Van laughed after seeing his reflection, which just made Henri giggle. It seemed laughter was contagious. Of course, she'd rather catch the giggles than some sort of sickness. The brunette glanced into her own cup and stared at the drink after he asked her what it was. "It's just plain black coffee, but...", reaching into her pocket she pulled out about 5 or 6 sugar packets. "I found their stash." Henrietta grinned and ripped a packet open. After dumping a few of the packets' contents into her coffee, she stirred it with a small straw. She looked up at Van hoping he didn't think she was a freak. The girl was having fun with him and she didn't want him to leave yet.

“Etta, what’s the best thing about New York so far? Besides meeting me of course.” The young man gave her a smile. She couldn't help but return the gesture. Letting out a small laugh, she tapped her chin with her right index finger. "Well, besides meeting you, it would have to be meeting people who understand me. It's also nice not to argue with my mom." She watched as Van put his feet on the table next to her drink. Raising an eyebrow, she looked at him and picked up her cup. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman behind the counter give an angry look towards the two teens. Henri tried not to laugh. The boy looked so relaxed about everything. It was like he tried not to worry about things. She wondered if it was an act, or if he really didn't worry much.

Looking at Van's feet a minute, she took a drink of coffee and set the cup back down. It wasn't like his feet were in her drink. There would've been a totally different reaction. One more along the lines of getting red-faced, saying ew a few dozen times, and then walking away in a huff. After all, sometimes a girl had to make a scene even if it seemed out of character.

"So, Van...what grade are you? I'm 16, so I'm a junior." She should be a junior, but she hadn't been studying so much lately. Wandering around had become a past time of hers. Yeah, Springfield was big, but this was something completely different. This place was huge and there were so many different kinds of people. She imagined Van never ran out of people to take pictures of and that there were always some sort of tourist-like people around.

Etta was a sugar junkie, apparently. If this was true, they’d get along just fine. Long nights spent anywhere but home often were the work of multiple energy drinks that more often than not contained much too much sugar. Van, like most people, had an insatiable sweet tooth. He didn’t comment on the sugar packets, just raised an eyebrow and smiled.

So Etta had mommy issues? Van could relate...well, not quite. He had issues with his father–he and his mother almost never fought and now when he argued with her she didn’t say anything back. The barista was giving him the evil eye, which only made the boy grin. Leaning back even farther in his chair, Van stared at the woman as he replied to the girl. “Not much will top meeting me, but understanding people are good. I argue with my dad a lot, I would kill for that to stop.” Well, maybe not kill...but Van would certainly move away if he had the means to if it meant getting away from his father. That wasn’t quite true–he wouldn’t leave New York but he’d certainly leave their tiny apartment if he could.

The barista kept glaring at him every time she got the chance but she didn’t do anything so neither did Van. The brunette glanced at his feet and she didn’t do anything either. Leaning back certainly wasn’t as fulfilling if no one said anything about it. Van was distracted from his disappointment when Etta spoke again. So they were playing the age card now, huh? Etta was sixteen, right in Van’s ballpark. People watching made one pretty good at guessing ages. “I’m an out-of-commission senior.” He grinned at the thought of his truancy. “I’ll be eighteen next August.” The feet on the table thing was getting to be more work than it was worth, so Van decided to readjust.

And then things got interesting.

As it was being removed from the table, his left foot batted a candle to the edge of the table. When Van brought his legs back under it, the table jolted and the candle in the bottle went tumbling down. Unthinkingly, Van reached out to catch it. Naturally, his arm stretched itself to make the catch. He caught the bottle by the end and managed to keep hot wax off of himself. He also managed to stare at the elongated arm for a moment before pulling it tight once more and placing the candle on the table. Blinking a few times he tried to plaster a blase smile on his face. “So how’s the sugar dipped in coffee?” Van asked, it was all he could come up with at the moment. What he really wanted to say was: ‘Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t.’ but he decided to at least try and act normal.

Maybe Etta hadn’t noticed?

Henrietta took another sip of the sugar-coffee as Van talked. He said he was a senior. I thought he was in my age range... The brunette nodded. He'd be 18 in August. "I'll be 17 in May." Grabbing another sugar packet, she tore it open and dumped the contents into her cup. Henri's sugar intake wasn't always so heavy, but the bitter coffee demanded it. Without stirring it or using the straw, she picked up the cup and took a small drink. She almost spit it back out. It was mostly sugar now and was way too strong for her tastes. She managed to swallow the sweet mixture, but she puckered her face a bit in the process. Laughing, she looked at Van and then into the cup. "Sorry about that. I didn't think it would be that bad."

It seemed the boy had gotten tired of having his feet on the table. He began to shift, but a candle began to fall in the process. Henri didn't have very fast reflexes or anything that could've stopped it, otherwise she may have tried. Watching its quick decent, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was only a few seconds, but she was sure she had seen something stretch. It looked like an arm and it came from Van's direction. It is an arm. She looked at him and then his arm. The arm's attatched to Van...Oh my gosh! It's Van's arm! He realized what he had done and his arm shot back to him. Henri wasn't sure what to say or do, so she just blinked. "Good catch."

