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David first starts to suspect that something’s up when his father gets a phone call very early on Tuesday morning.
The timing isn’t the weird part—Dad’s on the phone at all hours, or telling Scott to get people on the phone, anyway. But Scott’s not here yet, and this doesn’t seem like a work thing, not that David can really tell, since his father’s voice is mostly muffled by his bedroom door.
The weird part is Dad’s telepathy, usually totally—kind of scarily—controlled, is slipping, just slightly: David isn’t trying to spy on him, but he’s been picking up these momentary bursts of emotion for the past ten minutes, and most of it has been extreme frustration.
OK, David can admit as he carries his toothbrush towards the bathroom closest to his father’s bedroom, he might be trying to spy a little bit.
The proximity doesn’t actually help—he still can’t hear anything, and Dad would know in an instant if David actually went into his mind, whether he was in the next room or halfway across the city. He brushes his teeth in there anyway, as he stares at his reflection in the mirror; he can’t help but think about how easy it was to slip in and out of Mum’s mind without her noticing, not that he usually took advantage of that. Mostly.
He frowns and spits his toothpaste in the sink. It’s not too early for phone calls, but it is too early to think about his mother.
In the kitchen, Elena is carefully transferring a poached egg onto a plate. She looks up and gives him a smile. “Breakfast?”
Elena has a very quiet, very methodical mind, which makes sense, given her job, and the way she makes everything run perfectly, almost as if by magic. David has always wondered if it has something to do with her mutation, but as far as he knows, that’s just cosmetic—her lizard-like scales, and her long, tapered tail.
David barely knew any other mutants growing up, so it’s been weird over the past eighteen months, adjusting to his father’s world, which is made up almost exclusively of mutants—kind of ironic, considering he’s famously an integrationist. Aside from random people in his daily interactions, David really only encounters baseline people at school. Of course, it’s been even weirder adjusting to having a mutant housekeeper, along with every other thing he’s still not used to, like this giant flat or his fancy school or the fact that apparently his father will buy him literally anything he wants.
Well, technically Scott will buy it for him, but he does sign the cards in his father’s name.
And then, as if David summoned him just by thinking about him, Scott strolls into the kitchen, carrying a garment bag in one hand and typing quickly on his phone with the other. When he finishes typing, he pockets his phone and looks up, giving them one of his blindingly white smiles.
“Good morning,” he says. “Elena, do I smell coffee?”
Elena turns off the water in the sink and reaches for a dish towel. “You do—give me a moment?”
Scott holds up the garment bag. “Of course. I’ll go drop this off.” As he passes the kitchen table, he claps David on the shoulder and says, “Heya, champ.”
David shoves a forkful of eggs into his mouth so he doesn’t have to respond. As Scott retreats, he glares at the back of his head, thinking, as he does most days, about going into Scott’s mind and erasing the decision to give him the nickname “champ”—or maybe just removing the word from his vocabulary all together, so he can’t give it to anyone else.
Scott’s mind—all right, it’s pretty methodical, too, though it’s nothing like Elena’s. But David doesn’t feel compelled to spend a lot of time in there; Scott’s nice enough, terrible nicknames aside, but David hates the way he sometimes tries to treat him like a little brother. He’s never had siblings, and he’s never particularly wanted any—and he definitely doesn’t want his father’s employee to pretend to be one.
He’s nearly finished with his breakfast by the time his father wheels into the kitchen, Scott trailing behind him, once again typing something on his phone.
“Good morning,” Dad says, smiling. Elena hands him a cup of coffee, and he nods in thanks.
David stares at him, trying to find any residue from the frustrating phone conversation in his expression. But he looks exactly the same as he always does, dressed in a neat blazer, no tie, his blue eyes bright and a blandly pleasant expression on his face—at least until he catches David staring, and the corners of his mouth turn down.
“David?” He places his cup on the table. “Is everything OK?”
He’s not going to read his father’s mind, of course, but he has no idea if his father is currently reading his. Was he too distracted by the call to notice him snooping around earlier?
The reality is he has no idea whether his father ever reads his mind—if he does, it doesn’t seem to be making things any less awkward between them. When he first arrived in New York, his entire world had been upended: his mother was dead, and he was 3,000 miles from home, living with someone he’d only known was his father because he’d dug through his mother’s memories to find out. For months, except for school, he mostly stayed locked in his room; after a few initial attempts at bonding, his father got the hint and gave him plenty of space.
Things are different now. Not in some ways: he misses his mother so much that sometimes, it hurts to breathe. Still, he’s settled into this life, sort of; at least he can get through the day. But his father continues to give him a lot of space, so much space that most of their interactions are polite but strained—and with his ridiculous schedule, there are days when they don’t see each other at all.
His father is still looking at him, a little groove of worry between his eyebrows. David shrugs and pushes back from the table. “I’ve got to get ready for school.”
Dad’s frown remains for a moment, until eventually, it clears, replaced by that same blandly pleasant expression from before. “Can we give you a ride?” he says, glancing at Scott. “I don’t think we have to be in Midtown until…”
“Nine,” Scott says without looking up from his phone.
“No, thanks,” David says quickly. “I’ll walk.”
He can feel his father’s eyes on him as he heads towards his bedroom. As he shuts the door firmly behind him, David wonders if he’s following his thoughts, too.
*
Maybe things would be different if he went to a school for mutants, but David goes to a school for rich people that some mutants happen to attend.
There are mutants among the most popular kids, but there are also mutants among the least popular. And just like at his old school, no one seems particularly thrilled by telepathy, even the other mutants. A bunch of students fall under the broader psionic umbrella, but David’s one of only three telepaths—and his powers are stronger than the other two combined. By a lot.
Who knows—it’s not like he had many friends at his old school. And back in England, he wasn’t contending with the reputational baggage of a dead mother and a famous telepathic father. But he doesn’t really have any friends now, and it often feels like his powers deserve a lot of the blame: even though he can hear every single one of their thoughts, it’s like his telepathy puts up this big impassable wall between him and his classmates.
Or maybe he’s just socially incompetent, because his father doesn’t seem to struggle with this at all—he’s always going to fancy parties and schmoozing with everyone, and even though David hasn’t been to a ton of them, whenever he’s seen his father in a social setting, he’s been the absolute center of attention, no matter the situation. People orbit him like planets around an ultra-bright star.
David, meanwhile, is clearly some sort of cosmic object that actively repels people. Or maybe just one that they’re careful to steer around out in space.
It’s funny, because even though his classes are laughably easy, his father insisted he enter the American school system at the normal grade level for his age, “for your social development.” David’s not sure what’s being developed, as he eats his lunch alone between classes that leave him bored out of his mind, but for now, this is where he’s stuck.
Well, sort of alone—he also has all his classmates’ thoughts pressing against his skull. And right now, he can feel the weight of someone’s attention on him: he looks up from his lunch and sees Teddy Appleton, from his algebra class, staring in his direction.
For a long, agonizing moment, he considers dipping into Teddy’s mind to figure out why he’s staring—and then he puts up a strong set of mental shields, and looks back down at his book.
Teddy’s not very good at algebra, and even though he clearly tries, his thoughts during class are pretty jumbled—not that David is actively eavesdropping or anything, but he’s only a few desks away, so it’s hard to block out. Sometimes he stares at the back of Teddy’s head, at the spot at the nape of his neck where his thick brown hair curls slightly, and thinks about slipping in and just…unjumbling things for him.
He frowns and tries to focus on his book, resting his elbow on the lunch table and shielding his eyes with his hand.
He takes his time crossing the park as he walks home from school, going the long way around the reservoir. It’s been a warm spring: some trees are still budding, but others have already shed their flowers for leaves. He likes living across the street from the park, which attracts as odd a collection of minds as any other part of the city, but just a little bit calmer. On nice days, he brings a book and sits on a bench, only sort of reading as he takes in the collective swirl of their thoughts.
Elena’s out when he gets home, though he’s sure she’ll be back before dinner. It’s not like David is incapable of heating up the food their chef prepares for them—his mother taught him cooking basics when he was seven—but he’s come to accept that this is the way things are done here. (And also Elena’s tail flicks a bit when you try to do one of the things she considers her job.)
He’s about to head to his room, but then some weird impulse tugs at him, and he turns in the other direction, towards the master bedroom.
In the eighteen months he’s lived here, he’s never been in his father’s room. He has no idea what he expects to find there—a calendar with this morning’s call scheduled on it? Some kind of diary entry where Dad details what they discussed and exactly why it upset him? David shakes his head, mildly embarrassed with himself, but he still pushes the door open and steps inside.
The room is large, with huge windows looking out over the park and wide, clear pathways around the bed and sitting area. Everything is built low, which makes sense—he knows his father’s accident happened while he was at university, so he’d been using a wheelchair long before he moved here.
Everything is as tidy as the rest of the flat—obviously Elena’s doing—except for the bedside table, where a sort of messy stack of books and papers are piled up. On the very top is an academic journal about genomics, but when David pushes that aside, he raises his eyebrows in surprise: the next thing in the stack is that novel he read a few months ago, Psion, with a bookmark tucked about a third of the way in.
He stares at the book in confusion, wondering why Dad never mentioned he was reading Psion, too—though come to think of it, David isn’t sure he ever told his father that he read it, or about how much it meant to him. He frowns as he covers it again with the genomics journal.
He moves back towards the door, feeling stupid—there was no reason he needed to come in here, other than nosiness—and then he catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye.
The dresser is as low as the rest of the furniture, with a collection of framed photographs on top. He’s immediately drawn to one with a flash of blue: Aunt Raven in a sparkly gown, laughing into a glass of champagne. David’s only met her twice—she lives on the other side of the world, in Tokyo—but she’s hands-down the coolest person he’s ever met, and not just in comparison to Dad, who, despite being famous, never comes off as particularly cool.
There’s another picture of her next to it: dressed up in a skiing outfit with a snowy incline in the background, she looks like she might be his age, or a little younger. She’s got her arm around the boy standing next to her, and as David looks closer, he blinks: it’s undeniably his father, his cheeks flushed pink from the cold, standing confidently in the snow.
David has understood, on some level, that he mostly looks like his father—he’s got his mother’s coloring, but otherwise, there was never much of a resemblance between them. When he finally met his father face to face, he did have a flash of recognition looking at him, but he’s always thought of himself as a kind of imperfect copy: gawky, way too skinny, with a thin face overshadowed by a pointy chin and frustratingly large nose.
His father is strikingly handsome—David’s even heard girls at school thinking about it, which is just thrilling to experience—but looking at him as a teenager, the similarities between them are a little spooky, straight down to the nose.
And then he catches sight of those same features a few photographs down the row: it’s a picture of David himself, from his bar mitzvah, just a few months before Mum died.
He doesn’t understand how his father got this photo—or the one next to it, where he must be eight or nine, since it’s taken in the living room of their last flat in Paris. Or the one next to that, where he’s much younger, maybe three or four, grinning broadly for the camera as he holds up his fingerpaint-stained hands.
He reaches out to touch the frame of the photo—and then he senses another mind coming up the flat’s private lift, and he snatches his hand back like he’s been burned.
It’s two minds, actually, both Scott and Elena, and they’re chatting as they enter the flat and head to the kitchen; they seem distracted enough, but David still sends them a light bit of misdirection as he exits his father’s room, just in case.
He drops his coat and bag in his own room before joining them in the kitchen. Elena is pulling containers from the refrigerator, and Scott is sitting at the kitchen table, pen in hand, flipping through what looks like a legal contract in a leather folder.
Scott looks up at him and smiles. “Good day at school, champ?”
David recalls his history teacher, loudly thinking through the logistics of his after-work errands as he delivered a deeply boring lecture, and shrugs. “It was fine.”
Scott seems to take this at face value, nodding as he turns back to marking the contract.
