Grace gathered up the empty lemonade pitchers and headed for the stairwell. "Well, if you won't let me help out up here, I'll just have to find some other mischief to get into—in the kitchen, say."
"Bobby—watch it, the ladder's wobbling." Ororo said. "Truly, Grace, we're not trying to shut you out. It's just that in your condition…"
I'm not that fragile, Grace thought. But there are more than enough hands to get everything done here. "I know." she said.
"Careful on the steps, remember? I'm sorry we haven't changed that lightbulb yet. I can go do it now…." Scott offered. However, he was wielding a varnish brush, and not at a good place to run and change a bulb.
"Tell him not to worry, it can wait." advised the lion, from her pocket.
"It's all right. It can wait." Grace said, and used the handrail to guide herself down to the next floor.
Since they're going to be working there for some time yet, I can best help out by starting dinner. Maybe my cooking skills have gotten rusty since I've been living alone, but surely there's something I can throw together without ruining it. She made her way to the blue and copper school kitchen, and looked through the cupboards and the fridge.
Canned tomatoes, canned beans, ground beef, and onions. Looks like it's going to be chili tonight. As long as it isn't burnt, it'll be edible, and the kids won't be too critical as long as there's plenty of it. She found a notebook with dietary information on each resident of the school, noting who was vegetarian, who followed a kosher diet, who had food allergies and what they were, and so on. If I do one huge pot of chili with meat, and a pot half that size without it, I'll have everybody covered. Plus a salad, to get some fresh vegetables, and maybe garlic bread. That'll be simple enough.
She reached into the refrigerator to see what salad vegetables were on hand, and the cow on the milk carton suggested, "Moo. You could make chocolate chip cookies." Being a cow, its voice was distinctly female.
She paused. "That's true--but since when do you just make suggestions for no reason? You're planning something else, I can tell. What is it?"
"Everybody loves chocolate chip cookies. Make a big batch."
"All right…" She took out butter for the cookies, set it on the counter to warm and soften, and went hunting for the chocolate chips. Good. They have the recipe printed on the label. I can't mess them up.
She started in on the chili, chopping up onions and garlic until her eyes were streaming and she had to open all the windows and the back door to clear out the fumes.
Something dark flitted across the courtyard—a shadow of a bird, perhaps. She paid it no mind, but went back to work.
In one pot she fried some of the onions alone, while she browned the ground meat together with the rest of the tear-manufacturing vegetable in another, larger pot. When they were cooked enough, she went to get the huge food-service sized cans of tomatoes and beans—only to pause, puzzled, because the can opener, which she had put beside them, was missing.
"The speeding girl has them. She's playing a trick on you." said a fish potholder.
"Callisto?" Grace was actually asking the potholder, but the girl herself answered.
"Yeah? What do you want?"
"The can opener, please."
"It's right there." She pointed. The mutant girl had a tattoo on her cheek, a large and elaborate symbol Grace half-recognized. How bizarre.
"Yes, because you put it back just now. It was facing the other way before."
"It was not! I don't make those kinds of mistakes."
Grace pointed her forefinger at her like a zap gun, and said, "Gotcha!"
The girl grimaced, and shot her the finger before she blurred out again. She must get that from Mystique. She saw the blur that was Callisto flash by in the courtyard, and stop. The girl was watching her.
I'm not going to let her bother me, Grace resolved, feeling slightly uneasy. She turned back to her dinner preparations. Soon two pots of savory chili were simmering away. It'll take a while for them to be really ready to eat. Time for the cookies.
She put the softened butter in the mixer, added the brown and white sugars, and turned it on. The vanilla went in next, and then she went in the fridge for a carton of eggs.
The chicken on the carton clucked, and said, "Ask her to help you with the cookies."
"No. My name is not Wendy, so since when did it become my job to mother all of these Lost Boys and Lost Girls?"
"Buck-buck-b'gawk!" The chicken laid an egg. "Don't you want to know who you're fighting for?"
The egg shivered and broke open, releasing a baby chick. It cheeped, "And why?"
"Isn't it enough that I'm doing the fighting?"
Hen and chick shook their heads. "No."
"If I don't do this, are you going to start singing?"
"Yes."
"All right." She turned to the open door. "Callisto, would you like to help me with the cookies?"
Suddenly the girl was right in her face. "Go f--- yourself." As quickly as that, she was gone.
"That's fine with me," Grace snapped. "It wasn't my idea to be nice to you anyway. I only asked because I was told to."
The girl reappeared, "Did Magneto tell you he'd turn you over to the humans for a test subject if you didn't make nice?"
"No. It was the chicken on the egg carton that made me do it."
"What?" The girl was at her elbow, staring at the carton. "Bull. It's just an egg carton!"
"I know that. The voices make me think I see things move and talk. They don't really move—at least I don't think they do."
"You have voices in your head?"
"Like you wouldn't believe."
"And you do what they tell you to do?"
"They wore me out that way."
"What kinds of stuff do they tell you you have to do?"
"Nothing as exciting as burning down buildings or killing people. They tell me I have to get all the mutants in the world, or at least in America, to unite so they can work together to get the Registration Act repealed. And they're forcing me to befriend disgusting hostile people who wipe their noses on their sleeves and cuss me out."
"They're making me become a better person and I must say I'm starting to resent it." She addressed the chicken directly with the last phrase.
"Who are they?"
"No idea. They won't say. There are lots of theories going around, but no proof."
The girl looked at Grace in an assessing way. "I was really disappointed when I found out Magneto had dumped Mystique because of you. I didn't like that he wanted to be with somebody more normal, but I've changed my mind."
"Why?"
"You're not more normal."
"Gee, thanks. So are you going to help me with these f---ing cookies, or what?"
Callisto looked at Grace again, judging her. "I guess. Where's the flour?"
"I don't know. Try the cupboards over there."
While the girl measured flour into a cup, Grace cracked eggs into the mixer, letting the beaters whip them into the butter, becoming light and fluffy. All right; she's helping. I wonder what her story is?
As if in response—which it might very well have been—the chicken explained. "Her powers emerged when she was fourteen. Up until then, she was the apple of her parents' eye—an honor student, a star athlete, and a volunteer in the community.
"They kicked her out when they learned she was a mutant. A week later, she sold her virginity to a drunk in the backseat of a car for fifty dollars, just so she could eat. He never realized it. She's tried to commit suicide twice. That's why she wears those gauntlets from wrist to elbow—to cover the scars."
God! A pain like a knife wound went straight to Grace's heart. Are all their stories going to be so awful? Why does it have to be so horrible for them? What am I supposed to do about it? What am I supposed to do?
"Right now, make chocolate chip cookies." The chicken told her.
Make chocolate chip cookies. All right. That I can do. She smiled at the young woman, although tears were burning her eyes again--and not because of the onions. "Thanks for helping. This is going to be a huge batch."
