Chapter 5: Shopping

                "Can I ask a question?" Mickie said as Bobby turned off Graymalkin Lane and headed for the Salem Center mall.

                "Sure," Bobby said, keeping one eye on the road and turning the other one to Mickie, who had won the coin toss for the front seat. Jubilee was in the back, rummaging around in her purse for more bubblegum.

                "You said…back in Charles's study…that Derek and his crew had done something to another student?"

                "Yeah." The dimples around Bobby's lips disappeared as he frowned. "Amara. Scott and Professor Xavier told Derek and his friends that they was on probation for the rest of the school year after that, and that if they did anything wrong after that that they would be expelled."

                Mickie's eyes opened quite wide. "What did they do?"

                Bobby sighed. "It started out as a practical joke. They sneaked into the girls' showers and hooked the main water connections up backwards. The problem started when Amara got hit by the cold water when she turned on the shower. She was so startled by the sudden cold she ran out of the locker room wrapped in a towel and nothing else. Derek and his friends were in the hall, and they blocked her path and started tryingto pull her towel away from her. Jean was furious when she walked down the hall and saw them tormenting Amara. We all heard her screaming at them from the classrooms."

 Jubilee's head popped up to the front from the back seat. "Of course, everybody could hear, like, everything she was saying because she totally freaked. I, like, have never seen any of the teachers get so mad, least of all Jean. She just started yelling out loud and mentally. And she swore! She can swear like Logan when she gets mad enough." Jubilee grinned. "She was like, so embarrassed that she lost control like that, but the damage was done. We all had headaches until bedtime. And Derek and his friends had headaches until two days after. Nobody really had a whole lot of sympathy for them. Bullying isn't tolerated here."

Mickie smiled. "That's nice to know. I had a friend who went to a private boarding school like this one once and there was bullying and stuff all over the place."

Bobby shook his head. "You won't find that here. Bullies don't last long here; it's hard to hide prejudices and hatreds in a school that has three telepaths living in it, as well as an undetermined number of telepathic students. Professor Xavier is a telepath; so is Jean, and Elizabeth Braddock, who teaches European History and Japanese, rounds out the last of the last of the three. You can't get anything by those three."

Mickie blinked. "They read minds? Isn't that kind of an invasion of privacy?"

Bobby's nose wrinkled as he pulled to a stop at a stoplight. "They don't read minds, exactly," he said slowly. "It's more like they sense strong emotions and surface thoughts, and if something seems wrong, they take the student aside and talk to them. Usually the person being bullied is so miserable Jean can't help but notice, even without using telepathy. She's kind of the mother hen for all the kids here. Whenever anyone has a problem, they go to her. She's always ready to listen and help."

"What are the other teachers like?" Mickie asked.

"Scott's a d**k," Jubilee said, and Mickie turned and stared at the younger girl. Jubilee noted the look. "No, really. Logan says that all the time. Scott knows Logan says it, and he doesn't protest…too much."

Bobby took one hand off the wheel and reached back to swat Jubilee on the upside of her head. "It's still not nice to repeat," he admonished her. "Come on, this is the new girl, after all. Give her a chance to at least meet Logan before you go quoting him all over the place."

"Who's Logan?" A memory surfaced, and Mickie remembered. "Oh, Logan's the one who smokes, right? He wears those cowboy boots and that hat and kinda has a funny accent…"

"Yep, that's him," Jubilee said, grinning as she plopped backward in her seat. "Me and him, we hang around together a lot. He wouldn't know what to do without me."

Mickie looked at Bobby. "He looks like he'd sooner eat one of us alive than hang around with us."

Bobby laughed so hard he almost ran a stop sign. "He looks like that on the outside, but he does care. Watch what happens when he sees one of the others get hurt in Phys Ed, or one of his self-defense classes. He gets all mother hen like. He cares, I think he's just too concerned with preserving his macho image."

"Yeah he does," Jubilee chirped from the back. "He's a big ol' softie at heart."

Mickie grinned, then said, "What about Miss Marie, and Mr. LeBeau?" She grinned. "Miss Marie was showing me my room, and Mr. LeBeau came in, and he picked me up (I was still in cat form) and he was rubbing my tummy, and oooh, he is sooooo attractive!"