David crosses the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and then he takes a deep breath and says, “Hey, uh, do you guys…”
He trails off, and both of them turn to look at him.
He suddenly feels very foolish. He swallows and says, “Is my dad going to be home for dinner?”
Scott gives him a sympathetic look, or at least it seems like that—sometimes it’s hard to tell with the visor that covers his eyes. “Sorry, bud,” he says. “He’s got a dinner with Senator Dreyfus tonight.” He closes the folder and adds, “Anything I can help you with, though?”
David shakes his head. “No, thanks.”
He shuffles the bottle of water from one hand to the other, and then after a beat, he turns to head back to his room. He can feel Scott’s curiosity, softly insistent, following him as he goes, so he throws up his shields, shutting out every mind except his own.
*
The mystery of the phone call—and the contents of his father’s bedroom—dominate David’s thoughts all day Wednesday. He wonders if he should have asked Scott about it, or Elena. He wonders if his father would notice if David went into his mind while he was sleeping.
And then, when he gets home from school that afternoon, his father is sitting in the living room, obviously waiting for him. He’s wearing a tuxedo—not a rare occurrence, but still a little strange for four in the afternoon—and he has an expectant look on his face. He almost seems…nervous.
“Are you going to a party?” David says, pointing to his father’s outfit as he drops his bag on the closest couch.
Dad glances down and then lets out a little laugh before he looks back up. “Yes, though not for an hour or so,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about something first.”
David’s heart rate picks up slightly. He sits down on the couch and says as casually as he can manage, “Yeah?”
A beat passes, and then his father says, “David, I hope you don’t have any plans this weekend.”
David stares at him. “What kind of plans would I have?”
Dad’s eyebrows draw together slightly. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe you have a friend from…”
David continues to stare. His father trails off, and then he clears his throat.
“Anyway,” he says eventually. “We’re going on a trip this weekend.” He pauses and makes a face. “Sorry, that makes it sound—we’re going to Westchester.”
David blinks. “Why?”
Dad sighs before he says, “To visit your grandmother.”
“I have a grandmother?” David says. “In Westchester?”
Dad sighs again. “You do.”
“Isn’t that like an hour away?” David frowns. “Did she just move there?”
“No, she lives in the house where I grew up,” Dad says. He looks a little pained as he continues, “David, my family….our family, they’re…”
He trails off again, leaving an awkward silence in his wake. David isn’t used to seeing his father this inarticulate, and for a moment, he strongly considers going into his mind to figure out what he’s trying to say.
But then his father takes a deep breath and says, “All right, so: the short answer is yes, my mother and stepfather do live only an hour away, though they’re often traveling. They’re headed back to New York for a big meeting next week—which I also have to attend—and my mother insisted on finally meeting you. I tried to convince her otherwise, but she threatened to come here instead. Which—” He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “This will be better. Trust me.”
“Hang on,” David says. “I don’t understand—”
“Just—” Dad cuts off, spreading his hands, palms-up, in a kind of shrug. “I negotiated us down from a whole week to two nights—which conveniently means we’ll miss my stepfather, who won’t be back until Monday. We’ll leave on Friday, around midday.”
David perks up at that. “I get to skip school?”
Dad smiles and says, “I’ll write you a note.”
David waits until after dinner to start his detective work, which mostly involves actually clicking the source links on his father’s Wikipedia page.
It’s not the first time he’s researched his father. For years, he only knew “Charles Xavier” as a name in the back of his mother’s mind, once he was old enough to even know what to look for. But when he was ten, he saw a man called Charles Xavier in an interview on television—and he was a telepath, just like David.
He didn’t want to ask his mother about it, or root even deeper in her mind, but as he watched the man in the interview waving his arms around as he talked passionately about mutation, he was absolutely certain that he’d found his father.
He’d assumed there was a reason Charles Xavier had never been a part of their life, and whatever that reason was, he was pretty sure neither of his parents were about to have a change of heart. So from that point on, he tried to keep his interest in Charles Xavier relatively measured: he watched a bunch of interviews on YouTube, and once he could get his hands on a copy, he read the thing his father had been promoting during that original interview, his most recent book. (He actually read it a few times, and highlighted his favorite parts.)
Even after David came to live with him, and Charles Xavier went from distant authorial figure to his actual, flesh-and-blood father, he’d still thought of him mostly as a famous mutant advocate, writing books and going on TV and being the keynote speaker at posh fundraisers. He’d assumed that success was the reason for the flat and the staff and the events that had his father wearing a tuxedo on a semi-regular basis.
But as he clicks around online and starts to learn about the Xavier family, he feels a little stupid that he never bothered to research this before.
There’s his grandmother, who’s been the subject of multiple magazine profiles: English aristocrat, New York socialite, widowed after her husband died, when their only child was six years old. She then remarried her husband’s business partner, which seems a little shady; that’s apparently Aunt Raven’s father, though Dad always calls her his “sister,” not “stepsister.”
And then there’s the business in question, X-Gen Industries, founded by his grandfather and Dad’s stepfather, who were both nuclear physicists. A little more Googling reveals the “big meeting” they’re all going to next week is the annual shareholders’ event; apparently the Xavier-Marko family still holds the majority of the shares.
It’s then that David remembers why he recognizes the name—amongst other things, X-Gen is a giant defense contractor. He makes a face and closes the browser window.
He lays awake for a long time, trying to process all this new information: that apparently his family founded a morally dubious corporation that’s made them billionaires, and that he’s about to meet his grandmother, an activity his father presented with as much enthusiasm as you might have for a trip to the dentist. It’s almost too much to wrap his head around.
And then, just as he’s drifting off to sleep, David realizes one more thing: this weekend will be the longest stretch of uninterrupted time that he’s ever spent with his father.
*
On Friday, David is the first to make it down to the car, which is idling at the curb in front of their building. Louis smiles as he takes his bag, his eyebrows raised; Louis’s mind is always a little bit amused, but right now, he seems extra amused.
“You ready for this?” he says. “Because I gotta say, you do not look thrilled for a kid currently skipping school.”
“Have you met these people before?” David asks.
“Your relatives?” Louis laughs. “No—thankfully I get to stay in the car.” He opens the door to the backseat and gestures for David to climb in before he adds, “But I have driven your father up there plenty of times. I pick up on the general vibe.”
David knows that Louis means this literally—that’s his mutation—but it’s the prior sentence that catches his attention.
“Do you…” He glances up at their building. “Does my father visit them a lot?”
Louis shrugs. “I wouldn’t say ‘a lot.’ But occasionally, sure.”
David frowns. “Has he visited them since I moved in here?”
Now Louis is looking at him in confusion. “Yes…every couple of months,” he says slowly.
He’s still holding the door open, with David’s bag in his other hand, and there’s just the lightest twinge of impatience blossoming on the surface of his mind.
“Uh, thanks,” David says, and he slides into the backseat.
His father comes down a few minutes later, deftly transferring from his wheelchair to the car. He gives David a bright smile as Louis closes the door behind him and sets to work stowing the chair.
“Well,” he says. “This is exciting, isn’t it? A little road trip.”
David gives him a look. “I don’t think an hour’s drive counts as a road trip, Dad.”
Dad chuckles. “Fair enough. Still—”
He cuts off at the sound of his phone vibrating, which he pulls from his blazer pocket.
“Apologies,” he says, glancing at David before looking at his phone. “Give me a moment.”
Of course ‘a moment’ stretches way beyond that. Once they start driving, David rests his head against the window and watches the street numbers climb higher and higher, and then, when they aren’t numbered anymore, he tries to take in all the unfamiliar street names.
This morning, his father had said he wouldn’t be working at all this weekend—and even though David should have known it was more wishful thinking than an actual promise, it’s still frustrating. But as he watches his father typing yet another email, he makes a split-second decision and decides to actually say something about it.
“I thought you gave Scott the weekend off,” he says.
It’s roundabout, but from the expression on his father’s face—almost guilty, like he’s been caught doing something wrong—it’s obvious that he’s picking up on the implication.
“I did,” Dad says. “And yes, that applies to me, too. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” David says quickly.
“No, no. It’s not.” Dad tucks his phone back in the interior pocket of his blazer. “It wasn’t urgent—thanks for holding me to it.”
David’s curiosity gets the better of him, and he asks, “What was it about, then?”
“Oh, book tour details,” Dad says, waving a hand. He cocks his head slightly and adds, “Did I tell you that I’ll be traveling a fair bit this summer?”
David stares at him. “I didn’t even know your new book was coming out this summer.”
His father raises his eyebrows, looking slightly confused. “I must have mentioned that.”
David shakes his head, and his father bites his lip and says, “I’m sorry, David.”
David isn’t sure what to say, so he turns to look out the window again. It’s starting to look less and less like a city, with small detached houses and longer stretches of trees.
“You know, my parents traveled a lot,” his father says suddenly. “When I was growing up.”
David looks back at him. He’s staring straight ahead, frowning slightly, and then he turns to meet David’s gaze.
“They never told me when they were leaving or when they were coming back,” he continues. “So at a certain point, I stopped trying to keep track of where they were.” He lets out a little laugh. “To be honest, it was usually better when they weren’t there.”
David frowns. “What do you mean?”
Dad watches him for a moment, biting his lip. “David, I know we don’t…talk all that often,” he says slowly. “But whatever happens this weekend…” He trails off and shakes his head, laughing softly. “I’m making it sound like we’re headed off to be murdered, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, a little bit,” David says.
His father smiles. “It’s not as bad as all that. But just, if you need to—” He taps his temple with two fingers. “Don’t hesitate, OK?”
There are trees everywhere now, thickly lining the road, and David watches them whip past as his father’s words echo through his skull. He’s mostly just confused—Louis said his father visited his family regularly, and he’s presumably seen them multiple times since David’s come to live with him, but this is the first that David is even hearing about them, let alone being brought along.
And now his father is giving a foreboding speech, and it’s mysterious enough that David is half-tempted to dig through his thoughts—but in a year and a half of living with him, David has never gone past the surface of his father’s mind. He has projected at him occasionally, particularly if they’re in a crowded, noisy place, but mostly, he tries to avoid it—he doesn’t want to intrude.
Maybe things would be different if his father had been a part of his life when he was little, or if David had never heard of him before they met. But he can admit to himself that deep down, he still sort of thinks of him as Charles Xavier, The World’s Most Famous Telepath, that larger-than-life figure he first saw on television five years ago. He owns all of his father’s books now, and all of them are heavily highlighted.
Apparently there will be a new one out soon—and apparently, his father will be gone all summer, criss-crossing the country to promote it.
David glances over at him; he’s looking out the window on his side, his lips pressed together in a small frown. He stares at him for a long moment, before he actively forces himself to turn away.
They must be getting fairly close now—the roads have turned narrower and windier, and the houses that are visible are pretty posh, though David suspects the truly posh ones are behind the big formal gates they’ve been passing for the last ten minutes.
And then they pull up to a very grand gate, and Louis is rolling down his window to say something into an intercom.
“Well,” Dad says.
David waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t say anything else.
Once the gates open, they wind along a ridiculously long drive lined with tall, shady trees and perfectly tended grass until eventually, a house comes into view—though “house” doesn’t feel like the right word. David’s mouth falls open slightly.
“You grew up in a castle?” he says.
Dad snorts. “You know, if you said that in front of my mother, she’d remind you she actually did grow up in a castle.”
David stares at him, and after a beat, he realizes that he’s not joking.
After they pull into a circular drive and come to a stop, his father takes a deep breath and says, “Once more unto the breach.” He smiles at David and adds, “I suppose this is actually your first time unto the breach.”
David swallows, and then he opens the car door and steps out onto the gravel.
*
It doesn’t take long for David to decide that his grandmother is kind of terrifying.
