I Bet I'm Faster

Peter I

There is nothing too strange about living two lives at the same time. At least nothing strange enough. I mean, every accounting manager has two lives, one at work and one at home. So there shouldn’t be this strange feeling. My thoughts carry on while I watch Beast in the front of the classroom, trying to get our interest in maths. I nearly jump as I realise he is actually staring right into my eyes.
“Hey Peter, back in reality? Or did you make another jump to the snack bar?”
The others laugh, but it is a warm laugh. The same way he is smiling at me. So warm… I just think of how blue he is when he is not trying to… I interrupt myself. “Sorry, Sir, I just didn’t sleep enough.”
He raises one eyebrow.
“I’m surprised you do sleep.”
Another laugh, but this time a thin voice raises from the back.
“Actually this is not as funny as anyone of you would imagine!”
I turn my head and see Nighty in the back, laughing and her hair floating around her head and spreading into the face of her classmates sitting besides her. Beasts grins at her.
“We sure now that you don’t sleep Ghostgirl. Still, you should ask someone to cut your hair.”
He turns around and starts writing on the blackboard again. I turn around slowly (really, really slow) and my thoughts start leaving their path again. Ghostgirl, or Nighty, as I like to call her is one of the newest students at the school. Nevertheless, she visits nearly all courses together with me, because she lived quite a normal life at home. She is one of the mutants that manage to hide their abilities quite long. In her case, she only had to cover two things: The fact that she never sleeps (which is easy to hide in my eyes) and her general outer appearance. Her skin, eyes and hair all match the same shade of white, but I guess she explained her odd skin tone and eyes with some sort of genetic failure. Also, her hair is floating through the air all the time, but when she arrived, her hair was completely shaved off, so… Well done on this one. She is quite on the punky side, so that’s probably why we became friends so fast. I crack my knuckles, stretch and slow time for a second. Beast must have seen my movement from the corner of his eye, since he faces me again.
“Peter, what did you do this time? I know, it is the last week before holidays start again, but since SOMEBODY…”
He gives Ragger a look who tries to hide under the table.
“… accidentally burned your math teacher’s eyebrows off, I have to do this job, and I swear Peter, when I see you running and eating snacks even one more time, I will…”
The soft bell rings and safes him from an unprofessional end of his sentence. He sighs.
“No homework for today guys, but try to remember what I taught you this time, okay?”
The class cheers and the usual wild chaos of students trying to leave a classroom begins. I also stand up and start throwing my math books into my bag.
“Peter?”
I look up and see Phoenix standing in the door. I cannot help but slow time and run towards her to hug her. She stiffens as I ask her:
“Hey, how’s it been?”
“Let’s talk about this later, but it went well this time.”
Then she hugs me back, still clearly surprised by me charging up on her so fast. I push her forward a step as I feel a shoulder in my back.
“Hey, this is Phoenix!”
“They’re back, they’re back!”
I grin and step aside.
“Still the celebrity, guess that happens when you don’t have to waste time studying strange things all the time.”
She winks at me as the crowd of students surrounds her. I smile and enter the classroom again to get my bag. I push my way through my classmates. When I look up, Beast is looking at me again. He looks around and watches the last students leaving the class.
“Peter, you should really pay more attention to the lessons.”
He lowers his voice as the last student left.
“Also you should be a bit more careful. Quite strangely, Kurt was too tired to follow my Physics lessons this morning as well…”
I look at him in surprise, not quite sure what to say.
“Let’s just say I never knew anything…”
He winks at me and leaves the classroom humming. Why is everybody winking at me today? I shake my head and grab my bag.