The bus went from cold, to hot, to cold again over the course of the million hours Anna was cursed to sit in the dank old thing. It was better than the rust bucket that picked her and her freak friends up in the morning, sure, but it also didn't take much to pass that flat-faced, cigarette-stenched, donkey wagon as far as quality. The school actually spared the cash to hire a charter bus with a driver that didn't look completely hung-over. Anna supposed she should be thankful if this trip up North to look at a glorified mountain range with a bunch of rock nerds was her idea. At least the bus was big and she had her whole bench, and nearly the whole back row to herself minus some weeb reading manga in the opposite rear corner. Still, he had his bright-pink cat ear headphones on and wasn't giving her any weird looks, so she supposed she could complain. The rest of the nerd brigade was far more vocal.
Mostly girls, and few who didn't seem to subscribe to either gender role, were all clustered near the center of the bus talking about crap Anna couldn't give less of a fuck about. All mostly upper-class men, they yammered on about classes, college, crappy teachers, girlfriends, boyfriends, and 'can you believe what that science teacher Mr. Morgan did in class the other day,' blah - blah… What was even worse though, was she was stuck in this freaking purgatory with Scott 'Summer-Boy' Summers who sat right up in the front row near the teacher like a good little lap dog.
Scott and the Archeology club… a combination if she ever heard of one. She didn't think the ass-for-brains could even spell 'Archeology' let alone find the door for the club. Still, there he was, sat up there with his crappy little nose dug into some textbook. Seriously, they were on this bus for over 6 hours and he reads a textbook to pass the time? Friggin' try hard. What did it matter now, though? She had her winge fest about it back at home, and now the only thing that mattered was finally beating the stupid-ass ninja-gym-trainer-guy in the Pokemon game Kurt gave her a few weeks back.
Hugging her backpack tight to her chest, Anna rested the side of her head against the glass of the bus window. She had her Game-Boy as close to her face as possible to better block out her crappy existence and was hard at work chipping away at the gym leader's cronies. She was halfway through tearing apart a Muk Pokemon when the screen went oddly dim before going completely dark.
"Oh, sweet jumping Jesus Christ no…" She flicked the power button on and off but there wasn't even so much as a spark of life from her last bastion of sanity. She ripped open the frontmost zipper of her backpack and uncovered nail clippers, a single bent stick of gum, an eraser filled with puncture holes from a pencil tip… then a single battery! She snapped open the back plastic hatch of her Game-Boy, popped out one of the batteries, and made to slot in the fresh one when she found it was far too small to fit. She slowly closed her eyes, leaned forward, and rested her forehead on the back of the hand-held game console till she could feel the warranty sticker leave an imprint on her face.
Finally admitting defeat, she shoved her Game-Boy, batteries and all, into her backpack then reared back and moaned. That was it. She was going to die. The boredom from the trip alone was going to be enough to kill her. Apparently, her dramatics were enough to catch the attention of the weeb sitting an aisle over who looked at her from the corner of his eye.
She looked back, "What?" He ducked his head, his shoulders concealing his head-phoned ears, then stared at the chair in front of him.
She rolled her eyes and liberated her phone from her pocket. Of course, no service. Either they were that far out in the boonies, or they finally reached these mythical mountains they were on this epic quest for. Regardless, it seemed like she wasn't going to be able to take advantage of the X-Men's generous data package any time soon. So instead she scrolled through her shared texts with the others, though Kitty's ramblings and Evan's notes for their up-and-coming Dungeons and Dragons campaign thing-ima-jig.
Eventually, she let her phone's screen come to rest, then plastered her forehead against the cool glass of the window pane next to her. She watched the foliage fly by at a steady pace and the frothy clouds loom overhead.
"It sounds like it'll be an adventure!" She could hear Kitty's attempts to cajole her even now from the night before when she packed her bags.
"I've never seen the mountains." Says Kurt, who was buried in Kitty's stuffed animals.
"Well, Kurt," Anna crammed an extra pair of underwear into her suitcase. "These aren't 'mountains,' you freaking plebeian. They are 'super mountains.'" She finger quoted.
"Super mountains?"
"The Adirondack Mountains," Evan read from his phone, "have been in existence for more than 5 million years. It is considered to be one of the landmarks that survived the ice age." He hugged the back of the chair he sat in and scratched the stubble under his chin.
"Wooow, 5 million…" Kitty looked from Evan back to Anna. "That's, like, what - a million less than how old Logan is?"
"Dude!" Kurt balanced Kitty's stuffed dragon on his head. "The Ice Age! Thats history! You like history!"
"I get along alright with a history teacher, Kurt." Anna crossed her arms. "At least I did till he talked to me like some sort of criminal."
"What do you mean?"
"It's his fucking fault I'm having to take this dumb-ass trip into hick-ville." Anna crammed a folded pair of socks under her underwear. "Out of damn nowhere, after class the other day, he gets all up in my face and says if I want a hope of passing his dumbass class I need to take this trip with the rock-lover club." She crammed in another pair of socks, this time with more force. "I would have told him to shove it, but he had already sent the request to Xavier who told me I have to, so -" She held out her hands to either side and shook them.
"Think of it this way," Kitty sat on Anna's bed, next to her scattered laundry and suitcase. "It's a free trip, you get to see the mountains, and you get to fix your grade? Sounds pretty good to me!"
"Yeah, sure - but you know who else is a part of the Archaeologist Club?"
"Scott."
Anna looked back at Evan. "How did you know that?"
"Heard him and Jean talking about it once during breakfast. I think he joined because she was going to, then she couldn't because of - I don't know, I kinda zoned out after that."
Anna and Kitty looked at each other.
"Could still be fun!" Kurt sat up and Kitty's ruined bed. "Maybe you two will find some common ground climbing those mountains together?"
Anna, back in the present, stared at the back of Scott's head, her eyes narrowed. "I think I'd rather die."