Chapter Nine
Jean uncapped the syringe. She hadn’t bothered with makeup in a few days, and without it her eyes looked like small, scarlet-laced marbles. They were purpled beneath—by sleep loss, not fists. Too many nights staring at a ceiling or a wall or at Scott or a medical chart. She was wearing a turtle neck—her red one, her favorite, although less form fitting than it had once been since she lived almost exclusively on coffee and ibuprofen. Jean wore her white coat and surgical gloves, blue ones pulled from a box kept on the table just outside the door as a reminder for anyone who intended to go near Her. The overall effect of this wardrobe—the red, the white, the blue--was one of scary patriotism.
Rogue developed a reaction to the snap of latex like that of certain caged animals. Understandable, as it rarely meant good things. Her breath would speed up; her bladder tighten. She too wore gloves—cloth ones that climbed all the way up her shoulders, like some grand Shakespearian lady. She doubted, however, that the Elizabethans secured their gloves with such tight straps or had the wrists bound together. This forced her into a near-constant prayer position, an appeal never answered except with joint pain.
All things considered, hers wasn’t the worst cage a mutant could be placed in. Xavier had made that emphatically clear. The chamber was spacious, with walls made of glass (the kind that didn’t break, regardless of what or who you threw against it) but ample privacy screens, positioned tactfully around the bed and toilet. She also had shelves overflowing with books and magazines, puzzles. A radio that played the top forty in the morning and classical in the afternoon. A mounted television which would show any film she wanted, even those fresh out of theater. A dorm-size refrigerator with her favorite snacks and a soft bed--to which she was no longer tied, having promised to stop biting people.
Rogue paid very little attention to these amenities. Or to the pain. Or to the fear. There seemed to loom a Great Wall between that part of her which felt things and saw things, and the part that simply…floated. She lived in fog, drifting in a place somewhere between fantasy and recollection. Her lucid periods started and ended with Jean’s visits, with the tap of a fingernail on the side of a syringe, with the sparkling tip of the needle, and with the critcch that Velcro made when a flap in the glove was opened just enough to expose a vein. Sometimes, like today, Jean was accompanied—although not lately by The Professor, who was giving her Time to Think Things Over. Rather, she was followed into the cell by her husband, trailing at her heels like a dog who no longer needs a leash. They found the girl curled cat-like in the corner, absently tugging threads out of the rug and piling them in a little mound, a pyramid of string. They didn’t pause their conversation, but continued it sotto voce, as one might expect around the ill or sleeping—
“Any sign of him?”
“No. No news.”
“We can’t stay in this lockdown forever.” Together, the two carried the girl back to the bed. She didn’t fight. Her feet were numb, heavy. And her lips. And her eyes.
“I’m aware of that, Jean. I don’t suppose you have any idea what he’s planning?”
A long pause. “No.” Scott held Rogue’s arms down as his wife checked and rechecked the dosage. His jaw was clenched, and from her position she could count how many places his razor had missed.
Rogue didn’t know who they were talking about and she didn’t particularly care, although she had a vague feeling that she had, once. She caught the redhead’s eye as the needle went entered her arm, and held if for as long as she could. “Some doctor you are,” she mumbled, just for the vague pleasure of seeing the spasm that crossed Jean’s face.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;
It had begun to snow again. From beneath her eyelashes she watched the flakes dropping outside the window—fat bulbs resembling packing peanuts—and her breath inside it. Billowing in and out, dragonesque. Earlier, she had drawn an M in the frostiest corner of the glass, as she had so many times in so many vehicles since Meridian. When this vehicle was moving it rattled, like it had swallowed a percussionist, and when it stopped—as it did now—it was with a groan like death.
“Hey.” The driver gave her shoulder a rough shake. She flinched, though his contact was brief and separated from her skin by two shirts, a sweater, coat, and scarf. She’d been awake before he touched her, although experience had taught the girl to assess surroundings before admitting consciousness. The surroundings she was assessing now were not promising: decrepit automobiles in a decrepit lot around a decrepit pile of wood you’d call a building if you were feeling kind.
Or concussed.
Her heart contracted painfully, and she sent a suspicious glance toward the driver, whose name was something grunted 400 miles back. “What is this? You said you’d take me as far as Laughlin City.”
“This is Laughlin City,” he said, with no sense of irony. Or perhaps too much.
It was Laughlin City. The frost bitten sign between the ugly Chevy and the uglier camping trailer confirmed it. The letters as faded as the initial she’d drawn on the window. The man waited only long enough to see her out of his vehicle and lock it before stomping off to do whatever it is one did in Laughlin City.
She stood in the falling white, which was much colder than packing peanuts should be. She clutched her duffel against her, wishing it was fuller.
And then she followed, because her options were 400 mile back.