They’re greeted at the front door by a butler, who leads them through the foyer and down a long hallway, both of which are as ridiculously fancy as the exterior of the house. To be fair, David doesn’t really take in a lot of details—he’s mostly staring at the back of his father’s head.
They wind up on a sprawling verandah that looks out over a massive stretch of manicured lawn, a lake glinting in the distance. A blond woman is seated at a table on the verandah, watching them approach with cool interest; David quickly brushes across the surface of her mind and picks up what feels like surprise, even though there isn’t even a hint of it on her face.
“Charles,” she says, raising one eyebrow. “I half expected you to arrive alone.”
Dad gives her a flat look as he wheels up to the table. She stands and leans down slightly, so he can stretch up to kiss her cheek.
When she straightens, his father turns towards him and says, “I promised you your grandson, so…” He gestures. “This is my son, David.”
“David,” she says, smiling slightly. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
There’s something about the way she says “finally” that seems kind of loaded, but once again, her expression gives nothing away.
“Uh,” he says. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
His grandmother takes a step towards him and places her hands on his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. “You know, you look just like Charles did at that age.”
David glances at his father over her shoulder, and then back at her. They look similar, too—she’s got the same bright blue eyes, anyway, though somehow, hers look a little colder than Dad’s.
She pulls him into a sort of stiff hug, and then she steps back and gestures to the table, which has full place settings—including multiple forks.
“Sit,” she says. “You’re just in time for lunch.”
They have Elena at home, of course, but here, there’s a whole army of servants, dressed in matching uniforms and moving around as quietly as possible. Learning to back off and let Elena do things has been weird enough to get used to, but David isn’t sure he could ever get used to this. As various people pass through, he steals their names from their minds: a woman named Margaret brings him his Coke, and his father and grandmother their respective cocktails.
He’s never seen his father drink at one in the afternoon—and he’s never seen him drink so quickly, either.
He sips his Coke as he watches his father and grandmother make polite but stilted conversation: about the drive from the city (pleasant, not much traffic), about his grandmother’s trip back to America this past week (she’d been in Italy), and about the current location of Dad’s stepfather (Dubai, his grandmother believes, or was it Abu Dhabi, she can’t actually remember, and David thinks about X-Gen Industries again, which he’d managed to forget about for the past two days).
And then, when they’re about halfway through their salads, she turns her attention to David.
“Now then,” she says. “What about my grandson?”
Dad looks apprehensive. “What about him?”
“That’s the purpose of this weekend, isn’t it?” she says, spreading her hands in a sort of encompassing gesture. “For us to get to know each other.”
Dad makes eye contact with him, and then he projects, You don’t have to talk about anything that makes you uncomfortable, OK?
David nearly jumps at his father’s voice inside his head. He glances at his grandmother—he thinks he's covered his surprise well enough—and then back at his father, nodding slightly.
“What would you like to know?” he asks her.
His grandmother gives him a speculative look over her drink. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, David?”
David blinks. There’s something in her expression that makes him kind of uneasy. He skims over the surface of her mind, but there actually isn’t much to read there, which is a little strange.
You often have to go deeper, Dad projects. She’s not particularly…emotive.
David looks at him and sends over a waft of gratitude, and his father gives him a small, encouraging smile. But when he looks back at his grandmother, she’s glancing back and forth between the two of them, her eyes narrowed slightly.
“I, uh,” he says quickly. “I’m not sure what you want to know? I’m in the ninth grade.”
“Yes—at Dalton, Charles tells me.” She glances at his father. “We sent Charles back to England for school. I was…interested to hear he wasn’t doing the same with you.”
David frowns. He didn’t even realize that was an option.
Dad is frowning, too. “I wasn’t just going to leave him an ocean away.”
“Hmmm,” his grandmother says. She gestures at one of the servants—Antonio, David takes from his mind—and holds up her empty glass.
Antonio nods, and then he gestures at Dad and says, “Sir, would you like another?”
“God, yes,” his father says, giving him a sort of rueful smile. “Thank you.”
After Antonio retreats, his grandmother continues, “You were living in England before.”
David nods. “And Paris.” He fiddles with his salad fork as he adds, “We moved a lot.”
“Yes,” his grandmother says slowly. “Why was that, exactly?”
David isn’t sure why, but there’s something in the way she’s asking questions that makes it feel like she already knows the answers. He’s about to try and slip a bit deeper in her mind, but then he decides to try something he’s never attempted before: rather than projecting full phrases, he thrusts his entire bundle of thoughts in his father’s direction.
Dad raises his eyebrows, and then he sends back a sense of agreement. She does—she did a full investigation when I gave her your mother’s name. She just enjoys making people feel caught off-guard.
That’s… David frowns. Why?
Dad takes a bite of his salad; he really is good at using his powers without giving anything away.
There were a few reasons I didn’t want to bring you up here, he sends back. This is one of them.
David stares at his plate for a moment, trying to make sense of this—and then he realizes he never actually answered his grandmother’s question.
“Uh, for work,” he says, glancing back at her. “We moved because of my mother’s job, I mean.”
She doesn’t respond immediately, leaving an uncomfortable silence. Antonio appears then with their fresh drinks, and she takes a long sip of hers as she watches David over the rim of the glass.
After she finally places her drink on the table, she says, “You know, David, when your father was a boy, he would sometimes have telepathic conversations in mixed company. With his stepsister, with the servants.”
“Mother,” Dad says, a little bit of warning in his tone.
“We tolerated it, at first,” she continues, totally ignoring him. “But eventually, we made it quite clear that kind of behavior was inappropriate. It seems—” And now she looks at his father, her lips pinching into a frown. “—that’s a lesson that your father has apparently forgotten.”
Dad is watching his mother, eyes narrowed. The ironic thing is they almost never communicate telepathically, in “mixed company” or otherwise. He’s not about to tell his grandmother that, though; at this point, he doesn’t want to tell her anything else.
Margaret appears to collect their salad plates, and his grandmother waits until she’s retreated before she says, “I think I’ve made myself clear, but if I haven’t, ask your father about it.”
Dad sighs. “I did hope we’d have at least one meal where you didn’t do this, Mother.”
“Do what?” his grandmother says innocently.
Dad gives her a look as he takes a sip of his drink.
David glances from his father to his grandmother and back again, trying to figure out what to say, but then a new servant—Sam—appears with the main course, placing plates of what looks like salmon in front of each of them.
“Ah.” His grandmother smiles slightly. “Lovely.” She turns to David as she picks up her knife and says, “Now David, why don’t you tell me about the first thirteen years of your life?”
*
By the time they finally finish lunch, David feels like he’s just taken an exam for a class he’s never attended.
“Well then,” Dad says once they’re back inside. “I assume that was…illustrative.”
“That was…” David shakes his head.
“I will say that it’s a relief that my stepfather isn’t here,” Dad says. “Makes things significantly easier, if you can believe it.”
“Easier?” David repeats, incredulous. “I don’t understand how—”
He cuts off, suddenly paranoid, and glances over his shoulder to make sure his grandmother isn’t actually standing behind them. Dad lets out a little laugh.
“She’s headed towards the gardens,” he says. “Most likely on her way to berate the gardeners…” His eyebrows draw together slightly. “You don’t do spot checks?”
David frowns. “What’s a spot check?”
Now his father’s eyebrows shoot up, and he says, “Oh!”
And then the answer comes telepathically: both the concept and the way the technique feels to perform, seamlessly woven together in a way that you could never actually articulate out loud. It’s apparently an ultra-quick method to locate people without actually expending telepathic focus—his father shows him how it feels to do it in a place like this, with a few dozen minds, or in their neighborhood at home, with many thousands.
“Try it yourself,” Dad suggests. “Why don’t you find one of the people who served us lunch?”
David nods and closes his eyes. He follows his father’s instructions, spreading a sort of telepathic netting over the whole house. He sweeps up all the minds within the netting, holding them lightly, and then he focuses and quickly narrows down to Margaret’s. She’s back out on the verandah, laughing with Sam as they clean up the remains of the meal.
“That’s brilliant,” David says, opening his eyes. “It’s…deceptively simple?”
Dad grins. “The more you do it, the faster it gets—eventually it’ll only take a second or two.”
David thinks about the shape of the netting and says, “I don’t think it would have occurred to me to do it that way.”
Dad’s smile fades a little, and after a moment, he says, “I’m sorry I didn’t show you sooner.”
David looks down at his shoes. “That’s OK.”
They’re both silent for a few seconds, and then his father claps his hands together and says, “Shall we figure out what they did with our bags?”
They learn that his father’s things have been brought to the room on the ground floor that he usually stays in—in “the west wing,” because of course this house has wings. David expects he’ll be nearby, but then they’re told that he’s been put in Dad’s childhood bedroom, at “Mrs. Xavier’s suggestion.”
David frowns as he glances over at his father. “Don’t you want to be in your own room?”
Dad looks a little resigned as he gestures to his wheelchair. “That’s upstairs, and I stay on the ground floor these days,” he says, and then he makes a face as he adds, “Not that I ever stay here overnight—it’s been years.”
David’s eyes widen. “They couldn’t put in a lift?” he says, feeling indignant. “Or one of those…” He tries to retrieve the word as he gestures upwards diagonally. “…stair thingies?”
Dad chuckles. “They’re actually called stair lifts, and no, I—” He shakes his head. “It’s honestly not worth it. I really try not to spend much time here. And they did renovate the ensuite in the room I’m staying in, so…” He shrugs.
David opens his mouth to respond, but his father reaches out and pats his arm.
“Why don’t you head up there and get settled?” he suggests. “You’ll probably want to gather your strength before round two at dinner.” He smiles ruefully and adds, “I know I do.”
David wants to argue, but there’s something in his father’s expression that makes him hold back, so he only nods. He glances around and says, “Should I find someone to show me, or…?”
“Ah.” The corners of his father’s lips curve upward. “I can’t physically take you there, but…”
A blueprint of the house drops into David’s mind—not just a map of the rooms, but something far more layered than that, three-dimensional and shaped by his father’s memories. It points him up the stairs and down a long hallway, almost to the very end, but the directions come with what must be his father’s feelings about returning to his bedroom when he was a boy, relief and comfort and a sense of possession, for the one space in the house that was truly his.
David stares at him. “How did you do that?”
“That’s a longer lesson,” Dad says, smiling. “But I can teach you that one, too.”
David climbs the stairs and turns down the long hallway. When he reaches what he’s certain is the correct door, he feels a strange sensation in the back of his mind, almost like a key turning a lock.
His father’s former bedroom is enormous—though he’s pretty sure every room in this house is enormous—and on first glance, David assumes they’ve redecorated since his father lived here, because it doesn’t really look like a child’s room, or a teenager’s.
But as he steps inside and walks around, he starts to amend his initial assumptions. There are a lot of science books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves by the fireplace, and there are also some fiction series he remembers reading himself a few years ago—he spots half a row of Hardy Boys mysteries, and a whole stretch of the Mutant Squad books, which must have just been coming out when his father was a kid.
There are more books on the desk by the windows, as well as a delicate double helix that spins when he touches it. He slowly pulls open the largest drawer: it’s full of notebooks and papers. He pulls out a few of them, laying them flat on the surface of the desk. They’re all labeled, in careful child’s handwriting: there’s “Charles Francis Xavier” and “1984” on one, and, in neater script, “C. F. Xavier” and “1986” on another.
He places his hand flat on the closest notebook, trying to decide if he should open it. It seems odd that there are only notebooks from his father’s early childhood, but then he remembers his grandmother saying they sent him to England for school, which has to mean boarding school. It’s probably another reason why the room only feels half lived in, with no toys or evidence of hobbies or posters on the walls—that and the fact that his father hasn’t even been able to come up here for twenty years.
He makes a noise of disgust and shoves the notebooks back in the drawer. It doesn’t feel right to go through his father’s things when he can’t even do that himself.
