Chapter 1: Home
Andi was still asleep when Ororo and Emma woke up the next morning. Ororo took a quick peek into her room to check on her, then closed the door softly and went to the kitchen. "Mmmm," she sniffed as she walked in. "Coffee smells good."
Emma pushed a cup across the little kitchen table toward Ororo. "Here," she said. "Sit down, drink that, and tell me a little more about Andi."
Ororo sat down. "She is a very shy little girl," she said slowly, trying to put into words what she had only felt till now. "She has spent most of her childhood going in and out of boarding schools, so she does not have friends, and she is therefore lacking in social skills. Her parents ignored her when she was home and spent the time trying to figure out ways to get rid of her; they had her on this ridiculously strict schedule that they expected her to follow, and they had the housekeeper and the rest of their staff keep an eye on her.
"Andi has only had her powers for a couple of years. They first manifested when she was fifteen. She and her parents were driving in the limo on the way back from a school she had just gotten herself expelled from, and a tractor-trailer flipped over on the highway and pinned the family's limo under it. Andi was trapped inside the car. The driver died instantly; Robert, Andi's father, fractured an arm. Andi's mother was just scratched." Ororo took a sip of her coffee. "They insisted on going to the hospital, even though Andi was still pinned inside the car. Andi's father's laptop was not secured, and the bag with the computer in it flew back into the third row of seats and smashed into Andi's head. She was barely conscious and bleeding." Ororo shook her head to dispel the terrible vision. "I cannot believe Andi's parents would put their own needs in front of hers. Especially as their injuries were relatively minor; hers was serious enough that the hospital kept her for a week.
"Andi's mother was certain that Andi was not that seriously injured. She insisted that the hospital release Andi at the end of the week, although Andi was still coping with dizziness and nausea. She was also starting to feel others' emotions in her mind; but from what she said, it was an inconsistent occurrence, and she thought it was her imagination. Andi's mother signed a contract with the hospital to have a private nurse attend to her care; needless to say, she did not keep that promise. When Andi got home, life resumed as though nothing had happened. She was still expected to get up and keep to her schedule. Of course, she could not. She kept having dizzy spells and bouts of nausea. Her mother punished her, but finally gave up.
"Andi stayed in her room, in bed, too sick to get up and attend meals. Her father's valet brought her meals, but when Andi's mother found out she had the man fired. Andi starved for a week before she got so hungry she decided to try to get downstairs to the dining room. She was halfway down, clinging desperately to the banisters when her mother spotted her. She got angry at Andi and slapped the girl so hard Andi tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs, reopening the stitches on her scalp."
Emma's hand was clamped over her mouth in shock as Ororo went on. "At least that got Andi's parents to get a doctor for her. He took care of her until she got better and she could resume her normal activities. The only difference was that Andi found that her empathy wasn't sporadic any longer; 'the switch got stuck in the on position', as she put it. With the emotions of the staff swirling around her, it was impossible to hang onto her own identity when she was unable to shield. She went crazy one day, when it got too much for her. Her mother punished her by locking her in a tiny closet the whole day, with no food, water, or ways to relieve herself."
Emma stared at Ororo. "My God, Ororo…that's inhuman! It's not Andi's fault!"
"Her mother thought it was," Ororo put her cup down on the table and dropped her chin onto her fist. "Andi was desperate. When she finally was allowed out of the closet she turned to her mother and said if her mother didn't get her help she was going to either end up killing herself or someone around her. I do not think Andi meant it as an actual death threat; I think she was referring to the eventual result of her lack of control. Andi's mother thought she was threatening to kill her and the child's father; so she locked the girl back in the closet. Andi stayed in there for a couple of days; when the door finally opened again, Dr. Hebron was there."
"She didn't have food or water for that long? How did she manage to survive?" Emma's face had gone pale.
"I do not know. I do not even think Andi knows." Ororo's tone was quiet. She had wondered the same thing herself. "Anyway," she said, picking up on the threads of her story, "Dr. Hebron told her parents that she was mentally unstable, and offered to take her. Andi's parents signed the girl over to the doctor for a year. Dr. Hebron took Andi to a hospital for mentally unstable patients."
