Lucky Me

Chapter 020


Ever said 'I'm so mad I could scream?' Ever followed through with it?

I did.

Ever picked up a chair, an innocent chair that was doing its chairy things by waiting patiently for your rear end, and threw it.

I did.

I was so angry. I screamed and picked up my computer chair and threw it against the wall Chris and I shared. I threw it right into my mirror. Did I do that on purpose? Oh yeah, I did.

Why?

Because I saw myself, and I wanted me to go away.

Why the sudden 'I hate me' depression?

I finally read my sister's e-mail. It had some junk in it, but most of it was what my mom had done to prevent me from ever going home again. No, Darcy didn't write anything about the mutant killers my mom apparently sent after me, but it said everything else.

My loving mother changed our phone number, then sold her shop, picked up, and moved to a different city in a different state.

She wanted nothing to do with me, Darcy wrote that mom even forbid my name from being spoken. All the photographs that any part of me in it went missing. There wasn't much I cared to read after that, except the part where she wrote I should watch for something in the mail from mom in the upcoming months.

Darcy wrote that if I hadn't turned out to be a mutant, we could all be back together no problem.

Like I had a choice in the matter!

That's when I jumped up, looked behind me, saw my wings, screamed, and picked up my chair and threw it at the mirror. It shattered into a million pieces (the mirror, not the chair). My screech must have been louder than I thought, because all went silent from Chris' room. In a few minutes I had thrown everything I could reach to the other side of the room and then back again. (Remember, I had no problems with authority as long as I could pitch a fit? My fits usually lasted for a week.)

Oh yeah, did I mention that it was around two in the morning?

That would explain the burst of curse words coming from the hall after about six doors slammed open. Then there was a healthy dose of pounding on my door. Thankfully I had enough brains to lock my door to avoid interruptions (not that I get visitors in the early A.M. like some of the people in the hall).

"Kerry? Kerry! Open up!"

I didn't care who it was, but they were persistent buggers. I heard the knob shake, and then more banging. Wasn't it amazing how quickly anger can melt into tears? Man, I hated that! When you're so angry you start blubbering like a baby.

"Kid!"

"Leave me alone!" I screamed out, much to my surprise.

"What's wrong?"

You're bothering me? I'd like to destroy my room in private, please go away now.

"I can get a key to get in there, so just open up," Mr. Warren's cautioned.

I knew Mr. Kurt must have disappeared on a 'mission' again because he didn't teleport in the room. Wasn't that freaky? Never knowing when someone was just going to 'pop' into your room and such? Like a physical telepath or something, more freaky to the eyes, but at least you got to keep more secrets from them.

"Don't come in here," I warned, like I really could do anything to them if they did. I think all of them would qualify as black belts or something, except Chris, he'd hang himself with his belt (I hoped) at the very least gag himself with it!

"What's with the racket?"

"There's a spider," I lied, banging my head on the door. "A big, furry spider."

There was no response, just a jingle of keys, and my lock slowly turning.

"I can kill it without you!" I pushed away from the door, and kicked the door.

Not only did I kick the door, I made a hole in it. I kicked a hole through a solid wood door!

"Whoa!"

I left my foot in the door, what else was I supposed to do? Actually think?

Yeah right, you turn a door into splinters and tell me you can brush it off like it was nothing. Better yet, lose your skin, grow wings, kick a hole through a door, and then tell me you can deal with it no problem.


"I have good news my female feathered friend."

Most people throw a fit and get left alone, I throw a fit and get examined. Dr. Hank agreed to wait until later in the morning to do it, but not much later. Everyone had a freak attack along with me, and tried to help get my foot and lower leg back through the door without too much damage. It would have worked if I hadn't forgotten my emotions set off my skin (that never sounded so weird).

"How?" I asked, any liveliness was drained from me. I think it was because I spent the rest of the night crying, curled up in a little ball on my bed with someone letting me use their lap as my pillow.

"Besides your obvious mutation, and your internal mutation, and your skin mutation, you also appear to have a sort of super strength," Dr. Hank explained.

"That is so wicked," Adam awed.

"Not the wording I would use, but it is rather impressive."

"Like Miss Rogue?" Hey, I might not talk to everyone, but I saw this chick left a car over her head without breaking a sweat one night after Mr. Remy came home with lipstick on his collar.

