Chapter 5

Tuesday, 27^th of November, 2035

Mandy

I woke early to get ready, though to be honest I hadn't slept all that well, so it was more giving up on sleeping than waking up early. After I dressed in my uniform and had some breakfast, I was a bundle of nerves waiting for D to come by so we could walk in together.

When she did turn up, Gwen gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, "I'm sure it will be fine, have a nice day at school."

I was quite quiet on the walk in, steeling myself for the trial of being the new girl. after we met up with Jane en route, she and D chatted while we walked.

Just before the school was in sight, I switched on my blue eyed Mandy disguise. Jane turned to say something and let out an exclamation of surprise. This caused D to turn, and both of them to stop stock still. They stood staring at me for a good few minutes.

"I see what Mum meant now about it being ingenious," said D.

"What?! You look totally different, I'm sure you didn't look like that earlier. How did you do that?" said a confused looking Jane.

"I ... Made a mask," I said hesitantly. "With my mind."

They continued to stare at me, Jane with shock, D with an assessing thoughtful look.

"Oh and gloves," I added, showing my hands, now pink and flesh-like.

"Hmm it's pretty convincing, you'll have to be a bit careful shaking hands or some such or people will feel your scales. When Mum mentioned you were going to hide yourself, I was thinking gloves and make-up. I forgot about your illusion abilities. The eyes are really good" D told me

I smiled a bit at her praise, because it made me feel good inside. She looked thoughtful, then smiling, she continued, "Ha, I suppose you could have gone for the full invisible girl option, bandaged yourself up like Claude Rains in the invisible man. That would be great for a fancy dress party, you have the powers to pull it off."

"But why are you doing that? Why the mask?" asked a still confused looking Jane.

"I wanted to look more normal," I said, shifting uncomfortably.

"Oh, I see," said Jane.

"Won't telepaths spot what she's up to though?" D asked.

"No you're forgetting that Tish is telepath proof," said Jane. "They will probably not even notice she's there. Her blocking has got a lot better as she has started to consciously control her empathy. I can barely tell she's there, not that I'm that powerful. I would suspect at school whatever slight signal she gives off will be masked by the huge number of other people about. Unless they consciously notice the discrepancy, that her mind is closed and stealthed, they will just skip right over her, to louder easier pickings."

They looked at me a bit more, then we carried on, Jane stealing glances every now and then. They didn't mention my disguise again, though they shared the odd concerned look when they thought I wasn't watching.

We arrived at the school a short while later. Jane and D led me to our class room for registration. They said hello to a few people along the way, mostly I wasn't given a second glance. Unlike my old school, it was big enough that you were unlikely to know everyone in your year, let alone the school. So a new face, especially my disguised one, blended into the scenery. Having experienced the mental onslaught of emotions the previous day, I was better prepared to handle it. I was less on edge as we made our way through the halls.

Once we got to our classroom, on the second floor of the English building, I drew more interest. Various girls came up to D and Jane as we walked in. It was still early, so there were only a handful of people, almost all were giving me interested looks.

"Who's the new Girl, D?" asked one slight brunette.

"This is Mandy, she's starting today," D replied.

"Hi," I said.

"You get lumbered with showing the new girl around or something?" asked a blonde, who had cat's eyes.

"Nah, Mandy's a good friend of Ours. She used to live a further away, but she's moved to the big city with her sister," D said.

"You are so terrible at introductions," Jane smirked as she took over introducing me around.

I promptly forgot the names of everyone I was introduced to. I did notice I was getting appreciative glances and emotions from some of the boys. I tried to block as much of that out as possible, not wanting yet another thing to fluster me. I noticed there were a few obvious MORFS survivors in the group, some boys, some girls. Usually they were partial hybrids of some description, none stood out quite so much as D & I did. Another thing I spotted looking at the class was that, apart from D, I was probably the tallest girl. I was even taller than most of the boys.

"Great," I thought, "As if I don't stand out enough already."

We took a seat towards the back of the room and chatted about this and that, fielding the occasional, "Who's the new girl," questions.

Soon after the bell rang for the start of school, a fairly stern looking middle aged man rushed in. "Right lets get started, OK, first things first. We have a new student starting today. Amanda Wilson, are you here?" the teacher asked.

I raised my hand.

