Cat's Shadow 5.4

The next day at school was all the same boring nonsensical crap until Anna made it to her U.S. History class where it was loud boring, nonsensical, crap. McCoy's voice boomed and vibrated the air like the blast from a mortar, and the tosses of his little boxed raisin rewards from his 'factoids' soared through the air like cannon balls. She desperately wished she could fall asleep on her desk as she had in all her other classes, but the rebounding energy from McCoy and his room of worshipers made it completely impossible. So instead she had to sit there like a zombie, staring at the whiteboard while McCoy occasionally chicken-scratched fuzzy hieroglyphics into it. Her hazy stare was finally broken when she felt the whoosh of air from a paper getting slapped on her desk by a passerby. She blinked the crust out of her eyes, looked down at the stapled loose-leaf, and spotted a giant red 'F' staring back at her with the words 'Let's talk after class' written below in the same fat red ink.

The sharp clanging of the bell roused Anna further out of her stupor. She heard the squeal of chairs as the students around her made for the door, and McCoy shouting just over them as they all funneled out. Threading the straps of her bag over her shoulders, she made to follow the others when she heard -

"Miss Marie. Could you collect your test and join me for just a moment, please?"

Anna watched the part between the classroom door and its frame slowly shut then tilted her head back and sucked in a breath through her nose. She turned, threaded her thumbs through the straps of her bag, and ambled towards McCoy's desk.

"Um, your test?"

She stopped, blinked, looked back at her desktop, and spotted the paper. She snapped it up - nearly ripping a page - and stood before McCoy's modest desk. "Yeah?"

He gestured at one of the scattered chairs behind her. "Why don't you grab a seat."

She tilted her head back again, made a show of grabbing one of the spindly metal chairs, and dragged it to the side of his desk where she plopped down. "Yeah?" She repeated with an even more exhausted dismissiveness.

McCoy turned his swivel chair in her direction and folded one leg neatly over the other. His red-striped polo shirt was buttoned all the way to the top where his powerful collarbone strained at the fabric. "Anna… I'm concerned about your grades in this class. To be honest, it seems like you're not even trying. You don't do the homework, you leave tests and quizzes half-finished -" He nodded toward her paper. "For your multiple choice test, you selected the letters 'A-C-D-C' in repeating order, and that's a test you managed to complete."

Anna sniffed. "I heard somewhere that if you do that, you'll get more answers right than wrong."

McCoy snickered. "Well, at least there's more to it than you just telling me how much you like band from the 70s." He uncrossed his legs and rested his elbows on his knees. "Anna, like it or not, you need to pass this course to graduate. If you fail my class, you'll only have to take it again through the online curriculum. And believe me, if you think the way I teach is boring, that stuff is way more dry." He held his hands together. "So tell me, what's going on, Anna? How can I help you with this class?"

She shook her head gently back and forth. "I don't have time for school. Listen, I've got stuff going on that is way more important than what a bunch of dead white guys did a million years ago. And the thing is, even if I were to tell you what that stuff was, I doubt you'd even believe me."

"You can try me."

Something tingled from the base of Anna's skull and down her spine. For just a fraction of a second, she was back with Logan all those many weeks ago at the flea-infested motel her mothers had her stowed away at. She was watching Logan work on the Gremlin when he revealed to her the truth behind a secret world she never knew existed. She felt as if the air was meeting her lungs for the first time since entering that classroom. Her eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"

McCoy smiled. "I said, I'm all ears if you ever need to talk."

Her lips felt dry as a surge of emotion built up her throat like so much bile. "What. Am I. Supposed. To do?" She heard herself say.

McCoy only looked back at her, his soft blue eyes seemingly looking down into the depths of her soul and asking for more.

Despite herself, she felt her eyes grow wet with tears. The test she still held in her hand crumpled in her grasp. "I have to do everything and nothing is good enough! I have to save the fucking world! Fix the people I live with! Learn about my abilities - how to fight - how to defend myself - how to live with other people who seem to do nothing but hate me and each other - how to live without my parents - without my friend - without -" She found herself standing over her teacher with him looking back up at her, his expression and body unmoved. She felt her face and neck go hot as her mind retraced all the words she had just said. She stepped back, her test a crumpled torn nightmare in her hand.

McCoy relaxed his arms, his shoulders loose at his sides. "You live at the Xavier Institute, correct?"

