Chapter 3: “Here We Go”

I am Charles Xavier, he reminded himself whenever he felt his hold on reality slipping, because  it was slippery in the world of pure mind. Voices called to him but when he reached to answer, they seemed to pull away and vanish. And then, when his attention moved elsewhere, they returned to assault him full force, leaving him reeling, spinning through space that was not space.

Disciplining his consciousness, he worked to build a coherent conceptual framework in which to view the data (the voices?) in the hope of making the whole paradigm somehow comprehensible. The lights, he decided, were minds; the red lights, mutant minds. And sometimes it worked. He found he could isolate a particular subject in the field of noise and make his way towards it by creating a mental body for himself. He recognized this as a conceit, perhaps a vain one, but it helped him to have a body in all the chaos. He noticed, with wry amusement, that the legs of his simulacrum were working limbs.

But, as always, keeping control amid the swirling sea of information was frustrating if not impossible. The minds! They were so needy! Or was it just that the needy ones drowned out those who suffered in silence? He felt his “body” disintegrate, the precise map of pinpoint lights dissolve into a sea and he was suddenly thrown out, through a pre-set mental circuit breaker, into the world of flesh, blood and six senses.

It felt as if he had landed in his wheelchair from a height. He became keenly aware of the coldness of the room. The helmet weighed on him and he felt how his skin was raw at the right temple where one of the pads had worn thin. He felt old. Removing the helmet slowly, he concentrated on breathing deeply and deliberately to help him lose the feeling of endless falling that, truth be told, still terrified him every time he was engaged with Cerebro.

Breathe! Charles, he thought. Be here in this room with all your senses. Sight: my hand on the leather armrest of the chair. Sound: the hum of the air compressors. Smell: metal and grease. Touch: the arthritic ache in my hands. Taste: metal and blood…

*Professor? Can I come in?* came a clear and familiar voice in his head.

He responded telepathically, *Yes, Scott, please do.*

The heavy steel doors slid open on their hydraulics and Scott Summers moved along the runway, pushing an incongruous antique wooden trolley laden with a china tea set. The Professor leaned on the arm of his chair, head lowered, his heavy breathing echoing in the steel interior of the massive structure.

“Good God, Professor,” Scott said, coming around to kneel in front of the older man, taking his cold, sweaty hand and feeling for the pulse. “If I had known you were planning to exhaust yourself, I would have stopped you an hour ago. You can’t keep pushing like this. Your pulse is racing. And we have to do something to get more heat in here!”

“Add it to the to-do list, Scott,” Xavier said weakly, with a tired smile. The young man pulled a PDA from his pocket and made a notation.

Scott gave a crooked smile and said, “Jean would kill us both, you know. And then she would remind your sorry corpse of all the speeches you used to give us about patience back when we were learning to control our powers.”

“Then we shan’t tell her.” He found himself breathing easier. “I know you’re right  to counsel caution, Scott. But it’s so… tantalizing! I have been a telepath since I was 15 and I’ve developed powerful skills. But to suddenly see the possibilities of, perhaps, infinite telepathy, of touching every mind on Earth…”

“Or burning your brains out in the process.” Scott rose and poured a cup of tea, adding cream and bringing it back to his mentor. Xavier responded to the quotidian ritual and pulled himself upright, taking the proffered cup with restored dignity.

“They’re out there, Scott, just as Erik said they were. Thousands of mutants living unseen; some of them perhaps not aware of their mutations, others hiding them and hoping no one will notice. I know our school could be an important part of making their lives better!”

“Well, our school doesn’t exist yet, Professor, and if you’re in a coma, you won’t be much help to them, will you?” Scott poured himself tea, leaving it black, and sipped it in the ensuing silence. “Can we get out of here? This place gives me the creeps.”

“Does it? I admit to feeling complex emotions for Cerebro, but largely, it represents hope to me. Someday soon, I will have enough control to show you what I am seeing here. And then you’ll know why I try so hard.” He placed the helmet gently on its stand and looked around the cavernous room as if he could still pick out the distant red lights. He sighed and wheeled his chair backwards, turning to follow Scott who was pushing the trolley out into the hall.

They exited from the sub-basement elevator into the main foyer. Around them, electricians, plumbers and carpenters were coming and going, filling the air with sawdust and noise. They both looked around with satisfaction, momentarily forgetting the long list of technical, administrative and legal details that would soon fill their day with frustration. Instead, they paused and breathed in the dusty air of hope as they watched their dream becoming reality. Then it was time to get to work and together they wheeled across the lobby, leaving twin trails in the sawdust.