"Right, Right. Come up to the front, so people can get a look at you," the teacher said.

I walked to the front and faced the class, once again getting a barrage of emotions. As all the eyes in the room locked on me, I tried not to squirm too much, but all that attention made me want to disappear.

"I'm Mr Griffiths, your house teacher, I also teach maths, I think you're in my class if I remember rightly, so I'll see you a bit later," He said to me, then he turned to the rest of the class, "Anyway, I hope every one will make her feel welcome and so forth. Does anyone want to volunteer to show her around?"

Half a dozen boys stuck their hands up. Then D spoke up, "Jane and I will show her round, we know her well already."

"Right! Good, good, Dorothy, take a seat Amanda and we can get on with the register." Mr Griffiths said.

I walked back to my seat, the disappointed gazes of the boys who had volunteered following me all the way back. Mr Griffiths took the register, they went by surname, so I was nearly last. There were a few announcements, then the bell rang again. Everyone sprang to their feet and headed off to the first lesson of the day. It was English for me, a class I shared with both D and Jane. The same dance was repeated again, where I was the new girl made to parade in front of the class. Then it was down to business.

They were reading Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. I would have to catch up, but it seemed they were not going at a very fast pace as I read along. Towards the end of English I was starting to feel the strain of keeping my blue eyed Mandy illusion up all the time. I put my hands under the desk, dropping the gloves, it reduced the strain of maintaining the illusion, and I felt a bit better. Being the new girl, I was one of the lucky ones made to read out a section aloud. I felt very nervous speaking out loud to a group of people I didn't know. Though after hearing some of the other attempts after mine, I guess I didn't do too badly.

After that bit of light reading, it was time for humanities. I kept my hands hidden on the way, so I didn't have to cloak them in illusion, reducing the strain of maintaining my disguise. There was a similar new girl routine in humanities. It was beginning to get a little tiresome. We then settled into the lesson proper. It got increasingly hard to maintain even just my mask, the strain giving me a splitting headache. I took a calculated risk and dropped the eye portion of the illusion. No one seemed to notice the switch from blue eyes to my natural unblinking iris-less orbs. Dropping the eyes bought me some time, but I could feel the strain wearing me down. I barely made it through the lesson. As people turned their attention inward to the room again, I drew on the last on my reserves and covered my eyes again. Luckily it was break time, I needed somewhere safe to drop my disguise, and spend a while regaining my strength.

When I asked D and Jane where the nearest toilet was, they showed me the way and waited for me. Inside, I found a free stall and locked myself in. I dropped my illusion, practically collapsing from the strain. I sat quietly, allowing myself to recuperate. I knew from experience that I wouldn't take me too long to recover enough illusion juice to be ready to go again. I would have to be more careful about conserving my power, getting so low that I lost my mask completely would be disastrous.

Feeling my power levels returning to normal, I put up my illusion and headed out. As I was heading out the door of the bathroom, I almost walked straight into Stacy Smith, the anti-MORFS girl who had attacked me at the shopping centre. When she walked right past me, not even seeing me, I decided my disguise had just passed the acid test.

When I walked over to where D and Jane were waiting, Jane asked. "You were gone rather a long time, are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"It's the strain isn't it? You can only keep the disguise up so long before needing a break," D stated.

I looked at her and nodded, then looked away, feeling ashamed at my weakness.

"Hey," said Jane, "you know you don't have to hide who you are with us. I understand that you don't want to attract bullies after what you've been through. We just don't want you to hurt yourself by trying to hide your wonderful true self."

When both D and Jane put a hand on my shoulder, I looked up and gave them a smile. They were great friends, I was so lucky to have them.

We were about to head over to go on a little tour Jane had cooked up, when Stacy emerged from the toilet. She had been joined by one of her henchgirls, Becky.

"You're new here, aren't you. Why are you hanging around with the big dumb animal. Normal people should keep as far away as possible," Stacy said, with characteristic venom.

"Bite me, Smith! Has your boyfriends been beaten up by any more little 16 year old girls yet?" D retorted.

Stacy gave her an icy stare then turned to look at me. When she looked more closely, her expression turned to one of confusion. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"

"I don't think so, I'm not from around here, I only moved recently," I replied hoping she wouldn't see through my disguise.