David kicks off his shoes and climbs up onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to grow up in this house, being a little boy going to sleep every night in this massive bed—but then, if you’d asked him two years ago to imagine himself living in a penthouse overlooking Central Park with a father he’d never spoken to before, he’d probably have checked to see if you’d lost your mind.
Growing up in this house with his grandmother—and Dad’s stepfather, who’s apparently worse somehow, though David doesn’t see how that’s possible, not after the weird psychological games all through lunch. She had this way of making even the most innocent-seeming statements feel like judgements, and the outright judgmental statements just made him feel…small.
He remembers his father, sighing into his drink, as if all of this was something he was extremely used to.
But then he remembers his father smiling softly as they communicated telepathically across the table—more than just simple sentence projection, but actually brushing up against the full expanse of his father’s powers. Part of him doesn’t even care that his grandmother scolded them for it; it felt like a secret thing that he and his father were sharing, mind to mind.
He closes his eyes and carefully spreads the netting over the house again, capturing every single mind, and then, for just a second, he narrows his focus to his father.
*
When David wakes up the next morning, he lays in bed for a long while, thinking back over the strangeness of yesterday: arriving at this house and meeting his grandmother, the lunch and then the dinner, his father’s weariness and his grandmother’s passive aggressive jabs and the kind of worrying amount of wine they both drank last night.
He can’t believe they’re going to do it all over again today.
He’s about to get up and take a shower when he feels a gentle knock against the surface of his thoughts. He opens up his mind, and his father’s warm greeting floods in.
There’s breakfast if you want it, Dad projects. Or I can buy you some time and tell her because you’re a teenager, you’ll be asleep until noon.
David laughs out loud, and sends back his amusement along with, What’s for breakfast?
It’s another warm spring day, and his father and grandmother are back out on the verandah, talking in low voices as they sip tea. They both give him smiles as he approaches, though his father’s is a whole lot friendlier, and accompanied by a little telepathic pulse of reassurance.
“David,” his grandmother says, nodding at him as he sits down. “I trust you slept well?”
He stares at her. He wants to say something about his father’s old room and her decision to put him there—but then he catches a glimpse of his father out of the corner of his eye, and he remembers the look on his face as he asked David to drop the subject yesterday. He swallows.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”
His grandmother watches him evenly over the rim of her teacup, one perfect nail tapping against the side.
“Well,” his father says, clasping his hands together. “Shall we get you some breakfast?”
David is about halfway through his omelet when his father trails off in the middle of a sentence, and then he smiles.
Are you all right? David projects, frowning.
Very all right, his father sends back, along with a buzzy sense of excitement. You’ll see in just a moment.
“Just a moment” is about five minutes later, when Aunt Raven appears on the verandah, grinning broadly, her arms outstretched.
David pushes back his chair and runs to hug her. She lifts him off the ground slightly, laughing, and when they pull apart, she shakes her head and says, “God, you look even more like Charles than last time.”
“What are you doing here?” David says.
“I heard there was a family reunion,” Aunt Raven says, crossing around the table towards Dad. “Didn’t want to miss out.”
She leans down to hug him, and they stay that way for a long time, until David wonders if they’re actually having a telepathic conversation, too. He returns to his seat and glances over at his grandmother, who’s watching them with a tight frown on her face.
And then Aunt Raven straightens and turns to her stepmother, who stands and gives her the same perfunctory hug that David got yesterday.
“Raven,” his grandmother says cooly. “We weren’t expecting you until Tuesday.”
“You weren’t,” Aunt Raven says breezily, taking the free seat next to Dad and slouching a little, crossing her legs with her ankle resting on her opposite knee. “But when Charles told me about your fun plans for this weekend, I moved up my flight.”
His grandmother turns an accusatory glare on Dad. “Did you know about this?”
Dad raises his hands in surrender. “Only a few minutes before you did.”
“Look, Sharon, I know you don’t like surprises,” Aunt Raven says, and then she puts on a wide-eyed, earnest expression as she continues, “Are you really going to deny me a little extra time with my one and only nephew?”
His grandmother stares at her for a long, tense moment, and then her mouth flattens into a thin line and she says, “I’ll see if they can prepare your room.”
Aunt Raven waves a hand. “Or I can sleep in one of the literally dozens of other bedrooms here.” She leans forward, putting both feet on the ground, and points to David’s omelet. “Can I get one of those? I’ve been on an airplane for the past fourteen hours—” She turns to Dad. “Or an egg sandwich? Could they make me an egg sandwich?”
Dad laughs. “I’m pretty sure they can make you an egg sandwich.”
Aunt Raven remains the coolest person David’s ever met: she’s dressed in a sleek white jumpsuit, which sort of makes her look like she’s just off a fourteen-hour flight from outer space, or maybe from the future. As she eats her egg sandwich and somehow manages to avoid spilling hot sauce on her outfit, she tells them about the most recent game she’s been working on—David doesn’t know exactly what her job is, but it’s something to do with video games and robotics and all the different shapes her body can take.
“So,” Aunt Raven says as Margaret quietly sweeps through, collecting their empty plates. “I am in desperate need of a shower, but after that, what are everyone’s plans for the day?”
His father opens his mouth to respond, but his grandmother is quicker.
“Why don’t you and Charles catch up for a bit?” she says smoothly. She looks at David as she continues, “I’d like a little one-on-one time with my grandson. Perhaps we could…” She makes a sweeping gesture towards the lawn. “Go for a walk around the grounds.”
David tries not to react as he projects to his father, Is she going to murder me in the woods?
Dad keeps an impressively straight face even as he sends back the sensation of laughter. Oh no, don’t worry—she wouldn’t murder her one and only heir. He pauses and adds, Well, not somewhere as messy as the woods, anyway.
He knows his father is teasing, but it’s not particularly reassuring. He looks at his grandmother and says, “All right. I just need to, um…” He glances down. “Change my shoes.”
Aunt Raven stands and jerks her head towards the house. “C’mon, I’ll head inside with you.”
Aunt Raven waits until they’re all the way back to the foyer before she leans in and says, “OK, on a scale from one to ‘one more cutting remark and you’ll walk into the sea,’ how bad has it been so far?”
David snorts. “Not great, but I’m still on dry land.” He thinks about the past day and shakes his head. “I don’t know, I feel like Dad’s been trying to protect me from the worst of it.”
Aunt Raven looks a little sad at that, and she says, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“You don’t seem intimidated by her, though,” David says.
Aunt Raven laughs. “Trust me: I am. We all are. We handle it in different ways—mine is just a little more aggressive than your father’s.” She wrinkles her nose and adds, “Based on past results, I don’t think either of our ways are super effective.”
David frowns, and then he glances at the staircase. “I should go put on my trainers, I guess.”
“Look, we’ve all made it this far,” Aunt Raven says, giving him a sort of half smile. “And if you need backup—” She taps her temple. “Call me.”
He nods. “That’s what Dad said.”
“Oh, definitely call him first,” Aunt Raven says. “He’s the best person in the world to have in your corner.”
David finds himself flushing at that, though he’s not sure why. Before this weekend, he’s not sure he ever would have described his father as “in his corner”—but that assumption feels all wrong now. He’s starting to feel like there have been things he’s been misunderstanding for ages.
“I’ve got to see where they put my bags, and then I seriously need to take a shower,” Aunt Raven says. She places her hands on his shoulders and puts on a mock-serious expression. “Good luck out there—and remember, don’t look her directly in the eyes. She sees that as an act of aggression.”
“Wait,” David says. “You’re kidding, right?”
Aunt Raven laughs and turns to head down the hallway, calling back over her shoulder, “Only sort of!”
*
For the first fifteen minutes of their walk, David can almost pretend that he has a normal, kindly sort of grandmother: they make polite conversation about school, and about what David does for fun, an admittedly pretty short list that starts and ends with reading books.
(All right, “kindly” is probably overstating it, but at least her questions feel fairly neutral.)
The gardens, which are in full springtime bloom, are elaborate—fifteen minutes doesn’t even take them all the way through. It’s yet another thing about this house that seems kind of silly, considering the fact that his grandmother and her husband are traveling all the time; the only people who probably get to enjoy them on a regular basis are the gardeners.
And then, when they finally reach what seems to be the end, his grandmother says, “Why don’t we head down towards the lake?”
David remembers Aunt Raven using the phrase “walk into the sea,” and he has to work hard to keep his expression even as he says, “Yeah, all right.”
The surface of his grandmother’s mind is still strangely empty, so David presses in a little deeper as he trails her across the lawn. Not too deep—he’d really have to concentrate if he wanted to do that without getting caught. He wonders if his father has any tricks for that, or if he could at least help him practice doing it more smoothly.
In a way, a non-emotive mind is easier to navigate than a person who gets swept up by every passing feeling: there’s nothing to pull him in one direction or another, and no one sensation overpowering everything else. But that’s also what makes it tricky, because it’s hard to know where to start; as he tip-toes up to the center of his grandmother’s memories, he pauses, not sure what he’s even looking for.
“You know, David,” his grandmother says suddenly. “I have been wondering.”
David nearly jumps at the sound of her voice, pulling back to the surface of her mind as unobtrusively as he can manage.
“Yes?” he says, willing his heartbeat to slow down.
She’s not looking at him—her gaze is fixed on the lake, only a few dozen yards away now.
“Your mother,” she says. “What did she tell you about your father?”
David frowns, immediately regretting that he pulled back to the surface of her mind. “What do you mean?”
Now she does look at him, and the expression on her face suggests she thinks he’s very dense.
“It’s a simple question,” she says. “I’m not sure how to make it any clearer.”
“Right.” David pauses, debating the wisdom of lying to her, but he decides it’s not worth it. He takes a deep breath and says, “She never told me anything about him.”
His grandmother’s expression doesn’t change—she’s probably very good at poker. After a moment, she says, “Don’t you find it…interesting that she would leave you in the care of the father that you never knew about?”
Before David can stop himself, he says, “Well, I did know about him.”
She raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I…” He looks down at the grass. “I knew about him from her thoughts.”
“Ah,” his grandmother says. “Of course.”
They’ve reached the shore of the lake, which is small but beautiful, lined with trees and glistening in the sun. Like the gardens for no one, he can’t help but think how ridiculous it is that this is on someone’s private property.
His grandmother turns back towards the water, her surface emotions dominated by a faint but steadily simmering disapproval.
“Charles was always such a nosy little boy,” she says eventually. After a pause, she adds, “And it seems that it’s hereditary.”
There’s something in her tone that makes David feel suddenly cold. She’s still not looking at him, and now, he wants to keep it that way; he’s half-tempted to turn and head back towards the house, but he knows that no good could come of that.
“I didn’t…” He trails off, not sure what to say. “I was just curious.”
“Of course you were,” his grandmother says. She looks back at him again, something accusatory in her expression. “And when you learned who he was, you didn’t feel compelled to contact him?”
David shakes his head. “I only knew his name. It wasn’t until…”
He cuts himself off, biting his lip. He doesn’t want to tell his grandmother about seeing his father on television: that’s his special memory, and his alone. But her eyes narrow suspiciously, and for one wild moment, David wonders if she’s actually a telepath, too.
“…until I saw him on television, giving an interview,” he finishes. “I’d only known his name, but he was a telepath like me, and—”
“On television,” his grandmother repeats, disdain swirling on the surface of her mind. After a long pause, she continues, “You know, I never imagined that Charles would grow up to be a….celebrity.” She manages to make the word sound like an insult, but then she adds in an even more disdainful tone, “But certainly not for his telepathy.”
A moment ago, David felt cold; now he feels warm as his anger rises, heat spreading across his cheeks and up the back of his neck. He can’t tell if she’s more unhappy with the telepathic part or the celebrity part—but her overall displeasure with her son is clear as day.