Mike Haddad and the Haddad’s housekeeper, Angelica were squeezed like comic spies behind the door jamb of the family room, catching covert glimpses of Bobby. The other boy sat shivering wrapped in a blanket on the couch watching old Seinfeld episodes without smiling, blowing his nose occasionally and adding to the growing mountain of used tissues spilling from the small wastebasket.

“This is not right, Mikey!” Angelica whispered harshly, wringing the hem of her apron in consternation. “We should be phoning Mrs. Drake and telling her Bobby did not go to school.”

“No, Angelica, please,” Mike whispered back. “She’ll just make him come home. Let’s see how he feels tomorrow. Okay? Please?”

“I felt like fool calling the school, saying another woman’s son is not coming. Only for you, Mikey do I make a fool like that!” she said, giving his ear a pinch. He grinned and kissed her cheek.

“That’s why I love you. Marry me!” he whispered, dropping to one knee.

She slapped his head. “Go away! Go talk to your friend. I have to make dinner. Here, bring him this.” She pulled a can of cola from her apron pocket and turned to go back to the kitchen. But just before she vanished, she suddenly returned looking concerned, wagging her finger at him. “Don’t get too close! You should not get sick, Mikey!” as she bustled back to the kitchen.

Mike rose to his feet and sauntered into the family room. “How do you feel, Bobby?” he asked as casually as he could. He put the soda on the coffee table in front of Bobby and sat down on the couch, a pillow’s distance away. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, Mike,” Bobby replied, eyes on the TV. “That bedside manner will come in handy in ten years… when you’re working at McDonalds.” He sniffled and sighed.

“So do you think you’re going to be better tomorrow? ’Cause if you aren’t, Angelica’s going to call your mom and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Bobby said nothing, but Mike could see the tension move across his shoulders and jaw. Mike continued gently, as if Bobby was a horse that he didn’t want to spook. “Look, Bobby, if something’s wrong, you can tell me. Even if it’s really bad.”

Bobby’s teeth suddenly chattered and he clenched his jaw tightly, saying “shit” through his teeth. He turned his face from the screen and looked at Mike for the first time. Mike could see how hard he was working to keep control. But control of what?

“I’m just sick,” Bobby said tightly. “It’s just a cold or something. But maybe…” Bobby lowered his voice and grew very serious.  “Maybe I should sleep in the apartment above the garage tonight. I don’t want you to get hurt… I mean, you know, like get sick…”

Mike laughed, “Oh my God, Drake, that’s what this is about? You’re a werewolf! Why didn’t you tell me?!” He threw himself against the back of the sofa, guffawing. And then he suddenly stopped. Something in Bobby’s eyes, some terrible pain, some desperation to tell and not tell choked the laughter in his throat. And he knew. He didn’t know how he knew, but he somehow did. The hysterical headlines, the new jokes at school, the change in the air that everyone felt but no one knew how to react to. It was here in his family room.

“Bobby,” he began slowly, looking into the clear blue eyes. “Are you a mutant?”

And Bobby broke. The blue eyes blurred and he shuddered out a hoarse bark like a dog. A week’s worth of misery and fear burst from him in a torrent of tears. His shivering grew into full-body shakes and he wrapped the blankets tighter around himself and sobbed.

Mike was at a loss. He didn’t know whether to reach out and hug Bobby (which would be weird) or leave the room and give him space. Mike definitely liked the latter option but was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do. So he sat there for a minute and let Bobby cry. When Bobby’s tears didn’t stop, Mike reached over to the box of tissues and handed it to his shivering friend.

“Th-thanks,” Bobby managed and a slim, pale hand emerged from the blanket to pull out three tissues. He blew his nose loudly and that seemed to calm him.

Mike ventured, “So, it’s true? You’re a mutant?”

“Yeah,” Bobby croaked.

“How long...? When did you know?”

“Just last week. The night before I came to school late.”

“Okay.” Mike paused. “And like you have a… power?”

“Yeah.” Bobby blushed and looked away.

“Can I ask… um, can you tell me what it is?” He found himself torn between a desire to move closer to Bobby and a desire to get to a safe distance in case his friend, like, exploded or something.

“Cold. I make things cold. I freeze stuff,” Bobby answered, sneaking a glance at Mike who was staring and tapping his foot nervously against the coffee table.

Mike looked around and then back and said conspiratorially, “Do it. Make it cold in here.”

“No, man,” Bobby whispered back to him, their heads drawing close. “I can’t! It’s dangerous. I-I killed this dog.”

“What do you mean? How?” Mike asked, more curious now than frightened.

