I yawned heavily, curled up on my jacket. Though the ride had been bumpy, sleeping had been my first priority. To this day, I don't remember spending more than five minutes at a time while conscious on bus 87. Most of those five-minute periods had involved going to the bathroom at a rest stop.

"Hey, kid! Kid!"

"Mmm?" I mumbled.

"This is the last stop. Westchester County. Get up and get out." The harsh voice and face of the bus driver came into focus.

"What-Oh, crap." I was now fully awake. Rubbed my eyes and looked out; it didn't look promising. There was an empty stop and bus in the dark. There were no street lamps in sight. "Please oh please," I begged the driver, turning to him, "let me sleep on the seat or something. I'll pay for a ticket to New York City."

"That was hours ago. Nothing doing. Now get out." He picked up my bags and threw them onto the pavement.

"Jerk," I muttered under my breath as I left the bus. I thought about what I'd like to do to him, but after a while I realized that I had more urgent worries. To start with, I was hungry and had no food left. The summer night wasn't too cold, but the air smelled like rain was coming. A memory drifted into my brain. Didn't Jeff say something about a private school near the bus stop? I hoped they would let me in. My watch said it was four in the morning. Dejectedly, I shuffled off towards the nearest lights.

It was way too dark. I stumbled around, hoping that there would be no traffic about. Just then I heard the sound of a car coming up behind me. "Great. Just great." Quickly I edged to the side of the road. The car lights were off. Just barely I could see its outline. It was swerving back and forth, back and forth. In a moment I saw why: beams of red light were being shot at it that destroyed everything they hit. One came straight at me and I dodged it, screaming. Unfortunately, the only other place to go was in front of the car.

When my head hit the pavement, I decided that my life couldn't get any worse. Then I heard a sickening crack and realized that it could. After that I didn't have time to think anything at all.

..................................................

Fire. Burning flames and choking smoke all around me. I remembered the fall, remembered the crash to my head, the awful pain. Then there was a long silence. A voice woke me up much later. Who am I? Who am I? That was my first conscious memory. Repeating the same question over and over for hours.

This was second time I woke up in a hospital, however. This time I could remember everything. "Just a dream," I muttered, referring to the fire. I opened my eyes. A man was sitting next to me, a complete stranger, just like the first time.

"Are you all right, Ryan Sing?" asked the man. He was bald and seemed pretty old, but had a dignified and cultured attitude and wore a neat suit.

Inanely, I asked, "Wha? How do you know my name?" I tried to sit up and found out that I couldn't. My ribs hurt, and I saw that my left arm was in a cast.

The man smiled kindly. "We found your name on your baggage. We found you on the road."

"Where am I?" Then I remembered that I had been looking for a private school. "Is this a school?"

"Xavier's School for the Gifted. I am Professor Charles Xavier."

I bit my lip. "I was hoping..." I began, not quite knowing how to phrase my statement, "to stay a day or two, until I can get a ride to New York City."

A woman walked over to my bed and shook her head. "I'm afraid that you can't be moved for several weeks. Several of your ribs are cracked and that arm won't be better for at least a month." She then turned to Professor Xavier and said something that I didn't catch. He nodded, and she quickly walked away.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"Dr. Ray. Some of our students fondly call her X-Ray. She is our resident physician." He clasped his hands together. "Ryan, according to Dr. Ray, you will have to be spending some time here. You are quite welcome to stay, and we do not ask for anything in return."

"Wow, thanks," I broke in.

The Professor continued, "I firmly believe that there is no use in trying to hide the nature of this school from you. Many of our students, like you, are runaways. We are accustomed to unexpected arrivals. However, the majority of them are...different from you."

"How?"

"We're all mutants, Ryan. The students, the teachers, and the other staff are all mutants. Except for the janitor, who is thoroughly 'normal', but has no prejudice against us." His tone was earnest and friendly.

I was frozen in horror. "Oh...crap," I said slowly. "Get away from me." My efforts to pull the covers over my head failed. I winced in pain.

Professor Xavier sighed. "I feared that you would have this attitude. This is why our students gather here. Here they are accepted and can have as close to normal lives as possible, while also learning how to control their powers. Ryan, I know the way that you, and many others, feel about us. I know even more firmly because I happen to be telepathic. Those dreams were your own memories, but I could not penetrate further than the time you lost your family. The rest is completely locked away. I was not trying to invade your privacy, I only wished to learn who you were and why you were here."

"Look," I said angrily, "why on earth did you save me? Why are you keeping me here? What's all this about?" I firmly believed that they, meaning the mutants, had some sinister motive for bringing me into their hospital.

"None of us here would leave an injured boy to die on the road. You may not believe me, but some mutants are actually decent people. Another reason for you to stay is, while I read your mind, I learned something from your earliest memories. I realize that you have suffered many shocks in a short period of time..."

Understatement of the year, I thought. I was chewing my lips to shreds in nervousness and clenching my fists in anger.

But I find it necessary to tell you something, came a voice in my head. I started. Though the Professor had told me he was telepathic, actually experiencing someone speaking to me with their mind made the skin on the back of my neck prickle. He continued, I know this disturbs you, but I do not wish for someone to overhear. There are one or two people at this school with very sensitive ears. I have read another person's mind before that carried a memory of a fire, and loss of a parent and a sibling through it. While that sank in, he added verbally, "She also shares the same surname as yours. A girl here is named Myra Sing. Do you happen to remember her?"

My jaw dropped far enough for me to swallow a fly. "That – that was my sister's name..." I shook my head. "No. You're lying. She's dead."