“He does really important work,” David says, raising his voice slightly. “For mutants in general, but for telepaths especially.”
His grandmother lets out a little laugh. “I see Charles has acquired yet another admirer.”
This makes David even angrier. “He’s my father,” he snaps back. “Unlike you, I don’t hate him on principle.”
Her expression darkens, and for the first time since they arrived, she’s actually projecting an emotion: she’s angry, too.
“What did you just say?” she says slowly, enunciating each word.
When David was little, he’d sometimes get upset and blast out his feelings involuntarily, hitting whoever was in close range. His mother eventually learned to shield most of it, but David still practiced hard to keep his pain or confusion or anger inside. He always pressed his lips together, like that would somehow keep his thoughts from leaking out.
He presses his lips together now, and his grandmother’s anger sharpens.
David? his father projects with a light hint of alarm. Is everything OK down there?
David sends the sensation of waving him off. He stares at his grandmother for another long moment, and then he makes a split-second decision—and he turns and breaks into a run.
“David?” she calls out, sounding confused, and then outraged as she repeats: “David!”
He runs as fast as he can, all the way up to the house, the lawn a blinding flash of green beneath his feet. He crosses the verandah and bursts through the back door, sprinting down the long hallway towards the front of the house, where he nearly knocks over a maid dusting in the foyer. He projects an apology at her as he climbs the stairs two at a time. When he finally reaches his father’s childhood bedroom, he slams the door behind him.
He throws himself onto the bed, face-down, and tries not to think about how his grandmother is probably going to have him killed—if not within the next hour, then at least before they’re scheduled to leave tomorrow morning.
He remembers the night he first saw his father on television, talking so enthusiastically about mutation, but specifically, about telepathy—the way he made it sound miraculous, like being a telepath was the greatest gift a person could receive. It was the first time that David had ever even thought of his powers as something good, let alone something miraculous; it was as if his universe had suddenly expanded exponentially.
There’s a knock on the door, and in a panic, he zeroes in on the mind of the knocker.
“It’s just me,” Aunt Raven says, opening the door and then shutting it behind her.
David doesn’t move, still face-down against the duvet, but he can feel the edge of the mattress dip as Aunt Raven sits. She pats him lightly on the ankle.
“Your father sent me up here,” she says. “Because…you know.”
David turns his head to look at her. Now he feels even worse—he didn’t mean to create that physical barrier his father couldn’t cross.
“I’m sorry,” he says, even though she’s not the one he needs to apologize to.
Aunt Raven gives him a half-smile. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Charles deeply understands the desire to literally run away from Sharon and lock yourself in your room.” She cocks her head slightly. “So do you want to talk about whatever had you high-tailing it across the lawn?”
David stares at her for a moment, and then he presses his face back to the duvet, getting out a muffled, “No.”
Aunt Raven is silent for a moment, and then she says, “OK, suit yourself. But if you change your mind….”
He makes a noise of affirmation, and then he feels the mattress lift as she stands. She gives his ankle one final pat.
“I think you’re officially in the club now,” she says. “We’ll mail you your member jacket.”
As she shuts the door behind her, David presses his face deeper into the duvet, wondering if anyone would notice if he just stayed in this room until it’s finally time to go home.
*
David fully intends to just lay in bed for the rest of the afternoon, but doing nothing is so boring that he doesn’t even make it half an hour.
He finds himself browsing his father’s childhood bookshelves again, first running his fingers over the nice leather-bound books, then the battered, curling spines of the paperbacks. He bends to examine the row of Mutant Squad books—the first twenty in the series, lined up sequentially.
He had a few favorites when he was little, but #6, The Troublesome Teleporter, was probably the one he re-read the most. He rests his hand on his father’s copy for a moment, wondering if it was also Dad’s favorite: it looks a little more worn than the others. He pulls it from the shelf.
On the first page, there’s another “C. F. Xavier” in big, loopy cursive; he bets he’d find the same signature in every one of these books. He sits in the closest armchair and turns to the first chapter, reading the opening paragraph: he was probably seven or eight when he last read this, but the words are so familiar that it’s a little startling. He reads the next paragraph, then the next.
All of David’s Mutant Squad books were used, some copies in much better shape than others; Mum would take him to the English-language bookstore near their flat in Paris, and if they spotted one he hadn’t read in the bargain bin, she’d buy it for him. They were still publishing new installments of the series then, but the really good ones were the first two or three dozen—the books that featured the original crew of kids, plus Mr. Oswald.
He wonders if Dad also liked The Troublesome Teleporter because it had more of Mr. Oswald than most of the other books. It had always annoyed him a bit, that the only telepath in the entire series was the old guy—he’d wanted to see a telepathic kid solve mysteries, but all the members of the Mutant Squad had much cooler, overtly physical powers, like flying, or shooting fireballs from their palms. Mr. Oswald was definitely not a character you were supposed to relate to, and yet David had often found himself skipping through during re-reads to his scenes specifically.
Even though he’s been way too old for these books for years, when he finishes the first chapter, David doesn’t hesitate before turning to the next one.
He’s about halfway through and so deeply engrossed in the story that when his father softly knocks against his mind, he literally jumps, the book slipping onto his lap.
Your aunt and I are having lunch in the kitchen, if you’re hungry, his father projects. Before David can ask, he adds, I’d say now’s your best moment to leave your room—your grandmother’s gone out for a bit.
David feels a little sheepish as he heads down to the kitchen: they’re only here for two days, and he’s literally been hiding for hours. He’s pretty sure that Dad and Aunt Raven get it, but still.
There are multiple kitchens on his father’s mental map, but he senses their minds in the smaller one—the big one appears to be enormous, like something out of a restaurant. Dad and Aunt Raven are sitting at the table eating what looks like a pasta salad; they’re also about halfway through a bottle of white wine, which might be why they’re laughing so hard right now.
(He’s not sure how to feel about this. It’s not like he regularly eats lunch with his father, but David is pretty sure he doesn’t drink so much in the middle of a normal day.)
His father catches sight of him, his grin softening to a gentle smile. “David—how are you feeling?”
“Uh.” David rubs his neck as he eyes their bowls of pasta. “Hungry.”
He’s pointed to a large container in the refrigerator, so he helps himself to a bowl and takes the chair next to his father, shoving a huge spoonful into his mouth at once.
“You want some wine, too?” Aunt Raven says, holding up her glass and waving it a little.
“Raven,” Dad says, his tone admonishing. “He’s fifteen.”
“Oh, silly me,” Aunt Raven says, smacking her forehead lightly. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fifteen-year-old drink before.”
Her tone is lightly sarcastic, and from the flat look Dad is giving her, David can guess that she’s referring to him. He doesn’t actually want a glass of wine—he’s had sips of alcohol before, but never a full drink. He knows a lot of his classmates drink regularly, at parties they throw in their absent parents’ flats or their beach houses in the Hamptons; he doesn’t even need to read their minds to know about this, because they brag about it, loudly.
“So David,” Aunt Raven says, refilling her glass and Dad’s. “How have you spent the rest of your morning?” She puts the bottle down and leans in slightly as she gives him a sly smile. “Carefully plotting how to make Sharon’s murder look like an accident, or…?”
Dad snorts into his wine glass, and David can’t suppress his smile.
“Actually,” he says, turning to his father. “I was reading one of your Mutant Squad books.”
Dad lights up. “Oh! I didn’t know those were still up there.” He cocks his head slightly. “Had you read them before?”
David nods. “It was my favorite series, when I was little.”
His father is smiling broadly now, and radiating warmth from the surface of his mind. “Mine too.” He glances at his sister. “Even Raven enjoyed them, and she hated reading books.”
Aunt Raven rolls her eyes. “Yes, it was truly a struggle for someone as dim-witted as me, but I somehow managed to piece together whole sentences when I—”
“Oh, come on,” Dad cuts in. “I didn’t say you were bad at reading. You just didn’t enjoy it.”
“Yeah, because I wasn’t a total nerd,” Aunt Raven says. She points at Dad and says, “Charles somehow made reading those books even nerdier, because he was obsessed with that old guy—”
“Mr. Oswald,” David says, glancing at his father as his cheeks heat up. “He’s um…” He swallows and says quietly, “He’s also my favorite.”
His father is pressing his lips together, and though his expression a little difficult to read, his mind is crystal-clear: that radiating warmth grows more acute, buffeted by something sturdy that’s hard to articulate, sort of like a shared understanding. David picks up the sensation and sends it back, until it loops between them. His father beams at him.
“I’m sorry, David,” Aunt Raven says, her tone gently teasing. “It’s obviously not your fault that you inherited the total nerd gene from Charles.”
“Don’t listen to her,” his father says in a stage-whisper. “She’s too dim-witted to understand that Mr. Oswald was by far the most important part of the Mutant Squad.”
David gets a second helping of pasta salad as Dad and Aunt Raven polish off the wine, and they fold him into their playful ribbing over the next hour, trying to pull him onto their side of any given argument, but never ganging up on him. The first two times he met Aunt Raven, he saw a little bit of this dynamic, but it was nothing like this; he wonders if it has something to do with them being back in their childhood home.
They’re all laughing over the punchline of a joke Aunt Raven just told when his father suddenly quiets, frowning slightly.
“Party’s over, I’m afraid,” he says. “She’s headed home.”
David stares at him. “Were you tracking her this whole time?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘tracking,’ precisely,” Dad says slowly. “It’s more…well, it’s hard to explain with words.” He gives David a small smile. “I can show you that one, too.”
David smiles back. “Thanks.”
“You probably have about ten minutes,” Dad continues. “If you want to go back to…” He gestures vaguely upwards.
David looks back and forth between them. “It’s really OK if I hide in my room?”
Aunt Raven laughs. “Another thing you inherited from Charles—he used to hide from Sharon all the time.”
“Ahem,” his father says, raising his chin. “I wouldn’t call it ‘hiding.’ ‘Avoidance,’ perhaps.”
“Look, no judgment.” Aunt Raven holds up her hands in mock-surrender. “That’s a pretty logical reaction to her, all things considered.”
“Anyway,” Dad says, turning back to David. “You have permission to be…” He glances at Aunt Raven. “Avoidant until dinner.”
David is suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to hug his father, so he leans over and wraps his arms around his shoulders. His father freezes for a moment, letting out a little mental jolt of surprise, before he relaxes slightly, reaching up to gently pat David’s arm.
“Go on, then,” he says as David pulls back, smiling as he gestures towards the door. “Say hi to Mr. Oswald for me.”
*
David finishes The Troublesome Teleporter just before six, carefully sliding it back into its spot on the shelf. He’s scanning the other Mutant Squad titles, wondering if he should pick out another one to read, when his father sends him a little greeting, friendly but tinged with apology.
I’m sorry to report that it’s time, Dad projects. We’re in the front parlor, when you’re ready.
David isn’t ready—not to face his grandmother, anyway. Dad and Aunt Raven knew he’d been hiding today, but except for Aunt Raven’s comment right after it happened, neither of them had mentioned that prior to hiding, David had literally run away from his grandmother in the middle of a pretty unpleasant conversation.
It’s obviously not her style, but it would have been far better if she’d just come up afterwards and had it out with him. Instead, she left him with hours of vague worry—reading has been a good distraction, but his dread has still been piling up in the background. He has absolutely no idea how she’s going to respond tonight.
He puts on the nicest outfit that he packed, finds the front parlor on his father’s mental map, and heads downstairs. Dad, Aunt Raven, and his grandmother are all there, drinking cocktails; when Aunt Raven spots him, she raises her glass in his direction and winks.
“Ah, David,” his grandmother says, her tone politely neutral. “How nice of you to join us.”
David makes eye contact with his father, whose face gives nothing away as he projects, Not to make you more nervous, but brace yourself—she’s quite cross at the moment.
“Can I get you something to drink, sir?”
