Chapter 5: Secrets
Alexandra was still clinging to Ororo as they walked into the informal living room, but now for a different reason. Jean supported her on the other side, helping her walk. She had wanted to carry the girl into Xavier's office telekinetically, but even with the pain Alexandra was in her pride refused to let her take advantage of the offered help.
Ororo sat on the couch with Alexandra beside her, and Jean telekinetically pushed a low ottoman up to the girl and put the swollen ankle on top of it. Alexandra didn't even protest. She was still dazed by the rapidity with which everything had happened.
Jean pushed the pant leg up to expose the swollen ankle and studied it. Hank was the more experienced doctor, but even she could see that the ankle was badly sprained. And she saw something else too.
"Alexandra," she breathed. She made a soft sound of dismay as she tugged the fabric further up the thin calf. "What happened!?"
Alexandra closed her eyes. Clearly marked on her ankle were the faint white lines, scars from old abrasions left by the leather straps Dr. Hebron had restrained her with. "It's nothing," she said.
Jean reached for the other ankle. Andi pulled the limb back under the chair, out of Jean's reach. Jean looked up at her. "Alexandra. Let me see your other ankle. If it has the same marks you have some explaining to do."
Alexandra kept the foot tucked under the low couch. Jean sighed and gave it a gentle telekinetic tug. The foot stayed under the couch. She exerted more force, but with the same result. Jean pressed her lips together. "Alexandra, if the marks are nothing, then why are you hiding them?"
The answer was whispered in a voice so low she barely heard it. "Because I'm ashamed of them."
"Why?" Xavier asked her. Alexandra shrank into the couch, almost seeming to become visibly smaller as she answered him.
"Because they're there because I can't control myself."
Jean was about to say something, but Xavier stopped her with a gesture. "Can't control what?"
The words spilled out. "I can't control myself. I can't control it to keep the other emotions, the ones that aren't mine, out. Dr. Hebron tried, he really, really did, but I just couldn't. It hurt, it really did, and I just couldn't, but he said I couldn't leave till I could, but I wanted so bad to just go home so I pretended I could!"
That made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but Xavier was encouraged nevertheless. Alexandra was so afraid of emotions, even her own, that she had bottled them all inside. It wasn't healthy for a normal person, much less an empath. The fact that she had finally admitted her helplessness would make it one less burden she had to carry.
Now to find out what it was that she couldn't do. "What was it?"
She clammed up.
Xavier sighed. "Alexandra," he began. "What is this school called?"
She said quietly, "A school for gifted youngsters."
Oh, well, it was close enough. "We don't consider mutations a curse, here, regardless of what your parents might call it. They're considered gifts here. I do take students gifted in other ways, of course, but the first and primary requirement for entry is having a mutation. Your parents were given to understand that you were accepted here for your grades. You weren't. You're here first for an education in the normal sense, and secondly for training in controlling and using your gifts, your powers, for your good and that of others around you. You may not be aware of the fact that I am a mutant too. I'm a telepath. I can project emotions, thoughts, and feelings into other minds, and also read them."
"You're a telepath?" Alexandra started shaking. "Are you going to hurt me too?"
"'Too'? Alexandra, what has…" Xavier cut Jean off. He was starting to get a better idea of the terrible secret Alexandra carried around with her, and it was an ugly one. He was going to need Alexandra's trust before he did what he knew he had to do.
"Yes, Alexandra, I'm a telepath. A fairly strong one. I'm not telling you this to frighten you, child, I'm trying to get you to understand that I have a very rigid code of ethics that prevent me from abusing my talent and using it for the wrong purposes. I could have read your mind as easily as you would read a book already; but I respected your privacy enough to try to ask you to tell me, instead of invading your mind and grabbing what I need to know."
"You mean, you're powerful enough that you could have read my mind already and you didn't? Why wouldn't you? I mean, everyone else…" she trailed off and bit down on a lip that was already chapped and raw.
"I would prefer that you tell me what is wrong, so that I can try to help you this way, rather than invade your mind and change it as someone has already so obviously done." He paused. "Will you help us help you, Alexandra?"
Silence for a long, long moment. Finally there was a small nod.
"All right. Thank you, Alexandra. Jean, if you would be so kind as to get one of the ice packs from the kitchen, we can make Alexandra more comfortable first."
