Free The Ultimate X-Men by Unknown Author

of a few hours. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I w T anted to be alone with my thoughts. And getting out of the mansion seemed like a pretty good idea. The Institute’s getting more crowded all the time, and as for the woods outside the campus, well . . . Wolverine’s taken to living out there these days. And he’s been scaring me lately.
    I was on a train bound for New York City within the hour. Now, you might wonder, What the heck was Sam thinking, going to the biggest city in the world when he wants to be alone? And if you are, then you must not have been to New York much. ’Cause there’s just so many people there, rushing around, each in their own world. That makes for millions of little worlds in one city, and I figured it wouldn’t mind one more. Besides, I wanted to be around normal people and maybe, just maybe, not worry about being a mutant for a while.
    I started by just walking around downtown. I didn’t much feel like going to any of the museums, and I like the Greenwich Village area quite a bit. It’s kinda, well, alive. Everyone’s in their own little world in New York, but the Village is the best place to sit and watch ’em go by.
    Another thing I like about the Village is it always looks the same. I’ve seen pictures of the Village from the 1950s and 1960s, and, well, there’s not much important about it that’s changed. The buildings are all there, and even some of the clubs and theaters are the same. But most of the storefronts are flashier now, and today there’s a lot more kids from the Empire State University campus running around.
    Now, while the Village isn’t exactly the best place for solitude, it’s an ideal spot to lose yourself in a crowd. After walking around aimlessly for a while, poking my head in stores and checking out vintage record shops for old George Jones albums, I decided to head up to Washington Square Park. Washington Square Park isn’t exactly a park like we had in Kentucky. After all, it’s mostly concrete, and the places that have grass also have keep off signs. But there’s no place better in the Village to entertain your eyes for free. On a crisp, just-after-a-light-drizzle day like that one, people from all walks of life hang out to meet, relax, perform, or watch passersby, as I was doing that day. As I entered the park, I heard dogs barking as they chased their masters, their tennis balls, or each other in the fenced-off dog run just to my left. Right in front of that was a group of musicians playing and singing old Beatles songs. Way over to the right was a man in a three-piece suit buying a hot dog from a street vendor. Just past them was a single guitar player singing love songs, surrounded by a few pretty young college girls. Listening to that boy sing made me think of Josh’s own glorious voice. I remember him even as a young’un, using that voice of his to charm us all: singing “Amazing Grace” in church, leading the family in sing-alongs by the fireplace on cold winter nights, and entertaining his friends at the soda shop like this young fellow in front of me was doing. In fact, I got so caught up in the flow of memories that I didn’t even notice until too late that my pocket had been picked.
    I felt light fingers cross my back pocket and immediately
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    reached to discover my wallet was missing. Looking up quickly, I saw a kid in a yellow T-shirt and baggy jeans running away. “Stop!” I yelled. I screamed for the police, but there weren’t any around. Typical, ain’t it? So I took off after the kid. That is to say, I ran after him. No sense in using my mutant power in broad daylight, I figured.
    Does anyone really think that yelling, “Hey! Stop, thief! ” at a thief is really going to make them stop running from you? Well, I did it anyway, and of course it didn’t work. ’Course, after chasing him for a few blocks, I realized that I wasn’t going to catch up to him, and no one was willing to help me. Maybe I