!Warning: Mild language!
I tell the girls about Coleton, and they can't wait for an introduction. Unfortunately, as the week goes on, I don't see hide or hair of him. I wonder if he wasn't able to stay after all.
I look forward to one-on-one on Friday so that I can ask Jean about him. I consider bringing it up with one of the other teachers or the professor, but I feel more comfortable with the Phoenix.
I ask Blanc about her when we all have a shared free time Wednesday afternoon. We stroll on the grounds. The fountain sparkles and birds chirp. It is, all in all, a beautiful Wednesday. Certainly not the setting for some of the stories Blanc tells me about the terrible and beautiful Phoenix.
I wish she wouldn't go into such detail. I'll have trouble, now, keeping the words in my mouth when Jean's around.
Blossom introduces her roommate Samantha to us on Thursday. It takes me too long to stop staring. I'm looking at my own face, at my own lips, as they convey different emotions and say different words than I'm saying at the moment.
It's entirely different than watching a video of myself or looking in a mirror. I think it might be the strangest thing that has happened to me. Ever.
She's very understanding, letting Blanc and I circle her and look at ourselves wearing clothes and hair we're not used to. Her hair is a lot darker, longer, and curlier, than mine is, and her blouse and skirt more feminine than what I usually wear.
I stand in front of her again and look her in the eyes. "Do boys see themselves in this outfit?" I ask.
After a few more tense seconds, we all burst into giggles.
"That would explain it," she says with my voice, "Boys here at the school have been avoiding me like they're frightened. I guess it could rather be that they're embarrassed."
Her laugh is mine.
"It must be hard, though," Blanc says, "Never knowing what body type to dress for, what color scheme will be neutral enough to work on everyone."
"I don't usually bother," she says, "I just dress for me."
"It still must," Blanc says, "You don't know what you look like to other people. How could we ever know what you looked like before?"
"Girl, there are other ways," my face says with a sass I don't have, "Do either of you have a mirror?"
I open our closet door to show the full length one that came with the room. Standing there, instead of me, is a short dark-skinned girl with ruby red eyes. She smiles.
"You see? There I am."
Blossom is unsurprised. I can tell that she's already more comfortable with her than she was the day she ran in to tell us about her. I don't know how long it would take me to get used to living with myself.
"So," I ask her, "Are you going to change your name?"
"I like to think that my name keeps me a little bit real," she says quietly, and I can suddenly see that she's not as OK with her power as she's pretending to be. I can't imagine having one like her's or Scott's that are active all the time.
The classes at this school are very different from what I expected. There are ordinary high school classes, like English, history, and math, but with mutant centered ideas. For example, we're learning about mutant history, and mutant alternate history, which really confuses me.
They tell us that there was another version of our lives where the world was ending, but now, because of a mutant with time travel powers or something, we live in this version. I find it pretty hard to understand or believe.
I ask Jean about Coleton the moment I see her Friday morning.
"He is at the school," she says, "You must not have seen him."
Then she goes right into the tutoring, asking me about my limits, other aspects of my power, and how long I can hold it for.
I'm disappointed by her answer to my question about Coleton, but I leave it be and answer her.
"And," I say, "I can control people for a few seconds after I unfreeze things."
This she looks skeptical about.
"Prove it."
I snap my fingers. She'll spin in three circles, then pull a flower out of her pocket and give it to me.
This she does solemnly before looking at me in a way I can't interpret.
"I didn't even have a flower in my pocket," she said, "You put that there, right?"
I shake my head.
She looks at me with a new interest.
"Lets find out the limit of that," she tells me. I picture what that limit would be.
I pause and envision a treasure chest with a cat inside. I picture Jean lifting the earth away with her mind and finding the box.
And so it came to pass. Jean said that was enough for one day. She honestly seemed a bit frazzled, if that was a thing this beautiful creature could be.
The cat I made hangs around now. Students sneak it food and leave a dish of water in the bushes.
Charlee Dacker seems to show up in my peripheral shockingly often. She's like a quiet little tail, peeking around corners and looking through windows when I'm nearby. I'm in the library on Saturday and she blatantly stares from the dark back shelves.
I confront her, using the lapse to appear behind her. She spins around with precision and crushes my throat with her arm.