It takes David a second to realize that Antonio is addressing him, and he looks up and nods. “Um, just a Coke, thanks.”
His father and grandmother say yes to another round of drinks, but Aunt Raven says, “I have no idea what time it is at this point—it’s definitely tomorrow where I live. I should probably, uh…” She laughs a little as she shakes her glass. “…take it slow tonight.”
David had always assumed Aunt Raven lived in Japan for her job, but now he wonders if she actually moved halfway around the world to get away from her family. The thought makes him kind of relieved for her, but also kind of sad for his father.
He mostly stays quiet for the next half hour, slowly sipping his Coke as he watches the three of them go back and forth. Aunt Raven’s strategy seems to be needling her stepmother to try to throw her off, which mostly feels like poking a bear; his father, on the other hand, either deflects or tries to smooth over friction, which doesn’t solve anything, either. It’s a weird sort of push and pull on either side of his grandmother—and as far as David can tell, she doesn’t seem fazed by any of it.
Like last night, they move to an extravagantly formal dining room for dinner, clustered around one end of the massive table; David sits next to Dad and across from Aunt Raven, his grandmother once again seated at the head.
Also like last night, David can’t help but notice that his father is finishing his drinks at a very quick pace.
During the first two courses, his grandmother only makes small, pointed comments here and there—all of them directed at Dad, Aunt Raven, or some combination of both—and David starts to wonder if she’s even going to bring up what happened this morning at all.
But then, when they’re about halfway through their entrees, she says, “David, I wonder if you told your father the details of our stroll through the grounds earlier today.”
She’s not looking at him, her eyes fixed on the knife she’s using to cut her chicken. The surface of her mind is, as usual, mostly empty—it feels more muted than before, even, and David wonders if it’s because she’s also finishing her drinks at a very quick pace.
He glances at his father and then back at her. “Uh, no,” he says. “I didn’t.”
“Interesting,” she says, still not looking at him. “I’d ask if you know what we’re talking about, Charles, but—” And now she looks up, directly at his father. “Of course, you know everything.”
Dad eyes her warily. “I don’t know everything. For example, I don’t know why you feel compelled to do…” He waves a hand in her direction. “This. Generally, but especially with my son.”
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is referring to,” she sniffs, returning her gaze to her knife. “I only asked David a few basic questions this morning—”
“Yeah, I bet,” Aunt Raven mutters.
His grandmother puts down her knife and says in a clearly insincere voice, “You know, it’s so nice that you were able to join us this weekend, Raven. Such a pleasant surprise.”
Aunt Raven just snorts, and then she picks up a stalk of asparagus and holds it in her fist, taking a big bite off the top, like Bugs Bunny chomping a carrot.
“Charming,” his grandmother says. She turns back towards them and continues, “I’d been under the impression that David and I were having a perfectly ordinary conversation this morning, but then…something seemed to upset him.”
David presses his lips together, trying to keep another outburst inside—and then he feels his father’s telepathy, steady and reassuring, like he’s placing a mental hand firmly on his shoulder.
“Right,” Dad says. He drains the rest of his wine, placing the glass on the table with a thunk. “Whatever games you’re attempting to play with David, Mother, play them with me instead.”
His grandmother places an affronted hand on her chest. “You always accuse me of playing games when I’m simply trying to collect information.” Her expression grows more pinched as she adds, “We can’t all just take what we want without asking.”
Dad ignores her dig at telepathy, spreading his hands, palms-up, as he says, “What more do you want to know? Ask me and I’ll tell you. I’m not keeping any secrets here.”
His grandmother doesn’t respond, watching him coolly as she takes a sip of her drink.
“I just can’t for the life of me figure out what else you’re after,” Dad continues. “I’ve told you about Gabrielle. You know the details of David’s background and upbringing. You’ve now seen physical proof that you have a grandson—though you’re doing your level best to make sure that you don’t get to see him again.”
His grandmother scoffs. “An empty threat.”
Dad folds his arms across his chest. “Try me.”
“It’s empty,” his grandmother says slowly, placing her own wine glass back on the table. “Because you’ve said as much about yourself dozens of times, and yet—” She gestures at him. “You keep coming back.”
Dad lets out a little laugh and shakes his head. “I keep coming back because I’m a fool.”
His grandmother raises her eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.
“Every time, I hold onto the hope—the delusion—that you’ll have somehow changed,” his father says, his tone sharp. “And every time, it’s exactly the same. Except now you’re pulling David into this—whether it’s because he’s a telepath or because he’s my son, I couldn’t tell you, but he doesn’t deserve your derision, or your cruelty.”
“Charles,” his grandmother says, sighing. “There’s no need to be dramatic.”
“Maybe I deserve some of the blame here,” Dad continues like she hadn’t spoken. “I gave up trying to defend myself a long time ago.” He reaches out and places a hand on David’s shoulder, mirroring the telepathic hand that’s still holding firm inside his mind. “But I’ll be damned if I don’t defend my own son. You will treat him with the respect that you’ve never given me—or I’ll make you forget you ever knew he existed.”
His grandmother’s mouth opens slightly, and David can sense twin jolts of shock from her mind and Aunt Raven’s—but they’re both nearly drowned out by the protective sort of fury his father is projecting. His hand is still on David’s shoulder, squeezing tightly.
His grandmother stands, primly folding her napkin and placing it on the table. After a long stretch of silence, she says, “I’d suggest you consider what you say next very carefully, Charles.”
His father raises his chin. “How empty do you think my threats are, really? Are you willing to take that risk?”
His grandmother stares at him, her eyes narrowed, and then she turns on her heel and marches out of the room.
The three of them sit in a sort of stunned silence for a moment, and then Aunt Raven says, “Holy shit, Charles.”
His father lets go of David’s shoulder and scrubs his face with his hands. “Oh my God,” he mutters. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Aunt Raven laughs. “I’d say some combination of innate parental instinct and an extremely high blood-alcohol content.”
“David,” his father says, turning to him with a searching look on his face. “Are you OK?”
“Are you OK?” David asks. “Because I’m fine—more than fine. That was…incredible.”
His father grimaces. “You shouldn’t threaten to wipe peoples’ minds, you know.” He bites his lip and adds, “Under normal circumstances.”
David smiles. “Yes, Dad.”
His father stares at him for a moment, and then he leans over to hug him, projecting softly, I hope you know how much I love you, David.
David throws his arms around his father’s shoulders, pushing back a bundle of his own feelings, and as his father hugs him tighter, he opens his mind wide open. David sinks into the feeling of it, his father’s powers nearly overwhelming him, like an entire universe opening up before him.
*
His father begs off after they finish eating dinner, saying he’s going to lie down for a bit, if they don’t mind.
Aunt Raven waits until he’s wheeled out of the dining room before she holds a hand to her mouth like she’s about to tell David a secret and says, “Because he’s wasted.”
You know that I can still hear you, Dad projects in a lightly scolding tone. From the way Aunt Raven rolls her eyes, David knows he’s sent it to her, too.
“Sometimes I think insulting thoughts about him, just because he’s so nosy,” she says as she pushes back from the table. “If he’s going to listen in, he deserves to hear it.”
She stands and stretches, extending her arms high above her head, and transforms as she lowers them, her scales rippling as she replaces the kind of formal dress she’d been wearing with sweats, her long red hair now short and spiky.
After she adjusts her new outfit, she looks at him questioningly. “You’re not tired yet, right? What time do you go to bed?”
David glances at the elaborate grandfather clock along the fall wall and gives her a look. “It’s half past eight.”
She shrugs. “Look, I don’t know, I haven’t been a teenager in…” She trails off and makes a face. “…A while.” A beat passes, and then she smiles and says, “I wanna go grab something—meet me in a little bit by the pool? You know where that is?”
David does: he noticed the pool area on his walk this morning. Honestly, it’d be impossible to miss, since the whole thing looks like something out of a film. He makes his way down there and sits on one of the lounge chairs, watching the soft lighting reflecting off the gently lapping water. It’s not quite warm enough yet, but he’s not surprised that the pool looks perfectly ready for swimming; he wonders who, if anyone, ever swims in it.
He spot checks and finds Aunt Raven is in her room, rifling through her bags, so he swings his legs up onto the chair and closes his eyes. He still hasn’t fully wrapped his head around what happened at dinner, and he’s not sure he truly will for a while—the actual fight and his grandmother’s retreat aside, he mostly can’t get over what his father’s telepathy felt like, bright and unyielding, as it echoed through his head.
He lays there for a while, turning over the memory of the feeling again and again, until he senses another mind in very close proximity. He opens his eyes to see Aunt Raven standing over him, and he scrambles into an upright position.
She takes the next lounge chair over, sitting cross-legged and facing him, and then she holds up a small leather satchel and shakes it.
“You’re not gonna tell on me, right?” she says, grinning.
David cocks his head. “Tell on…?”
He trails off as she starts pulling things from the bag: a lighter, a little packet of papers, and a plastic bag full of what must be marijuana.
She slides out one of the papers and lays it flat on her thigh. “Have you smoked weed before?”
David shakes his head.
“Man, you are one well-behaved kid,” she says, laughing. “I guess there are actually a few things you didn’t inherit from Charles.”
David leans forward slightly. “Did he…do a lot of drugs when he was my age?”
Aunt Raven snorts, still focused on her lap as she transfers weed from the bag to the paper in a neat little line. “Mostly booze—as you can see, that remains his drug of choice.”
David frowns. He can chalk it up to a very stressful weekend, but he hasn’t loved seeing his father drink as much as he has.
Aunt Raven looks up, and like she’s the mind-reader, she says, “He falls back into old habits whenever he’s around Sharon—they’re her habits, too, as I’m sure you noticed.” One corner of her mouth quirks up and she adds, “You should tell him if it bothers you. He’d want to know.”
David looks down at his knees. For all that he and his father have grown closer this weekend—and that’s far, far closer than he ever would have imagined three days ago—he doesn’t have any idea how he’d start that conversation.
“When Charles was a teenager, though?” Aunt Raven continues, smiling as she raises the joint to her lips. She licks the edge of the paper and then carefully starts to roll it up. “I’ll just say: if you start partying and he ever tries to discipline you for it, text me. I have a lot of incriminating stories.”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” David says, shaking his head as he folds his arms across his chest. “The odds of me getting invited to any party—let alone enough to ‘start partying’—are basically nil.”
Aunt Raven gives him a skeptical look. “C’mon, that doesn’t make sense. You’re smart and nice, and you’re funny when you want to be.” She raises an eyebrow. “And you’re pretty cute, too.”
David wrinkles his nose. “Ugh, gross.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know I’m your aunt, and you probably think I’m, like, a hundred,” she says. “But seriously—you’re a little gawky, but so was Charles at that age. He made it work, and I think you can, too.”
For a very brief moment, David thinks about the back of Teddy Appleton’s head—and then he quickly banishes the thought from his mind.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.”
“I’m not kidding!” Aunt Raven laughs. “It’s all attitude—ask your dad about it.”
David stares at her. This conversation is mortifying enough, but the idea of talking about his lack of basic social clout with his father makes him want to, in Aunt Raven’s words, walk into the sea.
Aunt Raven’s still smiling as she lights the joint and inhales slowly, holding the smoke in for a few seconds before blowing out. David watches the smoke drift upwards into the darkness.
“Fuck,” she says, looking at the joint and shaking her head. “I should have done this right when I got here. Huge mistake on my part.”
“Wait,” David says. “Did you sneak that through customs?”
Aunt Raven smiles. “I stopped in the city on my drive up here.” She lets out a little laugh and adds, “I knew it was gonna be a long week.”
She takes another drag, and David watches her blue lips pull in the smoke and blow it out again.
She follows his gaze and smiles, holding out the joint. “So do you want to try it, then?” She raises her other hand and adds, “Absolutely no pressure, of course.”