“She was attacking me! I didn’t mean it! It was raining and I covered her in ice and… and… I’m fucking dangerous! You should get away! I’m a fucking killer.” Bobby’s voice was arching up into a cracked falsetto and the tears were coming again.

Mike grabbed his shoulders hard and gave him a shake. “Hey, chill! If the dog was attacking you it was self-defence. You’re not a killer, Bobby! Okay?”

Bobby sniffled, “Okay.” He shook and sneezed.

Mike held his gaze, trying to keep Bobby grounded. “I know you won’t hurt me, Bobby. You’re my friend. Is that why you’re sick? Does it have something to do with your... with being a mutant?”

“I’m not sure, Mike. I think it’s because I’m not using the power. It’s like having to pee really bad and you can’t go. I can feel it inside me. It wants to get out!”

“The soda!” Mike exclaimed. “Freeze the can of soda, Bobby!”

“I dunno, I’m scared.”

Mike got to his feet. “Look, I’ll move over here. It’ll be okay.” He ran across the room and hid behind his father’s big lounger like he had just thrown a grenade. He peeked over the top, his eyes wide with excitement. “Okay, do it!”

Bobby slid off the sofa, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders and got on his knees in front of the coffee table. He looked a bit confused, like he didn’t know how to do it after all. He held a hand over the can of soda and stared at it.

Nothing happened.

“I can’t, man!” Bobby said kind of desperately. “I don’t know how to turn it on!”

“Okay, okay, listen,” Mike said breathlessly. “You said it’s like taking a piss…”

Bobby looked offended. “That was just a metaphor, you asshole!”

“No, listen. You’re just pee-shy. Heh. ‘P’ shy. Power shy.” Mike thought for a minute and then said, “Close your eyes. Do it! Close them, Drake!” He watched as Bobby closed his eyes uncertainly. “And now breathe slowly. Imagine the can getting cold. Imagine that you’re in the Arctic…”

“Okay, shut up!” Bobby snapped. “It’s my power and I know what I have to imagine.” He breathed deeply and straightened his spine, waving his hand over the can. Suddenly a deep shiver went through him and he gasped. The air around his hand puffed with frost and the can suddenly expanded and burst open with bang. Slushy cola ice dripped off the table top.

“WOW! That is fucking awesome!!” Mike yelled, jumping up and running towards Bobby who collapsed forward and grabbed the table for support.

“Mike! Get back,” Bobby suddenly shouted and his body kind of spasmed. The whole coffee table was instantly covered in white frost. Bobby pulled his hands away and stared at them.

“Bobby, it’s cool but stop it now.” Mike felt a sudden pang of fear, like he had set something bad in motion.

“Mike, I can’t stop. I gotta do more…” Bobby staggered to his feet. “I can’t hold it…”

“Okay, okay!” Mike ran to his side, reaching to grab his arm and then pulling back. Was Bobby dangerous after all? “Just not in the house, Bobby! Come on, follow me!”

Mike dashed to the back of the family room and yanked open the glass patio doors that led out to the backyard. Bobby ran after him and they climbed through the bushes at the back and up into the wooded area that ran behind the houses.

Bobby, who had been following, pulled ahead of Mike and ran until he reached a small clearing in the woods.

“Stay back, Mike!” he yelled, and Mike stopped, sheltering behind an old oak, staring at Bobby who raised his arms in the air like a wizard, swaying a bit. The moment seemed to last forever. Mike felt the cool, late-afternoon spring air nip at his bare arms. He heard birds rustle in the branches and he watched as Bobby rocked and tensed.

Then suddenly, Bobby cried out and a thick shower of pale frost shot from his outstretched arms. The maple tree before him was vanishing under a skin of ice that climbed its trunk and coated its branches. And as Bobby continued to shout, one branch grew heavier and heavier with ice until it split with an awful crack and crashed to the forest floor. Then Bobby was falling, too, collapsing on the ground as Mike ran to him.

“Bobby!” Mike dived down beside his friend, grabbing him by the shoulders, turning him on his back and looking down into his eyes. Bobby’s face was pale, his eyes closed and Mike was suddenly afraid he had done the wrong thing, encouraging this adventure.  If Bobby was hurt, what was he going to say to Angelica? Or to Bobby’s parents? But then his eyes, mere inches away from his own, opened slowly and a smile moved across Bobby’s relaxed face.

“Fuck, Mike,” said Bobby, “I feel way better.”

“Holy shit, Drake,” Mike said a bit hysterically, shaking Bobby’s shoulders. “That was the most awesome thing in the history of awesome things!” Mike fell back in theatrical relief into the leaves.