"Ain't he?" Jubilee leaned forward. "Watch out, though. Him and Rogue are, like, lovebirds, even though he can't touch her; they're like, forever dancing around each other. Don't make difference to him, though; he amuses himself with a wide assortment of female companionship whenever he likes."

'Why can't he touch her?"

Bobby started the car again, with a quick glance to make sure incoming traffic wasn't going to blindside him. "Rogue has this power that allows her to absorb energy from anyone she touches, skin to skin. She keeps every inch of her skin covered, that's why you'll see her wear gloves and long sleeves all the time. And Remy is empathic, as well as being able to kinetically charge objects and explode them."

"And he teaches Atomic Physics?"

Bobby gave Mickie an amused sidelong glance. "Don't take his class unless you're really seriously interested," he warned her. "Remy can be a very hard teacher, and he makes his coursework challenging. And very technical. I dropped out because I couldn't get interested in the work."

Mickie looked at him. "What about you? Are you a teacher? You don't look that much older than us."

Bobby grinned. "I graduated two years ago. I just hang around because it's so much fun teasing Scott, and because I really don't know where I'd go if I left here. This is my home."

Mickie digested this. "And what about you?" She asked Jubilee, turning to look at the other girl. "What about you? Is this your home too?"

"Yeah," Jubilee said, her face becoming serious. "Yeah, this is my home. I don't have anybody else related to me. The X--" she clapped a hand over her mouth, looked at Bobby, and then said, "The school's my home."

Mickie frowned. "'The X' what?"

Bobby pulled into the parking lot of the mall, parked, turned the engine off, and looked at Jubilee, then at Mickie, then said, "This is a secret. You have to promise never ever to tell anyone, even if they try to make you."

"What secret?" Mickie was more curious than serious.

Bobby shook his head. "Uh-uh. You have to promise."

"Okay. What's the secret?"

Bobby grabbed her hand. "This is important, Mickie. People have died before revealing who and what we are. You have to promise the same thing. We could all of us be killed, in painfully slow ways, if the word gets out."

"Okay! Okay! I promise! What's the secret?"

Bobby sighed, looked at Jubilee, and they both looked at Mickie.

Mickie made an X over her chest. "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye if I lie."

Bobby said, "You watch the news?"

Mickie frowned. "Aren't we getting off topic here?"

"No. No we're not. Trust me. Do you watch the news?"

Mickie settled back in her seat and crossed her arms. "Who doesn't?"

"You heard of the X-Men?"

Mickie sat bolt upright, as if struck by lightning. 'You guys are the X-Men?!" she yelped.

Bobby grabbed her hand to stop her excited fidgeting. "Yes. But it's a secret, for a lot of reasons. Very, very few people know that we're the X-Men, and we're all sworn to secrecy. If any of the bad guys we fight on a regular basis find out who and where we are, we're all dead. And even some of the government. There are a lot of people out there who hate mutants, Mickie, and a lot of them don't care which side you're on. If you're a mutant, to them you're automatically a bad guy. And what do you think would happen to the school, the students, and Professor Xavier if word got out? They'd almost certainly close the school and send all the students home, and the teachers would go to jail. That can't happen. A lot of our fellow X-Men have died rather than give up our secret. The world doesn't know it, but we've saved Earth's collective butt too many times to be shut down without something disastrous happening."

Mickie stared at him, her eyes round. "I can see that," she said finally, struck by the seriousness of the situation. "All right. I promise. I promise, I will never ever ever tell anyone who and what you guys are. Even if they tie me up and stick me with needles or something gross like that." She made a face.

"It may come to that," Bobby said. "You never know. It could happen to any one of us; me, you, or Jubilee."

Jubilee snapped her gum and reached for the door handle. "All right. Enough serious stuff. Let's go shopping!"

Mickie climbed out of the car a little more slowly, thinking about what she'd just been told. Bobby took her arm gently. "You okay? It's kind of a shock to some people. And we don't usually tell everyone; I only figured we'd tell you because you seem like you can keep a secret."