David glances back at the house and bites his lip.
Aunt Raven follows his gaze and snorts. “Just a reminder: I have a lot of incriminating stories.”
David swallows and says, “Yeah, OK.”
He tries to copy Aunt Raven, though the second the smoke is in his mouth, he has to fight a very strong urge to immediately cough it out. It burns in the back of his throat and his eyes water, and then Aunt Raven starts to laugh.
“You don’t have to hold it forever,” she says.
He exhales in a rush, coughing slightly, and she pats him on the arm and then plucks the joint from his fingers.
“A noble first attempt,” she says, her mind warm with amusement. “I’m proud of you.”
He rolls his eyes, but when she offers it again a minute later, his second try is much better.
Aunt Raven’s mind grows both looser and louder as they pass the joint back and forth, while David tries to figure out if he sort of likes this or actually hates it. When she finally stubs out the last of it, she swings her legs around and stretches out on the lounge chair, her hands folded behind her head. He mimics her, lying down and looking up at the sky. There are a few stars here and there, but mostly, it’s just an expanse of black. But even without stars, it looks…enormous.
Aunt Raven suddenly laughs out loud, and he glances over at her.
“You’re starting to project,” she says, still chuckling. “Based on past experiences with Charles, I’m not surprised.”
He suddenly feels paranoid. “Project what?”
“Stop, stop,” she says, laughing harder. “Now you’re projecting paranoia.”
He frowns and tries to imagine gathering up his telepathy and locking it in a sturdy chest.
“No, don’t worry,” Aunt Raven says. “I’d tell you if it was a problem. Or…” She gives him a knowing look. “You’d probably hear me think it.”
David sniffs. “I don’t eavesdrop like that.”
Aunt Raven sends off a wave of skepticism—or maybe he’s actually in her mind, pulling it out. It’s getting harder to tell. He’s glad she’s not the telepath, because then she’d know that he does eavesdrop sometimes…OK, actually, a lot of the time…
And then she starts laughing again, and he realizes he probably just projected that, too.
“This is even funnier than I thought it would be,” Aunt Raven says, grinning as she closes her eyes. “You’re a good kid, David.”
Her mind is very warm, and David sinks into it as he closes his own eyes. It feels kind of silly to be called a good kid after he just did drugs, but it seems like Aunt Raven has different metrics than other adults.
He thinks about what she said earlier, about when his father was a teenager, and he remembers the boy from the photograph in his father’s room, standing confidently on that mountain. Before this weekend, David had no conception of who his father was—as a person, not as a public figure. He still doesn’t know much, especially not about his father’s life now: just glimpses of his maybe kind of wild teenage years, or of a little boy who hid from his terrifying mother, and read the Mutant Squad books mostly for Mr. Oswald, just like David always did.
“You should talk to him,” Aunt Raven says, startling him out of his thoughts—which he’s apparently incapable of keeping inside his own head right now. He glances over at her.
“I don’t…” He frowns. “He’s pretty busy most of the time. We don’t…talk very much.”
Aunt Raven rolls over onto her side to face him. “He’s not that busy—I bet if he knew you wanted to get to know him better, he’d make time.” She pauses, studying him for a moment. “I think he mostly just doesn’t know what he’s doing—I sure as hell wouldn’t if I suddenly became a parent at age forty.” She snorts and adds, “It’s probably extra hard for him, since he loves to pretend he knows how to do everything.”
David suddenly feels defensive of his father, and he opens his mouth to say so, but Aunt Raven just laughs.
“You’re very loyal,” she says. “When you do start to get to know each other, you will quickly see that I’m right.”
David rolls his eyes. “You guys are so mean to each other.”
Aunt Raven smiles. “That’s just how we show our love.”
David realizes that he’s actually starting to feel the effects of the joint now—his limbs feel heavier than before, like his whole body is gently sinking downward. His telepathy feels even more expansive; he’d have to work hard to lock it in that chest if he even still wanted to.
After a long stretch of silence, Aunt Raven says, “You know, I can’t really blame Charles. It’s not like he’s had any functional parental role models—certainly not anyone who could show him how to be a father. His dad died when he was pretty young.”
There’s a sort of resigned sadness in her mind, and David follows her emotions towards her more concrete thoughts.
“Not your father either?” he says. “Dad suggested that he was somehow worse than my grandmother…which doesn’t seem possible.”
She makes a face. “I’ll say this: there’s exactly one person in the world that Sharon is afraid of.”
David frowns. He’s very glad that they’re leaving tomorrow morning.
Aunt Raven snorts. “Yeah, you dodged a bullet there.” She pushes herself up into a sitting position, stretching her upper body a little and then bending to touch her toes. After she straightens, she says, “C’mon, this is supposed to be ‘get stoned and have fun’ time, not sad therapy hour.”
“Sorry,” David says quickly, sitting up, too. “It’s just been…” He shrugs. “A weekend.”
She laughs and says, “It has indeed been a weekend.” She shakes her head. “I still can’t believe you literally ran away from her. One for the record books.”
He flushes. “Yeah, well…”
“If only I could have seen the look on her face,” Aunt Raven says. “Was it like…?”
Then her scales ripple, and suddenly, his grandmother is sitting across from him, her whole face pinched like she just bit into a very large lemon.
David physically jumps, and Aunt Raven doubles over laughing, which looks totally bizarre with his grandmother’s body.
“Stop,” he says, scrubbing his face with his hands. “This is too weird.”
Aunt-Raven-as-his-grandmother gives him a wicked smile and says, “Weirder than this?”
Her scales ripple again, and then David is sitting across from an exact copy of himself. It’s perfect, down to every last detail, his eyebrows and his shoulders and the exact shape of his nose—it’s like looking in a mirror, except he’s pretty sure his own mouth is hanging open, but this version of him is grinning.
He slowly reaches out to touch his copy’s hand, but when their fingers meet, Aunt Raven instantly ripples back to blue. He’s so startled he bursts out laughing.
Aunt Raven laughs, too, and when she catches her breath, she says, “Who should I do next?”
She cycles through all the famous people he requests, dead and alive, and she somehow manages to make every impersonation both spot-on and totally ridiculous—he laughs so much that after a few minutes, his stomach actually starts to hurt.
She’s just turned into Queen Elizabeth and is doing that little regal wave of hers when David senses his father’s mind in close vicinity, and then he hears him shout, “Raven!”
“Hellooooo, Charles!” she calls out in a perfect imitation of the Queen’s voice.
Dad rolls up, glancing back and forth between them with an indignant expression on his face, before he settles his glare on Aunt Raven and says, “I can’t believe you got him stoned.”
David tries to tamp down his surprise, wondering how long his father has been listening in on their conversation.
Dad gives him a look. “I haven’t—I’m pretty sure you’re giving a telepathic contact high to people in the next county.”
Aunt Raven laughs again, still doing the Queen’s voice as she says, “Maybe you want to sober up a little more before you start chucking stones from that glass house, Charles.”
“Excuse me,” Dad says, turning back to her. “I don’t—” He cuts off, frowning. “Can you…” He waves a hand. “This one is too confusing.”
Aunt Raven looks down, and then the wicked smile returns, and suddenly, a perfect copy of his father is sitting there.
Dad lets out a very put-upon sigh. “Raven, no.”
“You know,” Aunt Raven says, sounding so much like his father that it’s kind of spooky. “I think I’m in the mood for a little dip in the pool.”
His father pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t.”
“But,” Aunt Raven says, stroking her chin. “I haven’t seen you in a bathing suit in ages. Shall I just guess?” She holds up her fingers to form a rectangle, like she’s putting him in a frame.
“Raven,” he says sternly. “You will keep clothes on my body and you will not put it in the pool.”
Aunt Raven catches David’s eye and winks. She stands and runs towards the water at full speed, launching herself into a cannonball—and then she shifts back to blue in mid-air, her laughter echoing through his mind as she splashes beneath the surface.
*
David wakes up in a weird sort of fog the next morning, and everything feels like it takes more effort than it should. After he showers, he does a slow, shaky spot check and finds Dad and Aunt Raven in the kitchen where they had lunch yesterday; his grandmother, thankfully, is clear across the house, in an area David hasn’t even been to yet.
As he shuffles into the kitchen, his father looks up and raises an eyebrow. “Good morning,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
David eyes him warily. “Can’t you tell?”
His father smiles. “I can.” He takes a prim sip of tea before he adds, “I can also help you take care of that, but maybe for your first time, I should let you live with the consequences for a bit.”
“Aw, Charles,” Aunt Raven says. “C’mon.”
Dad turns to her. “Honestly, what I should do is transfer those consequences to you.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know that no one’s forcing you to do this stern parent routine, right?”
He gives her a look, but then he turns back to David and says, “Why don’t you get yourself some breakfast and I’ll show you my hangover trick.”
“He’s a true expert at getting rid of all kinds of hangovers,” Aunt Raven says brightly. “They should have given him the PhD for that instead.” And then, after a beat, she says, “Ow, Charles!”
His father is still holding his teacup with both hands, a serene smile on his face.
The hangover trick is a huge relief, and after David drinks some tea and eats some cereal, he basically feels like normal again. Dad and Aunt Raven squabble all the way through the rest of breakfast, and as he laughs watching them go back and forth, he can’t help but wish that Aunt Raven didn’t live on the literal other side of the world.
And then, once again acting like she’s the mind-reader, Aunt Raven says, “David, you should come visit me in Tokyo.” She glances at his father. “If that’s OK with your dad, obviously.”
David turns to his father, who gives him a soft, encouraging smile.
“Of course,” he says. He looks over at Aunt Raven and adds, “Am I not invited, too?”
“No,” she says. “You were a total buzzkill last night.”
She’s smiling as she says it, though, and Dad laughs.
“And to be a buzzkill once again,” he says, wheeling back from the table slightly. “We should gather our things—and I’m sorry to tell you this, David, but I do actually think we should say goodbye to your grandmother before we go.”
David frowns. Part of him knew this was coming, but another part of him was hoping they could just slip away in the car and possibly never speak to her again.
His father snorts, and then he glances at David and says, “Sorry, I was eavesdropping.”
David doesn’t mind—only a few days ago, he wondered if his father ever read his thoughts, his telepathy feeling distant and untouchable. But telepathy is one of the things that’s brought them together this weekend; he’s still not sure about the other direction, using his own powers to really go into his father’s mind, but it feels like they’re closer now than they ever have been before.
Instead of saying so out loud, he pushes his feelings at his father, who brightens and sends him a bundle of appreciation and affection back.
David didn’t pack much, so gathering his things only takes five minutes. He puts his bag by the door and then does one last sweep of the room, lingering for a while at the bookshelves, and that long row of Mutant Squad books.
He has a sudden impulse to grab them all and put them in his bag—and then he shakes his head at how silly that is. If he asked, his father would probably buy him the entire series, and besides, they’re meant for little kids.
He still rests his hand on the spine of The Troublesome Teleporter, just for a moment.
The second he sets foot in the foyer, his bag is gently plucked from his hand by the butler, who gestures to the front doors and says, “They’re gathered outside, sir.”
David senses all three of his relatives’ minds—plus Louis, who’s waiting patiently by their car. He takes a deep breath and then steps out into the sunlight.
His grandmother watches him approach with a neutral expression on her face, the surface of her mind unsurprisingly blank. He glances at his father and sends him a small question mark.
Don’t worry, she’s on her very best behavior, Dad projects along with a waft of amusement, even though there isn’t a trace of it on his face. Apparently she decided to take my ultimatum seriously.
“David,” his grandmother says, and as David turns back to her, she pulls him into one final stiff hug. “You must come back and visit again.”
“Of course,” he mumbles into her shoulder.
When they pull apart, his grandmother steps towards his father, so David turns to Aunt Raven, who leans in and gives him another one of her giant hugs, squeezing as she picks him off the ground once more. They both laugh as his feet land back on the gravel.
