Chapter 4:
Andi knocked timidly on the open door, and waited for Miss Munroe to respond.
"Alexandra," Ororo greeted the girl with a friendly smile at the sound of the timid knock. "Come on in. Anytime the door is open, child, please feel free to simply walk in. You only need to knock if the door is closed." She gestured the girl in.
Andi took exactly two steps into the room, and stopped. "I don't want to bother you," she said quietly. "But I was just wondering…um…" Her hands were twisting again, and Ororo saw the nails were bitten down to the quick.
"Go ahead, child. I won't bite." Ororo was really starting to dislike Andi's parents. Why would any parents push their child so hard she would develop such neuroses?
"Are the facilities for use anytime? I mean, like in the free time when no one's using them, can I…I mean…can anyone use the gym?"
Ororo smiled. "Of course. And even if someone else is in there, feel free to use it if you want to."
"Thank you!" Ororo caught a brief glimpse of the first real smile she'd seen on Alexandra's face since the girl was dropped off. Then Alexandra was gone, before Ororo could draw in a breath to ask her the question that had been nagging at her since that morning. She sighed and returned to what she had been doing; trying to figure out which girl would be in which rooms. When she was done this she would go and find Alexandra.
* * *
There wasn't anyone else in the gym. Andi slipped silently in the door and reached for the light switch. Her questing fingers found all three switches at once, and the gym became brightly lit. She closed the door carefully behind her, and took a deep breath. The beams overhead were hung with gym equipment. There were no cameras that she could see. She let out the breath, smiled, and released all her tension and nerves in an all-out run across the floor. Once in the corner, she carefully pulled off her pants, loafers, and shirt, opened the small bag she had carried down here, and upended its contents on the floor.
Her ballet shoes and her black leotard spilled out. She slipped on the leotard and sat down on the floor to put her shoes on, then decided not to. They were old, and worn, and almost falling apart, and she didn't want to wear them for just the exercises. Maybe, when she started receiving this allowance the headmaster wanted to give her she would take some of it and buy herself a new pair. Maybe she could afford to spare it then.
She started with the simple exercises, glorying in the pleasure of being able to stretch out, fully, of being able to loosen tense muscles and move without the hindrance of tailored clothing. The familiar movements relaxed her, and she finally decided she was warmed up enough to start dancing.
She put her shoes on, walked out to the middle of the floor, and tried a few experimental steps en pointe. It had been almost a year and a half since she had last put them on; she had not been permitted to take any of her things with her when she went to the asylum, and she didn't dare dance at home. One of the house staff would tell her mother, and she would be in trouble.
She began to hum under her breath, an energetic song from one of her favorite (private) singers, Gloria Estefan. It was a song called 'Reach'. Admittedly it was a pop song, but the rhythm and beat felt right for her mood, and she just improvised the steps as she went along. Music had always been like that for her; she could tell whether she liked a song or hated it from the first few measures.
Her mother had at first laughed at her daughter when a five-year old Alexandra had told her that she could 'see' music. She dismissed it as childish nonsense, and Andi, hurt by her mother's rejection of something that felt important to her five-year-old mind, had never spoken of it to anyone again. It was something she kept to herself; the fact that a few notes, put together in a particular way, could bring flashes of vivid, lovely colors and shapes behind her closed eyelids. She listened to music with her eyes closed; her mother had disliked it, her music teachers had loved it, but she'd never even told them that she could see music.
Ororo and Jean watched spellbound. Unnoticed by the solitary dancer, they stood by the gym door, which they'd opened a crack just so they could see what Andi was doing. Ororo had finished room assignments and gone looking for the child; unable to find her, she had enlisted Jean's help in finding the missing girl. She had not expected to find her in the gym, dancing. "So this is what she wanted permission for," Ororo whispered to Jean. "Alexandra came to me earlier and asked if the facilities were available for use anytime."
"I guess this is what she wanted permission for," Jean whispered back as she watched the girl execute a perfect series of spins. "I don't watch ballet a lot, but I think she's pretty good. She's wasting her talent by not using it." She stopped, and reconsidered. "Then again, I doubt she has much of an option. Did you see the courses her parents signed her up for? I'm guessing they want her to be a doctor or something. Poor child." She watched the girl for a moment. "Think we should leave her alone, or should we let her know that we know she's here—and that she doesn't have to hide anything from us?"
At just that moment, Andi stumbled, the toe of her shoe catching on an uneven board in the floor, and spilled her on her side. She fell with a cry of pain. Ororo abandoned her post by the door and hurried across the floor. "Are you all right?" she reached for the ankle.
Andi actually gave a scream of fright and scooted backward on the floor away from her. She stared at Ororo with wide eyes for a moment, then blurted, "Please, please don't tell my parents, please, Miss Munroe! I'll get in trouble!" She got up, ignoring the pain in her ankle as she backed away from Ororo.
