The sea breeze felt nice against Anna's sun-abused skin. The heat of the day had since passed, yet the long claws of the summer were still clung sunk deep into the broiling air around the mansion. The cliff face overlooking the ocean, just over a football field's length away from the rear door, offered the only solace from the day's unusually high humidity. It was there she found Kitty sat cross-legged atop a flat weathered rock which was surrounded by pillars of precariously stacked stones. Kitty's backpack rested atop the patchy grass behind her, half its contents split out from the open zipper. Forearms resting on her knees, Kitty stared out into the gently rocking waves beyond the cliff's edge. Pinched between the index and middle fingers of her right hand was an unlit cigarette whose precarious position was kept in place by the weight of her relaxed fingers.
"How did you find me?" It startled Anna when Kitty spoke. For a moment, she forgot the other girl was even alive and not just some statue silently sat there suspended in time.
Anna stopped in her tracks, her right hand wrapped tight around the strap of her backpack. "I spotted you walking over here from the attic."
"Oh yeah?" Anna could hear Kitty snicker just once before glancing down at the cigarette wedged between her fingers. She flicked it with the back of her thumb. "You tell the adults about my nasty little secret yet?" She pinched the cigarette between her lips, lit it with a plastic lighter - sure to shield the flame against the wind - and took a drag.
Anna's lips pressed together. "No."
"Ain't that sweet of you," Kitty said in a mock southern accent. "I'm sure Xavier will organize a raid of our room soon enough to find any contraband. He can read freaking minds after all."
"I didn't tell Xavier... I didn't tell anyone here about what I found."
"Why not? What do you care, it's not your life. Besides, you'd only benefit. You'd get me kicked out then you'd get a room to yourself."
Anna let out a sigh. "Kitty, I don't want you to get kicked out -"
Kitty stood and faced Anna for the first time since she arrived. "Don't lie to me! Of course, you do! You and everyone else here! All of you hate me! I see how you look at me, Anna. Like I'm some sort of - sort of gunk you stepped in! You've had that same look since the day we met!"
Anna raised her hands to her chest. "I don't think of you like that. I think you can be a little much -"
"'A little much.' Such a nice way to put it. I'll admit, I've heard it put much more plainly than that. A loudmouth is one. I'm sure it's what you all say about me behind my back. So why don't you just say it, Anna? Call me a loudmouth! Call me a waste of space! Call me a coward! Or are you too much of one to say it to my face?"
"Jesus, Kitty 'Ah' -"
"No - No - No! Don't 'Jesus' me! You don't get to say I'm overreacting! You don't get to say I'm being hysterical!" Kitty stood from her rock and aimed a pointed finger at her. "I've been nothing but pleasant to all of you - all of you! And in return all my supposed 'family' does is talk smack about me behind my back! All they can talk about is how much they secretly hate me!" Anna could see tears welling up in the other girl's eyes. "Well, let me ask you this. Why is it that I'm the only one who has an issue with any of this? With the violence. With fighting other people. Not just people but people like us! Like, shouldn't we all be on the same side? Why does it all have to come down to throwing fists and shooting guns? Why are we all just freely co-signing to a world like this? Why is it bad that I have an issue with all this fighting? Doesn't that just make me human - or mutant - or what the heck ever?"
Anna's lips parted as absorbed the radiating pain from the other girl. They were all questions Anna had asked. Some she asked publicly. The others she kept private in a secluded section of her heart where the rest of the painful injustices of the world lived. She watched as Kitty fell to her knees, tears freely falling down her cheeks.
YOU ARE READING
Rogue Evolution
FanfictionA secret world exists within our own that only a few, a reluctant few, know about. The world of Mutants. They walk amongst us, talk like us, and many even look like us. However, within each of them they carry great powers beyond our understanding...
