An Accidental Interception
of Fate: La coppia perfetta
Minisinoo

When Francesco Placido was ten years old, he'd fallen prey to a particularly virulent strain of meningitis.  It had been winter in the little hamlet of Ginostra, one of two settlements on the volcanic isle of Stromboli in the Eolian string running northeast from Sicily.  Even Odysseus had found the place difficult to escape.  It had no running water or electricity, depending instead on solar energy and imperfect cell phone reception.  Thirty-seven people and eleven donkeys had called it home then, with Francesco being the only one under the age of fifteen (including the donkeys).  His father had worked for Siremar, the local transport company.  It was a tourist site, intended to preserve the natural beauty of the volcano, and with tourists and traffic at their seasonal low, the first aid clinic had reduced its staff to one nurse and a medic, who had taken advantage of a break in the weather to go that very morning to nearby Lipari to fill prescriptions. 

The nature of meningitis had meant a rapid onset.  At eight that morning, young Francesco had been racing off to help his father at the world's smallest formal port (it accommodated only three boats).  By ten, he'd been sent home to his mother with a fever and a rash, and lay torpid on the family couch under a window where he could hear the quiet pulse of the sea.  By twelve, he'd been delirious, and his mother had yelled for a neighbor to bring a wagon so she could get the child to the clinic.  Less than an hour later, Francesco had begun seizing and a wire was sent to the medic on Lipari, but it took time to return from the other island, even by Aliscafo hydrofoil, so the man had arrived at the clinic only to declare the boy dead at 1:26 pm. 

For a normal human child, that might have been the end, but Francesco's latent X-gene had saved his life by activating early.  The virus that had inflamed the lining of his brain and spinal column had also caused his mutant gift to manifest before puberty's traditional onset.  Twelve minutes after he'd been pronounced, while his mother Valeria wailed in the outer office and the doctor notified the father by cell phone, the clinic nurse had come rushing out to say that the boy was coming around.  Dropping the phone without hanging up, the doctor had raced back into the exam room to find --­ past any expectation or hope --­ Francesco Placido with his eyes open.  "I'm thirsty," he'd said. 

From that day on, in the hamlet of Ginostra, he'd been called Lazarus, but as with the Biblical resurrected, his evasion of death had come with a terrible price, though it would take years and a move to Genoa before he understood that his almost-magical knack for predicting things would include foresight of his own father's demise.  He was ten when he regained his life, and fourteen when he lost his mind. 

Now, at not-quite-seventeen, and perfectly sane, he sat on the steps of the courtyard gate to Xavier's mansion and waited for what he knew would be the third most important event of his life (the second had been losing his father).  Fortunately, this time, it involved no one's death. 

"Hey, man --­ it's Saturday.  What are you doing up already?"

Frank looked around to find Scott Summers standing behind him.  The other boy had apparently just gotten out of the shower; his hair was wet still and he looked freshly shaved.  He held a mug of coffee in one hand.  Frank had finished his own some time ago and was using the cup as a makeshift ashtray.   "That is so gross," Summers said, wrinkling his nose and seating himself beside Frank on the step. 

"Would you rather that I littered the drive?"

"No, I'd rather you didn't smoke at all." 

Smiling, Frank brushed the nails of his right hand up his neck, the Italian hand gesture for, among other things, 'I don't give a shit.'

It made Summers laugh and shake his head.  "You're such a crazy Wop.  And you didn't tell me what you're doing up at this hour.  It's not even noon yet.  You never get up before noon if you can help it." 

"The professor, he comes back today." 

"Yeah, so?"

But Placido didn't reply to that immediately.  Instead, he lit his fifth cigarette of the morning and inhaled deeply, held the smoke until it burned, until he could feel the nicotine charge his blood, then let it out in a rush.  The breath of a sibyl before prophecy.  "He will bring us someone new." 

Summers' gaze was intense behind red quartz.  "Who?"

"You ask her name?  I do not know.  That is not how it works.  Her hair is white." 

"She's old?"