It turned out that what one did in Laughlin City was spill large mouthfuls of bad beer while shouting through a haze of smoke and crushed peanut shells. There were animal skins on the walls, tiered benches made of wooden pallets. It took a while to identify the noise, and a while longer to find its source—a metal cage in the center of the room. There was no other word for it--cage, but she didn’t get to see what or who it housed. The crowd was too thick. A sea of flannel and denim, middle school dropouts and domestic violence arrests. The tide rushed to the bar and back again. She could scarcely step without her way being barred by a sweaty back or drinking arm. And when she did—it was towards the bar, the ache in her throat sharper than curiosity. Whatever these rednecks were booing over, it wasn’t going to help her.
She hovered at the counter, attempting to look the right kind of pitiful. Nobody took the bait—which was to say, nobody took much notice of her. There was a fight—that was it, that what was going on in the cage. She gathered this over the next hour. When her ears adjusted to the din she could hear it, the slap of meat on meat. Some kind of competition—the kind that necessitated a mop bucket in the corner with pink water. Men and women were taking bets around her, their moods cresting and falling. None of it did her any good. She didn’t have any money for food, let alone to lay down.
She couldn’t see the man who’d brought her here.
In time she found an open seat, slightly sticky—for reasons she didn’t care to deduce. And there she sat, trying to look as alluring as a person can when they are wearing so many layers of clothing and thinking about dying in the Canadian wilderness. Because that was what she faced, if she couldn’t get a ride before this bar closed. Most of the patrons seemed to know each other but not the kind to travel; half the tires in the parking lot were on their last roll. She needed to reach an actual city, someplace she could find work. She needed someone—someone safe. A Good Samaritan, but not the Ted Bundy variety. She needed a plan. She needed money. Money to—
“Can I get you something?” The bartender leaned over the calloused bar top, whiskers studded his cheeks like splinters. If he was the owner then she supposed it was right, what they said about people growing to resemble their pets.
“I’ll have some water, please.”
“With what?”
“With…just the water. Thanks.”
He grunted either disgust or assent, and several resentful minutes later slammed a glass in front of her. It might have slopped over, had he filled it high enough to slop. Around them the crowd roared as something brutal happened in the cage. A voice began to speak over them and the screeching protests of a cheap microphone.
”Gentlemen, in all my years—“
“He spat in your drink.”
The voice was so smooth that it seemed almost part and parcel with her own thoughts. So cleanly did it cut through the din she wondered if it might be a voice in her head, although rarely did any of them sound so confident. Instead of psychosis, she found the true speaker perched on a stool right at her side. Its former occupant, a meth head with a James Dean t-shirt, had vanished without as much as a rustle.
The person who sat there now was nothing like the other women in the bar—leopard tops and terrible perms, shaking hands lighting bummed cigarettes. This one was wearing a jacket that could feed a family of four for a month—although that leather didn’t look very warm. What it did look was extremely fitted—confirmed by the glances of men nearby and the prompt attendance of the bartender. A hand with a pert engagement ring waved him off. Nails long and exact, painted to match the color of her lips, which was painted to match the color of her hair, which was the shade of some mythic bird. She was beautiful.
“He spat in your drink,” this creature repeated. “The bartender. I wouldn’t drink it.” Double parenthesis framed the corners of her mouth, giving her the impression of smiling even when she wasn’t—but she was now. At the—gently, amicably. “Actually, I wouldn’t touch a peanut in this place without antibacterial wipes.”
The girl smiled into her lap. She set the glass back down, although she still quite thirsty.
“This isn’t the nicest place for someone your age. Are you alone? Did you come here with somebody?” The woman glanced around the bar, eyes lingering on the cage. Her nose wrinkled, as if she couldn’t imagine someone might enjoy such barbaric entertainment.
“Yes,” she answered. “I mean, no I—“
“I hope you don’t mind my asking. Only, I work at a school, and it’s troubling for me to see somebody like yourself in this environment.”
“No, not at all. I just--” She felt nervous, having a conversation with this creature, the way she’d felt around cheerleaders at school (before frostbite took the place of popularity on her list of concerns). At the same time, there was something gracious about the woman. Imperturbable. She imagined she could say anything and the woman would sympathize, anything at all—
She blinked. What was she thinking?
The redhead was staring at her, eyebrow lifted delicately.
A tremendous noise rattled the bottles of beer on the wall behind the counter, a crash so great she thought the building might be about to collapse around them. That possibility remained, but it wasn’t the source of the commotion—it seemed that someone heavyset and (now) unconscious had been thrown against the wall of the cage. The metal and wire mesh shrieked in protest, and so did the spectators who’d lost their bets. Her companion frowned. Cerise nails clicked irritably on the counter, hard enough to threaten the paint.
