Chapter 3: Explanations
Scott and Jean were hiding in the small copse of trees behind the stargazing rock when Amy came running up at six the next day. "I came as soon as I could get away, " she said, panting a bit from exertion. "I'm sorry, I couldn't get away earlier."
Xavier was dying to ask her the questions he had lain awake all night wanting the answers to, but he put them off as he saw her hand come up to push a lock of hair off her forehead. "What happened to you?" he said, taking her hands gently in his and turning them over. He winced at the swollen welts that crossed her palms. "Amy, what happened?"
"Oh," she pulled her hands quickly out of his and hid them in the pockets of her uniform skirt, "I wasn't paying attention in Mr. Fry's English class yesterday, and he used his ruler. It's okay; it'll go away in a few days. It always does."
"Always? This happens on a regular basis?" he tugged at her arms. She kept them stubbornly buried in her pocket, refusing to yield to his efforts. Finally he said, "If you want to suffer, then fine. We have medical supplies back at the mansion; if you wanted to come I could get something to take the sting out of those welts, and get the rest of those splinters out too."
She looked undecided for a moment, then pulled her hands out of her pockets. "I'm sorry. It's just…they never help us when we get hurt; we're supposed to learn to take care of ourselves. I'd be glad if you'd help me," she said quietly. He looked at her hands as she held them out to him.
They were a mess. In addition to the welts, which would go away eventually and which Hank could do nothing about, there were splinters of wood driven into her fingers and palms. They should be hurting fiercely.
He turned and waved to Jean, who stepped out from behind the tree. "Jean, if you could push me back up…I don't think Amy could do anything right now with her hands the way they are."
Jean took the handles of the wheelchair as Scott came out from behind the tree too. He fell into easy step beside Amy, and tried to sound casual as he asked, "Does this happen on a regular basis, these welts on your hands?"
She blushed. "Only when I'm not paying attention in class. All the teachers do it, honest," she said earnestly, noting the look on his face. "Mr. Fry, the English teacher, started going on about his pet peeve and I just didn't want to listen to it. He's always criticizing the X-Men for what they do." She shrugged. "I think they're great. They're always helping people. I wish I could be one when I grow up."
Xavier thought to Jean, We can't get Hank to look at her. If we do she'll know we are the X-Men, and I'm not sure how good teenaged girls are at keeping secrets. When we get in, go and get one of Hank's medkits and we'll see if we can take care of her ourselves.
Jean sent back, Good Lord, Charles, I can't imagine anyone wanting to lead the life we lead, to really want to do the job we do! There are times when I don't even like being me! Scott heard Jean giggling hysterically in the back of his mind, and had to fight to keep a straight face. It wasn't often that they heard anyone say they wanted to be an X-Man when they grew up; hell, if he'd known what kinds of things he would later go through, he probably wouldn't have signed up in the first place.
Then he looked over at Jean, and he smiled. If he had never signed up, he'd never have met Jean, and he would have gone through life missing the other half of his soul. No, things happened the way they had for a reason. If his reason was to find his soulmate and lead the X-Men, then that was what he'd do.
They reached the mansion's back door, and Xavier checked his watch as they walked in. It was only five-fifteen, but he'd asked Jean if she'd make a quick dinner, for Amy. She would have enough time to eat, then, before she left, because he had felt her stomach-cramping hunger pangs in the hall at the orphanage. She was still hungry, now, but the pangs weren't quite as acute. She had managed to eat something since the day before.
Scott sat her down in a kitchen chair as Jean went to get one of Hank's medkits. Out in the hall, she ran into Storm, who was about to walk into the kitchen. "'Ro," she said, stopping the other woman before she could enter, "Not right now, please. We've got one of the girls from the orphanage in there right now, Charles is trying to get as much information out of her as possible. She should be going in about a half hour, could you wait till then?"
"Of course," Ororo said, and Jean gave her a hug as she stepped back into the kitchen.
Amy was staring around her at the huge space. "Oh, wow," she said, impressed. "I guess this is what they want the kitchen at the orphanage to look like. I don't think we'll be able to do that, though."