"No.  She is younger than me."  And Placido returned to his smoking, satisfied that he had said enough to deflect further questions.  They sat in easy silence then as the summer sun beat down on the courtyard flagstones and baked the boys into medium-well indolence.  Pulling off his shirt and pillowing it under his head, Summers stretched out to sun himself like a cat.  He'd probably pay for the indulgence later with a massive headache or extra hours at practice to ease the pent-up solar energy that his body stored and released again as optic blasts.  But just then, he lived in the moment, and the sun was pleasant on his bare flesh. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Placido caught Jean exit the den out into the courtyard, but spotting the two of them lounging on the steps, she moved back into the shadow of the doorway.  He turned his head and she raised a finger to her lips, shutting the door behind her.  He might have chalked it up to a desire to avoid her shadow, but knew better.  If Scott wasn't following her around the mansion, before long she turned up somewhere public, reading a book or computer printout while pretending that she wasn't making herself easy to find. 

"La storia di Scott e Jean," he muttered sotto voce. 

Perhaps five minutes later, he heard a soft crack and glanced up to find the face of Jean Grey grinning down at him from the window above.  The gated courtyard steps lay half under an arch that opened onto the main drive.  Above was a narrow, second-story servants' pass joining the east and west mansion; they used it these days as a short cut to avoid walking all the way around to the building's rear to cross over.  Narrow, wooden-framed windows marched along the outer wall, and Jean had opened one directly over them.  She held a big plastic Tupperware bowl, and waved Frank clear.  Very carefully, he moved, but Summers was so far out of it, he didn't even stir.  Jean lowered the bowl with her mind until it was less than five feet above Scott's chest, then tipped it upside down. 

Little cut squares of refrigerator-cold Jell-O with fruit and marshmallows landed in a verdigris splat all over Scott's chest and belly.  Bellowing, he arched up in shock and Frank let out a bark of laughter as Jean slammed the window shut above.  The plastic bowl, forgotten, slapped down on the Jell-O littered flagstones beside Scott. 

"Godfuckingdamn!" Summers yelled, slapping and swiping at the green mess all over his stomach as if he'd been covered in snakes.  "That sneaky bitch!  She's going to pay for this!"  But Frank could hear an edge of real delight behind the indignation, and laughing almost too hard to breathe, leaned up against the wall behind him. 

Naturally, it was at that very moment when the professor's dark limousine pulled through the front gate and made its way up the drive.  Scott and Frank watched it approach, Scott still shirtless and decorated in bits of pineapple, orange, and green-stained marshmallow.  When the driver had stopped the car, one tinted back window slid down.  Xavier grinned out at them, then spoke to a shadow in the car beside him.  "And these, I am sorry to say, are two of your fellow students.  I buy them books and buy them books, but all they do is eat the covers off."  There was a sound of distinctively female laughter from inside the limousine, and Frank thought he caught a flash of white hair.   The present fractured into myriad futures, all edged with lightning.  His vision tunneled and he heard Scott yell, "He's zoning again!" before he blacked out. 
 
 
 
 

"I call, and raise all of you another quarter." 

Ororo Munroe, the white-haired object of Frank Placido's visions (not to mention his more heated dreams), tossed thirty-five cents into the pot at the center of Warren's bed.  Due to his wings, Warren had a king-sized bed, and it was the only one large enough to accommodate all four of the younger students for poker. 

"No way," Summers announced now, folding his cards face down on the quilt.   "Too rich for my blood.  The woman cheats." 

"Prove it," she said, but without obvious heat.  In fact, she did cheat, but was accomplished enough at it to be arrogant rather than defensive.  She had survived on the streets of Nairobi through a mix of thievery, cons, and picking pockets.  She had skills at deception that the other three could only postulate existed. 

Grumbling, Summers sipped from a contraband can of Heineken.  There was a loaded cooler in the corner that Warren had smuggled in; this beer was Summers' fourth.  In fact, alcohol could be directly blamed for the current mutation of five-card-stud into strip poker.  Fold and lose one's money, or call, lose the hand, and lose an article of clothing along with the pocket change.  So far, Summers had lost both his shoes and socks, his watch and his high school ring, but was in better shape than his two male classmates.  Warren was down to jeans and underwear, and Frank had on only European-style bikinis. 

