Chapter 3

Bayville High. He'd spent years here, knew the place like the back of his hand.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He knew it like he knew his hand inside a black leather glove, seeing the shape but not the detail. Robbed of any true identity, it was just like everywhere else he knew. Monotonous and monochrome.

Even the one thing that usually brought him solace couldn't help. In fact, thinking about the love of his life only made things worse as he realised how little he actually knew about her. Sure, he knew all the romantic nonsense – her favourite chocolates, which flowers she liked, and what love songs made her vision blurry and her breathing slow. He knew her deep dark secrets. But it was the silly little things that tormented him as he tried to picture her in his mind. Shape, but no detail, everything overshadowed by the terrible benevolent curse. Ask him what colour her eyes were, and though he'd gazed in them a million times he would have to answer the same as for any other object.

Pink.

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Scott Summers depressed. Now that really was a turn up for the books.

Robyn slumped against her locker, watching. It wouldn't last, of course. One glance from Miss. Grey, looking down from her pedestal, and he'd perk right up. The perfect couple. How sweet.

She punched the cold metal apathetically, the studs on her fingerless leather gloves biting bruised flesh. Funny how two nutcases from Xavier's School for the Seriously Weird could become the Westchester's epitome of cool, while the completely un-extraordinary, if a little maladjusted, were...

"Morning, Freak"

Robyn scowled, both at the disruption of her musings and the inconvenience of having to think of a good comeback. Weird how they hated her for being a... whatever, then hated her even more for defying their classification with an apathy too easily mistaken for lack of attitude. Who the hell came up with these classifications anyway, deciding what was 'cool' or not? Black was what she chose to wear, not a lifestyle choice, for chrissakes!

Thankfully the little brat was distracted as a much better target came into view. Another 'nutcase', one she thought better deserving of the praise and adoring glances lavished on Scott and Jean. They could have been twins, although Robyn thought the white bangs would have made it much harder to hide, and so saved them for after graduation when she'd become a proper recluse and live in Alaska. Instead her hair, once again playing against those stupid stereotypes, was a strange sort of tawny blonde – 'beige on acid', perhaps, had anyone bottled it. Not one to launch a leaky dinghy, let alone a thousand ships, but that was how she liked it; an invisible girl, roaming the corridors and classrooms. A face without a name. Just another freak.

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Goddam freaks. Why weren't they all quarantined or something?

Amy flicked her hair and yawned idly, one delicate ivory hand raised to cover the peachy oval yet tilted almost imperceptibly so as not to smudge her expensive designer lip-gloss. It wasn't normally done to swear, but in this case she felt it justified. It was bad enough that some people didn't even try to conform to perfection. But to have MUTANTS running around? It didn't bear thinking about.

And yet that was the reality, wasn't it? Anyone she passed in the street could be a monster. Even her fellow students.... The people whose air she shared at that very moment. Disgusting. The thought of dirty air polluting her lungs like an oil slick, swirling through her bloodstream, made her nauseous, a vain attempt to purge her of the corruption.

Amy tossed her head in a gesture both casual and contrived to keep from fainting. Of course there would be mutants, there always had been, wasn't that what Professor Xavier had been on about in those stupid lectures? But not here. That was just silly.