Lessons 7.3

A rush of cool air sent the unsecured flaps of Anna's jacket flying out to either side like bat wings when she pushed open the mansion's front door. She wrangled in her hoodie and nearly caught her finger in the zipper after stuffing her scarf between layers. She took a long draw of the steady crisp breeze and tracked the sun only a few feet above the tree line to the west.

Stepping down the narrow set of stairs, her boots manage to catch a few roaming leaves despite their considerable wind-bound speed. It was satisfying to hear them crunch beneath her weight. She remembered when she was little, she would go out of her way to find the biggest fattest leaves and stomp on them during the fall. She remembered just earlier that day doing that exact same thing between classes at school when she was pretty sure no one was looking.

She threw her hood over her head and pulled it snuggly against her scalp with the drawstring as she began her walk North along the mansion's drive. Walking, for walking's sake, sounded like a thing that retires with nothing to do - and detainees did with nothing to do - did the pass the time. It's not like she was at a loss for damn exercise these days, thanks to the Danger Room or whatever sadistic regimen Logan may have concocted for her to do. Still, Kitty mentioned how much she liked 'getting out in the fresh air', and whenever Anna looked outside, she always seemed to clock Jean going out to her special spot by the sea. While she wouldn't consider either of them the 'picture of mental health,' well, it's not like she had anything better to do.

It's not something she would admit it to either of them, but after a while, she had to admit walking around the mansion this close to sunset was pretty nice. The trees were all oranges and reds, the weather was the coolest it had ever been, and she never considered the value of fresh air. 'Fresh air' always seemed like the thing a parent tells a kid to go get when they're done with them being in the house all day, but maybe there was something to it after all.

Anna pulled her hands out of her pockets, unfastened the buckle on the back of her right glove, and allowed her bare flesh to greet the sky above. She held the sun between her fingers and moved the tips slowly till one eclipsed the sun's rays. It was crazy how pale her hands had become over the summer after constantly being covered. Made sense, was just strange having a farmer tan on your wrist. She pulled her hand close to her face and inspected the frayed nails and damaged skin around the smallest knuckle. Nail biting had always been her bane. She thought she had kicked the habit, but the little chipmunk bite marks along the whites on the nail of her thumb said otherwise. She missed painting her nails too. It's not like there was anything stopping her, she supposed, but there wasn't much point if they were just going to be covered by gloves all day, was there?

'It's a skin condition,' Anna remembered telling a girl once who asked her about her gloves in school. 'It's not contagious or anything, just… you know.' She couldn't remember exactly what the other girl, a pretty blonde with a wonder bra that didn't leave much to wonder about, said exactly, but she was pretty sure it was something like 'gross' or 'whatever' before walking away.

Anna brought her hand close to her chest and held it there like a wounded bird. She drew in a long breath, and when she did, she smelt something like gas. She looked up and saw she was just starting to pass the garage on the far side of the mansion. The middle of the 5 garage doors was open, and inside, she spotted Scott's little red sports car with its black canvas top pulled up. If she peered her eyes, she could just spot a pair of wingtip shoes poking out the passenger-side window.

She wasn't trying to be subtle in her approach. She didn't try to walk in the grass or keep out of view of the car. Still, when she leaned over and knocked on the driver-side window, Scott jumped hard enough inside to shake the whole car. Formerly reclined with both of his feet dangling out the open window, in his shock, he made to pull both of his feet back in the car but only managed it with his left foot while his right was stuck wedged between the frame and the door's mirror. With his foot tangled, his body twisted in a way Anna didn't think possible toward the driver's window, and the thing he had been holding, a book, slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

Anna opened the driver's door. "Jesus, Scott. You look as if I pointed a gun at you."

"You - I - I wasn't - I wasn't expecting anyone!" He coughed, supposedly in an attempt to clear his throat. He gave up on trying to fish his foot from the window and turned to face her. "Why - uh - what are you doing here, Anna?"

She looked in the car and found no one else. She had never been in Scott's car. As far as she knew, only Jean had ever sat inside. Still, nothing looked out of the ordinary aside from Scott acting like a lunatic. "I was just on a walk and saw the garage door open -" She spotted the book on the floor near the peddles of the car and picked it up.

"Don't!"