Now, sighing, Frank folded, too, and flopped back on the bed.  "I told you," Summers said, "she cheats."  Ororo had lost only her earrings and sandals, and Summers was convinced that was simply to make her cheating look less obvious. 

"And I said you must prove that I cheat."  But she wasn't looking at Scott; she was looking at Warren.  "Are you in?"

He considered the pot, considered his hand, considered her, and folded as well.  "Better to keep my clothes and lose some cash." 

"Wimps," she told them and raked in her draw, then laid down her cards for them to see.  All she'd had was a pair, and not a high one.  Two sevens.  

"Goddamn!" Warren yelled, tossing his own hand.  Scott picked them up and turned them over to reveal a straight. 

Ororo shook her head.  "I told you.  I do not cheat.  But I do bluff." 

"You cheat, too," Summers insisted, gathering all the cards for his turn to deal. 

In the end, Ororo did win the game, though they got her down to her bra, at least.  But she had an opportunity to compare circumcised with uncircumcised, and pronounced Frank the best endowed of the three.  When, later, she chose to go out with him, she claimed it had nothing to do with his assets below the belt.  Warren claimed not to believe her.  And Jean never heard about that particular poker game until, many years later on the eve of her wedding, she was shocked to discover that her teammate had seen her husband-to-be in all his glory before she had. 
 
 
 
 

"Hi." 

Ororo looked up from where she was trying to read a history assignment in the courtyard sun on a warm, June afternoon.  The yard was expensively landscaped, and populated with good Greco-Roman imitation sculptures and pseudo-damaged Ionic columns.  Ororo shaded her eyes until she could make out the person who'd spoken to her: the auburn-haired medical student with the expensive shoes and delicately-arched eyebrows, the one whose name her schoolmate, Scott Summers, couldn't keep out of his conversations. 

Jean Grey. 

Without being invited, the older woman sat down beside Ororo on the bench, pulling up her legs to wrap arms about them and rest her chin on her knees ­-- a posture reminiscent of slumber-party confidences, although Ororo had never been to a slumber party in her life, to recognize it.  Nonetheless, she could recognize the attempt at friendly familiarity and her time on the street had made her suspicious of it.  "Is there something you wanted?" she asked. 

"Oh, I don't know.  I just thought we might have a chat."  Jean grinned.   "You're the only other woman here.  Female bonding."  Ororo blinked, startled by that notion.  As near as she could tell, she had next-to-nothing in common with Jean Grey to bond over, and it never occurred to her that Jean might be practicing something as simple as kindness.  She hadn't experienced much kindness in her sixteen years.  When she didn't immediately reply, Jean sat up to run a hand through her hair.  "The professor introduced us, but we haven't had a chance to talk much ­-- get to know each other." 

"That is because you are usually conducting your research in the lab below, or at the hospital." 

It was offered as an observation, not a rebuke, but already feeling thrown off her stride, Jean took it as the latter.  Over such small misunderstandings are wars begun, and the power of first impressions lent this one additional impact.  It didn't begin a war, even of the minor, interpersonal variety, but it did succeed in killing any real chance at sisterhood between the two women, although both proximity and familiarity would eventually build a bond based on common causes and shared experience --­ a friendship of sorts, but stemming from necessity, not preference.  Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe would always be closer to others at the mansion than to each other. 

Now, realizing that she had said something wrong ­-- but still suspicious and skeptical --­ Ororo closed her history book to set it aside, her movements neat and precise.  "You are also a mutant, I presume?"

"Yes." 

"What is your power?"

One hand releasing her knees, Jean pointed to Ororo's book, levitating it a few inches off the bench.  Ororo neither started nor permitted herself to appear impressed.  "I'm a telekinetic," Jean said with a smile.  "What's yours?"

Turning her face to the sky, Ororo let the mist roll over her eyes, making them as unnaturally white as her hair.  A wind whipped up and the cirrus-scudded blue overhead grew obscured by boiling gray clouds, like a time-lapse film of an approaching storm.  Jean gasped.  "My tribe, in Kenya, called me a weather witch," Ororo said, lowering her chin.  The wind had lifted her long hair like a bird's wings and the clouds above hid the sun until, with a flick of her wrist, Ororo dissipated the buildup as easily as she'd called it, and as quickly.  She didn't tell Jean how much the whole display had cost her; she'd meant it to impress. 

