Hothouse
Ororo wakes up in clean white sheets that are heavy against her hands when she pushes them off. She props up on one elbow and looks around. There's a dark wooden desk with a kind of precious little lamp on it and an empty bookshelf by the window. The curtains are green with little flowers on them, tied back in stiff curves like they're full of starch. She slips out of bed, the heavy comforter she'd kicked off the bed during the night under her feet.
She's still wearing her shirt and jeans. Xavier had said the night before that she could borrow some other girl's clothes until she got some of her own, but that he didn't want to wake her in the middle of the night. She'd rather sleep in her own clothes than in some rich girl's old nightgown. She's still got some pride.
She looks out the window. Below, she can see the top of some kind of greenhouse, and what looks like an old garden full of leaves. There are a bunch of hedges and trees going back as far as she can see, with a couple of buildings back there. It doesn't look like any school she's ever seen; it looks like something out of an old movie. Any minute now a maid in a starched apron and hat will knock on the door asking her if she wants tea.
There is a knock on the door, but when she says "come in," it's a red-haired girl with a kind of awkward smile. "Hi," she says. "Professor Xavier wanted me to ask if you want to come down for breakfast. Oh, I'm Jean."
Jean is wearing a preppy sweater and white designer jeans. Her hair curls under perfectly at the ends, just brushing her shoulders, and her tennis shoes are very clean. She is exactly like what Ororo figured the kids who went to a school like this would be, and Ororo hates her already. "Is there a choice?"
Jean looks like something hurts, but she smiles again anyway. "If you're not up for people, I could bring you up something."
"Isn't there some kind of rule?"
"Well, usually if we don't show up for breakfast we get to make cereal for ourselves," Jean says. "But I think you get special favors on your first day."
"I never asked for any," Ororo says.
"I'm sorry," Jean says. "Do you just want me to go away? I told the Professor you'd like Scott better, but he didn't think you'd want to deal with boys right now."
Ororo has to laugh; it's just too much. "What do any of you think you know about me?"
"The Professor's a telepath," Jean says. "And I sort of am, too. And I usually figure it's more fair to tell people when the Professor's trying to use psychology on them."
"Stay out of my head," Ororo says.
"Sure," Jean says. "I still know you don't want me to be here."
"I don't want to be here," Ororo says. "But I'm not sure where else I want to be right now." She wraps her hands around her elbows; it's chilly with her feet bare on the wood floor. "Now I guess you're going to offer me your clothes."
Jean considers her. "You're a lot shorter than I am," she says. "I think my pants would look incredibly weird on you. I could lend you a sweater or something, though, and we can go to the mall this afternoon."
"I haven't got any money," Ororo says.
"Professor Xavier does," Jean says. "Consider it a fringe benefit of being a really weird kid."
Ororo follows Jean to her room, which has old white furniture and actually looks like somebody lives in it. The wallpaper is aggressively purple, and there are stiff purple curtains with purple flowers on them. The bright red blankets on the bed don't match at all. "Here," Jean says, and tosses her a red sweater. "Try that one."
The sweater fits, more or less. "Thanks," Ororo says, because she was raised right, even if she still doesn't like Jean much.
"No problem," Jean says. "The Professor's great, but he's not always very practical about things like clothes. Make sure to get stuff like underwear. And a toothbrush. He never thinks about that stuff."
"What kind of a school is this?"
"It's not that old," Jean says. "The Professor will give you the whole we-are-the-future speech after breakfast. I was the first one here." She puts a hand on the painted bedpost as if she's thinking about something she misses. Ororo wonders what happened here to make everybody sad.
Jean turns back to her, running a hand through her hair. "I hope you stay," she says.
Ororo tries not to roll her eyes at the speech she knows is coming. This is the part where they tell you that this place is really going to be good for you, like they think you're broken instead of just out of money and places to sleep. She's not interested, and she starts to say so.
"It sounds like you could really help with ... well, with stuff," Jean says instead. Ororo knows better than to ask, help with what , but she knows she's not going to be able to keep herself from asking the question forever. She knows just the fact that she's thinking about forever means she's thinking about being here for a while.
"So what's for breakfast?" she asks, and Jean looks like she's happy to have gotten something right.
Breakfast is pancakes, now sort of cold. Yesterday's sandwich was a long time ago, though, and so she pours syrup over them and eats them and tries to pretend people aren't staring at her. Jean goes on about some television show, which Ororo guesses is in an attempt to make her feel better. Xavier listens to Jean with an expression of polite mystification. Scott and Hank alternate staring at her and eating pancakes.
Scott looks younger than she is, skinny and wearing a big grey sweatshirt. He is wearing big red glasses that make it hard to tell when he's staring at her and when he's listening to Jean. She's kind of annoyed at the idea that he could possibly scare her. At one point he knocks over a glass of orange juice and turns bright red as he mops it up.
Hank looks older than she is, with big hands and linebacker shoulders. He'd be scarier without the glasses perched on his nose. He keeps trying to pretend he's reading the paper and not looking at her over the top of the paper. At one point he corrects Jean about the plot of her television series, at length and using words that Ororo has only ever seen in textbooks.
Jean says "Whatever," and somehow Hank's newspaper ends up crumpled into a ball in front of him. Hank looks at her speculatively, and then tosses a pancake at her. It freezes in mid-air, and then follows a wobbly path down to her plate.
"Could we have one meal in a civilized fashion?" Xavier asks, not actually sounding particularly annoyed.
"Yeah, cut it out," Scott says. He scowls at Hank. "We have a guest."
"And therefore we should all be very solemn," Jean says. She demonstrates, ineffectively in Ororo's opinion. Scott sighs dramatically and shakes his head, looking at her as if inviting her to share his amused tolerance of much younger children. At least, she thinks he's looking at her.
They're playing like this to try to put you at ease, Xavier says, or at least the words are sounding in her head, although he doesn't move his lips. It is at least sincerely well-meant.
"What exactly is it that you people want?" Ororo asks, putting her fork down. She's asked the question now. That probably means they've won something.
"We're superheroes," Hank says. "More pancakes?"
"Right," Ororo says, and of course she doesn't believe him, but she almost wishes that she could. She's tired of being either somebody's problem or nobody's problem.
She'd rather be a hero.