Bobby sat up, starting to laugh. He picked up a handful of leaves and twigs threw them at Mike, who responded with a barrage of his own. It quickly escalated into a war until they breathlessly fell back on the ground beside each other.

Mike spoke first. “You’re not sick anymore?”

“No,” said Bobby in wonder. “I feel amazing. Better than I felt all year.”

“You don’t just make things cold, you know. You make ice!”

Bobby looked confused. “What are you talking about, Mike?”

“Ice! You must draw water out of the air and freeze it. Think about it! The maple tree wasn’t wet, but you covered it in ice.”

“Whoa,” said Bobby in awe. “Ice.”

“Iceman,” Mike breathed, like an incantation. They lapsed into silence until Mike began chuckling which soon turned to hysterical laughter. Mike curled into a laughing ball and Bobby jumped on top of him, punching his arm. “What?! What’s so funny?”

“I-I told you… before, when you were freaking out…” Mike gasped out, clutching his aching ribs. “I-I told you to ‘chill’!” And Bobby fell down beside him, his own hysterics reigniting Mike’s, each boy feeling his laughter reverberate through the ribs of the other.


to: andimura@gmail.com
from: b-cube@hotmail.com
subject: M-word
 
Hi, Andi. It’s me Bobby.
 
So I acted like a dork to you in the chatroom. You know what? I am a mutant. I’m sorry I said I wasn’t. I guess I just wasn’t ready to hear that word – at least applied to me. It feels really weird even typing those words but it’s true. I can make cold and ice. I sort of don’t believe it’s true still sometimes, but then I go out to the woods with my friend Mike and I freeze stuff. Mike is pretty impressed with the fact that I have these powers and stuff so I don’t really tell him how freaked out I am.
 
I don’t know if I should just keep it all a secret and sneak out sometimes to ice something (otherwise, the pressure gets really bad). But then what if I get caught? What if I make a mistake and freeze something and wreck it. Or SOMEONE. Yeah, scary.
 
And I don’t know what my parents would do if they found out. I mean, one minute they think I’m just Bobby and then suddenly I’m, like, this alien. BUT I’M NOT. It feels really unfair sometimes. And sometimes it feels the same as being one of the kids on 2gether – like you’re going through this huge awful thing and you can’t let anyone know. But with 2gether at least I had other kids, you know? I haven’t been in the chatroom in 2 weeks now because I don’t want to tell them and I don’t want to lie.
 
I don’t know what i want from you, Andi but you told me to write. So I am. Maybe in all your research you found a magic land where all the little mutants skip through the grass together and no one burns them at the stake or freaks out at them. Heh, I sound like this guy named StJohn in 2gether. I miss them all. Tell them if you go there.
 
Anyway, don’t get all weirded out. I’m not all depressed or anything and I’ve got Mike here and he’s being super-cool. But if you have a minute sometime, I would be really, really happy if you wrote me. Really. You can also IM me at screen name b-cube.
 
It’s funny that I don’t know you but I trust you. I guess I have to trust someone, huh? Mike and you.
 
Bobby (the Iceman!)

“Andi?” came a voice behind her and she jumped out of the rickety office chair with the cracked vinyl seat that looked like it hadn’t seen daylight since 1964.

“Raheem, hi!” Andi said with too much enthusiasm. “I was just checking my email, I didn’t look at your files or anything.” She reached around quickly and closed the webmail window on Raheem’s computer and then smoothed her palms above his desk as if somehow undoing any theoretical mess she had made. She spent a lot of time worrying about messes she hadn’t actually produced, she realized.

Raheem, standing half-silhouetted in the door of his dim office laughed and then looked very serious, “I’m sorry, Andi, but you may have learned about the community center’s top-secret nuclear facilities. I will have to kill you now…” He grunted as he put down the heavy pile of file folders. “…by dropping unfiled maintenance reports on your head.”

Andi sat on the edge of his desk smiling. But then a river of worry flowed across her features. “Did you find out? Did you ask your boss? Did she say no?”

“She said yes,” he replied with a reassuring smile. “But a very, very quiet yes. You understand?” He came and sat next to Andi and with his head tilted towards her and his voice pitched low, he told her, “You can have a meeting room Tuesday nights from 7 to 9. You can advertise the meetings but don’t put up any posters in the Center or in any other public buildings. Just on the street and in laundromats and stuff.”

Andi screwed her face in consternation. “How can we possibly keep this a secret, Raheem? It won’t work!”

“There are secrets and there are ‘secrets’, Andi,” he said, taking her hand. “That’s why we separate it from official policy. People in social services want to help, as long as they have a graceful way of saying they didn’t know anything if the shit comes down.”