It worked.  Jean sat up.  "That's . . . amazing," she said.  But before she could say more, an upstairs window slammed open and Scott Summers leaned out with Frank Placido behind him. 

"Ro!" Scott scolded.  "What are you trying to do?  Paint a big X on the mansion with magically appearing and disappearing thunderheads?  Christ, woman, show a little common sense!"

Ororo casually flipped him off as Jean waved a hand.  "My fault, Scott.   I asked her what she could do."  It was Jean's nature to smooth over conflict.  

"A little fog next time, maybe?" Frank said from behind Scott.  Like Jean, he was more inclined to offer solutions than rebukes. 

Ororo and Scott ignored them both, continuing to glare at one another a moment until finally, Scott's lips turned up and he flipped her off in return before pushing himself back inside and shutting the window.  Embarrassed, Jean shook her head and turned to Ororo, intending to offer some kind of apology, only to realize the white-haired girl was half-laughing. 

And a strange hot flash skittered under Jean's skin, uncomfortably like a jealousy she shouldn't feel.  She wasn't interested in Scott that way.  "His dimples make up for his lack of manners," she said, her tone teasing and suggestive.  "He's cute, don't you think?"

Ororo glanced at her and spoke with the same bluntness she had before.   "Frank is better looking, but Scott is more honest.  I respect that.  He isn't afraid of me." 

"And Frank is?"

"Oh, yes.  Terrified."  She shook her head.  "He is very silly sometimes."   But Ororo was secretly flattered by the intensity of his infatuation. 

Jean plucked a leaf from one of the courtyard bushes and studied it in her fingers.  "Men are often silly creatures."  Then she asked, abruptly, "Do you like him?"

"Who?  Frank?"

"No, Scott." 

Ah, ah, ah, Ororo thought.  Frank had told her --­ insisted, in fact --­ that Scott's interest in Jean Grey wasn't entirely one-sided.   She hadn't believed him. 

"Yes, I like Scott," she said now, just to watch the older woman's eyes widen and her face go still in an effort to hide her disappointment.  It was cruel, but amusing, and Ororo was not above being occasionally cruel in small things.  "I like him very much as a friend.  But Frank has asked ­-- again --­ to take me to dinner on Friday, and I think this time, I shall go.  But I shan't tell Frank that just yet.  And you mustn't, either." 

Grinning, Jean gave Ororo's arm a playful pat.  "You're wicked.  But I hope you have a wonderful time.  Frank really is quite sweet." 
 
 
 
 

The set of experiments that Jean was currently running with vaX receptors and stress triggers had to be done sequentially, from start to finish, and so, required her to be awake and coherent for twenty-eight hours straight, a feat that --­ at twenty-six years ­-- did not come as easily as it once had.  She managed on coffee, BLT sandwiches, and her insatiable hunger for knowledge.  It was her fate to be dissatisfied with ignorance ­-- hers or anyone else's.  To her, the only thing worse than ignorance was a casual complacency in it.  Like winter snow, it buried the true outline of things in white silence. 

When her experiments were done at last and the results stored with doubled backups, she dragged herself upstairs to bed, sleeping for sixteen hours until a little before ten the next morning.  Waking finally, bleary and befuddled, she showered and dressed, and considered getting coffee.  But even the mere thought of more of the black bean made her queasy, so she opted for tea and toast instead at the little eat-in kitchen table.  It sat near a door that led out onto the rear porch, once the servant's entrance.  The day was cool for late June, nice enough to leave the door open and enjoy a breeze through the screen.  Limpid gold morning sun played over the yard beyond, casting indistinct shadows, and triplet bees hummed among the chamomile bushes in the herb garden. 

"Hey!  You're awake!"

Startled, Jean jerked around to find Scott in the kitchen doorway.  "Hey yourself," she answered.  He took that for an invitation and ambled across black and white tile to plop down on a vinyl seat across from her.  It squeaked under his weight.  He was carrying a pair of cameras. 

"Frank said his mom said you were up.  How'd it go --­ the experiments?   Did you get the results you needed?"

