“When did you start smoking?” Charlie asked, the disdain plain on her face. Her nose had wrinkled into a disapproving mass in the center of her face, and Rowen stopped with the cigarette in her mouth. Suddenly sheepish, she removed it.

“I mean, it can’t hurt me anyway. What’s the point in not doing it?” she murmured. The smoke in her mouth turned sour. Since when had peer pressure swung to convincing people not to smoke?

“That’s a pretty dumb reason for doing something, you know? Why not just break your arms and your legs every day? They’ll heal anyway, right?” Just like always, Charlie did nothing to hide the sardonic bite of her words. The world wasn’t worth hiding it, she had told Rowen once. It was going to hurt you, and the only tool in your arsenal sometimes was biting back with a well-placed barb. The art of it was lost on Rowen, whose tongue never seemed to throw off the shackles of comportment.

But there was a flaw in Charlie’s theory: she did experience breaks often. In the past week, they had worked on the regeneration of her thumb to the point it still smarted with phantom pain. “Like you don’t use your power for personal benefit,” she muttered. Her voice did its best to take the same edge as Charlie’s had, but it fell far short. She sounded more like a kicked puppy than anything else. Beside her, Charlie rolled her coal black eyes.

“That’s different. My power doesn’t cost me anything, and I have everything to gain by using it. Destroying yourself, even for just a little bit, hurts no one but yourself. I guarantee you that your mom doesn’t give a shit about your lungs.”

Charlie spent too much of her time rooting around inside other people’s brains, Rowen decided. That was what was wrong with her. She had forgotten that she was one of them. They were no different; Rowen was even older than her. She wasn’t so special, even if she could play doctor, but whatever Rowen wanted to say died on her tongue when the door behind her swung open. She hurriedly ground out the cigarette and turned around so fast that she nearly knocked herself off balance.

“Come on, Miss Oswald. Your escort back to Primrose is here. Deveraux, you’re going to be late for craft time again. Don’t abuse your privileges.” The doctor was staring past Rowen, to the curly haired girl beside her. There was an understanding between the two that she couldn’t place and didn’t want to understand. Charlie wasn’t her friend, just some girl they stuck her on the roof with when they were done poking her full of holes. Still, there was an odd tinge of pity as she waved goodbye to the girl, the pack and lighter tucked into an inner fold of her windbreaker. “I’ll see you next time, Charlie.” The other only gave a half-wave and a grunt of dismissal.

Charlie didn’t speak the entire time they sat on the roof, not when the doctor brought Rowen out. She hadn’t even turned around to acknowledge them, her eyes trained over the well-manicured lawn of Monroeville as though it would suddenly burst into flame. Rowen took up her usual position beside the other girl on the roof and glanced down, for a second, at the tiny strip of photo booth pictures in her hand. The strip was badly charred, and the only thing she could discern from it where three amorphous faces, streaked with ash. She didn’t dare question it, and she didn’t try to look at it again. Charlie remained silent even when Rowen smoked quietly beside her. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, and though she would never ever mention it, she could see the redness in Charlie’s eyes. Rowen had cried enough in her life to recognize what it looked like.

It had never occurred to her that Charlie could cry too.

Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat drives you mad

“What, no cigarettes this time?” Charlie’s voice was quick and barbed, and instinctively, Rowen covered her stomach with an errant hand.

“No,” she told her, her voice barely above a whisper. “But if I tell you why, you can’t tell anyone, okay?” Curiosity sparked in Charlie’s dark eyes, the prospect of secret-keeping drawing her silently forward in interest. Rowen cast looks all around them, as though double-checking that the empty roof was empty, before she leaned forward herself. “I’m going to have a baby.”

Charlie pulled back rather quickly, confused. “That’s fucking stupid.” Color sparked in Charlie’s cheeks, and her gaze seemed to widen with a sudden attack of anger. “What the fuck do you mean? Why would you do that?” She made no movement, but Rowen still felt like she had been hit.