She felt herself start to say something critical about hypocrites and the duty to stand up to authority, but then it occurred to her that she had actually gotten everything she wanted. Was this what it felt like to play politics? she wondered. So she made herself smile brightly and said, “Thank you, thanks so much! I won’t get you in trouble. And we’ll be helping so much!” She looked up into his dark eyes and squeezed his hand warmly.

Suddenly, at the door, someone cleared his throat loudly. Andi turned and saw a young man with black shining hair and oversized black glasses standing there smirking at them. She pulled back quickly from Raheem, standing and straightening her jacket.

“Sorry, Raheem,” the young man began in amused, musical tones with a slight Spanish accent. “If I’m interrupting a beautiful moment, I can come back…”

Raheem rose and took the kid in a friendly headlock, pulling him over to Andi who was blushing and trying to look professional. “Andi, this is Tonio Jimenez. He’s going to show you the meeting room, okay?”

“Nice to meet you, Andi,” he said, holding out his hand, smile still a little askew with innuendo.

Andi took his hand firmly and pumped it, looking up with professional earnestness at the face whose eyes were a cipher behind the huge shades, worn incongruously in the dim light of the Center. She thought about all the ways young people hid themselves behind oversized clothes, behind costumes and attitudes. And she wondered about her own masks.

“Nice to meet you, Tonio,” she said. “Please, I’d love to see the room. Did Raheem tell you what… what we’re using it for?”

“Oh yeah,” he smiled even more broadly, “I know all about it. Let’s go! Later, Raheem. And I promise, I’ll knock next time!” Andi blushed again and followed him out of the room.

“Do you work here at the Center, Tonio?” Andi asked, trying to stay conversational even as she worked hard to keep up with Tonio who took the worn stairs three at a time.

“Nah, just hang out sometimes and help how I can,” he yelled over his shoulder as the distance between them increased. She saw him above her at the entrance to the third floor and watched as he took a right down the hall. Andi was a good 15 seconds behind when she found him holding open a door down the corridor. Rather annoyed that he was making her chase him, she put up a dignified, even a bit haughty air and gave a curt “thank you” as she entered the room.

She marched into the middle of the dark room, noting chairs and old posters for Planned Parenthood in the dim light when suddenly she heard the door close and she was plunged into pitch darkness.

“Tonio...?” she asked in surprise.

“Relax,” came a voice in the darkness that immediately made her heart start pounding.

“Tonio,” she said a bit tentatively, “would you please turn on the lights now?”

“Have a seat, Andi,” he continued. She could hear the smile in his voice and it made her uneasy. The darkness was total and she could hear him moving slowly. “There’s a chair to your right.” She wanted to shout for help or at least to let him know she wasn’t weak and helpless, but she found herself groping for the chair anyway. “No, that’s your left.” She switched hands and immediately smacked her forearm into the chair. She gripped it tight but didn’t sit.

She felt foolish being so intimidated by the kid and wondered if latent racist tendencies were making her demonize a Hispanic. But no, this was not appropriate! “This isn’t appropriate, Tonio! I want you to turn on the lights right now,” she said as she silently opened her purse and pulled out her keys, palming them as a weapon.

“Easy, Andi! It’s cool. And please put your keys away; I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“You heard...?”

“No, I can see them. You have a leather thing on the key chain with gold letters and one of the keys has a big chunky plastic handle.” Andi strained her eyes against the dark but there was no way she could see the keys in her own hand. He continued, “And now you’re running your fingers through your hair and now you’re looking up at me really surprised. Your eyes are pretty.”

Suddenly the lights came on. She flinched in the sudden glare but recovered quickly. She could see him standing by the light switch; his glasses were off and his eyes were tightly closed. There was something strange… and only as he tentatively opened his eyes, squinting against the light of the fluorescents did she see that they were huge, twice the size of normal human eyes with a series of folds and wrinkles around them where the oversized lids and lashes made room for themselves on his otherwise normal teenage face. The effect was disturbingly like the face of a cocker spaniel.

It was clear that the light pained him but he looked her in the eye as best he could for a few seconds before retrieving the huge sunglasses from the collar of his t-shirt and putting them back on his face. She sank in the old wooden chair that must have been a leftover from some Depression-era classroom.

“You’re a mutant,” she said quietly. She felt something move in her heart. Despite weeks of immersion in the theoretical world of mutants, Tonio was the first she had met in person.

“Yeah,” he replied, his bravado subdued now that he had revealed himself to her. He scraped another of the old chairs across the floor to himself and turned it backwards, sitting with legs wide, leaning over the back, facing her. “When I hit puberty and started growing, well, my eyes grew faster than the rest of me. At first I was just funny looking and they called me ‘Highbeams.’ But then it started going beyond just weird to freakish, y’know?”

