The X-Project

Jamie manages to track down the elusive Great Crested Paige and, by dint of shiny car, he convinces her that she is not in fact universally hated.  I know, I know, I'm sure you're all as shocked as she was.

Edited to add: hey, isn't that a spiffy icon? Alicia did it. She's nifty.



Jamie ducked his head into the library, scanning the room.  On the one hand, his looking-for-Kitty skills should theoretically translate pretty well into looking-for-Paige skills.  On the other, he was used to looking for brown hair . . . aha, though, there she was.  He grinned and waved, walking the rest of the way into the room.  "Paige!  Just the person I was looking for.  I need some help."

There was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to cover her face and mumble something about needing a book from the library, or pretending to have fallen asleep with her eyes open or even to suddenly vomit into her book bag so he'd be so grossed out that he'd leave her alone.  Paige had done so well at avoiding the bitch hunt, and to have Jamie be the one to track her down...  "What with?" she asked cautiously, putting down her pencil.

"The upstairs hall closet is out of spare lightbulbs," Jamie said seriously.  "And I know what you're going to say, we can just get them out of the downstairs hall closet, but you know what I say?  I say those are old lightbulbs.  Unreliable.  Don't know where they've been."  He nodded firmly.  "We need to go buy lightbulbs.  And we can't go to WalMart in Salem Center, because--well, you've heard what those big superstores do to local business, don't you?"  Absolutely deadpan, he continued, "So I was thinking, there's a WalMart up near Albany.  I mean, you hear these things about the big chains, but I don't know, they're so convenient, and you can get some real bargains."  He grinned.  "So you wanna come?  I'm driving.  I don't know if you've heard, but I have this car now . . ."

Blinking slowly, Paige tried to take that all in.  Wait.  Car?  The Mustang?  "You mean your Shelby?  What year is she by the way?  Did you choose a paint job for her?  Not that you couldn't pull off the purple, it was a great shade with your hair or something, but.  Uh," Paige quizzed before grinding to an embarrassed halt.  Ferraris and Mustangs.  How cliché was she?

"Let's see.  Yes, the Shelby, '68, dark green, it looks awesome, Forge's suggestion, guy isn't kidding around when he says he's a genius."  Jamie bounced up and down on his toes.  "Is that a yes?  C'mon, you'll be the third person ever I've driven around in it.  Come buy lightbulbs with me!"

Eying him suspiciously one last time, Paige finally nodded.  He wouldn't dare risk the new interior by offing her in there, right?  Besides, she really wanted to see this car, and the idea of spending some time out of the house wasn't a bad one either.  "The year they got the nose jobs," Paige said with a nod, as she collected her books and put them in a neat pile on her seat.  No one touched her stuff these days.  "It was their best year if I recall, six models out.  My memory is getting rusty."

"It is," Jamie said positively, "the prettiest car I've ever seen.  I mean, not to disparage Mr. Summers's car, that's a sweet little machine, but you just can't beat the classics.  Purrs like a kitten, too, Ms. Braddock kept it in amazing condition.  C'mon!"  He grinned and started out of the room.  "Glad I didn't have to twist your arm.  I'm driving people around because it's an excuse to go driving, and you were one of the first people I thought of because I know you like cars and you won't look at me funny when I make little glee noises."

"Hey, if it wasn't your car I'd be practically molesting it.  You will get no funny looks from me," Paige admitted as she followed him, tugging her t-shirt, another article of clothing of Jono's, straight.  "Besides.  I could use some caramels.  I've had a craving for them all day."

"Aw, you can molest it anyway," Jamie said generously.  "And yes.  Impulse snackage is a vitally important part of the random errand.  Caramels sound good."

Jamie led the way down to the garage, where not entirely coincidentally the Shelby was sitting parked off a little ways by itself, gleaming a deep green in the overhead lights.  "Ee," Jamie said.  "Still can't believe it's actually mine."

Paige paused to appreciate the sight before her for a moment before crossing over to the green beauty.  She just barely resisted petting it if only because then she'd have to polish out the fingerprint smudges.  "Makes me wish I could put up with telepaths.  Almost," Paige answered, smiling.  "You are a lucky, lucky guy, Jamie.  She's mint."

"I wouldn't say 'lucky' so much as 'really, really, mindbogglingly, once-in-a-heck-of-a-lot-of-lifetimes lucky.'"  He pulled the driver's door open gently, slid into the luxurious leather seat, and pushed open the other door.  "C'mon, get in, get in."

"Well, there's so many of you.  Perhaps all your karma from all of you was used on this car.  Or possibly you're stealing everyone's karma for your nefarious pretty automobile purposes.  I'd like my karma back please," Paige replied, almost back to her cheerful babbling self if it weren't for the topic, as she hopped into the passenger's side, closing the door firmly but not roughly behind her.

"Well, I'm doing what I can," Jamie said, not entirely joking.  "Been practicing slowing down my duping every single day since I found out it was possible, in case Nathan and Doc McCoy want to have another try at seeing if Jono can figure out how I get new bodies out of the astral plane.  Just wish I could do more than that."  He patted her on the arm.  "But hey, even if I'm all out of miracles on demand, I can at least show you a good time in the shiny car while we wait for the real geniuses to pull through, huh?"