The redhead turned back with only a slight crease in her forehead, and leaned towards her just like they were the dearest confidantes. Her breath touched her ear. “May I be completely honest with you?”
In response the girl leaned away, nearly falling into the leather fetishist on the stool to her left. He didn’t notice; he was studying the backwash in his tumbler. She blushed. “Um. Yes?”
“I don’t mean to alarm you.” To prove this, the woman put her hands in her lap and crossed her ankles, as if to make herself look the least possible reason for alarm. “My name is Jean. Or Doctor Grey. And the thing is—the thing is, I believe I know who you are. Are you Ma—Oh, please don’t. It’s okay. Please sit back down. I’m not going to hurt you. I swear I won’t.”
“You said you were a teacher.”
“I am. Well, I work at a school. I’m a doctor. Look—just sit down, okay? We’re in a public place. I didn’t come here to frighten you or--or, for that matter, for this boozy ambiance. I want to help you. I’m here to help you.” The woman—Jean—plucked a card out of a pocket in the wrist of her jacket (that would be great for poker, the girl thought, a little frantically) and held it out until she took it. Their fingertips didn’t quite touch, a restraint that, in hindsight, couldn’t have been anything but deliberate.
“I’m part of a group. A team that’s built something of a safe haven for—“
“’Gifted Youngsters?’”
“That’s right.”
She turned the card over. It was black, with a yellow ‘X’ in the center. The edges were sharp. “You think I might be a gifted youngster?”
“I know you are.”
She shook her head, but she couldn’t meet Jean’s eyes. Her mind was screaming Doctor She hated doctors. Doctors were dangerous. But so was causing a scene. “Why would you want to help me?” she stalled.
“Because—my team? That’s what we do. And we have reason to believe you might be in some peril.”
“Peril?”
“Danger.”
“I know what it means,” an ember of teenage indignation flared up, and with it her southern accent at its thickest. “I can take care of myself. I have been.”
Jean said condescendingly, “I’m sure you have. But this is—you know, I don’t think this is something we should discuss here. Will you let us—“
“’Us?’”
“My friend is waiting in the car. She’d stand out a bit in here, and we didn’t want that. Her name is Ororo—you’ll like her. Everyone does. Will you come to the school? Or allow you give you a ride, at least, and hear us out? You can’t intend to stay here all night.”
A voice in her head was screaming, Don’t take candy from strangers! It sounded suspiciously like her mother’s. She crossed her arms over her chest, tried to sound firm. “You expect me to just get in a car with you? Why would I do that?”
The woman sighed, smiling in a way that said, Do you have a better offer? But, to her lasting credit, she didn’t say that. She whispered instead, “Because we’re rather gifted ourselves.”
She nodded pointedly at the glass of water, focusing her gaze on it until the girl did the same, and they both watched the cup lift slightly—but definitely in the air. Nothing holding it up. It hovered only a moment, then came clattering down. Liquid streamed slowly across the counter, possibly the nicest thing that had been spilled there in some time.
“Well. I’m still working on some things. I’m not Matilda.” Ignoring the cursing approach of the bartender, Jean stood. She pushed her stool in with one hand and ran the fingers of the other through her hair, cracked her neck, looked sidelong at the girl—whose eyes were still round in shock—and said, by way of conclusion and farewell. “It’s your call. Nobody is going to make you do something you don’t want to do.”
And then she was gone, just like that, gliding confidently between the patrons and out the door, as if carried on invisible wings.
It had happened so fast. She could hear her heart, wet drumming in her ears. Dry lips. Clenching stomach. There was no time for deliberation, just a hitching in her chest, an excitement quite indivisible from fear. As the bartender swiped halfheartedly at the spilled drink, she jumped down from her stool. She nearly tipped it and herself over. “I’m sorry,” she said to the old man, who grunted something vulgar in reply.
She barely heard him. The strap of her duffel was pulled onto her shoulder in a quick, practiced motion. The crowd didn’t part for her the way they had for Jean, but she made it through with hasty excuse-me’s and a liberal use of her elbow. She might have caused quite an argument, but everyone’s attention was on the cage. The man with the microphone seemed to be wrapping things up for the evening.
A cheek-stinging flurry of snow met the girl when she left the bar. That, and a sleek black vehicle. All the others in the lot were drowning in white, but this one was untouched—it didn’t even have the wipers going. She didn’t pause to question this, driven into the backseat by cold and her own momentum. Honestly, she was afraid of what would happen if she took too long to consider, to really consider these things. She was so tired of watching her every move. Leather seats and heat that was like a bath, Debussy bubbling softly out of the radio. Bottles of soda and water in a box by the floor. Jean grinning at her from the passenger seat and another woman, with a shock of white hair, from behind the wheel.
What choice did she have?