"What the hell are you doing," she hisses. I can only make a shrill croaking.
"You been spying on me?" she asks me, and the fire behind the short girl's eyes shows me, once again, that I shouldn't misjudge. She lowers her arm a few inches so I can speak.
"You've been spying on me," I insist.
She shakes her head like this is beside the point.
"Your future is muddled, tell me why," she says, pushing painfully against my collarbone.
"I don't know what you mean," I say, trying to twist out of her hold. She grabs my neck with her other hand, holding strong without cutting off my voice.
"You jump all over, you age in leaps, you learn things you shouldn't know without the passing of time," she hisses, "What can you do? How do you know so much about me?"
"I can freeze time," I explain, "I looked in your wallet because you were watching me when we were in the shower. That's all."
"I was only watching you because you would know about me," she says.
She has a way of speaking that makes me wonder if English is her first language. She doesn't have an accent, exactly. It's really more that her inflection is off. She puts emphasis on strange parts of her sentences.
She releases me. "It seems like we've simply had a misunderstanding," she says, holding out a hand, "You know my name. What is yours?"
"I call myself Lapse, but my name is Mallory," I say. Her bright blue eyes inspect me from behind curtains of curly dark hair.
"I call myself Charlee. I don't want a pseudonym," she says.
"So, Charlee," I say, looking at the books on the floor. They must have spilled from her bag during our scuffle.
"Yes, Lapse?" she says, calling my attention back to her face.
"Um, do you want to be friends?" I say, failing to find a more charming way to word it.
Her grin is bright. She pushes her hair behind her ears. "Yes I do. Who are your friends?"
I tell her to meet me at my room after supper. I'm starting to gather quite a group. Our discussions will look more like parties before long.
Blanc admits she'd noticed the girl. "I didn't want to worry you," she says.
Blossom is interested in meeting her. I tell her to invite Samantha.
"We might as well fill the room," I laugh. I should have known better, though.
I introduced Charlee to Blanc easy enough, but when Blossom and Sam come in Charlee blows up.
"Who is she?!" she screeches of Samantha, attacking her after a second of silence. Pinned to the floor, Samantha tries to explain herself, but Charlee will hear none of it.
"Impostor!" She slaps her. "What are you trying to do?"
Samantha is crying and we're trying to pull Charlee off of her. When we succeed, Sam runs from the room.
"Charlee!" I shout, "That's her power! Everyone sees themselves! What is wrong with you?"
She just starts yelling at us to put her down. We let go. She sits on the bed with a wild look on her face, obsessively tapping her legs.
"I should go check on Sam," Blossom says quietly.
Blanc sits gently next to Charlee.
"You'll be OK," she coos to her, "Everything will be all right."
Slowly Charlee calms down and smiles at Blanc.
She leaves after a few minutes and Blanc goes to see Sam and Blossom before I have a chance to ask her how she knew to calm Charlee down. She comes back with a sort of darkness in her eyes that keeps me from questioning her.
"Samantha's fine," she says curtly. She quickly strips and tucks in bed. The clock says it's eight, but I go to bed too.
There's a knock on the door right when I'm about to fall asleep. Angrily, Blanc opens it.
"I said it's fine, sissy," she snaps. The door closes and I'm left wondering what sibling rivalry must feel like.
I only notice when she comes back in because she slams the door.
"Blanc," I growl into my pillow.
"Sorry," she whispers.
"What's up between you and Elizabeth?" I ask after a few silent minutes. She rolls over to face me.
"She asked me a favor," she says, "she was just checking up on the results."
"Care to go into detail?" my curiosity says against my will.
"Well, long story short, I told a few friends back home about her powers and they outed it. I owe her one. She made me promise to erase her old friend's memories about it, and that she basically has a tally of how many times she can ask me to erase someone's memory. So, she called that in."
"Why?"
"She decided to see what her roommate's reaction would be to her telling her," she says, with a whispered laugh, "It didn't go over well. My sister had to convince her not to switch rooms. I guess she didn't feel comfortable knowing Elizabeth can change like that."
I ponder this thought as I start to fall asleep.
"It wouldn't bother me if it were you and I, Blanc," I mumble.
I can swear I hear her crying as I slip into my dreams.
