at the mansion itself. There were stables! I wanted to go riding at my earliest opportunity. The boathouse by the lake held a few single shells and a speedboat, I wouldn't have to give up rowing after all! They told me stories about what it was like to live with their teachers too.
"Oh god, remember that Christmas a couple years ago?" Kitty asked the group
"With the lights?" Rogue asked, laughing at the memory. Kitty nodded, giggling, and Jubilee turned to me to take up the story.
"Mr. Summers has this major thing with Christmas, and he HAS to decorate the entire mansion with fairy lights. It's like an obsessive-compulsive disorder or something. Anyway, it was before he'd learnt to carry himself telekinetically, so Hank had to carry him up there, and Hank got sick of doing it. Summers got all control freakish and pissed everyone off because he had to have the lights in specific patterns and lines, and use specific colours for specific places, and Hank got really mad at being bossed around, and picked him up and launched him onto the roof – he's got super strength – and left him up there for half the night until the Professor ordered him to get him down."
We were all giggling by the time Jubilee finished, partially because the thought of Mr. Summers being hurled onto the top of the mansion was funny, and also because Jubilee told it so well, she mimed the actions and laughed along as she told it.
"And it was snowing too, remember? He got a cold and sneezed and made eggnog come out of his nose." Kitty giggled.
~
"So the question is, which solution benefits the greater good?"
Hank McCoy was huge. His body resembled that of an ape, though his arms were slightly shorter and he walked upright. He was an odd mixture of body building champion and geek scientist; his body was solid muscle, his shoulders were broad and thick and I could easily tell how he could of thrown a fully grown man onto the roof, but he wore silly little round wire glasses and he had a Mr. Rogers cardigan on under his white doctors coat. He led the debate on stem cell research with a passion none of my other science teachers had ever exhibited.
"Should thousands of children be made to suffer for the sake of the merely potential life worth of a five day old cluster of cells? Or does the research that has already been completed show that more good will comes out of other means? I'd like a paper on your views on my desk by next week."
~
The dining hall was set up a lot like my old school, but on a much smaller scale. I noticed that the youngest kids there were about thirteen, and there were a lot less of them than there were of us older guys. There were just five tables that ran from the back of the hall to just over halfway. They had circular metal seats that were attached to the table at the bottom; about 20 ran on each side of the table. At the far end of the hall was another table of drinks, and then a large opening that stood about four feet off the ground and opened into the kitchen. We lined up in front of it to be served our food. There were only two cooks, a big, muscular man with stubble all over his chin and big beefy hands, and an older woman who smiled as she served us and took more care with there she put the food on the plate than the guy.
"Do you want pizza? Or a baked potato?" Rogue asked me, taking her own plate of pizza and fries and smattering it generously with ketchup.
"Pizza please." I said, and was handed a plate like Rogue's, minus the sauce. My old school only had pizza twice a month, it was square, and it was horrible and soggy, with watery tomato sauce. This was the proper triangular shape, overflowing with two different kinds of cheese and thick red sauce.
Kitty and Jubilee were leading the way to a table when Rogue stopped and grabbed my arm.
"Hold on, we'll ask Mr. Summers who your I.T. teacher is." She said, pulling my back towards the serving line and through a door in the corner. The kitchen was to the right, it was huge and everything in it was stainless steel, and to the left was another door. Rogue knocked a few times and waited, both of us still holding our rapidly cooling lunches. A man who, in my opinion, looked like he should never be left alone around children opened the door. He looked hard, and rugged in his worn leather jacket and motorcycle boots. He smelled of tobacco and his side burns were way too long to be fashionable but looked good on him, and he handed shaved in a few days. He his hands were also covered in leather gloves, in fact, I couldn't see a patch of bare skin on him apart from his face. He nodded to Rogue in a busy kind of way, but he wasn't unpleasant.
"Hey sugar!" She greeted, warmly, in her Southern Belle accent, "We need to speak to Mr. Summers."
The corners of his mouth tipped up a little and he turned around and yelled 'Scooter!' into the room behind him. I giggled at the name and he looked back down at me, his eyes were crinkled, he seemed amused. Maybe he wasn't such a vagrant after all.
Mr. Summers appeared at the door giving the other guy a glare for the name, and then looked at us expectantly as the man pushed past him to go back into the room.
"Angi needs to know who her Independent Training teacher is." Rogue explained. He seemed preoccupied too, there was obviously something going on in the room.
"Me. After last night we thought it best." Rogue stared at me; he couldn't have made it sound any worse if he'd tried. Mr. Summers struggled to hold back a grin; he knew what he said. "I'll meet you on the basketball court." He said to me.
"Thanks." I said, my face getting hotter.
"Thanks Mr. Summers." Rogue smiled, and then pulled me back into the dining hall. "After last night?"