"I'll keep it," Mickie said, "As long as you promise me something."

"What?" Bobby asked guardedly.

"Can we hit the food court first? I have this craving for a burger with everything on it. It's been a month since I last had one."

Bobby laughed, and linked Mickie's arm with his left arm, and Jubilee with his right. "Sure. I'm a little hungry myself."

They stopped first at a McDonald's in the mall's food court, and Mickie satisfied her craving for the burger by stuffing herself with two Big Macs and a huge Coke. Jubilee and Bobby watched her eat with some amusement, which only increased when she devoured the remainders of their fries as well. Finally when every bit of food had been eaten she sat back with a sigh.

"You sure you had enough?" Bobby said, highly amused at the way she'd eaten. "You eat like you haven't tasted food in a month."

"Well I haven't!" Mickie defended herself. "Mom and Dad got tied of me experimenting with food in the refrigerator. They were convinced that constant throwing up couldn't be healthy, and they restricted me to cat food."

"Cat food! Yuck!" Jubilee made a face. "Did you actually eat the stuff?"

Mickie grimaced. "A lot of the stuff was horrible. Simply horrible. And people wonder why their cats don't eat?" she snorted. "Some of it, though, wasn't so bad to a cat's tastebuds. But I'll still take a Big Mac any day!" She sat up, and flushed as she burped. She hid her mouth with her hand as her two companions laughed, and then they emptied their trays and headed out to the mall.

The girls spent a lot of time in the various clothing shops, dragging Bobby in and out of shops that, to him, all sold the same stuff. He did perk up interestedly when they went into a lingerie store, and spent some time watching Jubilee and Mickie look at little scraps of lace that made him blush when he imagined the two girls actually wearing any of them. The salesgirl spent most of the time frowning at him, and finally he walked up to them and told them, quietly, that he was going to wait for them outside the lingerie store.

They took so long to come out that he was seriously considering going in to find out what was taking so long. Just as he was about to go in, however, they came out giggling under their breaths, and he frowned when he saw them. "Jubes, Mickie, what--" he started to say, and was cut off as they each grabbed an arm and hauled him physically away from the door to the store, not stopping until they were in the middle of another crowd of teenagers. Jubilee and Mickie headed up the escalator without a pause, and finally Bobby balked when they reached the upper level. "What have you done?"

Jubilee pointed down. He followed the direction of her finger and gasped, then turned around, leaned up against the rail of the walkway, and started laughing so hard he had to sit down. "How in the name of God did you manage to do that?" he asked Jubilee, who was giggling too.

"It was all Mickie's idea," Jubilee finally gasped out. "I distracted the saleslady with a question about something, and she ducked around the curtain and changed the display. Isn't it funny?"

The mannequins in the store window were now wearing underwear on their heads, and their arms were upraised. One mannequin was hugging another; the third one was holding its head casually in one outstretched hand.

Bobby smacked Mickie on the upside of her head, like he had done to Jubilee in the car. "How the heck did you do that?"

Mickie giggled too. "I got a job last summer working in a dressmakers' shop. I had to learn how to manipulate the mannequins there to make sure the dresses I sewed fit. I just ducked into the window and rearranged the arms. It was easy."

By now, a crowd of laughing shoppers were crowded around the window, laughing and pointing at the mannequins on display. The saleswoman who had glared at Bobby appeared in the window and began to rearrange the mannequins, restoring them to their former positions. She looked up, saw the three teens standing on the walkway above the shop, and pointed at them. A moment later, a man wearing a uniform started making his way to the escalator, clearly bent on apprehending the girls.

"That's our cue," Bobby said, and they immediately vanished into another crowd of kids heading for the front door. It was a rule Bobby had learned long ago; if you hang around the scene of the crime you'll get caught. He didn't breathe easy until they were out of the mall and heading for the car.

"We all gotta swear we won't tell Jean or Scotty about this," Jubilee snickered as the car pulled out of the lot. "Or Ororo. They'll get really upset."

"Cross my heart," Mickie said, laughing.

"And hope to die!" Bobby and Jubilee both finished for her, and they all laughed.