"Black? Like the whole thing black?"
"What's wrong with black?"
"Oh, nothing - nothing." Kitty, sat opposite Anna on a swivel chair she had pulled over from its usual spot in front of her vanity mirror. "I mean," she picked up one of the fingernail polish bottles resting on the bed to Anna's left and shook it. "I just unloaded out my whole bag that has every conceivable color known to man and squirrel… but sure black is a good color too."
Anna tisked as she curled her fingers inward and looked over glossy nails. She had to admit, Kitty had done a remarkable job filing them down and cleaning them up. Anna adjusted the tightly wound bob of dyeing hair atop her head. "Black is a good color. It's timeless and doesn't make me look so fucking girly."
"There isn't a 'girly' color, Anna." Kitty rolled back, pecked at a few keys on the laptop resting on Anna's desk, and a second later the playlist of soft thumping lofi music had restarted. "But I know you got the goth aesthetic going, so I'm not going to question you." Kitty rolled forward to face Anna on the bed, adjusted the gloves on her hand, and gave the black she'd selected another shake.
"Well," Anna tugged at the zipper of the tiny Hello Kitty themed duffel bag overflowing with different hues of polish. "What else you got?"
Kitty dropped the black she was holding like it was a dirty sock a dove into the bag. "You like classy right? How about a nice red?" Her head buried neck deep in the bag, she pulled out a fist full of paints with a few lids poking out between her clenched fingers. "Got Jungle Red, Blackberry, Burnin' Love, Stiletto -" She dropped the pile on the bedspread. "Oh! How about we go different with a blue or a purple? It's like black but with an accent! Maybe we could do a punk green or deep shade of violet! Ahh!" Kitty seemingly dug her whole arm into the bag and dug out a bright pink vile. "This one's the best!" She pushed it into Anna's hand. "It's called Dazzle!"
Anna turned it over in her hand. "It's pink."
"Yeah, and that bedspread you're on is green and the sky is blue." Kitty watched her and sighed. "You don't gotta if you don't want. Just thought it might look good." She offered her hand to take it back but Anna didn't give it up. Instead, Anna looked up at her.
"It's… alright actually."
Kitty smiled. "Yeah? Are we doing this?"
Anna let the bottle rest in the palm of her hand as if weighing it. "One finger. One finger each hand, and the rest we'll do black."
"Heck yeah!" Kitty plucked the pink polish out of Anna's open palm. "That's my girl!"
"Yeah, whatever." Anna could feel the creep of a blush at the corners of her cheeks. "I'm only doing it because my hands are covered all the time anyway."
Kitty raised and lowered her shoulders intermittently. "You sure it's not because you want to feel like a pretty girl?"
Anna waved her hand in front of her rosy cheeks. "Okay, never mind. All black!"
Kitty took Anna's arm and gently squeezed. "Kidding! I'm just kidding! Really, I think it's cool you're doing something different." When Anna offered her splayed hand with reluctance, the other girl rested it on a portable laptop table and started to shake the pink vile. "Which finger?" Anna pointed to her pinky and Kitty got to expertly lacquering the nail with the fine pink polish.
"Tell you what." Kitty dipped the applicator brush back into the vile for a new coat. "I'll do something I've never done. I'll paint all mine black."
Anna snorted. "You don't need to do that."
"I want to! I can pretend to be some sort of cool spy holding all the government secrets in my phone or something."
"Is that what you think when you see black nails?"
"It's what the ladies in spy movies always have on, don't they?"
"Don't know. Guess I've never looked hard enough."
Kitty finished with the pink and started with the black. "We can check on the hair dye in a minute."
"Thanks." Anna prodded at the bundle of dying white hair resting against her forehead. "Last time I did my streak, I had to do it myself and it was a such pain in the ass."
"Not that I wanna question your style, but why just a white streak in the front of otherwise black hair?"
Anna snorted and shook her head. "A few years ago, my best friend Jess and me decided to go through my Mom's old magazines. We found this one from the late 90s that featured these dumb hairstyles and decided one boring summer afternoon to try them out. She had this weird cornrow sort of thing for a while, and I trimmed my hair and got this white streak. Just sorta stuck, I guess."
