Evan slouched down in his desk chair, wishing the day would be over so he could get out of there and take out his frustration on the pavement. He'd be 'boarding alone, though, because his usual pack of fellow skaters had abruptly severed ties.
"You weren't that good anyway," they'd told him. And that really stung, because he was good. He was better at it than anything else, including school, including superhero-ing, and he considered himself a pretty good superhero.
It sucked. The whole thing sucked. The rawest of raw deals.
He'd thought Bayville was cool. No one cared that he was a black kid from the city with a juvie record - the first day he'd been there, he'd hooked up with the local skaters and they'd torn up some sidewalks. It was great.
So what have we learned? he asked himself, drawing a meaningless picture in the margins of his notebook paper. That Bayville doesn't care about skin color, just so long as you don't have an X-gene? Figures.
There was a sharp rap on his desk, inches in front of his face, and Evan looked up, startled. The teacher was standing over him, frowning. "Mr. Daniels. I understand you had a busy evening yesterday, but you really should try to pay more attention. Okay?"
He dropped his eyes back to the desk's surface and said, "Uh, yes ma'am."
The class had broken into half-whispers about mutants. More than a few people were snickering and looking smug. One kid's expression practically said, Look at me, I'm normal, I don't get picked on by the teacher.
Evan wanted to bail. He wanted it more than anything in the world.
But he'd told his parents he wouldn't, because he was tough and he was honorable and he had a responsibility to all the mutant kids who'd ever go to public school in America. Sometimes he wished his parents were like other people and didn't study civil rights and quote famous black activists. The other X-Men thought he was just a mutant, but he wasn't. It went way beyond that. His burden was twice as heavy, and worse, he didn't have anyone to talk to about it, because Auntie O had grown up in Africa and didn't know.
He'd promised, yeah, and he'd meant it, but he wondered what would happen when he got sick and tired of dealing with all the hassle. Sometimes he thought the only thing really keeping him in Bayville was the Institute. At least he had teammates here - other people who had his back and could sort of understand. He didn't know anywhere else he could go and find that. Mutant communities weren't exactly widespread.
"Freak," the kid behind him hissed.
Evan clenched his jaw and kept his eyes on the teacher. He wasn't going to give.
The kid hissed "Freak," again, and jabbed Evan's back with the sharp end of a pencil. It took all his willpower, but Evan didn't react. Bones shifted inside his chest, grinding against each other from the effort of not reacting, and he didn't let that show either.
And for his stoicism, he got jabbed again. And again. And again. The other kids nearby started giggling and egging his harasser on. The teacher, busy at the board explaining a concept Evan really needed to understand in order to pass the next test, never noticed.
He was sick of it already.