She nodded quietly, looking into his face without fear.

“And I had to drop out of school. It got kind of dangerous sometimes. I figured out I could see in the dark and that came in handy when I had to escape from kids sometimes. I know how the deer in the forest feel when all the hunters are out.”

“Have you been able to finish high school?”

“Nah, but Raheem wants me to do evening classes and I can do some courses online from the Center here. Mostly I help out in my parents’ clothing store.”

“So at least you’re learning how to run the store and do sales.”

“Well, I kinda scare the customers, so they keep me in the back most of the time.” There was just a hint of the caustic in his statement. They lapsed into silence for a minute.

“So now,” Tonio began again, “time for me to ask you some questions, Ms. Andi.” She tried to put on an air of attentive calm, but she was still disturbed by his earlier stunt and wondered now what he really wanted. “Are you a mutant, too?”

“Me? No! I’m…” She struggled for a word other than ‘normal’. “I’m not, Tonio.”

“Then why are you so into helping out freaks like me? And why should we trust you?” He wasn’t hiding his suspicion now and she could feel the resentment coming back at her from the years of mistreatment he had faced. She shifted in her chair as a sour cord of doubt wound its way through her.

“I-I want to help,” she began uncertainly. “I know I’m not a mutant, but I can’t stand seeing what’s happening to mutant youth—to kids like you—and-and I thought this group would be a good start.” Tonio had crossed his arms on his chest and was staring at her from behind his impenetrable glasses. She felt the words catching in her throat.

“Look, sister, you’re cute and nice and stuff but this is serious business.” He got up out of the chair, his brow creasing as his voice rose. “There’s a whole country out there who doesn’t want us and your little group won’t make that change. So go back to school and become a nice social worker lady in a safe office. We mutants’ll fend for ourselves, ’cause you don’t know, chica. You just don’t know.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Andi with her mouth hanging open.

“Tonio!” she called after him, but his resolute footsteps continued to recede. And part of her was glad he didn’t stop. Because, she wondered, what the hell would she have said? What words did she have to soothe his hurt? Who the hell did she think she was anyway?


Bobby and Andi found each other on Messenger that night. Mike accepted with a shrug Bobby’s request for some private computer time and wandered off to watch the hockey game.

Bobby had so much to say, he thought he had developed a new mutant power of speed typing. He told her how Mike was trying to get him to make ice sculptures that actually looked like something other than melted garden gnomes. He told her he was having nightmares when he could sleep at all, if he wasn’t lying awake wondering about the future.

Andi, for her part told Bobby about the mutant youth support meeting that was coming up in just a few days. She eventually admitted how nervous she was. That shocked Bobby, who thought of her as some kind of wise sage.

andimura> I’m still a student myself, Bobby
b-cube> I think you’re a really good therapist or whatever. You should talk to my mom
andimura> about you?
b-cube> No!! no way! I mean because she’s crazy. I phone her and she’s going on and on about marriage counselling that they’re doing
andimura> that sounds positive
b-cube> I don’t think she thinks so. She keeps asking me what I think. Like she needs my approval or something
andimura> how does that make you feel?
b-cube> mad. she makes me feel like I’m the parent sometimes
andimura> Parents struggle too, Bobby. But it’s not fair of her to make you her counsellor. Why don’t you get some support on 2gether about this?
b-cube> I can’t! I don’t want to talk about the mutant thing there yet.
andimura> so don’t. just talk about your parents
b-cube> no! then i’d be a stupid liar. I don’t want to lie to gina and the others.
andimura> I understand. I wish you could be in NYC for the support meeting. I think you’d be a big help to a lot of kids
b-cube> me? I’m so messed up I’d make everyone feel worse
andimura> Bobby, cut the drama. You are thoughtful and empathetic. I think you’d help a lot of kids. I think you could be a leader.
b-cube> ...
b-cube> I want to say ‘bullshit’ but you’ll yell at me. so I’ll just say thanks.
andimura> I still don’t know where u r. Far from here?
b-cube> Boston
andimura> you’re kidding
b-cube> no. why?
andimura> just something someone said...
b-cube> ?

In the days that followed, Bobby felt himself sinking back into his depression. He and Mike took their first exam on Friday morning in the gymnasium, the desks assembled in long, well-spaced lines. But as Bobby began solving the geometry puzzles in front of him, he started to lose focus. He looked around the hall at all the ‘normal’ kids and he wanted to run. He began to sweat, imagining that they knew he was a mutant.

