Prism: Origins
Part One
“You're a mutant?”
“It's not a big deal.”
“Not a – you’re glowing in the dark!”
“Yes.”
“Are you dangerous?” That caught her off guard. “No.” She spoke sincerely, but the question had her mind racing – am I? Could I be?
“So your power is – what? You’re a lightbulb?”
“Among other things.” Aimee stared. She was still standing uncomfortably far away, frozen, tense. Jordan thought it looked like she had come face to face with a mountain lion and resolved not to make any sudden movements.
“But this hasn’t happened before.” Jordan sighed again, impatiently this time. Her powers, for the most part, didn’t bother her, but having to explain them over and over again to faces painted with hatred or terror or both was always a nuisance.
“My body stores energy. Unless I let it out, I turn into a glow stick. Today I forgot. It’s sort of like how you bloat and fart all night every time we order pizza.”
“I do not—“ Aimee began, but she scoffed, grinning and loosening up slightly when she caught Jordan’s smirk. “Show me.” Jordan shrugged, raised her left hand and snapped her fingers, releasing a brilliant flash of white light. She still glowed slightly afterwards, just enough so the two could see each other in the dark. She stared at her roommate with a hardened expression, anticipating a freakout, but, shockingly, Aimee was nonplussed.
“That’s it?”
“What did you think I was going to do, explode?”
“Well, yeah. There’s a girl two floors down who was breathing fire in her sleep. Her roommate woke up with her eyebrows singed off.”
“That’s how that happened? I thought she just shaved them!” Aimee was laughing now and Jordan wondered if they were back to normal, if she could move yet.
“So how long have you known?”
“I was twelve the first time. It really didn’t bother me as much as it probably should have. Mostly just useful for reading in the dark.” Aimee was watching her curiously but remained silent. Jokes didn’t seem to be working, so Jordan went for earnestness instead. “Hey, could you not tell anyone? I’m not embarrassed, but you know how some of the girls can be…” At this, Aimee broke into a weak, but reassuring smile. “Of course I won’t. Just promise I can keep my eyebrows.”
“Stay out of my Lucky Charms and we have a deal.” With another closed smile, Aimee turned and got back into her bed. Jordan followed suit, but lay down wide awake, staring at the wall. Once Aimee was out, she let panic overwhelm her and sat up hugging her knees for a while, too shaken and terrified to sleep.
“Hey.” Jordan closed her dormitory’s door behind her and set her bag and keys down on the hall table, inhaling and exhaling slowly, experiencing the sinking feeling that her roommate and her friends had just finished talking about her. She sat her on bed and turned towards them, their faces confirming her fear, but she tried to appear unfazed.
“I fell asleep in class again. Luckily the professor has a wandering eye so I get a free pass,” she joked, gesturing at her almost unacceptably low-cut top. Silence. It wasn’t difficult to guess exactly what their conversation had been about and she decided to attack it head-on.
“You told them.” Silence, again, but tenser this time. Jordan thought to herself what a fool she’d been to think this would ever end well and felt the paralyzing fear creep up over her again – this time tinted with righteous indignation.
“So that’s why the girl next to me got up and moved when I sat by her? Exactly how many people have you told? What the fuck, Aimee?” At this, Aimee finally spoke.
“I had to tell someone, you could be dangerous!” Jordan noted her friends looking at her as if she were a puddle of vomit,, but didn’t have a thought to spare for them at the moment.
“I told you I wasn’t. I also asked you to keep it between us.” She made sure her voice was icy and incisive, determined to hide her emotions and deal as much damage as possible. Yet again, silence, but this time Jordan wasn’t annoyed – rather, the guilty looks on her friends faces gave her a savage sort of satisfaction as she realized that she was now in control.
“I wasn’t lying when I told you I wasn’t dangerous. But now you’ve outed me and probably put me in danger. Now you have an enemy.” Jordan didn’t bother sticking around to gauge their reactions – she could guess. She stood up, grabbed her stuff and walked out, holding her tears back and her head high.
Part Two
Jordan Shaw takes a very long time to get ready in the morning. This is something she has long since accepted about herself in spite of it becoming the butt of a few too many jokes for her liking. While trying to pin her bangs back perfectly, she noticed that reapplying her makeup three times had made her late for class; she took a split second to look at herself in the mirror, bobby pin still between her teeth, and reexamine her life choices before shaking the thought out of her mind and getting back to work. The fact, she reflected as she slid the pin into her hair, is that every day is a war against the world – even more so than usual recently – and I fully intend to wear the best armor.
After some final touch-ups, she packed the necessities into her bag – Hermès, naturally – and walked into her bedroom, impossibly high heels clacking, saddened but not entirely surprised to see her roommate was still avoiding eye contact. As much as it stung that none of her friends spoke to her anymore, she was resolute to not let them win, and so she put her best bitch face on and strode out of the room.
On the walk from her typically dull and alienating class to her preferred café, she considered again her unyielding devotion to her appearance. Was there really anyone worth dressing up for anymore? She had stupidly decided to go to an all-girls university, so news traveled fast. Her friends ignored her, other students wouldn’t sit within five feet of her. She’d noted a change in her professors’ attitudes, as well, as hard as they worked to hide it, but she smirked at this thought – no matter how strong their prejudices, they couldn’t mark down her consistently excellent coursework. And she’d even catch lingering, hateful glances or uncomfortable body language from townspeople now and then; Northampton was smaller and more conservative than she was accustomed to. She felt almost as if she’d been blacklisted, been made an outcast, a pariah – then again, she thought, maybe that’s the best reason to keep up appearances.
Jordan paid for her usual complicated latte and sat down at the corner table; even in snow, even in six-inch heels, she always made the trek to what she fondly considered her hideaway. She felt functional, working adults were more her kind of people, and appreciated the respite from what she not-so-fondly considered the barbaric social cesspool that is Smith College. Still, she’d sensed a trace of ice in the barista’s eyes as he handed over her change without a word, and so she decided to keep her head down in a textbook rather than attempt to socialize.
She lost track of the time and her surroundings as she read up on Russian art until she noticed a pair of jeans approach her out of the corner of her eye.
“Hi, ” said a deep, gravely male voice.
“I’m not interested,” she answered almost reflexively, hardly letting him finish. Much to her displeasure, he sat down at her table regardless. She made a point of taking her sweet time to look up at him and intended to glare until he went away, but was even more displeased to find he was incredibly handsome – slightly older than her, tall, fit, with dark, perfectly tousled hair, a jawline that could cut diamond, and the kind of oceanic blue eyes she thought only existed in magazines.. She regained composure as quickly as she could, but still couldn’t help staring.
“Can I help you?”
“Maybe. You’re Jordan Shaw?”
“Maybe,” she replied, folding her arms and crossing her legs. She wanted to scowl, but something in his manner was keeping her off guard. She closed her book and tried to appear closed-off and superior, fighting hard to look at anything but his eyes. “What do you want?” At this, he leaned in closer, smiling slightly.