Ororo sighed. "Child, how many times must I tell you that you need not worry? I will not tell your parents anything! It is highly unlikely I would ever meet them, anyway! Sit down, you're not making your ankle feel any better standing on it."
The girl paused for a moment, then surrendered and sat down on the floor. She untied the shoe and stretched her foot out for Ororo to look at. "I'm fine," she said in a small voice. "I just turned it. I'll be fine."
"Your ankle is swollen," Ororo said firmly. "Jean, can you brace her up telekinetically until we get to the kitchen? I want to put an ice pack on that before the swelling gets worse."
"No, no, I don't want to trouble you, I'm all right," Andi said hurriedly, untying her other shoe. She stifled her pain and forced herself to walk across the floor to where she had left her clothes, and she pulled her shirt on over the leotard and buttoned it up. "I'm all right. Really," she said, smiling brightly at the two women. It was the same smile she used to fool her parents; she figured it ought to work here too. She jammed her legs into her pants, then forced her foot into her loafer. "See? I'm all right. Thank you." And she disappeared out the door of the gym before Jean and Ororo could stop her.
Up in her room she pushed the door closed and slumped to the floor. That had been awfully close. If they had persisted in taking a look at her ankle she would have had to remove her tights and everything, and they would have seen the marks on her ankles that the straps from Dr. Hebron's bed had left on her skin. She hastily got up, took off her shirt and leotard, pants and tights, then hobbled into the bathroom. It was only a half-bath; showers were down the hall; but she could put her foot in the shallow sink basin and run cold water over her ankle, and maybe that would help.
She was soaking her ankle when a sudden thought hit her, and she pulled the bathroom mirror out so she could check the cabinet behind it. She sighed in relief when she saw the aspirin bottle sitting next to the box of band-aids. Apparently they trusted the students to take care of small injuries themselves. She supposed that would be a better idea than having to dole out band-aids to the students for little things like scrapes and paper cuts.
She swallowed two of the aspirin and turned off the water in the sink, dried her foot off with the small towel, and was hobbling back into the room toward her bed when she heard a knock at the door. "Wait a moment," she said as evenly as she could, grabbing her pants and pulling them on, "I'm not decent." It was only a matter of a few more minutes before her bra and shirt were on, and she tucked the shirt in quickly before she said, "All right, I'm dressed."
Ororo walked in. "Are you quite sure you are all right?" she asked, concerned. "It was quite a nasty fall."
"Oh, yes, I'm fine," Andi lied, subtly shifting her weight off the foot and leaning back against the bedpost. "It was just a little fall. You don't need to worry about it, and you don't need to call my parents."
Again with the parents. Ororo had a feeling she was going to hate Alexandra's parents before long. "As long as you are sure," she said. "Alexandra, I meant to ask you if those are all the clothes you have." She gestured to the white shirt and black pants. "Are those the only clothes you packed?"
It hit a sensitive spot. Andi hated the clothes. "They're all my parents buy," she said bitterly, "So that's all I wear."
"You have no other clothes? No jeans, nothing you can relax in?"
Do you think I'd wear this awful uniform if I had anything else? Andi wanted to yell, but she bit her lip. "No. I don't. Mother says jeans aren't proper clothes for well-bred young ladies."
Ororo blinked. Had she just heard sarcasm in Alexandra's tone? Her face was completely straight, so maybe it wasn't, but it had sounded for a moment like it was. "Would you like to go into town tomorrow to buy something more comfortable to wear for play? I have a few errands of my own to run; it would be no trouble to take you along."
Andi gasped, forgetting about the pain in her ankle. Shopping! It was something she hardly ever got to do. Trailing after her mother while her mother walked into every dress shop near their Boston home didn't qualify. To be able to pick something out for herself, to get something she wanted instead of something she hated, would be a change. But, "I don't have any money," she said.
"A part of the money collected from your parents for tuition is for clothes," Ororo explained. "All kinds of things can happen to the gym uniforms here; they get ripped, stained, and ruined in more ways than I can count. A portion of the tuition is for replacement of the clothing. I checked with Charles; he said he didn't see why some of it could not be spent on play clothes for you."
Andi opened her eyes wide to keep them from tearing up. They were being incredibly generous; no one had ever been this kind to her. "Thank you," she stammered.
Ororo reached out and hugged her. The girl looked like someone had just handed her an incredible gift; she was glad she could make Alexandra happy. "I will be leaving around eleven," she said, "Will you be ready?"
"Yes," Andi said.
"Good." Ororo let her go; the girl was stiff as a board, as though she had never been hugged before, or at least she didn't get hugged frequently. "Now why don't you come down to dinner? Lunch was rather light, by our standards; and you did not have breakfast, so you must be hungry. We're having roast beef tonight."
Andi's mouth watered. Oh, she would love that. She was about to say yes when she realized that there was no way she could take the stairs with her ankle the way it was and not show her pain. And if the teachers knew she was hurting, they would insist on seeing to her ankle, and questions would be asked that Andi didn't want to answer. So she said quietly, "Thank you, but no. I'm not very hungry; I think I'll skip dinner." Ororo frowned, but didn't press.
