Truth? Love sucked.
Kitty had resigned herself a long time ago to never finding a boy who would actually like her. She was cute, and fashionable, and liked to party, but she was also a freak. Even before she started walking through walls, she'd been way too smart. The school had wanted her to skip a few grades, but her parents had refused. It didn't help, though. Kitty was still a brain - and brains never got boyfriends.
But then she'd fallen out of her locker and right into Lance.
He was probably the first guy without glasses and a Star Trek fixation who'd really talked to her in years. When she went to the Institute, she'd been sad that he wasn't going to be there. But he was - even if he was on the wrong side - and it all seemed like fate had stepped in to give her the perfect chance at true love. The fact that he was one of the bad guys only made it more romantic. So 'Romeo and Juliet.'
Her mom had always said, "Men make plans and God laughs." She should've listened to her mom. And she should've paid more attention to the end of 'Romeo and Juliet.'
Kitty stabbed her pencil at the notebook in front of her. She was pretty well past the sadness and moving through anger. Weren't there, like, nine stages of grief? She had a long way to go, then.
She couldn't believe that he'd had the nerve to say that she thought he wasn't good enough for her! She'd never thought that. If she had, she wouldn'tve talked to him on the phone, or gone malling with him, or asked him to the dance, or any of that. He'd saved her life - well, he'd tried - and he'd even tried joining the X-Men to be with her. That kind of stuff... it was all so romantic. He was a thug, yeah, but she had believed from the beginning that he was a thug with a heart of gold. Stupid her. Heart of stone was more like it.
The teacher started calling on people to answer questions, and Kitty tried to look invisible. She didn't want to answer questions. She had no idea what they were even covering today. Last night, instead of doing homework, she'd gone to bed early and cried herself to sleep.
Romeo and Juliet got divorced and Juliet had to fight him in battle because Romeo was on a total evil power trip. That was how it really worked.
Love sucked.
"Kitty," Ms. Hawkins said. "Maybe you can tell us."
Kitty snapped to attention and did her best not to look like a deer caught in headlights. "Um... tell you what?"
"The answer to problem twenty-nine," Ms. Hawkins said, scowling a little. "Unless you'd like to go back to daydreaming."
Fortunately, her math book was open to the right page, and fortunately, problem twenty-nine was a cinch. She glanced at it, pretended to find the answer on a nonexistent sheet of homework, and rattled off the solution.
That was one advantage to having a giant brain.
The teacher looked appeased but not happy. Kitty sat with her back straight and her hands folded attentively over her textbook, following the teacher's every movement with wide, alert eyes until the woman stopped glancing in her direction. Then she went back to stabbing the notebook with her pencil.
She hated Lance. She loved Lance.
She didn't know what she felt.
She was having the worst day of her life.
This is a short chapter, so it's the perfect place to give some feedback to my reviewers, whom I worship and adore despite the fact that I never tell them so because I have major issues about sending "thank-yous"! Yay!
First, some clarifying: Any student requiring special services falls under the umbrella of ESE (Exceptional Student Education), which runs from "gifted" to TMH (look it up) and everything in between. Gifted students receive an EP instead of an IEP, and are of course viewed with a different set of expectations, but they are still ESE. I thought I addressed that in Jean's chapter, but repetition can never hurt.
Second, a correction: It was Jubilee and Rahne who left at the beginning of "Mainstream". Trust me - I watched it enough times to know. :)
Third, a general statement: The BOM will not be getting a voice in this fic. Further, they have a low presence in all of my stories because... um... I don't really like the Brotherhood. Not in the same way I like the X-Men - which is to say, with a fanatical devotion that borders on the frightening. Sorry.