At that moment, I spotted a girl walking towards us. "She thought you were dead as well," Professor Xavier said quietly, "for many years."

I would've rather been told that I had leprosy than that the thing I saw was my sister. She was stick-thin, with enormous sunglasses obscuring her eyes. Her visible skin was covered with dark gray fur. FUR! Short hair hung slightly above her shoulders, hair that was a metallic silver. She saw my face, and her expression was of pure amazement. A slow smile crossed her face. I was revolted.

"Liar," I whispered. Then I said it again. "Liar! She's not related to me. No no no."

"Ryan," began the Professor.

"NO!" I wouldn't let him finish, nor would I listen to anything he said. "LIAR!" I screamed, "Get away from me, freak! LIAR!" Holding my left hand to my eyes, I continued to yell, "LIAR! LIAR! GO! LIAR!"

Through a crack between my fingers I had a fleeting glimpse of the girl rushing away, a tear trickling out from the glasses. A momentary pang of conscience hit me. I had never made a girl cry...except Crystal. Then my anger and bitterness rose again. It was THEY that took her away. Crystal became one of THEM. I had sworn to hate them forever the day that Crystal had disappeared, no matter how many little girls' feelings I had to hurt.

They left me alone for a while, to cool off. I did nothing but fume for what seemed like hours. Why was this happening to me? Of ALL the places to end up, I ended up here. Of ALL the places to get hit by a car, it had to happen here. Of ALL the people I could've been reunited with, I was stuck with my little mutant sister. If she WAS my sister, since I didn't think there was any proof. Even staying at home would have been better than being surrounded by mutants. I muttered and griped until my thoughts were interrupted.

Jerk. The word floated into my head. Total and complete jerk. Myra should've kicked his a$$. Guess it's up to me...

"What?" I said aloud, intensely annoyed. I turned my head around. Another girl was walking towards me. She was decent looking, with average height, average weight, and average build. Her hair was an ordinary dirty-blonde shade, her eyes a completely normal gray-green, a spray of normal freckles crossed her face, and she had glasses indistinguishable from any teenager's. Actually, she frightened me more than the previous monstrosity, since I would have never known that she was a mutant if I had just seen her walking down the street. "What did you just call me?"

"Oh, was I projecting? So sorry," she said, meaning the complete opposite. "Sometimes I do that without meaning to. Gets annoying." The girl sat down on a chair next to my bed. "Allow me to introduce myself. They call me Spy here. My other name doesn't matter much anymore. I already know that you're Ryan Sing. Don't worry, just the teachers and we two girls know you're here for now. It'll probably get out in a day or two." Spy adjusted her glasses. "You really upset Spirit, you know."

"Who?" Her manner was grating my nerves.

"Silent Spirit. SS. Only I call her Myra, since we're best friends. She's your sister. And she's been desperate to meet you for two years; before then she thought you were dead."

I tried to stretch nonchalantly, but only managed to remind myself why I was stuck in that bed in the first place. "Ow..." I whispered, then recovered myself and said, "You've got no proof that we're related."

"Oh yeah? What about this?" She drew something out of her pocket and showed me a wallet-sized photo. There were three people in that photograph. One was me in a little suit and bow-tie. I recognized myself because I looked the same as I had at age seven. There was also a man in the picture, a man who looked like a perfect adult reproduction of me, except that he wore sunglasses. On his lap was a little girl in a red dress and red sunglasses. She had gray fur and silver hair.

Shaken, but still firmly opposed to the idea of my being related to a mutant, I said, "Still no proof. Trick photography or something."

Exasperated, she answered, "If you're going to be in denial, there's nothing I can do."

"Look, kid, I don't appreciate being insulted by a freshman."

"I am NOT a freshman! We're sophomores! I'm sixteen already, and Myra is fifteen and a half. Just cause you're one year older than me and you're a normie doesn't mean you can look down on us."

"Normie?"

"It's a not very nice term for nonmutants. We got tired of being called muties, freaks, etc. So a bunch of the teens here coined the term "normie" for the people that call us that, since you guys put so much STRESS on being NORMAL." Spy stuck her tongue out at me. "Gaah. Spirit wants me to leave you alone, so I just thought I would tell you what I thought of you."

"Why do you people call her Spirit, anyway?" What a stupid name, I thought, forgetting that the irritating mutant next to me would know what had passed through my mind.

Oh hah hah, her thoughts returned. Why don't you ask her, then? You don't deserve such nice treatment from Myra and the Professor. I'll leave you this to chew on. Can't stay, I'm late for a date. She tossed the photograph, along with an additional one, onto my bedcovers, and stalked out.

My curiosity insisted on me looking at the other wallet-sized photo. It was the portrait of a fairly pretty and reasonably young, about mid-thirties in age, Asian woman. The image was oddly familiar, though I had no idea when I had seen it before. As I gazed at it, a strange feeling passed through me. There was a wave of comfort, peace, and complete security, along with a fleeting feeling that I had nothing to fear. I also felt an impulse to turn it over. On the back was a penciled, little-girl-type cursive message: "Mother, Lily Sing, 1970-November 18, 2005. I'm so sorry." I turned over the other picture, the three-person portrait that I had yet to explain away, to see if there was a message there as well. A tiny print said: "Dad, Charles Sing, 1971-2011. I'll never forget you. Ryan, 2003-? Are you still alive? Where are you? Me, age five. Who would've known what would happen next?" A wave a longing passed over my senses, a longing for these to be actual pictures of the parents that I remembered no more. But I could not accept the idea that my sister was a mutant.

Following Spy's advice, I chewed on my thoughts for quite a while.