Lucky Me

Chapter 002


Ever have one of those lives?

I did.

I hadn't until a few days ago. I had a slightly strange, teenager-with-a-weird-obsession kind of life. Going to school in a normal West coast school, making grades that made parents rant about the lack of studying and such.

Now?

Now my life was over.

I suppose I should tell it like it was. Well, like it was to me, which is the only way I could tell it I guess. Remember I was in school when my back started to rebel against my skin?

Yes, that's right; skin came off my back. Bloody, nasty, fleshy piles of goo were all over my clothes and the locker room floor.

"What. The. Hell!" was the ringing words Mandy left in my ears as she ran from the locker room. I couldn't catch her; I couldn't even move or speak. My eyes were so blurry with tears I probably would have run into a wall before I got her. So stunned was I, that I just stood there, tears pouring down my ashen face, and blood weeping down my back. I didn't want to touch me; I didn't want to see me.

But I looked. Looked to see if I could see my spine since there should have been no flesh there left. Instead, I could only see dark red. The sight made me completely lose control over my stomach. I threw up my breakfast. Not only was I a disgusting mess, I now smelled like vomit. Such a picture perfect moment, I should have been surprised that one of the yearbook staff didn't pop up from the toilet, snapping a camera in my face.

I can't say what happened next, except I hit my knees, and heard people burst in through the door. Never looking, freaked out, and weak from lose of blood and breakfast what else was I supposed to do but pass out?

When I came through to the sound of my name being repeated like a panicked chant, I saw the red head from the earlier assembly looking down at me. After my eyes fluttered and stayed open, she smiled in, I guess, relief.

In response to her question if I was all right, I groaned.

"I'll take this as a yes," she said softly to my incoherent reply. Personally, I thought it would translate into something to the effect of 'I just threw up, my body is coming apart at the seams, how do you think I feel?' but whatever.

"Kerry," came a stern voice as the red head helped me into a sitting position. Ignoring the voice for a moment, I took quick inventory of where I was since I was for sure no longer in the locker room—or school for that matter. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn I was in a plane!

"Plane?" I muttered, my throat dry and scratchy. My head throbbed as I swung my legs over the side of the bed I was resting on.

"Yes, we are in a plane," the comedian, who was not on my good list since the basketball thing, chimed in. If I weren't so tired I would have given him a death glare, if the little colored spots that appeared in my vision allowed me to find him.

"Kerry, do you know what happened?" came the stern voice again. I tried to look in the general direction of the voice and then shook my head.

"Was bleedin', Mandy started to scream—then—then I don't remember—" whatever I didn't think I remembered, I did just then as I tensed up in realization.

I was only wearing my sports bra and wind pants in the locker room!

Sudden embarrassment crept across my face as I nimbly felt my sides, but instead of my rebellious skin, I felt bandages. Oh great, I was bandaged and probably drugged since it didn't itch anymore.

Then I had to ask—who took off my bra!? Talk about total humiliation.

"Yes, and then you passed out when we came into the room. Do you realize what you are, Kerry?"

In trouble?

Humiliated?

Dazed and highly confused?

A freak?

"No, you are not a freak."

I was corrected by the deep-voiced individual. If I wasn't already on the highest creeped out level, then his answer would have sent me in to frantic panic because I had only thought my answer. Yes, only thought.

"You are a gifted individual," he began; (I thought only my mom referred to me as that) "You are what the world terms a homo-superior."

That term was familiar and not in a good way…

"You are a mutant."

Oh crap! I was a genetic freak?

I started to shake my head, my eyes finally clear of the spots only to be replaced with tears of denial. There was no way I was a mutant! I only learned about them, I was not one of them.

"No," I choked out, looking up at the man— the Professor whatever— who only stared back at with seemingly no emotion. Then, slowly, everything about that day started to make sense.

Why they appeared out of nowhere at a little no-name school in Washington, what Mandy said about them looking for kids to go to their mutant school and -Mandy!

"She will never remember what she saw," came a crisp woman's voice.

How the heck were these people able to answer questions I didn't voice? Oh yeah, they're probably mutants.

"I want to go home," I begged, and then promptly started balling.

If I had a half-working brain, I wouldn't have wanted to go home. In their plane, yes their plane, we went flying to my house (a bit of an over dramatic thing to me since my house was about five minutes away from the school). I went home to my mother and my little sister. To the house of my mother who hated mutants (which I didn't know until then) and my little sister.

I don't want to relate all the details, but needless to say she told me to get out of her house or she'd call the police. That hurt. I never thought it would hurt so much. One of the people asked if I could get a few things and with iciness I never knew my mom possessed she said take everything or she'd burn it.

After I packed everything I could in the few sacks I was allowed to have, I sat with my legs to my chest, arms wrapped around my knees, and my head down. Where was I going to go? What was going to happen to me?

Of course, they already had an answer.

They already planned on taking me away before they even knew who I was.

All that happened two days ago.

I couldn't believe I was in New York and clear across the country from my family's home. From my mom, who I tried to call and talk to but she kept hanging up on me. As for my little sister, I e-mailed her school account, but she wrote that she wasn't permitted to talk to me because I am a no-account mutie. My mom's words, not her own.

As for my skin?

Well, it was still leaving me. Piece by piece it peeled off and was being replaced by a gray, milky colored flesh. My spine started to swell not too long after landing in New York. So far at the Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning, I hadn't learned anything but that I didn't think I'd ever see my family again. I didn't think I'd ever go to a normal public school again. Just like I didn't think I'd ever be normal again.

A freak who happens to be a mutant, whose only power so far was grossing everyone out with my skin falling from my body. My life was over, what little life I had, and this was supposed to be the start of a 'new' life or so said the bald guy in a wheelchair. I really had to learn these people's names.

Especially since I didn't think I would be leaving for a while.