Running for Home - 63. March 4, 2022

March 4 2022

I decided last night that it was time to start teaching Daniel to drive, so I skipped my prep period and signed him out of his last class of the day. It was math class, and I knew he was doing well enough that one day out wouldn’t put him very far behind. He’d just have to catch up on the homework.

I had contemplated starting out in the school parking lot, but quickly nixed that idea. It would put Daniel under too much pressure to do well out of the gate. Who wants to be seen through the windows by all of their peers the first time they get behind the wheel? Instead, we headed out to Danbury, Connecticut, in my car. It was only a twenty minute drive, and I figured the parking lot of the Danbury Fair mall or some mega-church would work just fine, depending on how busy they were.

Daniel was excited. He had been chomping at the bit to get started since he got his Learner’s Permit on his birthday last month. I wish I’d been in a better state back then, but I really was too busy to take him out the past few weeks between dealing with my return to work and dealing with my recovery. I’m not going to feel too guilty about it, though. Despite his eagerness, Daniel had been nothing but polite about getting on the road for the first time.

As we pulled into the mall parking lot and I started surveying for an empty quarter, it occured to me that I should have borrowed one of the School’s cars, not used my own, but whatever. It’s not like my piece of shit was worth all that much. I was contemplating getting a new car soon, anyway. This Civic had served me well, but maybe it was time for something new now that I had secure work. It would be my first new car, too.

Once I was satisfied we were in an empty enough area, I put the car in park and switched places with Daniel. My car is automatic, so I didn’t have to deal with teaching him how to use a clutch and shift gears. Well, thank god for that. Daniel had poor control, pushing too hard on the accelerator and too hard on the brakes, jerking us back and forth. His steering wasn’t so bad, at least, though I was a little leery of leading him towards any area with parked cars. We practiced driving straight, braking, turning and all around just using the parking lot lines as guides for where he could and could not go.

He was getting more confident, and wanted to drive further afield. My anxiety was a little too high for that, though, so I told him we were going to work on pulling forwards into a parking space and backing out instead. Anything to keep him away from other moving vehicles. He was pretty sloppy with the parking, so we’d definitely have to work on that, but hell - it was his first time. He did fine, just needs to learn to control his foot better on the pedals.

I switched with Daniel and drove around the mall to get us closer to an entrance with a decent restaurant, a Brio Tuscan Grille. I was taking him out to dinner as a sort of non-apology for taking so long to get started with him. Daniel was happy when he realized we were going out to eat instead of heading back to the School.

We ordered some bruschetta to start, he had the chicken marsala and I ordered the pollo caprese. I felt like having a glass of wine to help me relax after all the tension that was riding up my back while Daniel was at the wheel, but I didn’t order it. We still had the drive back to the School, and I didn’t want to leave Daniel with a bad impression of my thoughts around alcohol and driving. Sure, one drink wouldn’t hurt me but at his age one drink is game over for driving. Not that he should be drinking at all, but that never stopped me at his age. Once in a while, anyway. There’s no way Xavier would have put up with too much nonsense from me and my peers, but looking back I can see he and the staff weren’t nearly as hard on us as I used to think. I definitely wouldn’t hold it against Daniel if he experimented a little, as long as he kept it safe. Maybe that’s another conversation we need to have some time, but I didn’t bring it up right then and there.

Daniel said he was supposed to be hanging out with Connor tonight, alone. He was taking my advice about communicating his feelings, but he was scared. He felt so vulnerable, and he was worried he might let Connor get away with things even if Daniel wasn’t completely satisfied with his responses. I just told Daniel that it’s part of the complexity of love, that in the end there are going to be faults in your partner and you just have to decide what you can and cannot put up with. That informs whether or not you need to leave them, or whether you can stay in the relationship. I also told him that I’m by far not the expert in what to put up with and what you should see as red flags to walk away from, considering my history with Dominik.

The reality of the situation is that he’s only in high school, and chances are pretty high that even if he and Connor get back together and their relationship survives until graduation, the pressures and changes of moving away to college and starting adult life could cause their relationship to strain and buckle anyway. Very few people end up with their high school sweetheart. He seemed a little disheartened by that response, so I told him not to worry about it too much right now. He should date and have fun and maybe not take things all too seriously. I told him I know that’s hard, considering how deep his feelings for Connor are, but I’d be here for him when he needs it.