After a moment she realized he had asked her a question about the disgusting concoction. "It's great. It might be better with more coffee in it or something..." Still in shock, she looked at the table next to them. Maybe she was hallucinating. A few people had the same looks on their faces. Or maybe they all saw it too...Standing up, she grabbed Van's hand. "Come on. I'm not sure if they're the type to accept us or not." Pulling him into a standing position, she lead him out of the coffee shop.

Several things happened in a short spans of time. First, Henrietta complimented him on his catching of the candle. This gave Van hope that she hadn’t noticed his freak arm do its freaky little thing. That would be a wonderful turn of events. In reality wonderful turns of events didn’t happen very often, especially not in the life of Van Sanders-Adamson–usually the worst case scenario was the most likely one, followed by the second worst scenario and so on and so forth. The second thing to happen: she answered his question with a very normal response. His hope of her ignorance to his mutant-ness soared, it would soon be killed, not that Van knew this.

The third thing involved Etta checking out the other patrons, gauging something. Of course they’d have seen his little display as well. Damn eyesight, what a lame sense. After Van realized that Etta obviously hadn’t been oblivious to his arm, she shot up from her seat and grabbed him by the hand. Then she said something that saved the entire situation: "Come on. I'm not sure if they're the type to accept us or not."

For a moment he had been afraid that she was leaving, running away from him. At that point it was made very clear that she was running, but he was going with her. Van allowed himself to be led out of the coffee shop, his thoughts occupied with holding her hand and the way she had said ‘us’. He was part of that us, even better, she was part of that us. They were an us. An us brought together by shared DNA. Etta was a mutant. Oh happy day! Van felt like dancing, so he did an awkward jig that raised more than a few eyebrows of the passerby. Maybe she’d think it was weird, but Van had no regrets.

Taking her hand again, the boy started making his way down the street, trying to put as much distance between himself and the shocked patrons as possible. He made a few ‘tsk’ sounds before looking down at the girl again. “Such a shame, I really liked that place.” Oh well, there were better places, Van supposed. “So how long have you been and undesirable?” The boy’s voice had taken on an almost angry tone as he asked her how long she’d known she was a mutant and his eyes became more steely. Why should he have to leave a café because of his genes? It was ridiculous that he spent so much of his energy on hiding what he really was. Van’s mind was whirring with all of the angry thoughts and questions that always came up when he thought about his mutation.

Holding onto Van's hand, her faced turned a little red. It stopped when she felt Van let go of her hand. He had stopped to do some sort of little dance. Henrietta watched and then smiled at him. The girl already felt more comfortable around the stretchy boy. Now that he knew she was a mutant too, she wouldn't have to keep pretending to be normal. Taking her hand into his, the two walked off again.

“So how long have you been an undesirable?” Henri glanced at Van. That's an interesting way to put it, but it's true. We are undesirable, aren't we? How is that fair...? Looking straight ahead again, she sighed quietly. "Well, I found out around September. I was at the salon in town. My mother wanted me to donate my hair to Locks of Love." The 16-year old stopped a minute as the came to a large group of people. Once they were in a less populated area, she continued.

"I hadn't cut my hair in such a long time and I thought it was one of my only good features. I panicked when the hairdresser came at me with scissors. She tried to cut it, but my hair broke them and then began to go wild." Making sure no one was around, Henrietta's hair lifted into the air and acted as if it were in water. "Needless to say, it started quite an uproar back home in Springfield. My mom was scared and didn't know what to do with me, so now I'm here." Stopping, she looked at the boy with her big, blue eyes and smiled slightly. " It's definitely not as cool as your ability though. I bet it comes in handy, huh?" The smile was to let Van know she was fine with what had happened in Illinois, when it reality she hated that she was treated in such a way.

As they walked Etta told him about how she discovered her powers. Whenever they passed large groups of people she stopped talking. At least she knew to keep being a mutant to herself. It sounded like she’d known only for a few months, Van had known since May 5th 2008, the date of his mother’s funeral. In a few months it would be two years since she died. Two years spent hiding what he was from his ‘friends’, his teachers, random people on the street. Two years spent being a freak.

Etta looked around as if checking for witnesses. They were on a less popular street now, and she showed him her powers. He stared, mesmerized by the way the brown locks rippled. He was brought back to reality when she told him that her mother was the reason she was in New York. They had stopped walking and Van focused on her words in an attempt to quell the growing anger that was inside him. It was terrible. Horrible, that a seemingly nice girl had to give up her life because of a gene. One single gene caused her to leave home and start over, alone. The world was a really shitty place if it was full of those kinds of realities.

She smiled as if what she was talking about was easy. The boy smiled back, but it was a flimsy mask for the blaze behind his eyes. He looked down at her, looked at her brown hair and replied: “I think we’re both amazingly cool. So cool in fact that words like cool don’t even apply to what we are. We are super human cool, our own race of cool that’s like a million times better than just plain cool.” Grey eyes traveled down the street. “So cool that if we don’t run right now our coolness will diminish.” Using their connected hands to point, Van gestured at a man with an intense mustache walking down the street at them.