"Andi." Andi said quietly.
Ororo looked at her. "What?"
"My name is Andi. I hate Alexandra. Everyone calls me that, and I hate it. It's so long." She fell silent again.
"I think Alexandra is a lovely name," Ororo said to her, "But if you like Andi, then that is what we will call you."
* * *
Jean came back soon with the ice pack wrapped in a towel, and also a plate of sandwiches and two cups of tea. There was a third cup on the tray, an insulated thermos, and Andi assumed it was warmed tea for refills for the adults when Jean handed her the plastic container. "Here."
"What is it?" she stared at it suspiciously, though the warmth of it against her clammy palm was comforting.
"Hot chocolate," Jean answered her. "Very good for comforting children during long difficult conversations." Her green eyes held a trace of humor, and her smile was warm.
Andi took it, and gave her a watery smile, which turned into a sharp hiss of pain as Jean cradled her sprained ankle in her lap. As carefully as she could, Jean laid the ice pack on the swollen ankle and wrapped a bandage around it to hold it on. Xavier waited until she was done and Andi had finished eating the sandwich before he broached the subject again.
"I realize some of these questions will be difficult for you, emotionally, to answer, so I'm going to keep the shield around your mind so you won't feel any emotions other than your own. I'm positive that mine will be sufficient, but for your peace of mind Jean will shield herself and Ororo as well so that you don't have to deal with them."
Andi sat with her mouth hanging open. 'You can put shields around someone else/" she said disbelievingly. At his nod, she asked, "Can all telepaths do that?"
He chose his answer carefully. "Most can, yes," he said. "If you can create a personal mental shield, then you can also create one around another person."
"Then why didn't he do that?" Andi wailed suddenly. "Why did he make me.." she clamped her mouth shut.
"Andi, it's all right. Let any emotions you have show. It will help us understand how to fix what happened to you. It will also help if you started at the beginning. When did you first realize you had a mutation?"
Andi 's voice softened. "I'd just gotten kicked out of Merriweather Girls' school," she said softly. "The limo was driving back to the airport in Denver and my parents were arguing with each other over whether they wanted to find another school right away or if they wanted to have me stay home for a while. Father wanted me to stay home, but Mother said the extra cost of tutors would place an undue strain on her household budget, because she had just hired herself a personal maid. The driver was distracted by the argument and drifted a little too close to the center line. An eighteen-wheeler crossed the line a bit to make a wide turn, and the limo crashed into it." She swallowed. "The truck turned over on top of the car. The driver died instantly. Father was on Mother's side of the limo getting ready to use the installed lighter for his cigarette. They said later that it was the only thing that saved him.
"The truck landed over the left side of the limo, and the car tilted. Father's briefcase, with his laptop in it, was the last thing I saw before I blacked out. I have kind of confused memories later of waking up sporadically, at intervals, but the pain in my head hurt so much that Mother said later all I did was scream whenever I woke up.
"The ambulance got there finally, but they had to wait for the police to call in people with blowtorches to cut me out, so Mother and Father insisted that there was no point in making them wait for medical assistance when they could be treated before I got out. They insisted that the ambulance take them to the hospital. Father had a fractured arm, but Mother only had scratches. I learned all of this from eavesdropping on the nurses who took care of me while I recovered from my skull fracture, because to hear my Mother tell it, they both were dying." Andi's voice was bitter. "I was trapped in the car, bleeding and in pain, and my parents didn't give a crap about me. It hurt so much, knowing they didn't really care. In the week that I was in the hospital I even tried to read my charts, to find out if I was adopted or something, because there had to be a reason why they didn't love me." A tear rolled down her cheek.
Jean and Xavier exchanged glances. They both had the same thought; maybe Andi was adopted. They couldn't imagine anyone's parents wanting to go to the hospital for scratches and what were relatively minor injuries when Andi was bleeding and screaming in a pinned car. Jean kept a tight control on her shields, though. There would be time enough later for them to compare notes.
Andi went on as Ororo put an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into the embrace, taking strength from the encouraging smile the silver-haired woman gave her, and her voice was stronger when she continued.
