Chapter Three: Meet the Roommates

The first thing that caught my attention was the two girls inside - my roommates. One was redheaded, green-eyed, and looked energetic and fun just sitting on her bed beside the door. The other was her exact opposite: quiet and thoughtful as she sat in the opposite corner of the room reading what looked like a large encyclopedia. Her hair was long, platinum blonde, and pin straight; if it hadn't been for the book, she would have looked decidedly like a preppy snob.

As it was, she looked up and gave me a friendly smile, and started to speak was was cut off as the red-haired girl jumped up and came toward me.

"Who are you?" the she asked brightly.

"Rori!" the other girl cried, setting down her book and standing up. "That wasn't very polite." It was spoken as a friend, but also as if this sort of thing were a common occurrence between the two.

"Aw, lay off, Pallas," the other girl said lightly, though she used a more polite voice when she next spoke to me. "I've never seen you before. You must be our new roommate. Professor X said we might be getting one. What's your name?"

"It's M-Megan Barnes," I told her, trying to disguise the tremor in my voice. Though she seemed very nice, her supremely outgoing mannor had me a bit nervous. "And yours?"

"Rori Adams," she said, grabbing my hand and shaking it enthusiastically as her shoulder-length waves bounced up and down. "This is our other roommate-"

"Pallas Bronson," the blonde girl said, coming up and shaking my hand much more politely. "You'll haveto forgive Rori. She can get a bit excited at times."

"You'll have to forgive Pallas," Rori retorted. "She can be a bit boringat times." Pallas glared at her, and the other girl stuck her tongue out playfully.

I couldn't help but grin. At least life with these two was sure to be anything but boring.

"So, what's your ability?" Rori asked suddenly.

I looked away. I didn't really want to talk about it, but I knew I would have to eventually if I was going to be living with these girls.

"Rori," Pallas said warningly, nudging her friend. She had seen my mood change and was trying to make me feel better.

"No, it's all right," I said. "You see, I'm not exactly sure. I guess it's something to do with controlling animals. I…ah, discovered that I was a mutant by setting a dog on a boy who was teasing me a few weeks ago." I hesitated to tell the rest, but finally pushed on. "It killed him."

"You're a murderer?" Rori's eyes lit up, and her voice was full of awe. "That's amazing!"

"Rori Louisa Adams!" Pallas's face was so full of horror that I couldn't help but giggle. After a moment, the blonde girl cracked a smile too, and Rori joined in as well.

"But really," Rori insisted when the three of us had calmed down again. "You killed someone?"

"Accidentally," I told them. "I was just really upset, and suddenly the dog ran up and was biting him, and…" I trailed off, shaking my head at the memory of the blood and his screams.

"I'm sorry. It's fine that you don't want to talk about," Pallas said understandingly.

I smiled gratefully at her. I was glad that this fact didn't seem to disturb them at all. I would have thought that hearing I had discovered my powers by killing someone would have freaked anyone out, but maybe it was more common than I knew. "Anyway, what's your ability?"

"I'll show you mine!" Rori cut in enthusiastically. "Do you have anything you can afford to lose?"

Curious, I rummaged in my pocket and came up with a candy wrapper. "Will this work?" I asked her.

"Yep. Watch this." She squinted at the wrapper sitting in my hand, her brow wrinkling. For a moment nothing happened. Then it disappeared. One moment the little paper was in my hand, and the next it was gone.

I gasped and jumped back. I had never seen anything like that before in my life! How had she done it.

Rori laughed aloud and thrust her hand at me. "Call me Dyspar."

Hesitantly, I shook it. "So you can make things disappear?"

She nodded. "Only nonliving things, though. So you don't have to worry about me making you disappear if we get into a fight." She winked at me.

I swallowed. I hadn't thought of that, but now that she mentioned it, I was glad she couldn't. Maybe my parents and I had been wrong about me coming here. Maybe this school would be more dangerous than we thought…

"Wait, did you just say Dyspar? I thought you said your name was Rori," I asked in confusion.

The redhead giggled again as Pallas stepped up to answer my question. "Her name is Rori," the blonde explained, "but everyone at the school has a nickname, something related to their powers. Because Rori can make things disappear, she decided to call herself Dyspar."

