A Day in the Life of Chapter Two
Jolie looked over at the seat next to her. She stared for a minute not saying anything. Remy noticed her staring and looked back.
"Jolie?" he asked and when she didn't say anything, "what?"
She was stunned but practically drooling at the same time. "Who are you?" she asked, trying not to show her interest.
"This is a joke, right?" Remy asked, knowing Jolie wasn't above playing stupid, immature jokes like this. She would kick a broken leg if she thought it might be entertaining. She also loved to ask Kristen and Damia what they were talking about (which was usually the other reality) and get mad when she found out. Then if they tell her "nothing" she pesters them about it until one caves and tells her and she gets upset anyway. Lovely person, huh?
"No, not really. I don't think I've ever seen you in class before. Are you new?" she asked. Then she looked down and noticed Kristen's backpack. "Is that yours?" she added.
"Yeah, I've had it for years," was the confused reply.
"A friend has the exact bag. Don't your contacts hurt? I've been considering getting colored contacts for a while now. I think I might go with orange or black. Something unusual, you know? I thought about going with the full-eye contacts like yours too, but I thought they were dangerous. Now that I've seen yours though, I might try it. Maybe I'll add red to the list of colors. It looks so cool. Red and black."
Well, that was just like Jolie to be that self-centered, but why was she asking about the backpack. Or contacts? Kristen didn't even have glasses. A sudden thought hit Remy. Red and black full-eyed contacts. They weren't contacts. Gambit's eyes were normally red and black. It was part of his mutation and the only thing that made him look inhuman. Unless people counted his supposedly inhuman good looks. Some people did, but no one really minded if it was. People don't normally complain about pretty things.
"Jolie? You know how Taleah's always talking about the X-Men an referring to 'there'?" Remy asked carefully. Jolie nodded, though she looked like she wanted to say something. "Well, I'm from 'there' and 'there' is another reality." Remy stopped because Jolie was looking at him like he was insane. "Never mind," he sighed, knowing she wouldn't understand it because she wouldn't believe anything other than science, even if she was presented with proof.
Then the bell rang and Jolie started packing up her things. Gabby was done before either Remy or Jolie and as she passed said, "See you tomorrow Jolie, Kri…" She stopped. "Where's Kristen?"
Jolie ignored her and grabbed her stuff to leave. She hadn't even given what Kristen might be up to a thought. She wasn't the center of attention, so she didn't want to be around them.
Remy grabbed Gabby ad pulled her out of the way of the people who were trying to leave. "Can I talk to you?" he asked desperately. Gabby was crazy and open-minded enough that she might believe him. He pulled her to the corner of the room and hopped up on the counter that was leftover from when the room was a home-ec./sewing class. It even still had small cabinets with ironing boards still, though it had been a math room for years. He wanted to wait there for Damia who had this class next.
When the bell rang and no one in her Geometry class noticed the difference, Damia, now herself, packed up and filed out of the classroom with everyone else. She walked past the wall of lockers and then ran into Koelyn. They never put the spell on her, so all she ever saw was Taleah.
"Hi," Damia said, raising her hand in greeting.
Koelyn looked at her, raised her hand and returned Damia's cheerful, "Hello," but wasn't really paying attention to this girl she'd never seen before and Koelyn wasn't even sure the 'hi' was directed at her. Koelyn continued to walk to class.
"Koelyn?" Damia asked, "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Koelyn assured this stranger. "But do I know you? And how do you know my name? Do you know me?"
Damia laughed. "I've only known you since seventh grade. It's not like we're strangers. Why? What's wrong?" Damia asked, as always, concerned about those she considered friends.
Koelyn stopped at the door of the classroom that Remy was waiting in. "I've never seen you before," Koelyn said, dead seriously.
Damia thought this was just a cruel way of Koelyn's to end their friendship, though Koelyn wasn't normally like that. Though Damia didn't show it, she was truly hurt. Koelyn was one of the few people Damia could say was her friend. She didn't even count Jolie as a friend. She had known Jolie through middle school. She put on a brave face and her "I'm okay" mask slid into place. She didn't need Stirrup (who was one of the few teachers who actually cared) to get worried about her. She walked into the class and glanced around.
"Kristen!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? You should be in or going to your next class."
Both Koelyn and Gabby glanced at the man she was clearly addressing and back at her like she was insane, which, while debatable, she probably was.
"Hi. Damia, I think we might have a problem," Remy said, not returning the (fake) cheerfulness.
Now Koelyn was staring at Damia. "Damia?" Realization struck. "Oh! Oh…" she said. "You know you'll be marked absent until you get his fixed?"
She wasn't trying to be funny, but the two misplaced souls cracked up anyway. The mood was instantly lighted, but they knew it was true. Until they could convince people they were Kristen and Taleah, there was no point in going to school.
"Gabby? What's your next period?" Remy asked. "And could you skip it?"
Gabby was curious. "Yeah, I don't have any tardies in it. I can afford one. I want to know what's going on."
"Koelyn?" Damia asked. "Do you want to come with, or are you good?"
"I won't learn anything in here without you anyway, so why not?" she replies.
Remy noticed that the class was practically full and several people were staring. "So we're all ditching?" he asked and everyone agreed. "Then let's leave before we can't get out without people noticing," he suggested, knowing Stirrup wouldn't let two people who belonged there leave class after the bell rang, which would be soon. He also wouldn't just let him and Gabby ditch their next classes either. "Can we get something to eat while we're off campus?" he asked, as always, obsessed with food. He jumped gracefully off the counter and headed with his stuff to the door. The others followed.
Remy wanted to talk over food, so they headed over to one of the nearest fast-food restaurants, Jack in the Box. No one else but him was really hungry, so everyone ordered drinks while he ordered food.