“Don’t ever trust the ones with facial hair!” He whispered in her ear before taking off at a run, pulling the girl towards the bus stop that had a bus pulling up to it.

Van tried to return the smile, but it was obvious that he was angry. She understood. Henrietta was angry too. They had the right to be, in her opinion. They had never done anything to anyone, so why mutants were considered so bad was unknown to her. All the mutants she had meant were pretty nice and didn’t act as if they weren’t human. They were still kind of humans, weren’t they?

He began to talk about how cool they both were. She smiled at him and was about to thank him when a man with a mustache passed them. Van whispered about how facial hair made people untrustworthy. She raised her eyebrow and turned to ask him why, but it was too late for questions. He held onto her hand and she was forced to run too.

They were heading towards a bus stop that a bus was pulling up to. She let herself get pulled along by the mutant boy. Henri could feel herself smiling and she no longer felt as scared about their contact. Thinking as they went, she laughed to herself quietly. I think I’m getting a crush….

She ran with him to the bus stop. He dropped her hand so he could dig for the fare in his pocket. This time, Van paid for Etta’s way. After all, she hadn’t really had a say about getting on the bus with him, it would be rude to make her pay for his randomness. For a juvenile truant he though of himself as a pretty good gentleman...so long as the lady didn’t make him want to take a two-by-four to his own head...then he wasn’t so polite. Some might say that when annoyed he was downright mean. Van called it honesty. It was the best policy as the saying goes.

After they sat down next to each other near the front of the bus Van took his camera from around his neck, yelled ‘Cheese!’, and snapped a picture of the two of them. As he shook the little piece of film he said: “This one’s gonna be a beauty I think. Look!” He pointed with his free hand out the window at the mustached man. “Can’t you see the evil in his eyes? If not there it is at least present in his sweater. I think that’s a crime against humanity right there, he should go in front of the UN and be banished from Earth.” He giggled in a very childish way, egged on by the caffeine and the tiny rush of endorphins from their little jaunt away from facial hair.

This was turning out to be a good day, and Van wondered when the fairytale would end and Etta would turn into a pumpkin and roll away. It happened a lot since the boy had a tendency of forgetting that most people his age didn’t spend their days (and nights) going and doing wherever and whatever they wanted. Most kids had parents that cared and schedules and the dreaded homework. Van felt for normal kids, he really did.

Henrietta was going to dig for money when Van handed the driver enough for both of them. She smiled at him. The two took a seat together. Almost as soon as when they sat, Van took a picture of them together. Henri laughed and tried to peek at the photograph, but the the picture couldn't be seen yet. He began to shake the polaroid photo. It reminded her of part of a song. "Shake it like a polaroid picture! Shake, shake, shake!" She began to dance a little when she sang it.

Looking at Van, she laughed. Henrietta felt her face turn a little red, but it didn't bother her right now. Glancing out the window, she saw another bus pulling up to a bus stop. "Uh-oh! That's my ride!" She turned and looked at Van. She didn't want to leave, but she knew she'd have to at some point. "I've had a lot of fun. Thanks for keeping me company and paying for a bus fee for me...And..." She stopped. How am I suppose to find him again? Part of her panicked until she remembered the school had a phone. "Bus driver, I need to get off here..."

Pulling out part of an old receipt, she wrote where she was staying on it and the phone number. "This is my..uh...school." On the sheet it said, "Xavier's Sister School" and then the number. "I'm sorry. I don't have a cell phone." Glancing at the bus outside the window, she stood up and made her way to the aisle. She turned to look at him again. Henri smiled at him. "Don't be afraid to stop by. You could say they're pro-mutant." Stopping, she laughed. "I'll tell you later when you see me."

After she had climbed on to the other bus, she sighed. Henri truly hoped that he got in to contact with her. Soon.

The pumpkin dropped and exploded into a million pieces. One minute she was dancing to the song she was singing (it sounded vaguely familiar but no one could say that Van followed popular music trends) and the next she was exclaiming that she saw her bus and that meant leaving him and whatever it was that they were doing. Talking/laughing/running/talking/adventuring? Van felt a little better when she rummaged around for something to write on. Oh ho! Things were not Cinderella-ing just yet. Van used her distraction to write something of his own on the picture he’d just taken of the two of them.

Phone number, score. Now he could even find her, she’d given him the name of her school. Niiice. When she stood up her surruptiously snuck something in her coat pocket. “Alright, sounds cool.” He smiled in a blase way and watched her walk down the stairs and off the bus. Meeting Etta made New Year’s Eve all the less boring. As he sat on the cold bus seat he wondered if she was rushing off to go get ready for a date with her boyfriend or something. It’s not like it mattered anyway, why was he concerned? If they were meant to see each other again they would, Van wasn’t concerned at least that’s what he told himself.

Pulling the tiny picture out of his pocket, the boy smiled. The look on the girl’s face was truly priceless.

Henri stood to get off of the bus when she arrived at her stop. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something fall. Bending over to pick it up, she realized it was a picture. A picture of her and Van on the bus. She flipped it over. His number was on it. She wondered when he had slipped it into her pocket, but just laughed. Slipping the picture back into her jacket, she walked off the bus with a huge smile on her face.