“Japan,” she reminds him in a mock-stern tone. “Hold your father to it.”
“I will,” he says. He looks down at his shoes as he adds, “Thanks for, uh…”
She punches him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t mention it.” She glances at his father and raises her voice as she says, “And don’t forget to ask Charles for those tips, too.”
Dad cocks his head to one side. “Tips?”
David glares at Aunt Raven, but she only throws her head back and laughs.
As they wind back down the long drive, David twists in his seat to watch Aunt Raven and his grandmother grow smaller and smaller, until the car takes a sharp bend and they vanish from his line of sight.
“Well,” Louis says, eyeing them in the rearview mirror. “It looks like you both survived.”
Dad chuckles, glancing at David as he says, “And then some.”
The ride back to Manhattan feels so much different than the one two days ago—the chilly distance between them has mostly vanished, and he and his father spend most of the time talking, and occasionally, laughing. Whenever Louis catches his eye in the rearview mirror, he’s smiling.
But then, when they’re back on familiar ground—passing below 96th Street—his father’s expression grows serious, and he says, “David, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t…talk for a bit.”
David stares at him. “We’ve been talking this whole time.”
His father bites his lip. “I guess I mean that we should have a talk.”
David’s stomach sinks slightly, and his father holds up a hand.
“No, no, nothing bad,” he says quickly. “You’re not in trouble.” He looks away for a moment and lets out a little laugh. “If anyone’s in trouble here, it should be me.”
“What do you mean?” David says, frowning.
“Just…” Dad looks back at him, and one corner of his mouth quirks up. “It’s a nice day out. Why don’t we head over to the park?”
*
It turns out his father’s favorite spot in the park is the exact place that David usually goes to sit and take in passing minds. As they make their way up the stretch where the path inclines slightly, David tells him so.
His father radiates warm surprise as he says, “I do that here sometimes, too.” But then he frowns and adds, “Well, not so much in the past few years, come to think of it…”
When they reach the top of the incline, he parks his wheelchair at the end of the closest bench, and then he gestures for David to sit.
They’re at an intersection of a few different paths—David’s always thought that’s what makes it the most interesting spot, mind-watching-wise. His father hums in agreement.
“Exactly,” he says, smiling. “That and it’s a bit ordinary—not so breathtakingly beautiful that everyone stops whatever they were thinking about to focus on the scenery.”
They sit in silence for a moment, watching people walk by. If David were here alone, he’d be gently stretching out his powers, but right now, he’s hyper-aware of his father, or more specifically, his father’s powers, just a foot away.
Eventually, his father sighs and says, “David, I owe you an apology.”
“About this weekend?” David says.
“No,” Dad says. “Well, sort of—I am sorry about my mother.”
David frowns. “I don’t think that’s your fault.”
Dad shakes his head. “I had hoped…” He lets out a little laugh. “Well, you know that my foolish hopes are not based in reality.” He meets David’s gaze, something searching in his expression, as he continues, “No, I want to apologize for the way things currently are between us.”
The same sinking feeling he had in the car returns—David feels like they’ve grown a lot closer this weekend, but maybe that’s not what his father wanted.
“No,” Dad says sharply. “This weekend was exactly what I wanted—well, except all the bits with my mother.” He pauses and scrubs his face with his hands before he says, “Let me take a step back—and I’ll try not to respond to your every thought along the way. I’m sorry about that, too.”
David gives him a small smile. “That’s OK.”
His father looks forward for a moment, and then he takes a deep breath and looks back at him. “Of course you know that I wasn’t aware of your existence until after your mother passed away. My feelings on the matter aren’t relevant—it was her decision.” He pauses, looking a little sheepish, and then adds. “Given the state of my life when we…met…I can’t say I blame her.”
“What do you mean?” David says.
His father looks a little pained. “Well, I guess…when it came to…companionship….”
“Oh my God, Dad, stop,” David cuts in. “I know what sex is.”
His father is blushing now, and he says, “All right, then let’s just say that I wasn’t particularly interested in pursuing committed relationships at the time, and your mother knew it.”
David frowns. “…OK.”
“Anyway,” Dad says, raising his voice slightly. “It’s pointless to dwell on whether she should have told me earlier, or what I would have done if she had, because she didn’t. But once I found out about you…” His expression softens. “There was no question about whether I’d bring you here to live with me.”
“Right,” David says slowly.
His father watches him for a long moment, and then he says, “In the beginning, you wanted a lot of space, so of course I gave it to you. But that was partly for selfish reasons—I had no idea how to be a father, let alone one who could properly help his son through something so difficult.”
“That’s what Aunt Raven said,” David says, nodding, and then rather than summarize it, he pushes the memory of their conversation last night in his father’s direction.
His father looks surprised, but after a second, he smiles and shakes his head. “She’s got a point, but I think she’s only half-right. It’s not that we didn’t have any role models, it’s more like…” He bites his lip as he looks straight ahead again. “I guess I’ve mostly been afraid that I’ll be the same kind of parent that my mother’s been.”
“What?” David says. “But that’s…you’re nothing like her.”
His father looks back at him with a sad sort of smile. “I appreciate you saying that, but she and I are similar in a lot of ways.”
“No,” David says firmly. “And even if you were, you’re not…cruel.”
His father doesn’t say anything immediately, but after a moment, David feels the warmth of his father’s gratitude washing over him.
“I suppose it felt safer to keep a distance, rather than risk replicating any of that,” Dad says slowly. “But in the process, I’ve left you with barely any father at all.”
David’s immediate instinct is to disagree, but as he lets the words sink in, he can see the truth in what his father is saying. He obviously knows about that distance: he’s thought about it every single day for the past few months. But he had no idea if his father even realized it was there—and now, it seems that it was actually a deliberate choice.
“And to make matters worse,” Dad continues. “You know I would have loved you no matter what, baseline or mutant, but when they told me you were a telepath…” He smiles as he shakes his head. “There are so many things I should be teaching you—things I should have been teaching you this whole time. And you shouldn’t be scared to read my mind—that’s actually how we should be communicating. We’re telepaths.”
Half of him feels warm, hearing his father describe their shared mutation, but the other half bristles a little. Of course that’s the one that wins out as he says, “I’m not scared.”
His father gives him a look. “I’ve been trying not to invade your privacy, but you aren’t great at shielding your own thoughts.” He makes a face. “Yet another thing I should teach you.”
David opens his mouth to defend himself, but then he feels his father’s telepathy, inviting him in, and he shuts it again. He closes his eyes and starts to concentrate, but then he realizes he doesn’t have to—his father has left his mind wide open, and it’s…
“Incredible,” he breathes.
A surge of warmth pulses through his father’s mind, and he says, “Yours is too, you know. Your powers are extraordinary, David.”
David blushes as he looks down at his lap. “Sure.”
“I will convince you of this,” Dad says firmly. “I’m only sorry I didn’t start sooner.”
His father keeps his mind open, and they sit there for a moment, all their swirling thoughts and feelings looping between them, all those passing minds reduced to faint background noise as his father’s outshines them all.
Eventually his father pats him on the arm. “See?”
David rolls his eyes. “Yeah, fine. It’s not scary.”
His father beams. “It doesn’t have to be with our powers, though,” he says. “We can just…talk.” He holds up a hand and adds, “Only if you want to, of course. You’re also well within your rights to…uh.” His smile turns more mischievous. “Literally run away from me.”
David buries his face in his hands. “You guys are going to bring this up forever, aren’t you?”
“Only because it was legendary,” Dad says, laughing. “Your aunt and I talked for quite a while about how impressed we were.”
David looks up. “Can we actually go and visit her? Aunt Raven, I mean.”
“Definitely,” his father says, nodding. “But before we do that, I was actually wondering…” He trails off, looking weirdly nervous, and then he says, “How would you like to come along on my book tour this summer?”
David’s mouth opens slightly. “Your book tour?”
“I’m aware that it’s not the most glamorous activity,” Dad says. “But there’s often a lot of downtime, in transit and in hotels and such. It would give us plenty of opportunity to…” The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Get to know each other better.”
“Yes,” David says immediately, before the offer can be rescinded.
His father laughs. “I’m not going to rescind it. I’m only sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.”
“It’s fine,” David says quickly.
“No, it’s not,” Dad says. “I’ve been using work as an excuse to put distance between us—and not just us, to be honest.” He grimaces slightly. “I don’t have to say yes to everything they ask me to do. And I don’t have to make myself so busy that I barely see you, let alone talk to you.” He pauses and smiles as he shakes his head. “You saw that I’m reading that book you love? And here I’ve been working so much this past month that I haven’t even mentioned it to you yet.”
David feels himself flushing against his will. He tries to play dumb, saying, “Uh, what book?”
His father gives him a look. “I’ll remind you that you are bad at shielding all of your thoughts, including your extended guilt about sneaking around in my room the other day.”
David finds his hands returning to his face. “I’m so sorry.”
“I love the book too, you know,” Dad says softly. “I haven’t finished yet, but so far…”
David looks up at him, and his father sends him a waft of encouraging warmth.
They sit in silence for a few more moments, until his father glances at his watch and says, “Well, shall we head home and have some lunch?”
David nods, and he’s about to stand when his father gestures for him to stop.
“Hang on,” he says. “I almost forgot—what was Raven saying as we were leaving this morning, about ‘tips’?”
David tries to keep from projecting his embarrassment. “Oh, nothing.”
His father gives him a pointed look.
David sighs. “She was just making fun of me. Because I have no friends.”
“Oh, I’m sure she wasn’t…” Dad frowns. “She probably was making fun of you, actually.”
“Thanks a lot,” David says.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says, laughing. “Forget about her—she only knows how to express her love by teasing people. It’s a terrible affliction.”
“She’s right, though,” David says. “She said it was all about attitude, and that you would have advice, but…” He bites his lip. “I’m not sure if it’s me or my powers, but it just feels like…” He trails off, shrugging.
“Well,” Dad says after a moment. “I’ve always had trouble making friends, you know.”
David stares at him. “But you go to all these parties—”
“Oh, those people generally aren’t my friends,” Dad says, waving a hand. “I am very good at making small talk.”
David looks down at his lap. “Well I can’t manage that, either.”
“You probably could, if you wanted to,” Dad says. “But you don’t want that, do you?”
David shakes his head. He swallows and says, “What about, like…talking to one person?”
It’s obviously the wrong thing to say, because his father lights up at that. “You have a crush.”
“No,” David says quickly.
“Who is she? He?” After a pause, he adds, “Them?” He holds up his index finger. “You know I read this article in the Times, about neopronouns—”
“Dad, no,” David cuts in. “Please stop.” He takes a deep breath. “Uh…he.”
Dad breaks into a grin. “The boy from your maths class.”
“Oh my God.” David bends over, pressing his face against his knees.
“Don’t worry,” his father says cheerfully. “You mostly think about him in your subconscious.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” David mutters in the direction of the pavement.
“No, no,” Dad says. “This one is easy.”
David finds himself curious in spite of himself, and he straightens and gives his father a look. “What do you mean?”
“This boy has trouble with algebra, yes?” Dad says.
David makes a face. “That’s an understatement.”
Dad grins. “Then you just need to find a way to become his tutor.”
“That’s—” David wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think being an algebra tutor is going to help my reputation.”
“No, trust me,” Dad says. “This has worked for me, oh, probably dozens of times.”
David gapes at him. “Dozens?”
Dad smiles smugly. “Raven wasn’t kidding when she said I had tips.”
David is certain his ears are bright red now, and he says loudly, “OK, I think that’s enough chatting for one day!”
His father laughs, placing a hand on his shoulder, and warm amusement spills from his mind and into David’s.
“Come on, then,” Dad says. “Let’s go home.”