Chapter 2: New School
He looked up, finally, and smiled at Andi. A real smile, not the pasted-on smile he had put on for her parents. "Please sit down," he said, gesturing to the chair her mother had vacated. "And feel free to remove those shoes. Looking at them is making my feet hurt, and that blister certainly isn't getting any better with you standing on it."
Surprised, Andi sat. Xavier reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small jar of peppermints, extracting two and offering one to Andi. She shook her head. "I'm not allowed to have candy," she said. "Mother says it will ruin my teeth."
"Your mother and your father are on their way to the airport," he said firmly, "And what they don't know won't hurt them. I certainly won't tell."
"You won't?" Andi couldn't believe her ears. Maybe this was all a trick. Maybe he was trying to trick her, so he could tell her parents and they could put her back in that horrible mutant kiddie jail.
"I won't," Xavier said, smiling as gently as he could and projecting an aura of reassurance and sympathy into her mind. "Go ahead." He held the peppermint out to her.
Andi wavered for a moment, then shook her head. She couldn't take a chance on him telling on her to her parents. He might seem sincere, but so had Dr. Hebron. And then Dr. Hebron had turned on her and sent her to that jail...she set her lips in a firm line. Better not to trust anyone. She was going to do exactly what her parents wanted her to do until she turned eighteen and she was free.
Xavier put the peppermint on the edge of the desk. "It's there if you want it, then," he said. "Now, there are a few things I'd like to discuss with you before you go up to your room. First is this schedule." He looked at the piece of paper her mother had handed him, and his lips curved in a smile. "Are you really expected to follow this?"
"Yes," Andi said quietly. "Dr. Hebron put me on the bed-at-nine, up-at-six schedule at the facility."
"And what were you expected to do during your day at the mutant jail?" He made a face at the word.
Her sudden silence surprised him, and he looked up. She was shifting uncomfortably in her seat, and her body had suddenly become tense. He could sense her discomfort at the topic. "Would you rather we didn't discuss it?" he asked gently. She nodded, her eyes glued to the carpet.
Xavier sighed internally. Alexandra was so withdrawn it was scary. Why had she become this defensive this young? "All right. You need not answer that question. I leave it up to you to follow the schedule or not, as you wish. And your parents shall not be told." She relaxed almost visibly, and he said, "Now, another topic. This is not normally something I would discuss with my students, but I feel that given you parents' disposition, this would be better discussed with you. The courses on your schedule seem quite advanced for someone your age. These are courses I would expect someone to take if they were trying to prepare for a medical license exam than for someone who is in her last year of high school."
Andi bit her lip. Her parents had made the decision on what courses she should take from the list of class offerings. She had no say in what was chosen for her, and she knew she wasn't going to be taking anything fun. However, if she changed anything on her course schedule, her parents would see the change when they saw her report card and she'd get into trouble. Her parents wanted her to become a doctor. She didn't want to. But she had to do what they said, or she'd go back to Dr. Hebron and the jail. "I'll leave my course schedule the way it is," she said, but there was an air of resignation about her that Xavier picked up on.
He looked at the schedule. Base mathematics…good Lord, what were her parents thinking? He hadn't taken base mathematics until his second year at grad school. It was far too advanced for her. So was the course on microbiology. "I regret to inform you, however," he said smoothly, "That base mathematics and advanced microbiology are two classes that are currently full. I am going to have to change one of your course selections to an elective, as you already have sufficient science credits to fulfill the mandatory educational requirements. Do you have a preference?" She remained silent. "Very well. As you still require a physical education credit, you may choose either gymnastics or contemporary dance."
Alexandra's eyes lit up at the thought of a dance course. "Dance? You have dancing classes here?" Too late, she realized she shouldn't have blurted out, and she bit her lip and curled up in her chair. "Dance will be fine."
Xavier was amused by her sudden outburst and alarmed at her immediate iron-willed suppression of it. "And you will be enrolled in intermediate trigonometry," he said, "As a replacement for that base mathematics class. All our students at your age level take that class, and exceptions cannot be made to the rules." He put the paper down on the desk and made the appropriate corrections. "Should your parents have problems with the adjustments to your schedule, please refer them to me. Now for the next topic; do your parents give you any allowance at all?"
Andi shook her head, thinking involuntarily of the small stash of money in her bag, but no one knew she had that, so she said nothing about it.
"Well, even though your parents chose not to provide you with an independent allowance, it is still a good experience for you to have your own money and to spend it as you choose. Therefore, I'll arrange it so that you will receive a small sum about equal to what your classmates will receive each week, so that you may take care of any small wants or needs you might have." He held up a hand to forestall the words about to come from her mouth. "I can spare it from the tuition that has been paid. Your parents will not know of it unless you choose to tell them, which I really don't think you'll do."
Andi stared at him, shocked. She knew the other girls at the boarding schools she had attended in the past got at least twenty dollars a week. She had four hundred dollars in her bag, scrounged and saved over the last five years. What he was proposing to do would double her hoard in only a few months! "Thank you, sir," she stammered.
He smiled at her. "You're welcome, Alexandra. Now, I think your teachers would like to meet you."
The door to the office opened, and Andi rose from her chair in deference to their entrance. Xavier gestured to the young man who had walked her parents out to the limo. "This is Mr. Scott Summers," he said, "He teaches some of the basic math courses, but his specialty is physics." The man smiled at her and tipped a head gently in her direction.
"Oh come on, Charles," said the woman beside Mr. Summers. "We can introduce ourselves. "I'm Jean Summers, Scott's wife, and I teach psychology and biology." She had a head full of the most astonishingly pretty red hair. Andi smiled tentatively back at her.
"I am Ororo Munroe," said the tall, exotic-looking African woman beside the redhead. "I teach meterology and Earth Sciences, as well as dance and art."
