XGeneration 1: You Don't Know Me (39 page)

“Then who’s the receptionist?”

“I thought it might’ve been the Leonards—I saw some telephone equipment when I went beneath the shed—but all that stuff’s been tagged and warehoused, I’m sure. No longer operational, anyway. And there’s still a delay on my line. Yours, too, I checked. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Was the answer also a
them
?

Janis wrapped her arms around her knees and rested the side of her head there. When she spoke again, her voice sounded older, tired.

“There are things I’m still trying to figure out too, I guess. So much has happened and…. don’t take this the wrong way, Scott, but I need a break. What you just told me, I… I can’t think about right now.”

Scott swallowed and looked at his hands.
Way to drop a load on her, dimwit.

“I’m not going to be at school next week,” she said. “My parents decided we should leave for Denver early, spend a longer holiday with Grams. They thought it best that we get away for a while.”

“I understand.” But the thought of not seeing her in all that time made Scott’s insides feel hollow and metallic. The last week and a half had been hard enough. He studied the gray street.

“Oh! I almost forgot something.” Janis patted his hand. “Wait here.”

Scott turned as she disappeared through the front door.

She returned a minute later, a slender paper bag crackling in her hands. Her eyes shone with excitement as she held it out to him. Scott nearly lost his balance when he stood.

“What’s this?”

“An early Christmas present.”

He took it. “Oh, you didn’t have to—”

But then he had the gift partway out of the bag, and a startled sound sheared his words. The front of the comic book showed a battle-torn Scott Summers and Jean Grey fighting side by side, taking on the Shi’Ar Imperial Guard.

“How did you know?”

Janis laughed. “You told me about it, remember? Up at The Grove that night. You mentioned it was the only one missing from your collection. I guess the issue number stuck in my head.”

He
had
told her everything that night, hadn’t he?

“But where did you find it?” Now Scott was laughing.

“Well, Margaret felt bad about not believing me about Mr. Leonard. I’d tried to warn her back in August, but Margaret being Margaret…” Janis rolled her eyes. “Anyway, she said she owed me. So I told her about the comic book. Turned out the guy at the hobby store near school had the issue in his personal collection.”

“You mean Tully? And he
sold
it to her?”

Scott had tried for years to get him to part with the issue but only ever received a condescending smirk in response, no matter what he offered.

“Margaret can be very persuasive.”

Scott kept staring at the cover.
Uncanny X-Men
#137
. “I-I don’t know what to say. I didn’t get you anything.”

“Do you remember what you said when you found me?”

Stay awake. Help’s coming.

“I think so.”

“Seeing you there, Scott. Hearing your voice. Knowing that you were all right.” Her eyes began to glimmer, even as she smiled. “That told me that I was going to be all right, too. That was your gift to me.”

She rose onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

“Merry Christmas, Scott.”

“Merry Christmas, Janis,” he whispered. For the first time, he noticed the fragrant evergreen trim around the Graystone’s front door, the red and white stockings hanging beneath the door’s small windows.

“So…” Her hand lingered around his another moment. “See you in 1985?”

He tried to think of something Scott Summers would say to Jean Grey, something special, something that would capture the dizzying enormity of what he felt for her in that moment.

But all he could come up with was, “You bet.”

When Scott reached the street, he flipped up his jacket collar. He’d have Jesse to face soon, a switchboard to figure out, and Mr. Leonard’s cryptic message to decipher—if it could even be believed. But for the moment, his thoughts were on one person.

Halfway up the hill, he turned, surprised to find Janis still on the front porch, still looking after him. Scott raised the comic book, smiled as she waved back, and hunched his shoulders against the December wind, the touch of her lips still warm against his skin.

From the Author

Thanks for reading! Book One may be over, but Janis and Scott, as well as the entire
XGeneration
series, are just warming up. And
XGeneration 2: The Watchers
is on sale now.

Check my author’s page for subsequent books in the series. Or, if you’d like to be among the very first to know when a new book is out, sign up for my new release mailing list:
bit.ly/bdmlist.
(
Psst
… I discount all new releases for the first week.)

You can also follow me on Faceboook:
facebook.com/bdmagna

Books by Brad Magnarella

XGeneration 1: You Don’t Know Me

XGeneration 2: The Watchers

Escape (The Prisoner and the Sun #1)

Lights and Shadows (The Prisoner and the Sun #2)

Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3)

The Prisoner and the Sun (The Complete Trilogy)

Acknowledgements

I had the pleasure and good fortune to work with a truly special group in transforming
XGeneration
from concept to reality. Heartfelt thanks go to my beta readers; to the talented Damonza for the spot-on cover design; and to the folks at Red Adept Publishing for their stellar job editing and proofreading, with special thanks to Michelle, Kelly, and Sarah. Naturally, any errors and inelegance that remain are this author’s and this author’s alone (he can be a stubborn S.O.B.). A final shout out goes to Harvey Chute and the motivating, magnanimous community at Kindle Boards, without whom I’d be just another lost and lonely prawn.