What if Mike had told someone—just a close friend, like Greenstein—and then it was all over the school! Graffiti on the walls about ‘Drake the mutie’, a gang of tough boys lined up to get him when he left the school grounds. Suddenly everyone around him was an enemy. He had to get away!

“Bobby!” Mike hissed from the seat in the next row. Bobby’s head snapped up and then followed Mike’s glance down to where Bobby had left a thin sheet of frost over the side of the desk. Bobby quickly rubbed the ice away, leaving the desk damp but otherwise unscathed.

A supervising teacher cleared his throat loudly at them and the two boys dropped their gaze back to their exams.

Later, in the woods, Bobby was silent as Mike commented on his lumpy ice creations.

“Dude, that one almost looks like a bird or–or a pterodactyl!” Bobby didn’t answer. “Can you make one really, really tall?” Bobby was just standing, looking off into space. “Uh, Bobby? I said—did you notice there was a burning helicopter down your pants?”

“Huh?” Bobby looked up, startled. “Sorry, I-I was thinking of something.” He looked at Mike, his face a picture of almost comic puzzlement.

Mike laughed, “What?”

“How can I get to New York?”

“Uh, is this like the joke about ‘how do I get to Carnegie Hall’?” Bobby looked at him uncomprehendingly. Mike rolled his eyes. “When do you want to go?”

“Like next Tuesday.”

“Bobby, we have exams Thursday and Friday!”

“I know! But we’re studying now. And we could study when we’re there. Mike, I think it’s important.” He looked beseechingly at his friend, who bit into a fingernail and furrowed his brow in thought.

“Secret mutant stuff?” Mike asked and Bobby nodded. “This Andi chick getting you in trouble?”

“I hope not. She’s, um, having this mutant youth meeting. She says I could help her. Of course she’s crazy to think that, but...”

“So, it’ll be like a roomful of you guys? Talking about what it’s like to be a mutant?”

Bobby began babbling. “You’re right, it’s stupid. We have exams and maybe I’m just gonna get in trouble. Forget it!” He turned half away, shooting off blasts of ice that kicked up the forest floor, his face red under his ash curls.

Mike started laughing, “Hey, Iceman, I didn’t say it was stupid. I think we should totally go.”

Bobby stopped and turned back. “Really?”

“Of course! what are you going to do here? Keep running into the woods to make ice? You have this huge thing inside you and I sure can’t tell you what to do with it.” Mike grew serious. “I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t want to mess you up, but eventually someone’s going to find out and then I don’t know what’ll happen.” Bobby watched him carefully as he continued. “People are scared, Bobby. There was another editorial about registering mutants today in the Globe. And lots of bullshit letters to the editor about camps and compounds. It – it scared me, Bobby.”

“We’re not monsters, Mike.” Bobby said quietly. “You don’t know what it’s like… thinking everyone’s going to hate you all the time. Wondering if the FBI is gonna bust into your house and take you away.”

“No, Drake, I have no idea,” Mike said with sudden bitterness. “I’m just an Arab in post-9/11 America.”

Bobby dropped his head in shame. “I-I never thought of you like that. You’re just my friend.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Bobby. I have my family and my friends.” His tone softened, “But you need some new friends now, ones who know about this stuff that’s happening to you.” Mike was silent for a minute until Bobby looked up at him. He continued, “And that’s why you should go to New York to this mutant meeting. You should meet Andi and figure out what you’re going to do now.”

“But how do we get there?”

Mike grinned, the famous Haddad confidence kicking in. “I got it covered. We’ll go by bus and stay with my Aunt Fatima. She lives in Manhattan, Upper West Side. She totally loves me. Angelica will have to say yes if my aunt invites us and your mom will say yes if there’s another adult taking responsibility.”

They began talking excitedly about New York and what they would do there, Mike showing off his insider knowledge of the Big Apple. Bobby tried to make the Statue of Liberty in ice but it came out looking like a buffalo standing on its hind legs. He added big boobs to the front and they declared it a great success until the breasts overbalanced it and it crashed to the ground in a thousand melting pieces. The boys howled.


At 10:30, the night before the first ever mutant youth support meeting, Andi was in her apartment, going through her notes for the hundredth time. She realized it was time to stop when she found herself trying to memorize various social service phone numbers to create the illusion that she just happened to know things like that off the top of her head. Stop it, woman, she chided herself. You are as ready as you are going to be.

She went to the kitchen to heat up some soup, grabbing the historical fiction she was reading as she went, intending to slow down her brain and finally relax. But just as she sat at the table, the phone suddenly rang. She jumped up and grabbed the receiver, almost knocking her soup to the floor.

“Hello?” she inquired.

