Family Ties
2
CHAPTER TWO
Disclaimers
Apply
A/N Goddess
Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, you are now
officially a Prophetic Muse. And wolf
boy is drooling on my pig. InterNutter,
TC and Maxwell Pink are shiny and happy because they archive. J
ProPhile is still a lovely smutmuse and Jubilee and Tex still get gold
stars. Readers/Reviewers: *blush *Awwww…thanks! J
The ducks appreciate it, too.
“What’s going on?” Jubilee
whispered, leaning closer to the vent.
“Hold still, chere cha chair ain’t
de sturdiest ting in de world…” Remy
grabbed the spindly back of the wooden seat before Jubilee could tumble to the
floor. “De Professor ain’t dumb…he were
gonna find out sooner or later.”
“Shhhh!” She waved at him distractedly.
“I can’t hear anything!”
“That would be because he’s done
talking to us,” Kitty intoned morosely, ghosting into the room with scarcely a
sound. Two things happened at once—Remy
let go of the chair and Jubilee fell to the floor with a thud and squeak. “You didn’t miss much,” Kitty
continued. “Just that he’s very
disappointed in us.”
“What about Scott and Jean?” Jubilee
asked from the floor. “Hey…mail!” she
added as an afterthought, her fall having dislodged several letters from the
tabletop, ing ing them on the floor around her.
“I’d rather not say…Scott’s kind of
pissed and Jean’s mopey.” Kitty sighed
dejectedly and picked up some papers from the desk and a book from the sofa. “Oh, Remy…someone called for you. Some girl…Sandy? Candy? Mandy?” Kitty shrugged. “Some cheerleader name.
Said she’d call back tonight.”
Remy nodded his thanks as Kitty
phased out of the room again and turned to face a very piqued Jubilee. “Quoi?”
“Girl?”
“Boy. Dis some Freud sorta ting, eh?
Gimme one more…dis easy…”
“Remy LeBeau, you know what I’m
asking…” Jubilee glared hard at him as
she stood, clutching a rather thick envelope and abandoning the others on the
floor. “Who’s the girl?”
“No idée. Prolly a salesperson or somethin’. Ain’t nobody got my number here.”
“Exactly!” Jubilee crowed, following
him from the room. “We’re
unlisted! So who’s calling you?”
“Jealousy don’t suit you,
cherie…” Remy paused at the foot of the
stairs and cocked his eyebrow at her.
“Don’ tell me you be tinkin’ I screwin’ round on ya…”
“Well…you probably could and I’d
never know,” she said, sounding a bit smaller than before.
“Prolly one ting, doin’ it
another…” He leaned close and placed
his finger against the tip of her nose.
“I ain’t cheatin’ on you, p’tite, an’ if I wer’d b’d be smarter den
givin’ de gal my home number, eh?”
Jubilee stuck her tongue out at his
back as he retreated, laughing, upstairs to find Scott. The envelope in her hands regained her
attention as she felt the thick paper of the envelope, obviously expensive,
marked with black ink, just her name, no return address. The stamp marking the place of origin was hard
to make out, and it obscured the postage somewhat, but, stepping under the
bright light of the chandelier in the main hallway, Jubilee had to stifle a cry
of surprise. Who the Hell would be
writing me from there? Who would know
I’m here? She held the letter at
arm’s length with slightly trembling fingers, looking at it with the expression
of Fatima finding Bluebeard’s terrible secret. [1] She barely looked up as Jean stomped down the stairs, past moping
and well into pissed. “No,” Jubilee
said under her breath.
“No what?” Jean snapped before she
could stop herselSeeiSeeing Jubilee’s
stricken expression, she paused.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, forcing her tone into a kinder mold.
“China,” was all Jubilee said before
the letter fell from her grasp and she sprinted from the foyer, barely slowing
down to open the front door as she tore into the evening.