Paige stuck out her tongue, but couldn't manage to make her angry face stick.  He was being nice to her, nice enough that it was like he didn't care that she had yelled at Amanda.  Amanda who had recently come out of her angst phase, at least mostly, Paige realized, trying not to be smug.  "You know, if I were a less kind girl I would bring to your attention that you basically referred to myself as a fake genius.  Luckily, I am won over by shiny things and sugar cravings."

"Ah, but that only makes sense, because  we just established that I'm very lucky indeed.  So I win!"  Jamie grinned and turned the key in the ignition; the car rumbled to life.  "Now is that not the smoothest thing ever?"

"Smooth like a thing that is really super smooth," Paige agreed easily, resting her hand lightly on the dash to feel the low vibrations under her palm.  She smiled quietly.  "How's she handle?"

"Like silk," Jamie replied, easing the car out of the garage.  "Very, very fast silk."

Her smile certainly didn't fade at that one.  The gentle hum that was reaching up to her arm now was certainly not a bad thing, but she wanted to see this baby roar.  "Well, let's go make something pretty then.  Just this once and just for you I won't even clutch at things if you accidentally forget to check the speedometer occasionally."

"I'm an excellent driver," Jamie deadpanned in his best Dustin Hoffman voice.  "Excellent driver."  He grinned.  "And I haven't actually taken her out and really given her a workout.  Need to find some nice long straightaway with tolerant highway patrol cops one of these days, though."

In a few minutes they were on the highway, and Jamie worked the shift smoothly, bringing them to something just a shade above the posted limit.

There were a few minutes of silence as Paige enjoyed the scenery rushing past them and the light wind from the window she'd opened a crack.  "Wait!" she cried out suddenly, looking out the front window as she thought of something.  "I've finally figured out something that the mansion doesn't have.  We don't have a driving track!"

"You're right, we don't."  Jamie clucked his tongue.  "And the Professor calls this a world-class educational institution.  I ask you, how can we call this a world-class education if we aren't allowed to explore NASCAR as a possible career option?  We should lodge a formal complaint."

"I knew there was a reason why his door didn't have one of those little suggestion box type things.  Other than the obvious fact that I'm sure there would be some very naughty things put in there of course," Paige continued, nodding.  "He knew that he was holding out on us and we'd figure it out one of these days."

"We should think 'Racetrack!' very loudly at him when we see him in the halls, do you think?  Eventually he'll have to ask.  Or have us committed."  Jamie considered this.  "Or start thinking weird things right back at us.  It's hard to tell with his sense of humor sometimes."

Paige couldn't help but smile a little at that.  Their headmaster was a little odd at times, sort of like a Dumbledore who wasn't going to turn out evil.  Or die.  "Personally I'm hoping her just starts leaving little toy cars in odd places.  I'm kind of afraid of what he considers a weird thing thought."

"Oh,  I think I've managed to surprise him a couple times," Jamie said airily.  He took a speculative glance at a sign they were passing, that promised a rest stop in five miles, and looked sidelong at Paige.  "You want a turn behind the wheel?"

"Are you on crack?" Paige blurted out, whipping her head so fast in Jamie's direction that her hair flew in front of her face and managed to get itself caught in her lipchap.  Clawing at her face, she managed to get it away and over her shoulder, trying to pretend it had never happened.  "I mean, first of all because you have to ask and second because you would ask in the first place, which takes us back to the first question."

Jamie blinked at her, puzzled.  "Why wouldn't I ask?  You're my friend, you like cars, this is a fun car to drive."

With the deep urge to turn her head to the right just so she could whip her head back at Jamie again, Paige settled on a long blink.  "I'm your friend? I mean, I thought...  Well, maybe not that you hated me, but irritated or indifferent or another one of those I words."

It was probably a good thing the rest stop exit came up just then, because Jamie's expression had moved past "puzzled" all the way to "boggled" and he wasn't keeping much of an eye on the road.  He coasted to a stop in the parking lot.  "Well, yeah, you're my friend.  Why wouldn't you be?  Dork."  He grinned.  "Now scoot over and drive my car.  You know you want to."

"It's just, you're friends with Doug and Angie and she's close with Amanda and... yeah?" she asked shyly, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear to distract from her little grin.  "And yeah.  I really do."

Jamie made a wry face.  "Well, if we're going Six Degrees, here, Amanda's going out with Manny, and you may not have heard, but he's not exactly on my list of favorite people.  And you're friends with Kitty, who gets her own whole list of the awesome.  But we're not doing Six Degrees, because hey, dozens of my own minds here, y'know?  Don't kill any puppies where I can see you and we're cool."

"Kay," Paige said, adding a bit of a pretty blush to her little grin.  She gave herself one more moment of embarrassment before grabbing the handle next to her and opening the door.  "All right, move over.  I want to see what she can do.  Within the law of course."

"Of course,"  Jamie said gravely, hopping over into the passenger seat.  "We wouldn't want to go breaking the law.  That would be bad."