Kurt of Romeo and Juliet
It was Friday afternoon, and Kurt had survived his first week in America, and his first week of school. In fact, school had not been nearly as arduous as he had imagined, or feared that it would be. He had read several books that involved children and adolescents in a school setting, which had made him feel slightly worried about the whole experience; that there would be bullies, people stealing his lunch money or flushing his belongings down the toilets. But in the books that he had read, the characters were quickly escorted away from all that by some kind of magical book or wardrobe or the like, to some magical and far more interesting land. That had meant that Kurt had not been able to find out much about school from reading books. There were films and television shows as well, of course, but they had only given Kurt a brief glimpse about what life at school would be really like. In fact, so far, all of the staff had been really friendly and helpful towards Kurt; which did not mean that school could not, however, be stressful at times, such as when he could not find the right classroom or other place that he needed to be. And most of the students didn't seem to mind him, either. Some had tried to make friends with Kurt, and the rest had largely left him alone. So all things considered, Kurt's first ever week of school had been a generally positive experience.
Generally positive, but not entirely. There was the problem that Kurt still remained fuzzy to the touch, meaning that he could not touch anyone without giving away his mutant secret. This was not usually a huge problem, but did mean that there were certain contact sports that he could not be involved with, and there were times when Kurt would pull his hands away from friendly, affectionate gestures, claiming that he did not like being touched. This was technically the truth, but only because he did not want his mutant ability to be revealed; he had actually really liked affectionate gestures back home in Germany.
Then there was the Brotherhood. Kurt did his best to avoid them, but that was not always possible, especially as he had to sit next to Toad in English class, and he was in the same class as him for other subjects too, although he generally tried to stay at the other end of the classroom, and as far away from him as possible, whenever they were forced to be in the same room as each other. He knew that the Brotherhood were involved in some kind of criminal behaviours, but he generally just avoided talking to them about it. This had led to them getting the impression that Kurt was stuck-up and snobbish, since he avoided having anything to do with them whenever possible. And Mystique did not exactly help matters. Kurt was well aware that she treated him better than she treated the rest of the Brotherhood – which was not to say that she treated him particularly well. But she did at least pay some attention to how he was doing at school, requesting a report for each day. So the other members of the Brotherhood had, understandably enough, been developing a certain amount of jealously towards him, since he had the best room, and was generally treated in a better manner than the rest of the residents of the Brotherhood Boarding House. Kurt would have had some sympathy towards them because of this, were it not for the fact that they were a bunch of massive jerks, who seemed to spend half of their time picking on those who they perceived as being weaker than themselves, and the other half involved in what were at best dubiously legal exploits. So Kurt had simply taken to ignoring them whenever possible, which only seemed to confirm their idea that he was nothing but a stuck-up jerk who thought he was too good to be a member of the Brotherhood.
Fortunately, Kurt had not generally found it difficult to ignore them at school, at least in the subjects that he did not share with them. And Kurt actually liked school, something which most of his fellow students considered to be unusual to say the least. But Kurt had previously been home educated, since his appearance had meant that he would have not been able to attend any form of public educational system, without at best experiencing unwanted attention, due to his very unusual appearance. So school was still a novelty for him, whereas, for his companions who had been attending some form of school institution for a decade or so, the novelty had long warn off. But Kurt enjoyed spending time with people his own age, discussing school work and other issues, and helping to solve problems as part of a team. The teachers and other staff seemed to have realised this, and seemed to consider that Kurt was as close to an ideal student as could reasonably be expected of a sixteen year old boy.
But although Kurt was good at practically everything at school, he did not excel in any particular area. He got good grades academically and was reasonably good at non-academic subjects such as sports and games, but he was not at the top of any of his classes. Ms Pryde, however, was. Katherine Pryde, whom all of her friends called Kitty, was the top of the class for all of her academic subjects, and overshadowed Kurt's more modest ability in every class that they attended together. For some strange reason, that really irked Kurt, even though Kitty was terrible at non-academic subjects such as sport and cookery. But Kurt felt that he had been trying so hard, that to always be overshadowed by just one individual was decidedly annoying. And there was a hierarchy of power in the school setting, as clear and as brutal as in any corporate setting. Power could be attained by being brilliant academically, by being something of a class clown, by being really good at sport, or by being a complete bully, intimidating the weaker students into submission by verbal or physical violence. Kurt could not beat Kitty academically, so had managed to gain some power by being something of a class clown, making the students laugh during lessons, but never quite to the point of being disruptive. Fortunately, most of his teachers were understanding, and tolerant of someone who was clearly a good student, even if he did prove to be a bit distracting from time to time.
And Mrs McCann was Kurt's favourite teacher, as she actually encouraged her students to be dramatic, to act out in class, to be as emotional as they wanted, and to question that which did not make sense to them. Hers was the only classroom where Kurt could almost equal Kitty for academic ability, since, although she was clearly smarter and more knowledgeable than he was, Kurt could be far more dramatic and enthusiastic – and the one place that this was a huge benefit was a Drama class. Besides, he tried his best to learn as much as he could, so that he could compete with Kitty academically, making it perfectly obvious to Mrs McCann that he and Kitty were clearly her best students. And that was one of the reasons why he had finally made up his mind that he would indeed audition for her play. The other was so that he would be able to ask for her help, ostensibly about the story that he was working on, but in actual fact to try and get some sort of advice about what to do about a giant robot that might end up killing people, if he were to do nothing about it.