"I want to do something particularly painful to them," Emma said decidedly. "Their child wasn't mentally ill, she's an empath! They couldn't understand that?"
"Andi's parents are mutaphobes. I do not think they wanted to understand," Ororo said. "So Andi was consigned to Dr. Hebron's care for a year. He was under no such illusions; he knew what Andi was. He was doing research on autistic patients; he needed someone to tell him what they were feeling. That was why he wanted Andi. He was going to force her to develop the control to block out others' emotions and focus on one specific person.
"He locked her in a bare room in the basement of the mental asylum for days on end, leaving her alone to suffer the deluge of emotions she couldn't shield herself from. He promised Andi that when she learned to shield she could go home. Andi eventually discovered the trick of playing music in her head loud enough to drown out the emotions around her.
"It was not enough for Dr. Hebron. She had to make that control unshakable. So he hooked her up to an electroshock machine and electrocuted her repeatedly to shake her concentration--"
"He electrocuted her?" Emma gasped. "That would be enough to shake anyone's concentration!"
"She has scars on various places on her body from electrical burns," Ororo said softly. "I saw them. She believes that they are her fault, because she could not control her ability." She picked up her coffee. "Andi did learn to concentrate even through intense physical pain. It was exactly what Dr. Hebron wanted. He had her sit in on sessions with his patients, sessions in which he electrocuted them to attempt to get a reaction out of autistic or otherwise non-responsive individuals. They could not react; they could not tell him what they were feeling; so Andi had to do it for them. She screamed for them; she begged him for them, she cried and whimpered and suffered everything they suffered. And at the end of the day, all she had to look forward to was confinement in her cell and some stale bread and water. Most of the time she could not even eat what was given to her; her throat hurt too much to swallow. She was finally released when a new doctor came to the asylum and sent her home, realizing that she wasn't mentally ill."
"My parents weren't happy to have me back," said a quiet voice from the door, and they looked up to see Andi standing there in her black pajama bottoms and white camisole top. The clothes hung loosely on her thin body; Andi had lost more weight than she could afford while she was imprisoned at Dr. Hebron's home. Looking at the child, she wondered now how she could have missed seeing the signs of starvation on the thin body before; it was very plainly evident now. Ororo estimated Andi must be about eighty pounds by now; way below the normal weight for a five-foot two seventeen-year-old.
A look of shock and horror crossed Emma's face for just a second before it went still and impassive. Had Ororo looked a second later, she would only have seen the smooth, calm exterior of the woman her students had called 'Frosty' and the 'Ice Queen'; but in that second Ororo knew Emma felt all the horror at Andi's abuse that she herself had.
"Come sit down, Andi," Emma said gently, pushing out a chair for the girl. She got up and poured a cup of milk, adding chocolate mix to it, and popped the mug into the microwave and punched the buttons. "Your mother was just telling me how you found out about your powers." The microwave beeped, and she took the steaming mug out, putting it down on the table in front of Andi.
Ororo got up and went to the counter, opening prescription bottles and taking pills out. Andi stared at the tiny dose cup she was handed, with six pills of different colors and shapes inside, and made a face. "Do I have to take those?" she said resignedly, taking the cup anyway. "What are they?"
"Vitamins," Ororo said. "Dr. Daniels, at the hospital, told me to make sure you had one of each every day. You need to gain some of that weight you lost back."
Andi gave a short, bitter laugh. "Most other girls my age are worried about losing it. I'm worried about gaining it." She swallowed the pills down, one at a time, with her hot chocolate, then sat at the table staring into the cup moodily as Ororo got up and took eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator. "Mother and Father weren't happy to have me back," she said. "I was lying in bed one night when I heard them arguing. Mother said she just wanted me out of the way so she could do what she wanted to do with her life. She never loved me, she never wanted me. I was always just a burden to her." She looked up at Ororo. "Mom, why did she take me in? Why didn't she just tell my biological mother no? Maybe someone else, someone nicer, would have adopted me, and I'd be a normal teenager right now."