“China?” Jean repeated to thin air,
picking up the letter as she stared after Jubilee. “Oh…China.” She frowned
and turned the letter over in her hands, frowning even more deeply when she saw
that it had not been opened. Strange
girl…
Jubilee had not gone far. She was sitting on the edge of the massive
fountain in the center of the circle drive, bundles of lumber and tarpaper from
the almost-completed new wing of the Institute dotting the ground around
her. “Go away, Jean,” she said
glumly. “If I don’t read it, they
didn’t send it.”
“Who’s they?” Jean asked, sitting
beside her. Her own problems were
weighing heavily but she could not bear to see Jubilee so affected.
“My family.”
“You’re an orphan…”
“My parents had family in China when
they died…they didn’t even send a response when the county told them I was left
alone…” She shrugged. “Fuck ‘em.
I don’t want anything to do with them and I don’t even want to know how
they found me here.”
Jean turned the letter over again in
her hands and passed it to Jubilee after a moment. “Well, you took care of yourself for years on the street. I don’t see why this letter should freak you
out so much when that life didn’t seem to phase you at all…”
Jubilee glared. She had never wanted to tell Jean any
details about her old life and railing at her about how everyday was a
nightmare would only trigger the older girl’s therapist response. “Fine,” she finally snapped. “I’ll read it and then throw it away.”
“Your letter,” Jean shrugged, though
she peered over Jubilee’s shoulder with avid interest.
The letter was written in Mandarin,
cramped columns of black calligraphy spilling down page after page. Jubilee forced herself to read it slowly so
as not to miss a detail, these words from a family long forgotten. The more she read, though, the paler she
became, the worse her hands shook. By
the time Jubilee got to the last page of thin paper, Jean was on the verge of
calling for Beast or the Professor, recent confrontations be damned. Jubilee crumpled the letter into an
inelegant wad and hunched in on herself, oddly silent.
“What is it?” Jean finally asked,
resting her hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“My grand parents and
cousins…they’re coming here. Soon. They want to adopt me…take me back to
China…”
Kitty was feeling an odd mixture of
self pity and sympathy. Scott and Kurt were busy packing box after box of
stereo equipment and clothes from the older teenager’s room while she and Rogue
got started on airing out the boathouse, making it habitable. “Do you think he would’ve gone easier on us
if he’d known when it happened?”
Rogue looked up from dusting under a
whatnot shelf and glared. “I’m still
kinda pissed that y’all didn’t tell me when it happened!”
“The whole point of eloping is to
keep it a secret!” Kitty said, defensive.
“Only the wedding part! You can tell people afterwards!” Rogue
cried, abandoning her dusting to glare even harder, her hands fisted on her
hips.
“Fine, next time I witness an
elopement, I’ll tell you first off!”
The two girls glared at each other,
faces set in hard lines, for almost a full minute before Kitty broke and
giggled, followed by a snort from Rogue and a flung dust rag that passed
through Kitty in phase. “So they have
to live here, huh?”
“The Professor
says that if they’re adult enough to get married, then they can live together.”
“That’s not so bad,” Rogue said,
joining Kitty on the sofa.
“Ah, that’s just the tip of the ice
berg. They have to get jobs, pay rent,
pay utilities and finish school all at once.”
“Whoa. Harsh.”
Kitty shrugged. “I can kinda see his point…”
“What’s Jean gonna do? She wanted to go to med school and
all…” Rogue blew out a harsh
breath. “I tell ya…I ain’t ever getting
married…”
“Don’t let Todd hear you say that,”
Kitty teased, although a bit halfheartedly, “I think he’s already bought the
ring.”
“Don’t make me hit you.”
Kitty blew a raspberry at Rogue only
to break off in an indigent yelp when the other girl tossed a throw pillow at
her. “Girl fight!” Todd called merrily
from the doorway. “Wait a sec and I’ll
go get the camera and some Wesson oil!”
“Your boyfriend is a dork,” Kitty
said, throwing the pillow back at Rogue.