"I got results, yes, but I didn't need any particular results.  That's not how research works, Scott.  Not good research.  You start with the data, the evidence, then you build your hypothesis from that data.  You don't start with a hypothesis and go looking for data to support it.  Bad science.  That was one of the first things Dr. Banner and Hank drilled into my head." 

Laughing, he held up a hand.  "Okay, okay.  I surrender!  I just meant in general."  Then he brought up the other hand, the one holding the cameras.  These, he set gently on the table in front of her.  "I wanted to be sure you got what you needed, so you could take a day off." 

She picked up one of the cameras.  They were of the drugstore cardboard disposable variety.  "What on earth are these for?"

Awarding her the grin she'd come to think of as 'pure mischief,' he said, "Remember what I told you about going to the mall and taking pictures with the worst and best stuff?"

It required a moment for her to place when he'd told her any such thing --­ and, thus, what he was talking about.  Then she remembered: at the Marriott Marquis, when they'd been walking around the atrium and had seen that godawful dress.  She lifted one of the cameras.  "Your idea of a day off is a bad-taste-in-clothes hunt?"

"Yeah --­ you, me and Warren, against Ororo, Frank and Hank." 

Both her eyebrows climbed.  "And they agreed to this?"  What she meant was, Hank agreed to this?  And what she didn't know was that Scott had bullied the rest of them into it because he'd felt that she needed a vacation from her work.  Even Hank had been unable, or unwilling, to argue against that, so they'd agreed to his scheme. 

"Yeah," he said now.  "They think it'll be fun.  We were just waiting for you to wake up." 

She should have said no.  She should have explained that she needed to go back down to the lab and evaluate the results of her research, her work, her passion.  She had no time for frivolity, and opened her mouth to tell him as much --­ then shut it.  Scott wore that earnest expression she found so impossible to refuse, eyebrows raised a little and the eagerness shining out of him as if his skin were translucent.  Rising, she finished her nearly cold tea in one swallow, then set the cup down on the tabletop with the solid thumb of a decision made.  "Then let's go hunting Tacky.  But forget those cheap things.  We need videocameras." 

So the six of them hit the Westchester Mall in White Plains, with its skylit ceiling and marble floors, specially commissioned sculptures, fountains, and four stories of shops, counting the food court.  They stayed until the doors closed at nine, and returned to the mansion with six tapes of excruciating footage, which they played on the den TV over popcorn, coke, and much ribbing.   The professor acted as judge, his final pronouncement being that both teams had execrable taste, but that Scott's team won on the basis of a single, particularly frightful dress found in the Neiman Marcus formal-wear department and modeled by Jean.  It seemed to have been constructed from purple velvet and silver semi-transparent scraps stitched together like a checkerboard quilt, with peek-a-boo slits over the belly-button, upper cleavage, and lower back, and a great purple and silver bow just above the ass to complete the Elvira Ensemble.  When Scott and Jean were married ten years later, that old tape found its way to the wedding reception, and though the professor staunchly denied any involvement, he remained the primary suspect. 
 
 
 
 

"Try again, Jean.  Concentrate." 

Lowering her chin, Jean Grey focused once more on the three laces lying like limp noodles on the professor's desk.  Her assignment was not simply to lift all three simultaneously, but to braid them, as well. 

The laces rose up and swayed towards one another like three drunk dancers, wavered, twisted and tangled, then dropped back onto the desk.  "Dammit!  I'm never going to get this!"

"You won't if you've already decided that you won't," Xavier told her with amused patience.  "You said the same thing, as I recall, when you were overcompensating and throwing all three of them at the ceiling, a week ago." 

Sighing, she rubbed her forehead, all damp with exertion, and he watched her fondly.  If she only knew how much potential he saw in her.  He loved all his students for their own unique virtues.  Frank, with his quiet wisdom that went far beyond his years; Ororo, for the strength of will that had made her a survivor; Hank, for his enthusiastic brilliance; Warren, for his desire to matter in the world for reasons beyond his bank account; and Scott, for a bedrock strength that the boy himself didn't fully recognize yet.  But Jean was the one most like him, and not just for the burden of telepathy that they both shared.  She, too, had been sheltered from the world by others' false perceptions of her fragility.  But she was his dragonfly child, too fast to catch and crush.  She soared high in a glitter-bright buzz over those who sought to contain her. 