Kurt had never auditioned before, but it was not nearly as hard as he had imagined it might be. His parents back in Germany had always said that if there was one thing that Kurt excelled at, it was being dramatic. So Kurt decided that he would audition for the part of Romeo, pretending that he indeed was the male lead of the play, making dramatic gestures and enthusiastically reciting the script that was in front of him, as Mrs McCann watched him, smiling and nodding her approval. Kurt nearly shouted for joy when Mrs McCann informed him that he had got the part, shaking her hands enthusiastically and thanking her several times for giving him the chance. She gave a bemused little laugh, and it was not until later that Kurt had realised that he really should not have shaken her hand that way, as it would have become obvious to her that his own hand was fuzzy. But at the time she did not even seem to notice, but just told Kurt that he could go home if he wanted to, since she had several more auditions to judge. Kurt politely declined, claiming that this would be a good chance to discuss his English assignment with her, and she had agreed to talk to him after she had finished judging the other actors for the play. So Kurt spent the next hour or so watching students rehearse. Some were good, some less so, and it was clear that some did not want to be there at all. Mrs McCann seemed to be fair in her judgement, only assessing students on their ability to act, rather than on any other talents they might or might not possess. Notably, Kitty was rehearsing to play Juliet, and she was very good at it, passionately acting out the part with a level of enthusiasm that Kurt had not seen in any of the other girls who had auditioned for the part of the female lead. As Kurt watched her, he remembered their meeting the previous day, when he had tried to explain to her that it had not been him who had yanked her ponytail on Monday, that it had been Toad who had been such a huge jerk, rather than him, but she had not seemed interested in listening to what he had to say. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that the members of the Brotherhood Boarding House did not talk to the members of the Professor Xavier's Mansion. This seemed stupid to Kurt, who was fairly sure that most, if not all of the members of the Xavier Mansion were mutants, as were the members of the Brotherhood. This had become clear from whispered conversations, occasional coincidences and other slightly strange occurrences. He could have dismissed any individual occurrence as being a coincidence, or merely his imagination, but not the total accumulation of them. So, from what Kurt could tell, the Brotherhood and the members of the Xavier's Mansion were quite possibly the only mutants in the school. And they tended to avoid each other. If it had simply been a friendly rivalry, then Kurt probably would have understood this, but as it was, they certainly were not friendly towards each other. Kurt considered that the last thing that mutants needed right now was to fight amongst themselves, that it would be much more preferable to present a united front, so that they could deal with the HDL and any other mutant hating organisation in a mature and sensible manner. Unfortunately, he seemed to be the only one who felt this way.
Kitty finished auditioning, and Mrs McCann gave her the part of Juliet. She squeaked for joy, and Kurt wondered if she would still be grinning when she found out that he would be her Romeo. Still, that should give him the excuse that he needed to talk to her, and she could hardly avoid him if they were to be forced together for the sake of the play. Kurt himself wanted to get to know Kitty better, if only so that he could apologise to her properly for the way Toad had behaved towards her earlier in the week. It might not have been his fault, but he still was a member of the Brotherhood, however little he liked that fact, and so he did feel, in some strange way, kind of responsible for their actions.
The auditions finished, Mrs McCann dismissed the other students, and turned her attention back to Kurt. "Thank you for waiting, Mr Wagner," she said, "now, I understand that you would like help with your short story assignment."
Kurt nodded. In fact, that was only one of the things that he needed help with, the giant robot under the Brotherhood Boarding House being a much more serious concern. Still, with any luck, Mrs McCann might be able to help him deal with both issues, without ever realising that she was helping him with the latter. "Yes, that's right," said Kurt.
"Tell me what you have planned so far, and we can see where we can go from there," she said, indicating Kurt to take the seat opposite her. Kurt did so, took a deep breath, and began to outline the story he had planned, "It's called, that is, it's working title, is, West of Tomorrow," he began, "because it deals with two sides of a river, and the river is called Tomorrow," he added.
"Go on," she said, encouragingly.
"Um…well, all of the people on the east side of the river are, um, right-handed," Kurt began, fidgeting nervously, "and anyone who is left-handed is sent to the other side of the river. So you see that means that there are far more people on the eastern side on the river than the western side of the river, and those on the eastern side of the river are scared of those on the western side of this river."
"Sounds potentially interesting," she said, giving him a careful look, "so, why are they scared of the people on the western side of the river?"
"Because, when they reach their teens, they develop, um, magical powers," said Kurt nervously, "and some of these magical powers can be dangerous. And some of the people on the western side of the river do abuse their powers, sometimes."
"And so they are scared of all of them, because of the actions of a few, is that right?" she asked, still giving Kurt a slightly undecided look.
Kurt nodded, "So, um, what do you think?" he asked.
"Sounds like it could be an interesting background to your story," she said, "but you will have to think about other things, such as the characters involved, and the plot; what is it that drives the story forwards, have you planned that far yet?"
"Um," Kurt began, "the people on the eastern side of the river have been building a giant robot, which they want to use to hunt down those on the western side of the river. Because they're afraid of them," he added.
"Magic and robots, this sounds promising," said Mrs McCann thoughtfully, "but your characters are possibly the most important part of your story, have you given much thought to them yet?"
"Um, not really," Kurt admitted, "there's um, a heroine who has found out about the robot, because she has a magical power of being able to spy on people without being detected by them, but I haven't really given much thought to the others involved," he admitted.
"Then I think that that is the next thing that you have to think about," said Mrs McCann, watching him carefully, "in your story," she added. "I think that your hero, I mean heroine, needs to find someone that she can trust, someone who can help her, possibly someone with a different type of magical power that can be used to stop giant robots. She needs to gather friends and companions at her side, so that she can accomplish much more with help than she could do alone." Mrs McCann gave him a long, hard look, "Do you think that advice will help you?" she asked, "with your story," she added after a brief pause.
She knows, thought Kurt to himself, or at least, she suspects. Still, she has no proof, and I think I can trust her, at least a little bit. "Yes," said Kurt after a long moment of silence, "I think that that might actually be quite good advice."