“Yeah, but he’s my dork.” Rogue smiled fondly at Todd as he wedged
himself between the two dusty girls.
“Why aren’t you helping Kurt and Scott pack?”
“Lance just got those tickets in the
mail, yo…” He wiggled his eyebrows and
grinned broadly.
“No fucking way!” Rogue said,
sounding more excited than Kitty had ever heard her sound before. “Whooo!”
“What tickets?” Kitty asked as Rogue
began an odd, seated happy dance.
“Dirtball 2003 [2],” he said, ducking
an outflung arm. “Its in Meridian this
year…”
“Meridian?” Rogue asked, stopping
suddenly. “I thought it was Ocean
City…”
“Nope. Lance read the wrong
dates. Ocean City is in the
winter. This summer, Meridian…”
“Oh.” Her face fell and she sank
back into the cushions.
“What’s Dirtball?” Kitty asked, her nose wrinkled. “Sounds…ick…”
“It’s this huge concert with all
these bands…they do it twice a year, once in the winter and once in the
summer.” Todd was looking between Kitty
and Rogue somewhat worriedly. “I
thought you were really looking forward to seeing Rob Zombie,” said to Rogue
finally.
“I am, but…” she sighed. “Meridian?
In the summer?” She forced a
smile and shrugged. “Just the heat is
all…”
Todd nodded but looked
disbelieving. “You think that’s bad,
Amara’s still coming, even though she and Lance are outsville…she said she paid
for the damn ticket, she’s going whether he likes it or not…” He shrugged and stood. “I’d better get back before Scott notices
I’m gone. Just wanted to tell ya…”
“Thanks,” Rogue said, smiling again
in an almost convincing manner. “And
it’s still okay with the Professor that we’re going?”
“Yup. Logan’s kinda pissed, though…he’s comin’ too!”
Kitty shuddered as Todd disappeared
back into the darkening evening.
“Logan’s gonna be a load of fun on that trip,” she said dryly before
noticing that Rogue again looked worried.
“What is it?”
“Kitty…I don’t want to go home
again…”
Kurt was bone weary by the time he
was done helping Scott pack. He dreaded
thinking about the next day, when he would help him move boxes into the
boathouse. If I were in his shoes,
I’d be a lot happier than he is now…Then again, I wouldn’t have married Kitty
before we were done with school… Not that
that isn’t nice to think about… He
nearly ran into the object of his affections before noticing her. “Ah, Liebes…there you are…and you seem to
have become a human dustbunny.”
“Tell me about it…It’s like going to
the beach, cleaning out that house. You
end up with grit in places you didn’t think possible!” She made a face and held out her hands. “Dirty nails! I hate dirty nails!”
He made a grab for her but she
squeaked and ducked away. “A little
dirt never hurt anyone,” he pointed out as he reached for her again, grinning.
“Haven’t you had enough?” she
chided, staying just out of reach. “We
already…you know…earlier…and besides, I’m tired and filthy and really want a
shower…”
He pouted fetchingly and very nearly
kept from grinning as he cornered her.
“Just one kiss? A tiny
one?” He held up one finger for
emphasis. “I won’t even nibble!”
“Fine! One kiss!” She sounded
exasperated but he knew better. He
leaned closer and pressed against her, their breath mingling and eyes sliding
shut in that bare second before a kiss truly begins, when the phone in the
hallway jangled to life and made them both spring apart. “Damn it,” he growled.
“Kurt!” Jamie called a moment later.
“Your dad’s on the phone!”
“Stay here,” he said firmly to Kitty,
who giggled and nodded. He was gone
only a few moments before returning, looking vaguely stunned. “What is it?”
“Feel like seeing the circus this
summer, Schatz?”
[1] Long story
short, Bluebeard is a legend or story about a man who murdered all his wives
and kept them in a secret room in his home, hung by the hair and their throats
slit. Fatima was the last wife, the one
who found the bodies and escaped.
[2] Made it up.