"Do it again?" she asked now.  He just smiled.  She already knew the answer to that. 
 
 
 
 

When Ororo and Frank were alone together, they tended to converse in French peppered with English idioms ­-- not to be covert or recondite, but because each found that language more amenable.  Speaking French would hardly have made their conversations secret, in any case.  The professor spoke the language fluently, as did Warren, having spent a year overseas in Provence after high school.  Jean had taken French in college, and Hank collected languages.  He often said that he could get himself in trouble in eight different countries in their native tongue.  In fact, the only person at the mansion who couldn't understand their franglais was the one currently standing in the den doorway, listening.  Scott Summers.  Hearing him enter, they turned as one, and Summers thought that he had never seen two people more alike, yet not --­ white and black in ways that went well beyond their skin.  A mutant Oscar and Felix.  

He was gentle; she was hard.  He was inclined to see the best in people; she remained cynical.  He was a romantic, she a realist.  He slept late; she got up early.  He preferred the city though he'd been born in a hamlet of thirty-seven people; she loved the country, though she'd come from a city of two-million.  He smoked like a chimney; she hated cigarettes.  Yet at some cellular level, they understood one other.  He was her sanctuary, her home, her peace. 

Rejected by her tribe as a witch, she had fled to the streets of Nairobi, where she'd made a living by cat burglary and picking pockets --­ a child of the savanna forced to live in an urban jungle.  She'd learned English from cartoons and B-grade horror flicks, which she'd watched on a filched RCA ten-inch television that she'd kept in her personal basement hole in an old business building on the Kiriyaga Road, not far from the river.  It was an infamous part of town, the kind tourists were warned away from, where business was conducted in the clichéd tiny smoke-filled rooms with low light and even lower honesty ­-- the part of town where bad things happened to young, pretty girls unless those girls commanded the lightning.  So Ororo had learned to keep a low profile, and her thoughts, opinions, and emotions to herself, especially among strangers.  They were not her tribe, and her tribe hadn't wanted her, in any case.  So she had lived without a people, rootless --­ a terrible fate, but an increasingly common one in Africa.  Francesco, too, had learned that some things were better left unsaid, and so he respected her silences, which inclined her to break them with him more often. 

Now, Summers sauntered into the den, hoping he wasn't interrupting something private, but the two lovebirds had out a math book and were apparently working on some problem.  Seeing him, Frank made an expansive gesture.  "Just the one we need!"  And he shoved the book across the coffee table towards Scott.  "Sit down, sit down.  Explain this to us." 

"What is it?"

"We are trying to find the lowest common denominator," Frank said.  "She does not understand the fractions, and you know how numbers and I get along.  I am no good at explaining this." 

She doesn't understand fractions?  Summers thought, but then bit his tongue.  Maybe he could do calculus, but he couldn't carry on a conversation in three different languages.  In the end, which of those was more practical?   Dragging over a chair, he settled in to look at the problem.  "Okay, it's really not that hard.  First, you've got to break down the numbers themselves."   He took the pen Frank handed him and set about writing.  "Let's see ­-- this set is an 8, 12 and 18.  What times what, gives you 8?"

"Two times four," Frank said, "but I tried that." 

"Yeah, but you stopped there.  You have to break down the 4, too.  You have to break them all down to numbers that aren't divisible.  It's really kind of fun, like solving a puzzle or something . . . "  And he was off.  They listened intently as he took them through the process, finally rendering an answer of 72.  "See?  It's not complicated.  You just have to take it one step at a time, and not get lost in the equation.  Let's try the next one: 9, 16, and 20.  Okay, factor down the 9." 

"Wait," Ororo said.  "Why is this important?"

"Well, you can't add or subtract, multiply or divide fractions until you get them down to a common denominator." 

"But why?  I do not understand why it even matters." 

That brought him up short and he straightened, staring off into space for a moment and pondering why it did matter.  He might enjoy the puzzle aspect of it, but not everyone was a math geek. 