"I like it."
"Yeah?"
"It's very you." Kitty poked the tightly wound bob saturated in dye on Anna's head.
Anna smiled and glanced at her pristinely painted nails. "You ever dye your hair?"
"Oh no. Never."
"Why?"
"My Dad would have lost his brains. He's always loved me and my Mom's curly brown hair."
"Dad's a real ball-buster, huh?"
Kitty shrugged her narrow shoulders. She leaned back, rested her feet on the bedspread, and checked on her drying painted toenails. "He's complicated. He's the nicest guy in the world, but can kinda be a traditionalist sometimes. He's had a wild life. He was born in Lanzhou China, met my Mom in Chicago, got married, then a few years later had me."
"You're half Chinese?"
"Yup. Chinese and Jewish. The Nazis would have loved me." Kitty retrieved the black she used on Anna's nails and started on her own. "Still, despite being half, I couldn't tell you a single thing about China other than my dad is glad he isn't there."
"Said he had a wild life, what did he get up to?"
"I only know the stuff he told my Mom. Supposedly he was this fisherman for a while in the homeland and went toe-to-toe with a shark. When he got to the States he got a crash course in English by working in construction. Eventually, he became a contractor, moved to Chicago, met my Mom, married, had me, then moved to Deerfield."
"That is a hell of a lot."
"Yeah," Kitty smiled. "He's always been head-over-heels for my Mom. When she went back to school to get her Masters, he would be sure she had a lunch packed her her clothes were laid out and ready for that day. He did some carpentry work out of our garage so he could stay home with me when I was really little. Gezz, that man would smoke like a chimney back then. His smoking habit kinda ebbed and flowed throughout the years, but Mom was sure that he never did it in the house."
Anna felt her body come to rest laying on the bed. She propped up her chin with her crossed arms and watched Kitty meticulously paint her nails.
"My dad took to the whole 'supporting my wife's Jewish traditions' thing a little too seriously when they got married too. Mom was kinda blasé about it, but Dad got us menorah sweaters and made sure our butts were in synagogue." Kitty's lips drew to a line. "Never thought I'd miss those days."
"Maybe you can go back to visit for Hanuka?"
Kitty looked up at Anna. "Maybe. I don't know… how that works."
"You get on a plane and see them."
"Well yeah. I mean… I wasn't a mutant last Hanuka."
"Oh." Anna lowered her eyes. "Right. I guess it's kinda hard to know what to do now."
Kitty waved a limp wrist. "Well, I'm sure we'll figure out something." She pulled out the hair ties keeping Anna's limp bun in place. The newly freed locks rolled over Anna's face. "Hey!" Kitty ran the hair through her fingers. "That looks great!"
"Yeah? All I can see is your hand in my face."
"Then you can return the compliment by telling me how good my nails look." She stood. "Come on, let's give it a final rinse."
Anna joined her roommate, holding her damp new white streak out of her eyes while Kitty opened the door for her. Kitty led her by the arm to the bathroom and helped her run water through her hair in the girl's very pink bathroom sink. Eventually, Anna dried off her hair with a towel and got a glimpse of them both in the mirror. Kitty wrapped her arm around the other girl's much taller shoulder. "That's someone who looks ready for their 17th' next week!"
Anna snorted and gave her head another run-through with the towel before wadding it up.
"You never told me you were a Halloween baby!"
"That's because I'm not. I was born the day after Halloween."
"Oh," Kitty made a strange flutter with her hand. "Everyone knows Halloween isn't over till all the drunk people go home and are sober."
"Is that what everyone says?"
"Duh! You still dressing up as Lady Frankenstein?"
"Only because you got that dumb costume for me." Anna opened the door to the bathroom. "Who were you going as again?"
"Cleopatra! The sexiest woman to ever grace the Sahara!" Kitty followed her out the door and into the hall.
"Hopefully no one goes as Mark Anthony otherwise that might get awkward for you."