"I don't know, Andi," Ororo said quietly, taking strips of bacon out the frying pan and dividing them between three plates. "I don't know why."
"She must have had a reason," Andi said. "She never does anything unless there's a reason for it." She sighed. "I guess I'll never know, right?" She turned to Emma. "When are we going to start my training?"
Emma said, "I wanted to give you some time to adjust to your life and home here before we began. You only got out of the hospital yesterday; give yourself some time to relax. If you push yourself too hard you're only going to stress yourself out more, and lose more weight you can't afford."
"What about lessons?" Andi turned in her chair to look at Ororo. "Am I going to get to go to a regular school?"
"You're well caught up in your studies," Ororo said. "Charles said you could probably take a college entrance exam right now and pass easily. So consider this some time off for you. Don't worry about school lessons."
"No school?" Andi looked puzzled. "What am I supposed to do?"
Emma laughed and put an arm around Andi. "Andi, do whatever you feel like doing," she said. "If you want to sleep the whole day, go on ahead. We're not going to start your power lessons for a week. I want you to have some time off. And your mom agrees with me. Right, 'Ro?"
"Certainly," Ororo brought Andi's plate over to the table and set it in front of her. "Go ahead and eat, Andi," she said when the girl hesitated. "You need not wait for us." Andi dug into the eggs and bacon and toast without further comment. Emma smiled as she saw the rate at which the food disappeared. The child must have been starving. She sneaked a look at the stove, and was reassured by the sight of another package of bacon frying on the stovetop. There would be plenty for all three of them.
Ororo took a deep breath. "The trial date has been set," she said as casually as she could. "Charles' name is quite well known; the publicity around Dr. Hebron's arrest and charges are serious enough that the trial date has been moved forward."
Emma watched as Andi went pale. She set down her fork. "I'm going to have to testify, aren't I," she said quietly. It was more a statement than a question, but Ororo answered it anyway.
"Yes you will. I am sorry, Andi. It starts in three weeks; the District Attorney is going to stop by in a week or so to prepare you for the kinds of questions you will be asked. I received the notices yesterday."
Andi bit her lower lip nervously. "Is it going to be public?" she whispered.
"Yes," Ororo said as gently as she could. "You are no longer considered a minor, so the courtroom will be open."
Andi started to cry. "I'm going to have to sit in front of all those people and tell them what he did to me? I can't, Mom, I can't tell everyone how he beat me and hurt me and…and…how Preston…Mom, please!"
Ororo wrapped her arms around Andi, ignoring the tears that dampened her shirt. "I know, Andi, I am not looking forward to this either. I know how they hurt you; I wish I could go up there and tell them for you. But I cannot; this is something you must do. I will be there, if it makes you feel better."
Andi nodded miserably. "But to have to sit up there in front of all those people; and Dr. Hebron will be there, too, looking at me, and Preston's going to be saying all kinds of things in my head, trying to distract and discourage me…and to have to tell them all…what they did to my body…"
"Wait a moment, Andi," Emma said. "Preston Childs is not allowed to speak to you. How could he…Andi, he's a telepath?"
Andi nodded quietly.
Emma looked at Ororo. "There should be a way to have the defendants removed from the room," she said. "And I'm going with you, to make sure he doesn't hurt Andi if he tries to do anything…"
"Emma, do not do something you will regret later," Ororo said firmly.
"Believe me, 'Ro, I won't regret anything I have to do if he tries to hurt Andi," she said coldly. "Nothing the law could do to him will ever equal the suffering he has put her through." She pushed her chair out from the table and left the room.
Andi pushed away from Ororo finally and wiped her face. "The bacon's burning," she said faintly.
Ororo returned to the stove, but it was too late. "Well, there goes that batch," she said ruefully, looking at the burned mess in the bottom of the pan.
"It's all right," Andi stood up, pushing her chair back. "You can have mine. I've lost my appetite anyway." She hurried out of the kitchen, and Ororo was left staring at a half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs.
"Damn," she swore fervently. "I should not have said anything while she was eating. She needs full meals." Sighing, she picked up the plate and emptied it into the trashcan.