"Not quite, like your skin transformations, it would appear that the same adrenaline makes your muscles go into 'over drive' and therefore give you incredible strength."

"Who would have thought since you have such scrawny arms?"

Eeegads, the last person I wanted to see this morning was D-M and her meanness.

"Miss Bloome is here in case you needed healing, but since they seemed to have-disappeared thanks to your black skin."

Yeah, thanks to being a mutant I managed not to get splinters in my leg and lose my family all in one blow. Oh, bless me!


"Want to talk about it?" Mr. Warren decided that it would be better to stay inside and work on my back strength the following day. Not because of my depression brought on temper tantrum, because Miss Munroe allowed it to rain, and Mr. Warren said it was hard enough to get me to let go of him on a sunny day, he didn't even want to try in the middle of the rain.

"Not really."

"It'll help."

"That is not a proven clinical fact?" I questioned, turned, and walked back across the balance beam. Didn't help with back strength but oh well.

"You can't keep it inside forever." Mr. Warren was a good strategist, but I still had things up my sleeves.

I decided to do the smartest thing, and ignored him.

"Why don't you ever talk to anyone about what's bothering you?"

Apparently he didn't know when he was being ignored.

"Come on, Kerry, don't you trust me?"

Dang it! Why'd he have to go and pull that! I didn't really trust him to not tell the Professor, but I'd been with Mr. Warren almost every morning for a month. So I didn't reply at first, just kinda stopped what I was doing and looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

This always did amazing things (on me at least).

This of course was shot to pieces when he crossed his arms and looked back at me with the same expression.

I sighed, defeated. I didn't feel too much like fighting anyway. But I didn't like everyone knowing my business either. I didn't like it when people looked at me with all that sympathy, it's annoying. Like I was some little kitten that just lost mommy cat due to a cruel eighteen wheeler.

"You won't tell anyone?"

I sounded like I just got plucked out of middle school. Man, I sounded stupid! Too late to take it back now. I wished sometimes I had the power to control time or something!

But Mr. Warren only smiled, "I promise, anything that is said will be between you and me."

Again, I sighed, and then jumped off the balance beam and sat crossed legged next to it. "What do you want to know?"

"Why you put a hole in your door? Why you screamed bloody murder? Why you are rolling your eyes when I'm talking to you?"

Whoops.

"I-got some bad news from home." Maybe I couldn't prevent myself from telling him, but at least I could hopefully leave out most of the details.

"Like what?" He moved closer.

"Like just-stuff." I started to pick at the blue mat I sat on. I really didn't like talking about my family.

"I see." Then he sighed again, "If you don't want to talk about it, we don't we have to talk about. We can talk about something else."

I wasn't biting that bait so quickly, "Like?"

"Anything, first thing that comes to your mind."

I thought about that. You know no one says the first thing that comes to their mind, and that's annoying. Sometimes I wished I could say what I wanted to without being edited by my socially acceptable dictionary. The little voice that goes 'you shouldn't say that, you'll upset someone'. The only time it didn't hang around was when I was sick, or had been up for 24 hours or longer. That little guy got drop kicked out of my mind and sailed into the cloud known as nine.

"I wish I were rich." Why must I speak? Why didn't I ever tell myself to shut-up? Save the oxygen for something that might actually sound decent? Maybe I should learn sign language to prevent from wasting air?

"Oh really?" Mr. Warren seemed amused, that could be bad or good. "Why?"

Wasn't he Mr. Wanna-Know today!

"Because if you're rich, you get it easier." I climbed back on the balance beam and started to walk on it. "I mean, if you do something bad, you get pointed at and followed around but in the end nothing really is done about it. Because no one really cares. Any flaw in the rich people just proves that they're real people under all the green."

"And do you think it's easier to be a mutant if you're rich?" His voice kept getting lower with each word. I should have taken that as a warning, but me doing a complete Kerry-Dumb-thing didn't.

"Well yeah, they can buy their way out of anything, why not just flaunt their mutant powers like an accessory and leave it at that? I mean that singer, Lila something or another was a mutant and everyone thought she was great. So I think with money you get to buy your response from people. If Spiderman were rich, I don't think that Bugle paper would give him such a hard time."