"You children are fixing up the house yourselves?" Xavier asked, though he already knew the answer. He had seen her putting a new floor on the front hall, after all.
She nodded. "We've done so at all the places we've lived at," she said. "The buildings are always yucky, and we've always had to fix them up ourselves. The Headmaster tells us we'll have to learn to take care of ourselves someday, and being able to fix up a house ourselves will help us learn that."
Jean had managed to extract the remaining splinters from the girl's hands, and now she put a glob of salve on Amy's palm. "Rub that around," she said as she packed the supplies she'd used back into the kit. "Your skin will absorb it. There's an anesthetic in it, so your fingers might go a little numb, but it's only temporary, and you won't feel any pain, at least."
Scott made a big show of getting up and going to the stove. "What's this, Jean?" he said, lifting the lid to the steaming pot. Amy's eyes widened as the smell of the hearty beef stew reached her nose, and her stomach rumbled audibly. "Hey, Amy, do you have time to eat with us real quick before you go?"
Amy hesitated, and Jean said cheerfully, "We'd love to have you, Amy."
She looked at the clock in the corner, and smiled. "Maybe just a little bit," she said. "The whistle blows at six, that's when I have to be in. It's only five thirty now. I've got a little time."
"How many places have you lived in since you joined the orphanage, Amy?" Xavier asked as Jean brought steaming bowls of stew over.
"Mmm….Five," she said. "Here and there, all over. The mansion next door will be number six." She waited for Jean to sit before she picked up her spoon. Her manners were impeccable, Jean noted.
"How many other children are there besides you?" Jean asked.
"Fifteen girls, twenty-six boys. Seven of the boys are mutants; I'm the only girl. They seem to be really selective about which mutants they admit into the orphanage.
"See, I'm from a city orphanage called Pinewood. They were getting overcrowded, and then out of nowhere one day Headmaster Gilmore showed up and told the Headmistress there that he was starting a new orphanage and that he was going to take some of her charges to help start his own. She was only too glad to get some of us out of her hair, but in the end, he only took three of us; me, and two other boys who weren't mutants, Tom and Mark. I still don't know why he picked me.
"He went round to each of us in the mutant wing and asked us what we could do. There was a girl there, Tascha, she could make herself look like anything she was looking at, like a mirror. She made herself into a mirror image of him as he stood in front of him. Then there was Rita, she could open her mouth and sing, and just drive every thought out of your head when she hit a certain note. Like hypnosis. Then he came to me, and I did my little fireball-juggling trick for him, and then I did my dragon thing, and he stopped going through the room and said he'd take me. I spoke later to the mutant boys, and they finally unbent enough to tell me their 'selection' was pretty much the same.
"Drew can levitate things, Stefan can walk through walls, Matthew can shape matter into illusions—I saw him pick up a stick once, and it got bigger, and made itself look like a boat. Luke touches stuff, and they get lighter, somehow. He helped me carry the beds in when we moved. Shawn can take anything, like a pebble, a stick, or even a cottonball, and throw it, and it turns into something that hurts. I can't describe it, it's like he makes bullets out of anything he throws. Greg can read minds, and Chris can run really, really fast, like the little bird in the Saturday morning cartoons always running away from the wolf animal."
She stopped talking to take a big bite of stew and chewed as Scott, Xavier, and Jean looked at each other over her head. Selective, indeed. Too selective. Who was Headmaster Gilmore, and why would he be 'selecting' such a diverse group of child mutants? For what purpose? Because there had to be one. The orphanage was just a front for something else, something larger.
Amy sat back and pushed her empty bowl away, the spoon rattling emptily in the bowl. "Thank you, that was the best I've eaten in a long time," she said happily to Jean. "The food at the orphanage is usually okay, but when we moved in, the water tasted funny, and I couldn't drink it. The other kids do, but I just can't. I tried and it made me throw up. Greg teased me about having a delicate stomach. Headmaster Gilmore bought bottled water for the staff, and I think I've seen Greg drinking some, but the rest of us don't get any. Anyway, we have to wash, bathe, cook, and clean with the water from the taps, and everything smells bad because the water's dirty. I snuck out last night and jumped in the lake because it was better than the water at the house. And I saw some of the others drinking from the lake too, so I tried it. It's a little muddy-tasting, but it's definitely better than the water from the house."