Dinner was a bit quiet after that. The food was decent, I guess. Probably better than the mass of spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread they were making for the residents of the School tonight. We were about to order dessert when my smartphone started to ring. It was Emma. The X-men were going on a mission. There was an anti-mutant riot brewing in Birmingham, Alabama. The Purity movement was instigating. We needed to get back as soon as possible because I was needed to supervise since most of the adults would be gone.

We headed back, me driving maybe a little quicker than I should have. I doubted that they would wait on me, but all the same it would be best if I was there. I saw the Blackbird take off just as we pulled in the front gate. Once we were in the door, Daniel thanked me again and then ran off to find Connor. I, of course, went looking for Bobby. But I didn’t find him, not in the dining hall, not in his office, not in our suite. Shit. He went with the X-men.

My anxiety started spiking.

Bobby and I hadn’t had a discussion about my feelings about him going out on missions with the X-men. I didn’t want to hold him back from doing what he felt was right, especially when they needed him, but at the same time I couldn’t help but worry. The situation down south was getting more and more volatile despite the best efforts of so many to reduce the tensions. The Purity movement and evangelicals like the Church of Humanity we preaching that mutancy was the result of sin. The sins of the parents, the sins of the children. They treated mutants like they bore the mark of Cain, as if their genetics had anything at all to do with their worth in God’s eyes. It didn’t matter how much rational, calm science you showed these people to demonstrate how being a mutant was just a stroke of luck, just part of nature, just another facet of what it meant to be human. Their hearts and minds were closed. Mutants were different and dangerous. It was reactionary tribalism at its worst.

I couldn’t help but remember the helplessness I felt when Dom came up behind Bobby and smashed a bottle of liquor over his head, and then began to beat him during the rescue. At least back then I’d been able to do something, been able to save Bobby - even if it was by accident. But being stuck here at the School?

Fuck.

I’m not an X-man. Don’t want to be one of them. It isn’t my place, even if I’d feel much better if I was out there able to watch Bobby’s back. But I’m no hero. Not after what I’ve done. Even if I wanted to be, putting me on the team would give the government just one more reason to crack down on the X-men. It’s not like what they were doing was illegal, usually, but definitely very much operating in a grey area. They didn’t need a former criminal like me on board further sullying their reputation.

Mulling about all this was pointless, so I headed to my office and grabbed my planner. I needed to do something, but I also needed to be in the living room or somewhere else public in case the kids needed me. I couldn’t very well bring marking with me, not out in public, but planning shit would be okay. None of this was what I wanted to be doing with my Friday night, but since when do I get what I want?

Well, that’s not fucking true anymore. I’ve got Bobby.

I sighed to myself and headed out to the living room. I sat down at one of the tables and started working on my plans for the next week. It was hard to concentrate, between my own anxieties, the blare of CNN from one of the TVs, and the kids that kept coming up to ask me random questions. They wanted to know if I knew what the X-men were doing. I was pretty sure the mission wasn’t any sort of secret, so I told them the truth. They asked me why I didn’t go with them, and I just shrugged and said someone has to stay behind and protect the School.

Whatever was happening, it mustn’t have been big yet because it wasn’t on the news on TV. Emma must have been in Cerebro and caught wind of something brewing. I tried to turn my attention back to my work, but then Jubilee came into the room looking exhausted. When she saw me, she looked a little relieved and flopped down in the other chair at the table with a dramatic sigh.

She’d been up in Maryland picking up a new student who started manifesting suddenly in her school cafeteria after being bullied, right in the middle of lunch. Apparently her parents were less than thrilled to have a mutant for a daughter and were happy to have Jubilee take the girl off their hands. Just what the girl needs, of course, her parents abandoning her right after one of the most traumatic experiences of her young life. At least she’d be living in the right place now. This School was full of kids with bad experiences manifesting their powers and bad parenting, so at least she’d be able to find someone to commiserate with pretty quickly. Jubes seemed to think they had a good match for her roommate, just from what she observed moving the girl in.

I told Jubilee that I didn’t envy her role in helping get new students to the School, getting them settled and counseling them through their traumas. Jubilee sighed, saying some days she wasn’t sure how she could handle keeping her cool through some of the ridiculous and horrible things some parents said and did when she was trying to get the kid to agree to come to the School, that it was the best place for them. There were parents who were supportive and concerned for their kid’s safety first and foremost, but they were in the minority. Mostly, there were parents who were abusive, parents who were ashamed, parents who wanted nothing to do with their child, and maybe most strangely, parents who were in denial and didn’t want their child exposed to more mutants - as if keeping them away from other mutants would somehow make their child more pure and less of a mutant themselves.