The cover of the novel depicted a half-dressed man with an oiled chest and slicked-back black hair supporting a woman in a long red ball gown on his knee. She had her arms wrapped around his neck and was looking down into his luscious brown eyes with longing as her long curly black locks rolled down an exposed shoulder. In thin twisty gold font, the title read 'The Baron of Monte Carlo,' and the author on the bottom was, as Anna suspected, was Kristen Ramsey.

Anna felt a smile creep across her lips and set into her face.

"It's something for class, okay!"

"And what class, exactly, do you read the queen of trashy romance novels for, Scott?"

"Women's studies. It's an elective I took. It's a college credit!"

Anna opened the paperback open and allowed the soft cream-colored, dog-eared pages to flip from her thumb and back to its front cover. "Women's studies, huh?" Anna looked at the back cover and saw Kristen Ramsey herself staring back at her while laying seductively atop a scarlet Victorian couch.

Scott's face was as red as the lenses of his glasses. "Yeah! So - if you could just put it down -"

Anna dropped her shoulders and wiped the smug look off her face. "Scott, I caught you reading this book back in the mountain when you thought I was asleep. It's fine. You can like reading romance novels. There's nothing wrong with it. Honestly, it would give your personality some much-needed depth."

"Well… that's a nice sentiment," Scott reached out and snatched the book from her grasp. "But, like I said, it's for class." He threw the book into the rear seats of the car and managed to unwedge his foot from the window after an audible heave.

Anna rolled her eyes and snorted. "You're such a loser." She opened the passenger door, and when she sat, she was hit with a wall of billowing hot air from the car's vents. "Gezz dude, hot enough for you?"

Scott turned the fan level down, and the hell flames ceased. "Not a fan of the cold."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Born and raised in the ass-crack of the South, can't say I mind having seasons other than 'Summer' and 'less Summer.'"

"I lived in Florida a long time. Just got used to it, I guess."

"Man, you really are 'Summer-Boy.'"

"What was that?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing -" Anna scratched her nose.

"Whoa! Careful with that!"

Anna looked at her finger and then at Scott, "With what? I know my nails look a little jank, but jeez."

"What happened to your glove?"

Anna looked back at her hand. "Wanted to give it some rec-time before putting it back in its cell. Don't worry, Scott. You're the last person I'd go touching anyway." A long pause passed as she dawned her glove and let out a long steady breath. "Sorry, that was rude."

"It's alright. I… may have over-reacted a bit…"

Anna looked at the boy and found him staring out the windshield. Nothing looked specifically different about him since the mountain. His hair still had a stupid quaff, his dumb sunglasses were utterly untarnished, and his vest with its collared shirt beneath was perfectly straight and even as before. Still, he somehow looked a little older… and a little more tired.

She averted her gaze. "How have you been? Since… you know."

He nodded. "Fine. I've been fine. You?"

What a fat lie. Still, his business, she figured. "Complicated." She said after a while.

"I can get that." He leaned forward in his seat and ran his hand along the dash. "It was messed up what happened back there. I'm… well, I'm really sorry. Facing your mom like that… God."

"Yeah." Anna felt her brows scrunch together. "It's hard to know what to think."

Scott chuckled, "Yeah. I get that too."

"I've been… born and bread Brotherhood. I mean, not born exactly. I don't know who my birth parents are. Still, raised by Mystique and coaxed along the way by men I thought I knew. The whole time too, I thought I knew who my Mom was, but that mountain really taught me otherwise. She's truly a woman that will do anything to get what she wants, including killing."

Anna crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the windshield. "Logan gave me this advice after I about half lost my mind out in the woods. At the time, I just felt like all hope was lost. You saw me in that cave, Scott. I shot that phantom cop guy with a gun. I'm lucky the gun was full of blanks, or I could have killed the guy. Then at the only school dance I've ever gone to I nearly put the guy I kissed in a coma." She shook her head. "Seemed like all I've been good for is destroying. Then Logan told me I still have some sort of choice. Said I got a raw deal, but," she sighed, "maybe these hands of mine can still do something other than kill as long as I chose it."

"I mean," Scott shrugged with his hand, "makes sense to me."

Anna's eyes narrowed with interest, and she cocked her head at him. "Really?"

"Well, yeah. Say if you have a gun, it doesn't mean you have to automatically fire it just because you're holding it."