Mr. Angel was really quite at this point, so quiet that I thought he'd dropped dead or left. But he was still there, standing with his arms crossed, and eyes hidden under bangs.

"You think you can buy your way out of a bad thing?"

I let my answer slip out when it shouldn't have, "Yeah."

"Come with me, I want to show you something."

His voice dropped an octave and sounded a whole lot like Mr. Scott-You-ain't-going-to-ever-eat-good-bad-food-again. I followed, and we ended up in some big round room with a big round metal table in the center.

"Sit." And like a dog that went to obedience school, my hinny hit the chair. "I want to give you a history lesson on someone that had the same outlook you did."

Oh no, not another long speech about how I wasn't thinking correctly! I'd tune out and continue with my 'bad' thoughts, or knowing Mr. Warren he'd pop quiz me over it again.

"Now, it's getting around that you put A.D.D. kids to shame when it comes to listening, so I'm going to try to keep your attention with some visual aid." With that, a picture of a young blonde guy in jeans with a cancer stick appeared in the middle of the round metal table thing. He looked familiar. "You are probably wondering 'Who is this gorgeous young man?'"

I flattened my stare, of course that's why he looked familiar, the picture was Mr. Warren 'back in the day'.

"Right."

"Moving on, who you are seeing is me. Warren Worthington the third, boy billionaire since I was born. I was and still am rich." The picture changed into some big blue guy with wires coming out of his head and purple lips. "Meet Apocalypse. If you thought the Prime Sentinels were bad, this man is a million times worse."

I raised an eyebrow at the picture; he looked like a toy robot.

"He didn't care who I was or whether I was poor or not. It didn't matter to him. And you know what he did?" He showed me him with white wings and peach colored skin, and made it do a really cool phase into blue skin with –silver wings? "He changed me. I lost my original wings in a fight, he found me, and made me into his Archangel of Death."

Creeeeeeeeppppeeeeeee.

"He gave me blades instead of feathers, took my life away from me," Mr. Warren's voice was really deep and very serious. "It took a long time, but I finally got away from him. He didn't care about money. I could buy a good portion of a continent, but I couldn't buy my freedom from him. I couldn't buy being normal. I still can't."

"How'd you get your feathers back?"

Mr. Warren shut off the computer and gave me a half smile, "I have no idea."

What! How could you not know something was growing out of your back? It wasn't like you could just wake up one day and go 'oh my, look what's here! At least I don't have to get stuck in morning traffic anymore!'

"What happened to the robot guy?"

"That's another story." Then his watch started to beep. "You're going to be late for your meeting with the Prof. You better get going."

I got up to leave, and then I remembered something about his name. Worthington? Hadn't I seen that like, a long time ago? I stood in the doorway for a while, just thinking about it. There was a sudden crash from Dr. Hank's lab and my mind was jogged!

"I know where I heard that name before!" I admitted happily (like it was some big accomplishment), "Bobby-Jer-Bobby had your credit card when he broke all that junk with Daisy-Mae!"

He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. "Was this at Najor?"

"Yeah, I think that was it."

"Excuse me, Kerry, I have to go kill someone." I moved out of his way, and then heard a very loud shout. "Prepare to die, Drake!"

Guess I made a mistake (then while was I smiling?).


They put me on a frigign' ice pillar!

I wasn't even talking about a few feet in the air, I was looking down at the forest floor and I couldn't see anything but green. I was up on this freezing pillar, that was a ten foot wide circle. I wasn't alone. I had another jerk up there. Oh yeah, you got that right Bobby-Iceboy!

"I think this is tall enough," he said, as a complete ice cube. "Only about two or three thousand feet in the air. Should be fun don't you think?"

"No! What is wrong with you?" I asked, my nails dug into the ice. I swear I could feel the big thing sway.

"There's only two ways down, Ker-ree, and that is to either fly or fall. And no one is going to be around to catch you." With that, he smirked and jumped off the pillar on to his ice slide.

"I'll freeze to death!" I protested.

"Nope, Storm is going to make sure about that. But just so you don't go all 'Shining' on us, you get a communicator." He threw me a little disc thing with an X on it.

"Is this because I told Mr. Warren whatcha did!" That was in the past!

"You're the one who ratted us out?"

I was so dumb!