Jubilee said she just had to keep telling herself that things really were getting better for mutants, that the students the School was picking up were the extreme cases that really needed their help - either because of the situation with their parents and their home school, or because their powers were out of control. She knew she had a biased sample, but that didn’t make it any easier day to day. She knew it was worth it, though. She could see the change in the students over their time here. They were learning to accept themselves, learning to control and be proud of their powers, and learning all the things a regular middle and high schooler should learn too. Every year at graduation she could see the fruits of their labours, and there were former students who kept in touch and gave her a window into their success out in the real world. All the day to day drama was worth it for the results they were getting in the long run.

Jubilee asked me how my day went. I told her about taking Daniel out driving, which she found entirely too amusing for my tastes. She told me that if I was too anxious about it not to worry - they did offer a state certified Driver’s Ed in the summers for students who stayed on campus all year. Daniel was one of them, so he’d be able to take advantage. It would be better for his eventual car insurance costs to have it under his belt anyway. I decided I’d still take him out for some lessons here and there, but that I would definitely encourage him to take that course over the summer this year.

Jubes asked if Bobby was working in his office. Apparently she missed the memo about how dire Emma thought this X-men excursion was going to be, and that Bobby had gone with them. Whatever, she was busy getting the new kid settled when all this was going down. She asked me if she was distracting me from getting work done, and I told her I didn’t really care. It was Friday night and I had all weekend to get things finished up. I’d mostly just grabbed it so I’d have something to keep me from ruminating. She dragged me over to one of the TVs set up with a video game system and insisted we blow off some steam with some MarioKart.

It was surprisingly effective. No one would ever make the mistake of saying that Jubes and I are particularly good at video games, but we both have a healthy competitive streak. We played for about an hour and a half, at which point some kids came by who wanted to play. Jubilee stayed and played against them, but I begged off. I took my planner and wandered down to the library. I managed to get things put together for the week ahead without too much trouble, but my thoughts were starting to turn back to Bobby and the X-men.

I dropped my planner off in my office and headed back to the living room. Jubes had apparently moved on in my absence. I sat down and flicked one of the TVs to CNN. The Purity movement was on the march through the Southside in Birmingham, protesting its diverse, Bohemian culture and how it’s become a haven for mutants (let alone the fact that it was already Birmingham’s gaybourhood!). There were torches, and there were a lot of people with guns, despite the fact that Alabama law prohibited open carry at public demonstrations.

It was chilling.

I grabbed the remote and flicked the TV to some sports channels. Eventually I settled on a rugby game. Rugby had been a passion of my mother’s, and she instilled a love for it when I was a kid. We’d watch rugby on the TV back when we could still afford cable. My dad liked it too, liked how rough it was. He was a big football fan, after all. Never really got the opportunity to play it, though, since it’s an uncommon sport in America and Xavier’s was still a fairly small school when I attended.

I couldn’t get into it. There was too much crawling in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t going to feed my anxieties by watching the constant drone of the news. I thought about going upstairs and grabbing a book to read and coming back down, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. I was too worried about Bobby, about my friends, about the fact that I was supposed to be acting like the cool, calm and collected adult here and yet I was haunted by the deep shadow of my kidnapper in the sub-basement and could barely control myself on a good day, let alone with all this stacked on top.

I hated this feeling. When I was younger, I was always a person of action - a doer. That was how I kept control, by stepping up to the plate and wrestling with whatever the problem happened to be. Even if I failed, at least I was doing something.

Yet I was doing something, sort of. I was here to guard the School, and to help the house mothers and fathers manage the students’ questions and fears. Not that there had been much of that yet, but still… I had to keep things in perspective. I had a role to play. My role just wasn’t on the front lines anymore.

I managed to keep myself occupied with television until the Blackbird came roaring back in at 3:34 in the morning. Jubilee sat with me some more, and seemed content to let me avoid the news channels at all costs. But when they rolled in, I needed to know. I bolted downstairs to the hangar. As soon as the jet’s loading ramp was descending I was running up, trying to get to Bobby. I was quickly pushed out of the way, though, because Sam had been shot in the shoulder and needed to be taken to the medlab for immediate treatment. Bobby’d iced over the wound to staunch the bleeding. Bobby looked like he’d been through hell.

I hugged him tight and kissed him, right there in front of everyone. Other than Sam’s shoulder, no one else was seriously hurt beyond some bruises.

We’d been lucky. Very lucky.