The receptionist guided Verdy into the small room and handed the paperwork she had meticulously filled in to the doctor waiting there. He nodded her to a seat and observed her answers with a detached air- as if he had no idea the headache reading the questions and writing the answers had been. He probably didn’t. He read over the answers, seeking clarification here and there and asking her to pronounce her name. Which he then massacred, but recognisably.

“Your active X-gene-” he peered at her, as if seeking the visual manifestation of the gene “has it any effect on your sight?” She shook her head. “No magnification? Heat vision? Ability to see in the dark?” at each shake of her head he made a mark on his list, a list he was evidently using to determine if he would be able to help her. It did seem silly to prescribe glasses to someone with laser-beam eyes, or contact lenses to someone who could taste with their eyes (what a strange mutation to have, whatever would it be useful for?). Her mutation, however, had no impact on the doctors tools, or on the glasses he would prescribe.

The tests were over quickly. Look through this lens. Now that one. With one eye, with the other, with both. Now read the first six lines. How many dots? She gave him her old reading glasses to look at as well, as badly broken as they were, and he made a note of that too, on the seemly never ending page of notes on herself. Hopefully all would go smoothly, being 20 she was far past the legal age for leaving home, and if ever there had been an auto-tab attached to her name, alerting the authorities that she had been found, it was long gone. Still, it made her a little nervous.

After another few tests she was asked to hand the assistant the prescription and wait until they made the glasses up for her. They would make up two pairs, he explained, one for reading and writing and the other for working on the computer. The reading ones were fairly simple and after she had picked out the frames they would only take half an hour. The computer ones were more complicated and could take up to two.

The frames were easy enough to pick out. Black squarish glasses for reading, the more rounded cousin in the same brand for the computer glasses. Leaving her name and details with the lady at the front desk she informed her that she was going to step out for a bit, but would be back before the half-hour was up. The woman made her pay before she left and, although surprised, she figured that was reasonable. Who knew how many times they had been robbed by a glasses-stealing mutant. Or, you know, had people forget.

Next door to the optometrist there was a slightly quirky teenage clothing store and she entered it to have a browse, she was only just out of her ‘teen’ years, earlier that month in fact. She still applied to the teen store. She flicked through the overpriced hoodies and shirts, cute or interesting, yes. Worth the price-tag, no. The jeans were much more reasonable (probably because of the profit they were making off the shirts) and she chose a pair that had a reduced sticker on them simply for missing a button on one of the pockets. It was about time she got some new jeans, judging from the stains on the pair she was wearing that just wouldn’t come out.

The odds and ends bucket yielded glasses cases with the superman ‘S’ plastered on them in one of two colours. She bought one of each. A lunchbox and a cheaper T-shirt sporting an adorable boy in a dinosaur suit followed. Her phone bleeped the fifteen minute alarm she had set, and she moved quickly through the checkout, accepting the bag proudly carrying the store’s logo and back to the waiting room next door.

The reading glasses were completed quickly, and the receptionist handed them to her, along with the update that her computer glasses would take about another hour. Grateful that the reading glasses were finished so she had something to do she moved back to her seat in the waiting room and flicked through the reading options on the table with greedy fingers.

The headlines for the women’s magazines weren’t particularly appealing. She didn’t want to know how to loose that extra roll and keep it off, in fact she was happy that she was starting to flesh out over the skeleton which had been visible for far too long, neither did she want to read the interview on ‘how I nabbed my own superhero’. The full-page colour photo on ‘wings and sexy’ didn’t call out to her, and after ignoring a magazine each on cars, cooking and cameras she discovered the newspaper.

While a little tattered and missing the coupons it was far superior to everything else on the table and making the first use of her new reading glasses on it didn’t feel like an insulting waste. Nor did she feel a flush of embarrassment when someone happened to glance at her and she was holding it. In fact she felt quite well informed and professional. The glasses helped.

The front page sported all the bold claims and big pictures that front pages are meant to, and the tiny script below was crystal clear from behind the lenses. It had been so long since she had simply read that she teared up just thinking about it, but with a deep breath and a swallow (after all, she couldn’t read if her eyes were blurred with salty water) she began to read hungrily. Stories of joy, and sadness, pain and elation. The sports report, even the weather. Everything was fascinating, simply because they were words on paper, and once again she could access them. The very world of literature was hers again, and she silently resolved to buy herself a good book, just as soon as her computer glasses were ready.

The stories within the paper ranged from reports on traffic incidents to the more emotional stories of missing family members. These, complete with school photos or pictures of birthday parties, were quickly skipped over. Even the novelty of reading couldn’t disperse the guilt she felt when confronted with these. The apartment prices were interesting (one, she noted, was in the same complex of Rupert and Flipsy and reminded her to pay the bigot a sober visit, preferably with some form of peace offering.) but with the mansion as her current option she didn’t really need a place to live.

A flick of the page and the grinning face of a sabre-woman, advertising Glimmer^TM toothpaste, stared up at her with a wicked flicker in her eyes. As white as the teeth were Verdy was confident with her own toothpaste and the woman didn’t look particularly friendly, supported by the caption ‘stop plaque in its tracks’.

A story about a vicious burglary, thwarted by an elderly woman with a conveniently responsive python (suggested by the journalist to be either a mutant herself, or living with a mutant snake-shifter) was interesting, although a sad statement on societies lack of respect for the elderly. The details, outlining the ribs broken by compression, as well as quotations from the older woman protesting that the snake took it upon himself to protect her were a fascinating read and the emotive words woven between facts inspired pity for the woman and a general feeling of beating the bad-guys. It was, in general terms, a ‘feel-good’ piece.

She was halfway a letter to the editor, protesting the fact that a gazelle-like mutant was allowed to participate in a high school athletics carnival beating the writer’s ‘wholly human’ son in the hurdles, when the receptionist called her name. Folding the paper neatly she left it on the table, skilfully covering two or three magazine covers in the process, and retrieved her computer glasses from the woman. With a final smile and a signature on the receipt she bundled up her bags and left to find a good book.