"You mean," Xavier thought his teeth would shatter, he was gritting them so hard in anger, "They didn't flush out the pipes when you moved in? You don't have clean water to cook or drink or bathe?"
Amy misunderstood the anger. "I'm sorry if my smell bothers you," she said, getting visibly smaller in her chair.
Jean laid a hand on her arm. "Amy, we're not mad," she said, "Just upset. You shouldn't have to live like that!"
Amy bit her lip, her eyes refusing to meet theirs, instead flitting restlessly over the kitchen. They lit on the clock, and she jumped up. "I have to go. The whistle will be blowing in a minute, and we only have two minutes after that to get in line." She opened the back door.
"Wait! Amy!" Jean caught her arm. "Come here for dinner tomorrow. And you can use our shower. The lake's cold!"
"So's the water at the house. But I'll come. Thank you, you're so kind. I'll come if I can!" And she was gone.
Jean returned to the table just as the kitchen door opened and Remy, Ororo, and Logan walked in. Xavier was still sitting at the table. "I can't believe that," he said. "No clean water, no hot water, they have to clean up and fix the place themselves…there's something really wrong, Jean."
Ororo took Amy's empty bowl, washed it at the sink, and helped herself to some of the stew as she sat down. "I agree," she said. "No one should have to live like that, least of all, children."
"Just some a' them," Logan growled. "She said this Greg boy drinks the bottled water with the staff, but the other kids don't get none. That stinks ta me. Whatever they got these kids fer, whoever Greg is, he's the one that matters most to them, or they wouldn't be treatin' him special."
"Did you hear her say that the orphans have moved five times already? Why would they move so much? What is going on?" Scott said. "The orphanage I lived in never moved, never went anywhere. So why are they moving so much? What are they hiding? Are they trying to hide from something, or are they chasing something? And if Gilmore is responsible for all of this happening, then why is he doing this? What's his purpose? Wouldn't it be easier for him to move about if he didn't have children to worry about? Damn it, Charles, what is going on over there? I wish Amy had more time, so we could ask her straight out what's going on!"
Amy stared at the unappetizing mess on the plate in front of her. She couldn't eat this. Two slices of a disgustingly bloody something that looked like it had just come off roadkill without being cooked, instant mashed potatoes that were a dull brownish color from the water it was cooked in, and more of those horrible canned string beans. She picked up her fork and dug it in the beans, visions of Miss Jean's delicious stew swimming before her eyes. She had only had time to eat one bowl, but oh, how good that was! She ate the beans, stuck her fork in the potatoes, and stopped. She couldn't eat it, she just couldn't.
"Little Miss High-And-Mighty thinks she's too good to eat what we eat, huh?" said a voice behind her, and her face flushed with anger. It was Greg.
"Shove off, Greg, leave me alone," she snapped. "You're eating chicken and rich junk with the staff while we get stuck with roadkill and crap, so you're not the one to talk."
He grabbed one of her braids, yanked it hard, snapping her head back until his face was only inches from hers. "Say that to my face, fireball," he snarled at her.
He was hurting her neck and her scalp, pulling her head back like that. Amy felt around in front of her for her plate, brought it up, and smashed it into his face. Blood-tinged meat juices and brown mashed potatoes splattered all over his face. She took advantage of his momentary befuddlement to get up from her place on the hard bench and run for the door as Greg spluttered and gasped and tried to get the slop off his face and out of his eyes. She pulled the door open, only to find her way out blocked by Headmaster Gilmore's tall, burly frame filling the door.
"Going somewhere, Amy?" he said.
He pushed her into a seat at the head of the table, and another plate was brought in, with the exact same contents as before. "Eat." Gilmore told her.
Amy stared at the plate. Dinner was almost over. By now the potatoes had congealed into a thick brown paste, and the meat looked more like roadkill than ever. She fought down the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks, and shook her head. "No," she whispered, "I can't. I'll get sick. Please don't make me eat that." She was practically begging, and she hated herself for it, but he wasn't moved the least bit.