Andi breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind Miss Munroe. She hobbled across the room, picking up her discarded clothes and putting them back in the bag, then put her ballet shoes back in the bag and crawled across the bed to wedge the bag between the bed and the wall. She reached down a little further and felt the sock with her small stash of money in it. Satisfied that it was still there, she lay back on the bed. She was more tired than she would admit to herself, and she drifted off into a light doze.
She awoke some time later biting her lip from the pain in her ankle. She got stiffly out of bed, moaning with the pain, and went to the bathroom. Dampening a small washcloth with cold water, she carried it back to bed with her and left it on her night table as she changed into her black pajama pants and white t-shirt top. Thanking God that the pants were loose, she climbed back into bed, wrapped the cold towel around her ankle, and drifted off into a restless sleep.
Anger. And a cold, consuming rage directed at another person. Pain. Lots of pain. Betrayal, loss, more rage. More pain. Lots and lots of pain, overwhelming the mind and consuming the body.
Andi never heard herself scream in her sleep. She didn't hear the pounding footsteps in the hall; she didn't hear the knocks on her door. She didn't know anyone else was in her room. All she was aware of was the emotions surging into her mind, eroding her fragile shield. A hand gripped her arm, and a voice called her name. "Alexandra!"
The touch brought with it a new wave of emotions. Fright and concern, an urgent need to know what was happening, and shock. She pushed the hands away, ignoring the pain in her now hugely swollen ankle, and cowered up against the headboard of the bed. "Stop it!" she heard herself scream, as form a distance, "Stop it, I can't, oh, please make it stop, I can't handle it, please, someone make it stop…" She began to sing, a nonsensical nursery rhyme remembered from when she was a little girl, repeating it over and over and over again, trying to use the sound and colors and shapes of the melody as a bulwark against the conflicting emotions that were crowding her mind.
Xavier and Jean came in at a dead run, responding to the psychic disturbance in the mansion. They stopped short at the sight of the girl, cowering against the head of her bed, singing a nursery rhyme over and over at the top of her lungs, as if using the sound to drown out the emotions in her head. Xavier reached into her mind and slammed a psychic shield around her mind, cutting off the tidal wave of emotions that was overwhelming her.
Andi suddenly realized how loud her singing was in the sudden silence. The confused babble of emotions in her head was gone, as if someone had reached out with a switch and turned it off. She stopped singing, and lifted her tear-stained face to the adults around her, and then she started to cry again, this time in pathetic despair. "I'm sorry for waking everyone, I'm sorry, please don't send me away, please, I promise it won't happen again, I'll shield better next time! Please don't send me back, don't call my parents and tell them I lost control again, they'll send me back to Dr. Hebron--"
Ororo sat down on the bed and hugged the girl tightly. Under all that reserve was a badly frightened child trying to cope with something she couldn't control, and she had no one to turn to. Her heart went out to the girl.
Andi tried to pull away from the older woman, but Ororo wouldn't let her. "Alexandra. It's all right, go ahead, let it out." For a long time there was no sound in the room but Andi's sobs.
Jean spoke to Xavier. Charles, what's wrong with her? Why did she suddenly break down like that?
My fault, thought someone. Jean turned to see Logan in the doorway, wearing a tank top and hastily pulled-on jeans. I was havin' a nightmare, an' I guess she picked up on it.
So why did she not shield? Charles was just as perplexed.
Jean sat up straight, her mouth making an 'o' of surprise. Because she can't! Charles, when I met her in the kitchen earlier, I touched her mind. She doesn't have shields, Charles, not like you or I have them. She 'plays' a song in her head loud enough to drown out others' emotions, and that's her way of shielding. I wondered at the time if maybe she was never taught properly to shield, but it seemed implausible, given her age and the fact that her parents got someone to help her, but it's the only thing I can think of that would explain this outburst.
We'll have to fix that. I can't believe her parents would be so irresponsible as to give her mental training over to someone that inept. Xavier's mindvoice was tinged with disgust at Alexandra's parents and pity for her. All right. Everyone back to bed. Jean, if you wish to return to bed, I can handle this with Ororo.
Jean's mindvoice was uncertain. Are you sure? I mean, I'm tired, but I can still help if you need it—
Xavier shook his head. I think the fewer minds involved in this the better for her. She's already terribly confused; I don't want to exacerbate that. And I'm going to need to concentrate and find out how Dr. Hebron tampered with her mind. Ororo started to rise, but Alexandra had her arms wrapped so tightly around her she couldn't disengage herself. Xavier smiled. On the other hand, maybe you had better come. She might respond to a female presence better. Ororo, I believe you should come as well. You seem to have bonded with her; she might be more open if someone she trusts were there. I'm going to have to ask a number of questions, and not all of them are going to be easy ones.