"I'm Remy LeBeau," said the brown-haired man standing next in line. "I teach French and elementary physics."
"Just call me Mr. Logan, kid," said the man next in line. "I teach physical education."
And so on it went. Andi stared at them. A few of them, she could tell immediately, were definitely mutants. Mr. LeBeau, Mr. Summers, Mr. Logan, and Mr. McCoy had physical mutations that were easy to see. She wasn't sure about Miss Braddock, or Miss Munroe, but she was reasonably sure they were also.
"Now that you've met our teachers, would you like a tour of the school? It could wait until orientation, but as you're here some weeks early, you'll need at least a general idea of the layout of the school."
"Okay," Andi said shyly. "But I really should get my luggage up off your driveway before it gets wet or run over."
"Don't worry," Xavier said cheerfully. "It's all already been taken upstairs to your room. Ororo will take you around the school, since the tour will end with your room, and you'll be in her dorm wing." He smiled at her. "Please enjoy the tour."
Andi walked behind Ororo, listening to the beautiful African woman talk about the mansion and whatever else happened to be the subject of the tour at the time. Her attention was half on the tour and half on the woman conducting it.
It was the first thing she always had done since she'd started attending boarding schools at the young age of six. She would meet the adults around her, watch them, learn what pleased them, and then tailor everything she said or did to make them happy with her. She told everyone what they wanted to hear, did what everyone wanted her to do, and made sure that whatever she did was pleasing to everyone around her.
That had lasted until she was twelve. At the age of twelve, desperate for her mother and father's attention, she discovered that when she caused trouble at the schools she was in, her mother and father were called, and they would come, and she would get to see them, however briefly. And when she caused too much trouble, and was expelled, they would take her home with them and she would get to see them every day until they found a new school to ship her off to. This cycle lasted for two years, until Andi realized that seeing them every day wasn't helping them to get to know her and love her. They didn't care enough about her to try to love her, or even pretend to. The only time she ever got to see a smile on her mother's face was when she played the piano or her violin for her mother's guests. It was why she had gotten so good at those instruments; she desperately wanted, and needed, her parents' love. She never got it.
Anger at her parents manifested itself over the next few years in her behavior. Andi started to pick fights at school, broke rules, and just generally did everything she could to make the people around her completely miserable so they would send her home. At fifteen, though, that all stopped. She had been sitting sullenly in the back of the limo listening to her parents argue and scream at each other in the front seat when a tractor trailer had overturned on the icy winter road, and trapped her and her parents inside the pinned limo. It had been hours before the police had managed to get them out. Robert had suffered a fractured arm; Chelsea a few scratches. Andi had been hit over the head by her father's laptop, and spent a week in the hospital while a skull fracture healed. But the stress and the injury had awakened her latent empathic abilities, and she had suddenly started feeling a conflicting wash of emotions. If someone around her was angry, she would throw something. If someone was sad, she would start crying, The up-and-down roller coaster of emotions overwhelmed her, and she had begged her parents to listen to her and get her help.
They had found Dr. Hebron. He claimed to be a psychiatrist skilled in the handling of childhood insanity; and his solution to her parents had been to incarcerate her in what he told her parents was a correctional facility for mutant children, but what had turned out, instead, to be an asylum for mentally unstable children, both mutant and human. Andi did her best to block out the memory of her year in the asylum, and did everything she could to become the perfect child again. She stopped being aggressive, buried all her own thoughts and feelings behind a sweet, simple smile, did everything she was told to do, and finally her parents had decided she could attend school again. The army of private tutors that they had hired to teach her were sent away, and they had found for her this school in New York for gifted children. Andi was determined to keep her head down, keep her nose clean, and do what was expected of her until she turned eighteen and she could run away from it all. She often fantasized about finding a deserted island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, where she could play her music and feel her own feelings without first having to stop and sort her own from everyone else's feelings.
"And here is your room," Ororo Munroe opened the door to a small room. It was larger than her room at home, but that was because there were two beds in it. The right side of the room was a mirror of the other side; a twin-sized bed, a chair, a small student desk, a small dresser, and wastebasket. A laundry bag swung from a hook on the closet door. "There are no other students here at the moment, so it is all yours, as is the bathroom. However, be warned; once your roommate is assigned, you will need to share the space with her, so do not get too comfortable.
"It is summer, so we do not keep regular hours or a set schedule. We usually have breakfast around eight or so, and lunch around noon. Dinner is usually at six." She stopped at the look on Alexandra's face. "Why, what is wrong, child?"
Alexandra was so shocked her words came out in a stutter. "M-m-my parents have a set schedule for me. I'm supposed to eat at nine, twelve, and five. How am I supposed to follow the schedule if I have only a half hour to cook and eat?"
Ororo blinked. "Charles said nothing about a schedule. Please tell me about it." She was silent as Andi ran through her schedule, from the up-at-six to the bedtime-at-nine, and she sighed. "Please excuse my saying so, but Alexandra, you cannot possibly do that here. We don't have a housekeeper. When the school term begins, there will be a wake-up bell at eight, breakfast at nine, and lessons begin at ten in the morning and end at five in the afternoon. Lunch is served from twelve-thirty until one-thirty, and dinner is served at six. Everyone is to be in bed by ten, but from seven until ten the house will be swarming with children. We try to limit the amount of homework given to an hour a night."
Andi blinked. No schedule? Her parents would be furious! But would they be angry enough to send her back to Dr. Hebron? "I suppose I could give it a try," she said.
"It is summer," Ororo said as she turned on the light in the room and wrote Andi's name on the top blank of the door in washable marker. "Don't worry about schedules in summer. Enjoy yourself." She closed the door behind her, leaving Andi to her own thoughts.