The voice on the other end, avuncular and calm, made her even more nervous. “Andi? This is Charles Xavier. How are you?”

“Professor! Oh, great. Just going over some notes for tomorrow.”

“I’m terribly sorry for phoning this late; I’ve been caught up in a meeting. But I wanted to see if there was anything else you needed before your big day.”

She wanted to tell him she couldn’t do it. She wanted to say she was afraid she’d freak out if she saw some weird mutation. She wanted to say what Raheem had said—that she had no business butting into the affairs of mutants when she wasn’t one.

“No, no,” she said instead, “Everything’s right on track. I’m really looking forward to this opportunity.”

“Excellent!” Xavier replied. “You’ll have to give me a full report later. What you’re doing is wonderful and important work. Perhaps I’ll come into the city next week and we can debrief in person.”

Feeling, as she was, like the world’s biggest fraud, this prospect horrified her. But she also realized she had paid for this roller coaster ride and there was no getting off before it was over.

“Great. It would be an honour to meet you in person, Professor.” Xavier was asking all the questions, she realized, and she was answering obediently like a good little girl. She decided that if she was going to earn his respect, she would have to take charge of the conversation.

“Actually, I’m really pleased that the young mutant—uh, the young man I met online is going to come down to New York for the meeting.”

“Really! The one you told me about?” Xavier sounded different, as if she could hear him leaning forward in his chair. Maybe she was scoring some points, she thought.

“Yes,” she answered. “I encouraged him to come. I said he could offer a peer perspective that would really energize the meeting.”

“Andi, would you mind hanging on for just a minute?” Before she could get out an answer, he had put her on hold. She felt her sense of control slipping rapidly.

A minute later, Xavier was back. “Andi, if it would not be too much trouble for you, would you mind if I attended tomorrow?”

Her eyes went wide. This was about the worst thing she could imagine. It was one thing to be bringing Xavier a well-massaged report on the success of her program in one week’s time; it was quite another to have the senior genius watching her every move. She stammered, “You mean, y-you want to come to the meeting?!”

“Please, don’t worry! I know it’s your show, as it were. But I would like the opportunity to meet this young man,” he went on enthusiastically. Andi wanted to scream ‘NO!’ but she found herself grinning idiotically in her empty apartment and nodding.

“Th-that’s great, Professor Xavier! It will really be a special day then!”

“Maybe I could address your young men and women at the start of the proceedings,” he suggested and Andi resisted the urge to hurl the phone across the room. She sat heavily down in her chair. Dammit, she thought. I’m doing all the work and he’s going to swoop in and take the credit!
 
But instead, she said, “Do you think that’s a good idea, sir? I want to create an, um, informal…”

“Yes, yes, of course. I would leave right after I spoke, but I think there are things that they need to hear about the world as it relates to them. Perhaps you should hear them, too, Andi.”

She took a deep breath but found nothing to say.

Xavier’s voice seemed to soften. “Are you sure you’re not at all worried about the meeting, Andi?”

“Well,” she exhaled heavily. “Maybe a few micro-butterflies.”

“Don’t worry, my dear. You can’t plan for every contingency. Just trust what’s in you and everything will be fine.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I do.”

And she decided to believe him, remembering what her mother used to tell her when she was an over-achieving high school student: Holding up the world by yourself can get tiring.

“Well, okay then, Professor,” she said. “Here we go...”

* * *

Bobby and Mike boarded the bus on a corner in Chinatown. This was one of Mike’s secret pieces of knowledge; private Chinese tour buses that could get you from city to city cheaper than Greyhound. Bobby felt strangely calm. He carried the minimum in his backpack. For the first time in his life, he felt that he could live without anything. If he never returned to his room to retrieve his treasures, he wouldn’t even care. He was a monk in the desert. He was an explorer of the Poles. He had no expectations; only blank slates and white expanses in front of him.

Mike, in contrast, was dripping with junk. His overstuffed duffel bag contained enough clothes, books, gaming paraphernalia and shoes he deemed cool enough for Manhattan to last a week. Bobby found himself constantly reaching over to shove a stray sock back into one of the bag’s pockets and zip it tight.

They made their way onto the bus, smiling awkwardly at the Chinese tourists. Angelica stood beside the car that she had brought them down in. Mike waved to her somewhat forlornly, and Bobby wished his mom were there to see them off, too. But she didn’t know him anymore. He wasn’t the son that had grown up in that house. He wasn’t even the son that had left ten days ago.

The bus growled into life and Bobby inhaled the scent of diesel and air freshener. Mike grabbed his arm, excitedly.

“Here we go!”

Chapter 4

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