She was about to start in on D again, giving me the odd confused glance, when her eyes seemed to lock on me and hate burst out from her like an explosion. "YOU!!!" she screamed, her voice raw with hate.

She started towards me and just I was getting ready to run or disappear, when I realised she was looking past me. I turned to see Helen, the girl who had been one of Stacy's helpers back when she attacked me, standing in the corridor behind me. Fear and helplessness radiated from her as she turned and ran with a terrified squeal.

Stacy and Becky raced after her, Stacy shouting, "Come back here, you freak lover! I told you if I ever saw you in my corridors again, I'd beat you to within an inch of your life."

I watched the retreating Helen, with Stacy and Becky in hot pursuit. I felt a bit sorry for Helen. While she had taunted me, I knew what being in fear like that was like, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

We continued on our tour, my friends taking me through the buildings, pointing out the quick way to get from place to place. Jane told me what short cuts were OK to use, which ones teachers frowned upon but you could get away with if you were sneaky, and what routes were strictly off limits.

As we were walking through the corridor in one building, we came to a section that looked like a bomb had hit it. There were holes in the walls and the ceiling looked damaged.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"Oh, some of the anti-MORFS crowd picked on some newly changed girl who went a little nuts and started throwing them through walls, She put at least one of them in hospital, so I heard. That's what I meant about Smith's boyfriend, he was one of the injured ones. It took weeks for them to get back to their usual nastiness," D said.

"I can't believe they still haven't repaired this, that was months ago," Jane said.

"What happened to the girl?" I asked.

"No one knows," answered Jane. "The common consensus is she was expelled, but no one knows for sure. After it happened, she just never came back to school again."

We continued our little tour they showed me all the places where people could meet, where to get lunch and so on. We went to the library for the remainder of the break, D took us to the back where there were very few people and suggested I "relax" for a bit. I took a look around seeing only a table of 4 people, one of which was the hybrid boy I had seen being attacked the other day. I figured D wouldn't have brought me here and told me to relax unless it was safe to let my guard down, so I dropped my illusion and rested as just me.

It was a relief, maintaining the illusion was taxing. Jane told me that the library was a safe haven of sorts for MORFS survivors. Miss Gordon maintained an iron rule and had a zero tolerance approach to any sort of bullying. I figured I might well be spending a lot of my time hidden away in here.

While we were there, we did some of homework that we had already got. I had received a fair number of things to do in addition to the standard homework, mainly catch up work getting me up to speed with where the rest of the class was.

We decided to leave a bit early, our next lesson being right across the other side of the school. On the way out, I switched on my blue eyed Mandy mask. Miss Gordon sitting at the front desk caught a glimpse of me as I did it and got a fairly shocked look on her face. "I didn't know you were a shape shifter, Amanda. Normally that sort of thing is mentioned, to stop people passing themselves off as someone else in exams."

I gave a sheepish smile then said, "I'm not a shape shifter, I have some localised illusion abilities. I can make illusions in a shell around my body. As a side effect I can make small changes to my appearance. Anything more wears me out pretty quickly."

"You should show her its primary function," said D mischievously.

"This calls for a little showmanship," winked Jane.

She waved her arms with a flourish, "I, the great and powerful sorceress, Jane The Mighty, will make a girl disappear into thin air before your very eyes. See? Nothing up my sleeves, nothing hidden in my hands, and now the magic word, Abracadabra!"

As she gestured to me, I switched on my invisibility. Miss Gordon gave a gasp, then a chuckle. With a smirk she asked, "Oh great and powerful sorceress, what will be your next trick?"

"How about levitation," I said. Moving to stand behind Jane, I grabbing her by the waist, lifting her quickly into the air.

Jane gave a shriek and waved her arms about a bit, "Put me down, Tish. You'll drop me."

I made myself visible again and lowered her to the ground.

"As you command, oh great and powerful sorceress," I said with a grin, which caused D to burst out laughing.

"That's a neat trick you've got there, Amanda. Anyway, you girls better get off to your next lesson," said Miss Gordon.

I turned my mask back on and headed out the door as we set off for our next lesson.

On the way we encountered a large group of MORFS survivors, standing at a corner of a building. They seemed different in their attitude from the other individuals I had encountered in the library and halls. They carried themselves with a sort of swagger, like they could walk right through any obstacle in their way. Of course for all I knew that was the case.