“It’s my life; I should get to live it the way I want. And this is what I want.” She folded her arms across her chest and tried her best defensive tilt of her chin. She suddenly felt small compared to the girl beside her, who seemed to vibrate with too much energy. “Besides, I love him, and he loves me. It’s going to be amazing. You just don’t understand.”

“You’re fucking right I don’t understand. How could you do something so monumentally stupid? How can you get a real education and still end up being so fucking stupid?” Charlie still hadn’t moved from her seat, but Rowen felt like she was running around the roof, throwing chairs into the lawn below. It was a strange power, to hurt people without ever moving.

“Don’t talk to me like that! You don’t get to lecture me about anything.” There was that bark that she had tried so often to conjure, there was that white hot coursing of rage that she had tried so unsuccessfully to muster. This girl was a nobody, and she was going to lecture Rowen about choices? About being stupid and reckless? Rowen’s mouth opened to say something awful, but it clicked shut when she thought better. Instead, she leaned back, arms crossed, onto the pony wall around the roof. “I didn’t plan it, first off, but I do love him. You’d might even like him if he met him; he’s not like us. He’s…”

“Normal? He’s human? I just…” The rage seemed to dissipate from Charlie, and she sagged against herself. “You had a chance to, like, really get away, but you’re just gonna be hooked up to monitors soon. Maybe they’ll keep your kid for testing too.” She rubbed her hands over her face, as if trying to scrub all the unpleasantness from her. “Who else knows?”

“No one. Just you. I haven’t even told him or my parents.” She didn’t want to rub the tears from her eyes, but she found herself doing it anyway. Damn it. It wasn’t fair.

“Don’t treat that like a badge of honor for me. We both just know it’s because you’re scared how they’ll react.” She was right, but Rowen didn’t have to like it. “Look, don’t tell anyone else here, okay? They’ll find out soon enough anyway. When they take you back, find your guy and run off. Just go somewhere away from Monroeville and Primrose, from New Orleans. Go to fucking Arizona or something.”

Rage had dissipated into a silence that stretched awkwardly between them. Rowen cleared her throat and broke it, unable to hold the weight of it. “Do you think about that sometimes? About leaving, I mean?” She didn’t need to ask; she could read the answer in the hard glint of Charlie’s eyes. Charlie had thought about it, she could tell, but come to some conclusion that it wasn’t possible. “I’m sure they’ll let you out someday.” It was a weak thought, and one she couldn’t much believe in. The roll of Charlie’s eyes confirmed that it was the stupidest thing ever said to her.

“You’re too naïve, you know? About everything and everyone.” Before Charlie could lecture her more, however, the metal door was swinging open. The two gave their usual, tiny waves, ignoring whatever else they wanted to say.

The monitors kept her from a restful sleep, and she was grateful that they left the baby in her room. Monroeville had never really been equipped with a maternity ward, but they had the rudimentary equipment and performed the birth without spectacle. Her mother had valued the discretion above all else, she suspected. Not that she knew for herself; she was pretty sure her mother wouldn’t visit her. Not after all the embarrassment Rowen had put her through.

The late-night knock on her door wasn’t unusual (the nurses seemed to perform all sorts of tests on her at every turn), but she hadn’t expected to see Charlie enter. She shut the door quietly behind her and immediately folded her arms over her chest. “Is that…it?” Charlie whispered from the doorway, nodding in the direction of the baby bed.

Rowen laughed, the loudest sound in the darkness. “I mean, I hope so, and you can call him a baby. I don’t think the world is going to explode if you do.” Charlie edged into the room and craned her neck towards the baby. Rowen could still see the tightness of her closed arms, as though she didn’t want to even accidentally touch her or the baby. “His name is James.”

Charlie’s nose twisted and scrunched as she watched the sleeping baby. “It’s – sorry, he’s very small.” Her tone, for once, was rather soft, and it caught Rowen out of sorts. The sheets of the bed crinkled as she pushed herself to sit up. “You didn’t do what I said. You didn’t run.” The dark eyes never left the sleeping baby, but she could feel the attention settle on her.