"Who the heck is 'Mark Anthony?' Is that another one of your history -"
A crash that sounded like a stack of plates a mile high falling all at once erupted from down the hall. The girls were rooted to the spot in front of the open door leading to their shared room. The cracked door bathed them both in yellow light. Anna felt Kitty grab onto the sleeve of her nightshirt and ball the fabric up in her hand. "What… what was that?"
Anna tried peering into the darkness but saw only window frames from across the other side of the mansion that were just barely illuminated by moonlight outside. She glanced at her watch. "It's 1 in the morning." She looked back at Kitty whose wide eyes were fixed at the inky blackness. "Let's get in the room and get my laser gun." Kitty nodded, and the pair slipped through the open door. While Kitty shut the door gently behind them, Anna slipped on her gloves and pulled her 50s-inspired sci-fi laser pistol out of her backpack.
"Has anyone said anything on the chat?"
"The chat?" Kitty pulled her phone out of her pajama pocket with trembling fingers. "Not that I've seen."
Anna armed the firing mechanism. "Looks like it's up to you and me to see what's up."
"Yeah… yeah it looks like."
Anna patted Kitty on the arm. "We got this. We're X-Men."
Kitty nodded. "Right. X-Men."
Anna slowly opened their bedroom door and kept her back against the hallway wall as she crept along with her laser gun aimed and ready. Kitty kept close to her rear and they held formation till they reached the upstairs railing revailing the downstairs floor to the upstairs. The pair peered past the corner and spotted something scattered in chunks on the floor of the main hall before the front door. Besides the strange disbree, everything else seemed to be in place and as normal.
Anna looked back at Kitty and flashed her a series of complicated hand signals. Kitty blinked and shook her head. "What does that mean?" She whispered a little too loudly.
"Goddamnit," Anna mumbled, grabbed Kitty's hand, and lead her down the stairs. Once on the ground floor, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned on the flashlight. "What the hell? It looks like a chunk of marble or something." Anna knelt down and picked up one of the pieces. "It's of someone's face."
Kitty touched her shoulder and pointed to a vacant pedestal left of the front door. "Look. I think a bust used to be there."
"All the way over there?" Anna showed her light across the spread of the pieces. "That thing couldn't have just fallen off."
Kitty walked over and flashed her phone's light over the platform. "Uh - you might want to come and look at this."
Anna joined her and looked at the spot where Kitty's finger rested. Three long marks were drug along the light coral plaster just behind where the bust presumably once sat. "What?" Anna ran her finger along one of the grooves. "Logan?" She ran for the front door and found it slightly ajar. She pulled it all the way open and looked outside but only found darkness beyond.
"Why though?" Kitty watched Anna close and secure the front door. "Why would Logan want to bust some busts in the middle of the night?"
"I have no idea." Anna's ears perked as she heard the small whine of an electric motor. She opened her mouth to warn Kitty when a light flipped on behind the other girl and a moment later Xavier appeared with a fat flashlight in his hand.
"Ladies?" This was one of the rare times Anna heard Xavier's voice lose that cool and calculated veneer it normally had. Instead, the man sounded shocked. Maybe he was human after all. "What are you doing out here at this hour?"
"We heard a crash and-" As Anna walked closer, she saw that Xavier was still dressed in the clothes she saw him wearing from the previous day. His eyes were baggy and he was showing a little stubble around his chin.
"You wanted to investigate." Xavier finished for her. His shoulder slumped as if he had been carrying the weight of the world on his back all day and finally let it go for just that moment. "Yes, of course you did." He gestured at the scattered remains of the bust. "Please excuse the mess. I'm sure it must have just fallen over in a draft or something. I assure you everything is fine." Xavier stared at the broken bust a beat longer than Anna expected without comment. Like he was chasing after the strands of a thought but couldn't quite get to grips with it.
"We have a sophisticated security system in place." He eventually continued. "If there were in any sort of threat, you'd know with plenty of time." He ran his hand down the contours of his hallowed-looking face. "I think it's best you both return to your room and try to get some sleep. It's certainly what I'm going to try to get." Without room for further questions, Xavier spun his chair around and went back down the hall where he had come from. A breath later, the hallway light vanished, plunging the girls back into darkness.