"I was released from the hospital after a week. The doctor wanted to keep me longer because I was still having dizzy spells and fainting a lot, but Mother and Father decided that I would recover better at home." Her voice grew bitter again. "The doctor made my mother promise they would get a trained nurse for me when I got home so that if anything happened I'd be okay. But when I got home, there was no one. Just the old housekeeper (I hate her, by the way; she loves Mother's rules, and she tells on me for every little thing I do that isn't approved. And then I get punished.) Anyway, it was just Mrs. Ferrette, Mr Gordon, the butler; Anne, Mother's personal maid, and Mark, my father's valet. Mark would look in on me sometimes, and he would bring me aspirin when the pain in my head got bad, and once he brought me dinner in my room because my head had hurt so bad for three days so I couldn't even walk to the bathroom without falling.
"He tried to tell Mother that something was wrong with me, but Mother didn't buy it. See, I'd spent so much of the last few years getting into trouble at school to get attention from them that she didn't believe me when I really needed help. She told him I was acting up and to ignore me, and he got his pay docked that week for bringing my dinner. The next time it happened he was trying to sneak food up to me again when Mrs. Ferrette caught him, and he got fired.
"The pain just got worse and worse and worse. I lost weight so fast I stopped having periods. I got desperate enough one day to try to get downstairs to eat, and Mother found me on the stairs crawling on my hands and knees trying to get to the dining room. She scolded me, and forced me to get up. I didn't even think; I told her she was supposed to have a nurse for me, and I was going to call the doctor at the hospital and tell him she hadn't kept her promise. She slapped me so hard I fell, and I kept falling all the way down the stairs. The stitches opened up on my forehead, and I was screaming before I blacked out."
She paused to take a sip of the hot chocolate, and Jean drew in a deep breath. She hadn't realized she was holding it. Andi was lucky she had survived; head fractures could be tricky things. If she had broken anything in her head during the fall down the stairs, she could have ended up in a coma, or worse.
"When I woke up again, I found myself lying back in my bed with another doctor, a stranger, stitching up my head. It hurt so much, because he didn't use anesthetic. At least this time they paid to have him stay, but the first memory I had of when I woke was feeling my mother's frustration that she had to spend the extra money on another doctor.
"It kind of switched itself off and on over the next few weeks while I healed under the doctor's care. It was more off than on, and it kind of didn't really bother me much, but about a month later the switch suddenly seemed to get stuck in the on position, and it stayed there. It was horrible. I could feel every emotion in the house. Anne was mad at her boyfriend when she reported for work one morning, and I got that emotion stuck in my head. I just grabbed my breakfast plate off the table and threw it on the floor. It broke. I got punished. A few days later, Father's new valet Mick had his back teeth pulled and he was in agony. I screamed all day. Mr. Gordon's dog died and I spent the whole day crying. And then one morning they all came in with something wrong or another, and I just lost it. I was crying, screaming, throwing things, and just messing everything up. Mother tried to ignore it, and when she couldn't she punished me.
"I couldn't stop what was happening until they had left for the day. I pounded on the closet door for what seemed like hours before Mother was finally convinced I wasn't going to break her precious crystal and let me out. I begged her to get me help. I told her what had been happening, that I was feeling other peoples' emotions in my head and I begged her to get me help. She started to walk away.
"I was desperate. I grabbed her and shoved her against the wall and told her I would kill myself or her or Father if she didn't get me help. She must have gotten scared, and she called Mr. Gordon and Mrs. Ferrette, and they put me back in the punishment closet. I begged, cried, screamed, and threatened all night, and the next day. They didn't let me out. I didn't see daylight until the day after. Mother opened the closet door and I saw a strange man looking at me. Mother was saying that I was crazy, that I had delusions that I was a mutant and I was hearing voices in my head and she was keeping me locked up to keep me from hurting her or Father.
"I was a mess. After two days in the closet, I hadn't eaten or drank or gone to the bathroom, I smelled, I was skinny, I was hungry. He took one look at me and told Mother he was going to 'take my case'."
Andi stopped. Her hands were shaking, and she was crying, tears running down her face. She suddenly put a hand to her mouth and her face went pale. Ororo saw the symptoms first, and grabbed wildly for Xavier's metal wastebasket, dumping the paper on the floor and holding it for Andi as she threw up the sandwich and hot chocolate. Jean watched, her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes; Xavier was similarly dismayed. Ororo had tears spilling down her cheeks as she patted the heaving shoulders and back, whispering soothing sounds as Andi retched miserably.