He smirked then was gone. I was left on the pillar of pure cold ice, with the hot, hot sun beating down on me as the clouds mysteriously disappeared. Wonder why. If no one was going to try to catch me if I tried and couldn't fly, then there was no way I was going to try to fly. No way.

Heck no.


I was going to kill someone or something when I got down from there! These were some sick, sick people, they should be known as the XXX-Men with their twisted since of humor. And if being up there for three hours wasn't bad enough, hearing the words of 'encouragement' from the stupid communicator did not help any.

"Come on, fly already, I'm going to lose the bet!" came the rotten man who put me up there. Oh, and then, shortly after I told them 'no way' again, they started target practice with my ice tower!

Mr. Scott-I'm-Going-to-Starve-You-Into-Submission, started to shoot off pieces of the thing that was holding me up! I wasn't talking about ice chips, but ice chunks! They went crashing down to the lake and made really big splashes. I was going to end up as a splash!

"Don't make me take this thing out from under your feet," Scott said.

"I'm not making you do a darn thing!" I screamed. I wasn't told how to use this blasted communicator. But the way I was still digging my nails into the middle of the ice thing, the picture was clear, and if looks could kill he would be a dead man shooting.

He was sickest. And he was at the top of my list I like to call 'Revenge'.

The ice started to rock to the right, my stomach became the size of a grain of dirt. I felt ill.

"It's giving away, it's now or never."

Then give me never!

"Come on Kerry, just try." Mousey-boy was giving me encouragement? At least he was trying.

"Chicken, fly. No wait, fall. It'll be funnier." Chris was such a jerk! No, he was much worse than a jerk was the living embodiment of a jack-ass.

"Come on Ker-bear! I'm pretty sure your wings will be able to handle your weight."

D-M and Chris sittin' in a tree…okay, that's too twisted even for me!

And then it gave. The ice pillar was weakened from being in the sun, and having a blockhead with a laser gun for eyeballs shooting at it. The thing finally gave away and started to sway heavily to the right.

Why couldn't I ever get my way? Never worked for me! But noooo they wanted me to fly and to fly right now. I didn't have much choice, it was either a big, painful splash or open those stupid curses and try to get them to work the way they were supposedly supposed to.

So I tried it. I had no choice! I spread out these things and just before the ice gave away I pushed off from the edge, and closed my eyes.

Then I remembered what I was doing, my eyes flew open again.

"I'm going to die!" I cried out to no one, I let the comm. thingie fall with the ice. I could hear the angels singing me in (though, technically, there are angels on both ends of the sphere, one good, one really bad) but it turned out to be cheering.

I-I was, well, I wouldn't call it flying, but I couldn't term it falling, I think they call it gliding or something, but whatever it was, it was not the end of me (yet).

These things actually worked!

"Good going, Kerry!"

"Ahhh!" Was my response when Mr. Warren swooped out of nowhere to be at my side. I jerked too quickly to one side and started to flip around in the air (I was told that between limbs and wings I looked like a human pinwheel). Before I stopped (ever been stopped in mid-spin? It's nauseating).

"You did well." Mr. Warren caught me, and was flying down to the ground.

"You're not going to make me do this again are you?"

"Yes."

I was moving.

"But not right now."

Okay, so I would stick around, not like I had anywhere else to go anyway!


Later that same day, after there was a small celebration about my breakthrough, they said that since my initial fear of trying to fly was crushed (according to them) I would likely be more cooperating toward future teaching…sheyeah right.

But I got another huge shock when I went into my room, after taking a nice hot shower to try to getting feeling back in my feet. Not only had my room been miraculously cleaned, and my door replaced (how come they weren't that fast with my room as a whole?), but my Skinny Stitch had been Stitch-napped!

I kept him on my bed, snuggled in the sheets with his fuzzy blue head sticking out from underneath with his head on the pillow, always. But my Skinny Stitch wasn't there. Instead, there was a Fat Stitch in his place.

Not exactly in his place, but sitting on the bed staring at me.

I kinda (with my jaw dropped open) stumbled my way over to my bed, picked up the new guy, turned, and dropped down to my bed. I couldn't believe they actually got me a new doll. As with every gift, there was a note attached to one of he's ears.

All I could do was smile after I read it.

Maybe this school would get more interesting.