"We don't waste food here, girl, you know that. Eat it."
She ate the beans again resignedly, and took a forkful of the potatoes. She tried to put it in her mouth, but it tasted so bad she took it straight back out. She put her fork down and silently stared at the plate in front of her.
"You will sit there until you eat it." Gilmore said firmly.
She sat there. She was still staring at that plate when the end-of-dinner bell rang. The others got up and filed out, Greg looking back at her maliciously. When she tried to get up, Headmaster Gilmore pulled her back down firmly. "You will sit there until you eat it. All of it," he said.
She sat there, staring at her plate. She couldn't. She couldn't she couldn't she couldn't.
"Don't you have homework you need to do? If you don't hand it in tomorrow your teachers won't be happy. You don't get a note, either. It's all due to your own damn foolishness. Eat it."
Homework. Amy blinked at the tears that threatened to spill out of her eyes. She picked up the fork, dug it into the potatoes, squeezed her eyes shut, and put the fork into her mouth.
It tasted like paper and ground-up pennies. Her mouth went dry as the coppery taste filled it, and she nearly retched there at the table. She swallowed with difficulty and took another forkful. A much bigger one this time. The portions they gave the kids were so small that if she took large mouthfuls she could get it all down in two or three bites. She forced herself to swallow the second forkful, and forced herself to take the third, last, big mouthful. She swallowed, coughed on something hard in the potatoes, and that started it. She gagged and choked.
Gilmore clamped a hand over her mouth as her stomach heaved, trying to rid itself of the poisonous stuff filling it, but with her mouth held closed and her body held tight against his, she couldn't rid herself of the awful stuff. Eventually her body gave up, and she went limp, relaxing on the bench. Gilmore let her go, stepped back, and said, "Eat the meat now."
"I can't," Amy gasped, and to her own disgust, she began to cry. "Please, it looks like roadkill, it hasn't even been cooked thoroughly, please don't make me eat it, please…" She froze as his cold hand grabbed the back of her collar.
"Then use your fire to cook it, if you like your meat well done," he said coldly.
It was something she hadn't thought about. She gingerly cut a slice off with her table knife, speared it on her fork, and held it up, dripping, over her plate. Then she extended a finger out to it, and a tiny spurt of flame came from her fingertip, searing the meat brown. She turned the fork around, seared the other side, and put it in her mouth.
It didn't taste bad. She chewed thoughtfully. Okay, she could handle this. She cut herself another piece, seared it with her fire, and ate that. She repeated the process with the rest of the meat until it was all gone, and she looked up.
"Go," Gilmore said. She jumped up out of her seat and ran.
He sat there for a long while, looking at that empty plate. The water here was truly disgusting; he hadn't wanted to get the water pipes cleaned, because they weren't planning on still being here in two weeks. The other kids didn't have a problem. Sure, there was some grumbling, but everyone ate it, and no one had actually gotten sick, except her. Of course, that could have been the dead roach someone in the kitchen had planted in the second plate he had asked them to bring her, someone who didn't like her, but some people ate bugs, and it didn't bother them, so she would survive the incident.
It was odd that she'd never thought to use her power that way. Maybe he should take the headmaster of the other school up on his offer to show the kids how to use their abilities. After all, it could only help his plans, if they found some other way of using their powers. Except his son Greg, of course.
None of the other orphans knew he was really Greg Gilmore. They all thought he was just another Orphan. But he wasn't. He was Gilmore's son, and his ace in the hole. With Greg's mindreading powers, he had wiped all the mutant children's memories clean after the last five jobs they'd pulled; first the Bank of New Haven, in Connecticut; then the Bank of Cape Cod, where all the rich and famous stored their money. They had taken down the Bank of Atlantic City, the gambling center for the East Coast, and the Bank of Baltimore, and the Bank of Annapolis. Manhattan Savings and Loan was the place they were planning to hit, then they would head south and hit the Treasury in Washington. After that, Gilmore figured, he'd split the take with his three cohorts, and they'd live out the rest of their lives overseas being millionaires.
The plan was perfect. It couldn't fail.