Anna said nothing and did nothing. What she wanted to do was jump out the window behind McCoy, spontaneously sprout wings, and fly till she didn't see ground ever again. Instead, her feet were fused to the spot.

McCoy leaned back, the chair squeaked under his weight. "I've had the pleasure of meeting the man himself a time or two. Has a good head on his shoulders."

Anna pressed her hand to her chest. "You've… met Xavier?"

"You could say we run in similar circles." McCoy flipped on his desk lamp, popped open one of his drawers, and produced a black pen that looked tiny in his large hands. He looked at it, then handed it over. She took it and examined it closely. She didn't understand at first. It looked like any ordinary black pen. That was until she returned to that day with Logan.

'It's a locater.' She heard Logan's voice in her head. 'To activate it you just pull the cap -' He pulled the plastic cap off the pen, put it on the opposite end, and twisted the cap around in a circle. 'That sends a signal to me that you need help.'

The pen looked identical to the one Logan gave her. She handed it back to McCoy and before she could say anything, he started. "There are things you can't tell me. I understand and respect that." He put the pen back in the same drawer in his desk and closed it tight. "I want you to know, though, you're not as alone as you think. There are more, even at this school, who are equally like-minded and are here for you and your classmates at Xavier's."

She stared at him till her dry eyes forced her to blink. She eventually nodded once, her chin lingered close to her chest. "It's hard… and I guess I haven't considered how hard all this is on some of the others. I - uh - found… I mean I think I found some… not such good stuff last night in our bathroom. My roommate had been acting weird all day, so I sorta put two and two together."

"That's a difficult spot to be in." McCoy's jaw shifted. He looked back at his bronze football trophy sitting at the corner of his desk. "Me and my team back at school were under a lot of pressure too. Nothing like what you and your classmates are faced with daily, but - well - it was football in Texas and our scholarships were riding on how we did every game. It wasn't all too uncommon for me to find my pals using to get the edge they needed for games, or using during halftime just to keep up with the pressure."

Anna followed his gaze towards the unremarkable, matte-painted copper trophy that didn't glisten, but instead mealy absorbed the afternoon's rays from the nearby window. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. I didn't know what to do. I never partook. Perhaps I thought that might keep my conscious clear but it never did." He picked a speck of dust off the trophy. "We made nationals that year, and we got our scholarships. Then a year later a good friend of mine died from an overdose."

"Jesus…"

"They worked us to the bone - milked us for all our capable bodies were worth - then let us fall to the wayside when they were done with us. But at least we got our damn trophies…"

Anna pressed the pads of her fingers to her lips. "I…" She paused to take a breath. "It's not like that at Xavier's. Not really. I mean, we've got a lot of pressure on us, but I never feel like I'm banned from the word 'no' if that makes sense."

"I'm glad to hear." McCoy turned and looked back at her. "I won't lie, it's something I've wondered about with the Professor taking interest in recruiting and training those so young."

"Yeah, but -" She glanced back at the trophy, "maybe not everyone feels that way there."

"They may not."

"What… what do I do?"

McCoy laced his fingers together and rested his hands in his lap. He sifted his jaw, took a long breath, and then looked at her. "The regret I've always had with my friend is not talking to him. When we were playing ball together - the using - it was this taboo thing. We all knew the other person was doing it, but no one ever talked about it." He pressed his laced fingers together tight enough that they lost their color. "I suppose… I wish I had found the courage within myself to at least talk to Damien and the others. I'm not sure what exactly I would have said, but - maybe if I had at least broached that topic with everyone, things could have gone differently. They may not have, I'm not sure. What I do know is people like to be heard, especially when they feel like they have no one to go to."

Anna paused. "Like me?"

McCoy gave her a tight-lipped smile and leaned forward. "Like anyone, Anna."

She sniffed and nodded her head. She made to turn when she heard McCoy call her name. She looked back just in time to catch a tiny box of raisins aimed at her chest. She looked them over. "A… factoid raisin-box? What the hell is this for?"

McCoy scooted behind his desk. "For listening," he put his spectacles on, "And for doing your best." He smiled at her. "It's all anyone can do." He pulled a red pen out of a cup of pens and got to work on a pile of papers at this desk.

Anna clutched the tiny box to her chest and ran her thumb along its paper-board top. Despite her best efforts, she felt the traces of a smile frame her cheeks as she pushed her way through the classroom door.