"Come on."  Rising, he led them out of the den, down the main hallway and into the mansion's industrial kitchen.  They raised eyebrows at each other as they followed, wondering what the kitchen had to do with math, but waited patiently while Scott rummaged through the refrigerator.  Pulling out a pack of bologna, he peeled off three slices and brought them over to the cutting board, where he cut them up.  "Come here."  They approached.  "Now --­ pretend these are pies at a party.  The people who brought them already had them cut like this.  One's in ten pieces, one's in six, and one's in eight.  How are you going to be sure that the guest who gets peach pie will get a piece that's the same size as the guest who gets pecan pie?"

"Pretty funny pecan pie," Frank quipped. 

Scott elbowed him.  "Work with me here, man."  And using the bologna, they figured out the lowest common denominator. 

"You are good at this," Ororo said. 

"Good at math?  Or good at dealing in bologna?"  He grinned at his own play on words, but neither of them spoke English well enough to catch it. 

"No, no," Ororo said.  "Good at teaching." 

He blinked.  "I am?"

"You are," she said, and Frank nodded agreement. 

Scott looked down again at the mangled bologna slices on the maple cutting board.  "But it's pretty straightforward stuff." 

"To you," Frank said, laughing. 
 
 
 
 

"She said I was a good teacher," Scott told Jean as he racked the balls a second time and lined up the yellow lead on the table's foot spot.  Removing the rack, he made a grand gesture.  "You break." 

"Are we playing 8-Ball again?"

"Unless you want to try something else." 

"No, this is fine.  It's not like I'm ready to take on Paul Newman." 

"Who's Paul Newman?"

"The actor Paul Newman." 

"Oh, I thought you meant a person." 

She laughed.  "Well, he is a person, Scott." 

"Christ!"  He blew out in embarrassed frustration.  "I just meant, you know, some guy you knew named Paul Newman!  What does the actor have to do with playing pool?"

"Paul Newman made The Hustler a long time before Tom Cruise made The Color of Money.  That was just a bad sequel, you know." 

"Oh."  Scott blushed, feeling foolish --­ and young.  Film trivia wasn't his forté. 

Still grinning, she patted his cheek fondly.  "It's not important.  But you're not ready for Paul Newman, either, boy-o." 

Scott shrugged.  "No, I guess not." 

What Jean didn't know, of course, was that Summers could have given Newman's Fast Eddie Felson a run for his money, and had threatened Warren, Hank and Frank with unspecified dire consequences if any of them let the cat out of the bag --­ not because he sought to hustle Jean, but because he wanted to keep her playing.  His mutation gave him an unfair advantage in games of physics and geometry, and his eyes were more than a vent for solar-powered force beams.  He saw differently ­-- could track motion with uncanny precision, determine trajectories and spatial relationships with instinctive skill, and even figure probabilities with innate facility.  Jean knew all that, but as an abstract description in his personal file.  That it might translate in the real world to a budding pool shark wasn't something she'd pondered. 

Now, she placed her cue ball and struck it hard, but the packed triangle at the table's end barely scattered under the white ball's assault.  Nothing found a pocket.  "Damn," she muttered, moving so he could take his turn.  There were several possible shots, but he eschewed them all in favor of hitting the remaining block of balls, breaking them further.  A solid slipped into a corner pocket, more by chance than design, and he glanced around the table for another shot, chose what should have been easy but made sure to hit the green six just enough off-center to cut left and miss the pocket by a good three inches. 

"Ha!" she said, triumphant.  "My turn." 

Smiling faintly, he moved back to let her shoot and tried (unsuccessfully) not to stare at her ass as she bent over the table.  Despite his impulsive vow to marry her someday, in his saner moments, he considered his infatuation to be hopeless ­-- she was eight years out of his league ­-- but he couldn't stop how he felt any more than he could have halted a freight train.   Sometimes, he wandered down to the basement just to walk by the lab and hear her inside, humming to herself, or he dialed the phone in her room to hear her pick up and say 'hello.'  He'd memorized the number of her license plate, and her weekly schedule, too, so he knew where she was every minute of the day.  You're pathetic, Summers, he told himself.  Aloud, he asked, "So what do you think?  About what Ro said?"

