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X-MEN '97 1.01 "TO ME, MY X-MEN"
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V. FIRST CLASS
PICTURE THIS: Juliet in her childhood. Before Ezra, before Dominik, before the Saviours, before her powers. Until she reaches high school and realises the sharp points of its attached, adolescent cruelties, it does not occur to her how little she grew up with. Her world was simple and small, and something that even her mother could describe when her English was still as newborn as her children. Arden, Ji-Ae. Sunday afternoons above the dry-cleaning store. The steady sound of the sewing machine, its hum warm and low like life. The iron and its pillars of steam, pluming through the upstairs apartment—a silk scarf dancing in the wind. Arden's laughter just the same.
It wasn't until Juliet's first sleepover in freshman year when she experienced for the first time what it must've been like to live in a real house—with an attic and basement, grass in the backyard, an ice-machine built into the refrigerator—that it dawned upon her she had lived a life without. Ji-Ae had been an illusionist in her own right, a self-taught stage magician with the unique ability to hide her ailing financial situation from her family. With smoke and mirrors, shadow and timing, she made away with the anxiety of overdue rent, food stamps, and second-hand clothes; it was all in the distraction.