"Sure, but I'm not a gun. I can't help what my body does. Scott, I can't touch people. If I do, I hurt them."

"For now, yes."

She blinked and sat up in her seat. "What do you mean for now?"

"This is a school, after all. 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.'" He air quoted. "We're all here to learn to better use our abilities. Whose to say you won't eventually learn to control yours?"

Anna turned in her seat to face him better. She felt her lips part as her jaw dropped. "Oh, my god. Oh, my god, Scott. I think you might be onto something." A smile wider than she had felt in the past several weeks cracked her lips and dimpled her cheeks. "Scott! You're right! This is a school! I… maybe… I could -" Before she knew it, she had wrapped her arms around Scott's neck and was hugging him. When sense returned to her, she immediately released him and covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers.

"Oh - shit - sorry!"

Scott's brow furrowed, and a little smile grew across his face. He snorted, "Sorry?" he straightened out his shirt. "It's fine! Not my typical thing, but glad I could help."

"Huh? No, I mean… I just didn't know how Jean felt about you hugging… girls?"

"Jean? Why would Jean-" He stopped short and nodded slowly. "Right… Anna, you do understand Jean, and I are just friends, right?"

Anna felt her eyebrow raise hard enough it challenged her hairline. "Uhh, you're in her room all the time. You guys are inseparable."

"Yeah, like how really good friends are."

"Oh, come on…"

"Anna, why would I lie to you about this?"

"Because - because Xavier made some weird rule about the team leader dating or something. Dude, you guys are just so -"

"So what?"

"So…so… hetero…"

Scott leaned forward to cover his mouth with his hands. His face, looking at the dashboard, was partially obscured as the rest of his body trembled.

"Uh," Anna leaned back. "Scott?"

He raised his head from his hands with a grin. His face creased with strange lines she eventually put together was from him laughing. "And you call me a loser." He wiped his eyes with his fore-finger and thumb.

"Excuse you?"

He looked at her, still smiling. "Can't put the pieces together, can you?" He reached back, fished the book from the back seat, and flipped through the pages. "This wasn't mine originally. It was my Mom's. She's the sweetest, most giving woman I've ever met. She's always been a huge bookworm, and she taught me to love reading from an early age." He closed the book. "I grew up on these books and ones like them. I loved the stories of strong heroes sweeping buxom women off their feet in romances twisted up in plots of greed, sabotage, or other overly dramatic subplots. It made me hope that, maybe one day, I could meet my strong, suave, confident hero like the ones I read in my books…"

Anna nodded slowly, then her eyes went wide. "Oh…"

"Yeah," Scott rested the book on his lap, looked at it, and then at Anna. "So that's one of the many reasons Jean and I aren't a thing."

Anna's shoulders rolled. "Fair enough, but why so secretive about it? For god's sake, Kurt and Ev are all over each other." She curled her hands inwards towards her chest. "Shit, guys aren't always that interesting to me. Back home, me and my best friend -"

Scott held up his hand. "Anna, just -"

She paused, her hands suspended in mid-air.

"I'd like you to keep this between us. Jean already knows, but…" He gave a sharp inhale, inflating his chest. "Look, I know it's natural, and I know it's fine. This is just personal, alright?"

She rested her hands on her lap. "Oh. Yeah, of course." She pursed her lips. "You know, if you want someone to talk to about it - I had to figure out some stuff for myself, and I know some guys -"

Scott looked out his window. "Have you tried out your car since you got here?"

"My what?" She looked out his window and caught a glimpse of the burnt sienna GMC Gremlin sitting dominant in the corner of the garage. "Awh, no, I haven't. Poor Banana."

"Poor what?"

"Banana. It's the name of my car. I named it after this stray cat I had as a kid."

Scott looks back at the car. "It's not even yellow."

"And you weren't born with the name 'Scott' tattooed on your forehead."

He lowered his head and grinned. "Alright. Well, if you wanted, I was thinking I could give your car a once over. Clean it up, make sure it's running okay."

Anna thought a moment. "Only if I can do it with you."

"Don't trust me?"

"Not that. I'd like to learn how you do it. How to maybe maintain a car."

"Ah, well, I can teach you that. My dad's a mechanic. Taught me everything I know. We could get started as soon as tonight if you want."

"Sorry, can't tonight." She looked out the windshield. "I've got an overdue history report to write."