"Oh." That made sense. "What's your name?" I asked.

Pallas smiled. "I'm Recall. My power is what you might call perfect memory. Anything I see, hear, or read I remember forever."

"Yeah, you might guess that she's a straight-A student," Rori added a little bitterly.

Pallas shrugged. "That's true. I never have to study, but I don't brag about it. I still have to learn and understand something in the first place, just like everyone else. I just always remember it after that."

"Wow, that's useful." I hadn't really realized up until now just have varied mutant abilities could be. From Pallas's useful permanent memory to my ability to control animals, the possibilities seemed endless.

"So what's the rest of your story?" Rori asked.

"The rest?" I echoed, unsure of what she meant.

"You know, what happened after that. How you end up here?"

"Oh. Well, that was like a week ago. I'd been mostly staying home since then, because obviously no one wanted to see me outside. No one trusted me. Then this morning I was just watching TV, and all of the sudden this car pulled up and Professor Xavier and Miss Munroe got out. They told my parents about this place, and Mom and Dad agreed to let me come. It was really fast, but I wanted to come. I was afraid that if people found out I was a mutant, my parents would get hurt. I'm hoping that by coming here I can protect them."

Rori nodded. "That's nice of you, but you've got to think of yourself, too. Did you really want to come here?" She seemed honestly interested and curious. It felt good to have someone to actually talk to when it seemed that I had never had a true friend before.

"Well," I admitted, "a lot of it was because of that, but I am excited about being here. I can't wait to learn more about my abilities and make friends that are like - like you guys." I grinned at them. "So what about you guys? How did you end up here?"

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew that I had done something wrong. Rori immediately turned to look at Pallas, who had a stricken expression on her face. Before I had a chance to ask what the matter was, the blonde girl gave a strained smile, said "Sorry, I have to go," and quickly left the room."

I blinked, unnerved by her sudden departure. Turning back to Rori, I asked curiously, "What was that?"

"I haveno idea," she answered, her eyes wide and innocent- a little too innocent.

She was keeping something from me, and it rankled, but I knew I should expect her to share. After all, we had just met. We weren't best friends or anything. "I'm sorry if I said something to offend her," I said honestly. "I was just curious."

"It's all right. I think she just has a class now that she forgot about when you got here." It was a lie. For all her bubbly personality, I could already tell that Rori was a bad liar. I tried to ignore it.

"Well, how did you come to be here?"

"I was a lot like you," the girl said, jumping on the new subject all too eagerly. "I'd been making things mysteriously disappear since I was little, three or four years old I think. It didn't take my parents long to figure out that I was mutant. I grew up knowing about it, and I was never ashamed." She shrugged and gave me a genuine smile. "In fact, I was kind off proud, though of course I never told anyone what I was. When I was old enough, two years ago, my parents told me about this school for mutants they had heard of. I was so excited to come here and learn about my abilities and meet other kids like me, like you mentioned. They had guessed I would say that, so they had saved money for my tuition and room and board. A few weeks later I was on a plane, and I've been here ever since."

I was about to comment on this story, when I suddenly heard a strange noise. It was like a mechanical humming growing louder and louder every moment, and it sounded like it was coming from outside. I ran over to the window and looked out - and gasped at what I saw.

A little ways away from the window was a basketball court, but not just any basketball court. This one was moving. A crack had appeared in the middle, and the two halves were slowly but surely moving apart. When they had opened all the way, a long, dark shape rose out and disappeared against the night sky.

"What was that?" I asked in amazement, turning back to Rori and hoping she knew what had just happened.

She was smiled like someone who was in a secret, so I knew right away that she did. "That's just the X-jet."

"The what?"

"The X-jet," she said, grinning at my total loss. "It's a private jet that the X-men go out on." She went on before I could ask what that meant. "The X-men are the Professor's sort of mutant superheroes. They go out on the jet sometimes to bring in new students under special circumstances, save the world, you know, that sort of thing."

All I could do was blink. More than ever, I now realized that this school was going to be nothing like any that I was used to.

AN:Just have to add quickly, thanks to Mom the Magnificent for helping me come up with Rori's codename.