Jean finished her shot, then looked around at him.  Light from the Tiffany lamp overhead fired her hair and he wished he could see her in full color.   "I'm sorry, I think I missed something.  What did Ro say about what?"

"She said I was a good teacher.  What do you think?"

"Oh."  She straightened.  "Well, you taught me to play pool.  But given how badly I play, I'm not sure that's a recommendation." 

He sighed.  "I'm serious.  Could I be a teacher, do you think?"

Sensing that there was more behind the question than idle curiosity, she leaned up against the table edge to study him.  "What brought this on?"

Suddenly embarrassed, he shrugged, unsure how to explain all the conflicting wants and dreams that had been running through his head of late.  He was still young enough that the possibilities seemed infinite, unconstricted by the buckles of too many previous choices, but he was single-minded by nature and all the many options confused him.  He'd been struck by her devotion to her research, and it troubled him that nothing consumed him in the same way.  He was a proselyte in search of a religion. 

Coming over, he leaned up against the table beside her, holding his cue stick in front of him, both hands clasped on the shaft.  He didn't look at her as he spoke, looked down instead at the fine dark grain of the wooden floor beyond the central carpet.  "I've been thinking about a college major.   I'm leaving for Berkeley in a month, so I've been thinking about what to major in." 

"I thought you'd planned to get a degree in engineering?"

"Yeah, I did.  But now, I don't know."  He stopped, letting his thoughts fall into order before speaking further.  "This whole mutant thing --­ it's just starting, y'know?  If what you and Hank and the professor say is true, there are going to be a lot more of us.  Probably are a lot more of us, even now." 

She nodded.  "Yes, I think so." 

"So who's going to teach them?  I mean, the professor is teaching us, but there are just six of us here, and you, me, Hank and Warren --­ we're not taking school classes.  It's just Frank and Ro who're actually finishing high school.  And he's busy all the time with us, as it is." 

He looked over at her.  She was watching him solemnly, not with tolerant amusement or half-distracted patience.  She cared what he thought, and that was why he loved her.  Beyond the loud cacophony of eighteen-year-old hormones or the romantic devotion of a knight to his lady, Scott Summers loved Jean Grey because she listened to him, treated him as a person with thoughts and ideas of his own, not just the teenaged kid who worshiped the ground she walked on.  She listened as if he might have something interesting to say.  

"More kids are going to come here, kids like Ro, who don't have anywhere else to go and no one who cares about them.  You and Hank say most mutant powers develop at puberty --­ I was late ­-- but that makes me wonder.   How many of those kids are going to come here needing to finish high school?   Xavier can't teach every subject to everybody when he has twenty students instead of two."  He shrugged and looked off, suddenly shy about adding the next thought, but driven to do so anyway.  "Maybe I could help.  If I have some talent for teaching, maybe I could get a degree in education and come back here to help the professor teach."  He stole a glance at her.  "Does that sound crazy?"

She was still watching him with great intensity.  "No, Scott.  It doesn't sound crazy at all.  You're right.  We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.  If my research is right, and my estimations, there are already over a million mutants in the U.S. alone, though most have mutations at only delta or gamma levels.  But there are others like us, beta and even alpha mutants who're frightened by what they can do, and don't understand what they are --­ call themselves freaks instead of gifted.  Those kids deserve a chance no less than we do.  We just got lucky." 

She stopped, staring at a Monet print on the wall though she didn't see it.  Instead she saw the petal-pale pink walls of a sanitarium room, blank and hopeless, the box in which society discarded its broken pieces.  "Sometimes I wonder how many other little girls are out there, hearing voices in their heads, diagnosed as schizophrenic and medicated into numb stupidity when it's really the thoughts of others that they hear?  I think about those little girls, Scott.  That's why I do what I do.  I know I told you before that I do it because I want to understand who and what we are ­-- and I do.  But it's also for those forgotten little girls." 

She didn't realize she was crying until he reached up to wipe away a tear.  "Yeah," was all he said. 

Turning, she smiled at him, bright and a little brittle.  "If teaching is what you want, then I think you could do it.  But don't do it because you think Charles expects it of you.  He doesn't." 

"I know." 

"You have to do it because you want to." 

"I know.  I want to." 

Go on to Chapter 3, Berkeley Bound