"It's called breakfast," Damia commented after they sat down, trying to lighten the mood a little—even before the "serious" conversation started.
"Had it at six," he replied and waited for his food.
After they sat down and Remy had his food, the real talking began. Or in one case, eating.
"Koelyn, you pretty much know what's going on, right?" Damia asked. Koelyn nodded. Damia glanced at Remy. "What do you think or know about other realities?" she asked Gabby.
Gabby became animated. "I don't know much, but there must be other realities in addition to this one. It's like aliens. They have to be out there. I have a couple of theories…why?"
Remy glanced up. "Because I don't exist if you don't believe in at least one of those other realities. I live in comic books here."
Gabby regularly read comic books. She also was familiar with X-Men and realized who he looked like.
"You're saying that you're…how? Or how did you replace a teenage girl?" That was what Gabby came up with for why Kristen suddenly disappeared. She didn't need to know how wrong she was until Remy went quiet and Damia finished the story, not noticing exactly why Remy was once again preoccupied with his food.
"Not exactly," Damia told Gabby. "He's more like possessing the body of Kristen. He's stuck in a teenage girl's body. There was a spell in place on Kristen and me so we could see each other. Now I guess it's working on everybody."
Remy glanced up, then his gaze returned to his food, embarrassed, but trying to hide it. "This reality has magic and the Marvel Universe. That might clear things up," he said, trying to keep the bitter tone out of his voice. He just had most of his masculinity stripped away by someone who was supposed to love him, but most women don't think like that. Damia noticed the tone, but wasn't sure what she said, so attributed it to a random mood swing, which sometimes could be worse than a woman with bad PMS. "Other than that, it's pretty much the same."
Gabby nodded. "It's not hard to believe, but how'd it happen?"
Before Damia could say anything, Remy spoke. "Let's not get into all of that. What I want to know is what do we do now. I can only hope that Mystique's shape shifting ability works through the spell, but I wouldn't want to give her access to here…or we can try to turn the spell off, but I don't think that would work. We turn it off for us. Like if I try to deactivate mine, she still sees me. So if we turn ours off, it still wouldn't change what other people see, we just wouldn't be seeing what they are." Remy glanced at the clock. "It's time we started back to school if you guys want to get to your third period classes."
Koelyn spoke up for the first time. "We can head back. There's really no point in you going back to school. Until you come up with some good reason, you could just keep staying away, except for your parents and Aunt."
Damia sighed. "Don't be late, you two." They left to get back before the bell. "I really don't know what we're gonna do."
Remy grinned and raised an eyebrow. "Have fun? No one would know it was us. We could do whatever we wanted."
Damia tried to figure out exactly what he meant with have fun. "Remy, with that evil smile of yours, am I sure I like where you're taking this?"
"Oh, come on, you know me…" he implored.
"…and that's why I'm not sure if I'm scared."
"I was just thinking I could confront Thomas or your Aunt. I think it would be fun and no one needs to know I'm only a hundred pound weakling…a girl. And your brother and cousins might find this interesting," he said, gesturing at himself. "Wait a minute. We're ourselves…we can't go home…but we could go fool around…and I'm not sure what I mean by that. But we can't go home or to school, or at least can't go to class until we fix this. Damia…" he whined, not sure why e was complaining—they were themselves. He figured it was having Kristen miss school and "run way". "You were the one who did the spell…can't it be undone?"
"I don't know. I don't know what to do. My aunt's gonna kill me when Taleah doesn't show up tonight. This may just ruin my life—not that it was that good to begin with. I don't know if the spell can be reversed. Or if this'll all stop as suddenly as it started," Damia admitted. She didn't voice the thoughts that were floating around like maybe I should just try to start over. Live life like I want to. I am an adult, or at least I look like it. I even have my husband, but no birth certificate. That would be a problem, and thoughts about it floated around both their heads.
People can't do much without a birth certificate and other papers. If this stayed permanent, they would have to look into getting things like that. If it didn't stay permanent, they were in trouble.
"Well, since we don't have any idea what we're doing, let's just get on the bus and go home to get some stuff. I'll come by your house about two hours after the busses leave the station and we'll figure out what to do. I wasn't to know what Andy's gonna say about my car and me being gone, since I'm not supposed to drive it." Remy laughed. "It's not like he'd give it to me if I asked. Not with me looking like this." He just had to worry about Andy reporting a kidnapping and car theft. That would be great—the police pulling him over and wondering what he was high on and exactly how long it had been on the market.
Damia agreed to the plan and they left. As they waited for the bus, Remy started fidgeting.
"What's wrong?" Damia asked.
Remy smiled at her. "I'm just not sure if I'd rather get stares because I'm a mutant, or a radical teen." He laughed. "Stupid, right?"
"No, you just have nothing to worry about, really. And you could always just keep your sunglasses on. It's not like you've never done it before." She didn't like to see him like this. He looked about ready to jump out of his skin. She knew he had more to worry about of a more practical nature than she did. She knew that he would be able to get them out of this with a plan or crazy scheme. He had to worry about, well, living. Sure, her eyes changed colors, but that still wasn't as noticeable as eyes that contained no white.
He jumped as the familiar screech of the bus's brakes sounded behind him. Damia shot him a look that said, "Are you okay?" He smiled back.
"I'm worried. I just don't think this'll work. And the last things I need is someone yelling 'good Gambit costume' or something," he said, ending with a grin, realizing how ridiculous he sounded. "At lest I'm not a girl."
As the bus pulled into the station, Damia asked, "What do you think I should grab?"
"Whatever you need for the rest of your life."
Please reveiw. Any comments welcome.
