Cinderellas

Cinderellas Chapter Seven (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Foxfeather the Multitasking Goddess gets a box of chocolate covered Wataris for beta’ing. * G * Readers/Reviewers: *blush * Thanks! J


She didn’t talk to me for two days. I tried, I really did. I apologized in so many ways: verbally, in notes, with gestures (which is how I found out she hates scrambled eggs for breakfast). I even tried to ignore her, too, but I couldn’t. I moped. I became one of those girls I hated, the kind that sighs a lot and sulks. I swear I was on the verge of poetry. Thank God she finally talked to me. On Thursday, she sat down across from me at lunch like nothing had ever happened, whistling the theme to Welcome Back Kotter. “You know,” she said lightly, as if the words were floating out of her mouth, “I think Senorita Smith is on crack. Did you hear what she made us do for class?”
“Uh…no…”
She pushed a folded piece of paper across the table to me and poked at her slice of pizza. “Scariest. Pizza. Ever.”
She busied herself with her lunch tray, obviously waiting for me, so I opened the paper. It was scrawled with penciled writing, mostly unintelligible, but the one thing that jumped out at me was “I know.” I folded the paper and slid it back to her. “Weird,” I said as calmly as possible. “This is from Spanish class.”
“Yep. On my desk when I got there.” She laughed as if we were still talking about weird assignments. “I think I’m going to ask Principal Kelly to talk to her or something.”
“Principal Kelly? Wow…that’s big time.” My lunch sat in a leaden lump in my stomach and was ashes in my mouth. I was going to be sick, I thought. Jubilee peeled the cheese off the top of her slice and dropped it near the roll. “Are you sure?”
“Mmmhmmm. Geez, so much bread on these tray lunches…”
“Jubes…”
“Want to come with me? I’m gonna go before fifth period.” She sounded serious then, all pretense gone. Down at the other end of the long table, Pietro and Lance picked on Toad, chocolate milk spreading in a puddle between them, and nearest us, Jean was just sitting down, calling over her shoulder to Kitty and Amara. “In fact, I’m going now…”
I looked at Jean, who seemed to be openly curious about what we were talking about, and the Brotherhood, still loud and now noticing we were there. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Hey, Sinclair!”
Why do idiot guys think it’s cool to call people by their last name? I ignored Pietro and kept walking, following a few feet behind Jubilee. Jean’s voice cut through my minor panic. “Hey, Rahne, wait up!”
“Sinclair!” Pietro yelled again, this time loud enough to draw attention. I stopped and turned, facing Jean who was hurrying up behind me, frowning. I could feel her try to speak to me inside but I blocked her. I didn’t want to hear her try to calm me or offer to help.
“Yeah?”
“Got something for ya…” A folded piece of paper, arranged like an airplane, sailed across the short distance but fell short, skidding across the remainder of the distance thanks to Jean’s assistance. He waved at me like we were friends, making a crude gesture.
Jubilee sucked in her breath behind me and I winced. I knew, even before Jean unfolded the paper, what it was. Jean actually blushed, turning crimson before fading to a nearly normal pink. She re-folded the picture and did not quite meet my eyes. “I was going to say, don’t turn around. He’s up to something.”
“Ah.” Jubilee reached past me and took the photo, opening it so I could see it, too. It was a picture of us, captured at a moment in the relatively recent past, when we thought we were alone. I could tell from the slightly hazy background that we were in the media room of the school library, a nice dark closet of a space with only one window, set in the door, for security purposes. We had been sent by the biology teacher to get the projector for some rather boring slides on meiosis. We had been together only a short while then and I was still very nervous when we were alone. I remembered how cold the room was, how it smelled like metal and WD-40 and plastic and her perfume as she leaned close to me in the tiny space. She kissed me cheek, my chin, my lips…the photo was of that one moment where I kissed her back, my tongue touching her lower lip, that moment right before she parted for me and our embrace became something much deeper. “We photograph well,” Jubilee finally tossed off, re-folding the picture and sticking it in her pocket. “C’mon.”
“Wait…” Jean trailed us into the hall, ignoring the Brotherhood’s catcalls and gesturing. “What are you going to tell Kelly?”
“The truth,” Jubilee sighed. “We have to…”
I was definitely going to be sick. “Really?”
“Rahne,” she turned her back on Jean and backed me against the wall, trying for a little privacy in the wide hallway, “I know you don’t want to let this get around but I think it’s too late.”
“What if…what if Kelly calls my parents?”
“They’re all the way in Scotland and last I heard, the Professor was your legal guardian. And the Professor already knows about us.” She took a chance and took my hand, squeezing. “Rahne, this isn’t about the damned prom or wanting to be out as girlfriends. This is about us being harassed.”
“We know who’s doing it, though,” I insisted. I was scared spitless, as Rogue would say, and admit I was scrambling for an out. “It’s just the Brotherhood. We can ignore ‘em, go threaten ‘em after school or something…”
“Rahne,” I think she wanted to kiss me then, the way she was looking at me, and God help me I would have let her if Jean had not shifted into view, looking like a mother hen, “this is important. I wouldn’t want to do this unless it was something so big…”
I don’t know how long I waited but I finally heard myself say it. “Okay. We’ll go to Principal Kelly.”
Jean let out an audible sigh. “Look, I’ll do some scanning and see if I can find out where they got the picture and all.”
“Thanks,” Jubilee smiled, letting go of my hand. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”
I could only nod.