Rowen frowned; once more, she felt like she was exposed in Charlie’s presence. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t try.” She pulled the covers up and tried not to resist the urge to have Charlie leave her room entirely, but that wouldn’t be a very fair thing to do. “He’s going to wake up soon to eat, so you can hold him, if you want.”

Silhouetted in moonlight, Charlie eased her grip on her own arms but ultimately shook her head. “No, no. I should get back to my room before they do checks.” The silence came back again, save James’s small coo. Slowly, Charlie backed away from the crib and shook her head, more to herself than to Rowen. Her gaze finally fell on Rowen. “I’m going to college in the fall. They’re letting me go to UNO. They want me to be a doctor, so I can actually work for the hospital.”

The words weren’t dressed up; they were bare facts, cold and laid out. Rowen wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about the words, but her hesitation to respond seemed to be the answer Charlie was looking for. The dark curls of hair bounced as she nodded and headed for the door without another word. Before she could dissect it any further, James fussed in his bed, eager to be held and fed.

Charlie ducked out of the backdoor of the nightclub, sick of the noise and the crowd. It had been an awful idea, to try and go out. It was unseasonably cold, and even on break, she had so much school work to do that it wasn’t funny. Education, real education, was the entire dream and nightmare she had been promised it would be. It was glorious, though. The newfound freedom, the ability to interact with more than just the grey walls at Monroeville. They had even gave her a small apartment after she graduated from undergrad. It was all subsidized by the hospital, but it was her space. It was the first time in a long time that she had been able to say that.

Her entire train of thought split when she was shoved from behind. Two young people had emerged from the club behind her, and they couldn’t see her in the dark. They were so wrapped up in each other that they couldn’t see anything. Normally, she would have immediately taken her leave, but she recognized the woman almost immediately. The same dark eyes, the same line of a mouth, though she looked like a ghost of herself.

“Rowen?” she asked, unable to keep her curiosity in check. The pair immediately disengaged, and the glare she got from both was new and uncomfortable. “What are you doing here?”

Recognition seemed to slowly dawn in Rowen, and she pushed the man away from her, back toward the door of the crowded club. Whatever spell the music and the crowd had created, Charlie had broken. Beside her, Rowen searched her bag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and the smell brought Charlie back to the roof and Monroeville. She scowled; she couldn’t believe that was all it took to make her feel powerless again. “You don’t do that in front of your kid, do you? It’s a disgusting habit.”

Rowen winced, just once, but she didn’t put the cigarette out. In the green and yellow of the streetlights, Charlie could read the lines on her face. Time had sent their lives in very different directions, and all she could really do was watch the ash flick off the end of Rowen’s cigarette. “You mean, do I smoke in front of his urn? Because yeah, I do sometimes. It helps.” She ran a free hand through her hair, the smoke billowing up into the night. Charlie remained silent, unsure of what to say or feel about the statement. “That wasn’t fair. You didn’t know. No, he, uh, he died a couple years back. Car wreck.”

“Shit.” It was all she could say, but it clearly wasn’t the right thing. A laugh, of all things, shook Rowen’s shoulders. “I mean, I’m sorry, Rowen. That’s hard.” Her mouth was trying very hard to correct its own mistake, but Rowen’s laugh had already turned into a choking sob. Charlie was officially way out of her paygrade.

Rowen rode the wave of her emotions until she could breathe in deeply and clear her throat. “It’s fine, really. I mean, it’s not fine at all, but it’s okay. I’ve never heard you apologize before, though.” She rubbed the tears from her eyes with the palm of her hand, the cigarette smothering itself in a puddle. Their silence seemed to grow, drowning out the music that thumped behind them. For a second, it really did feel like it was so very long ago, on the roof when the world seemed young and open. They had been a little foolish, then, they knew. “Did you ever get to go to school?” she asked, just to find something to break the icy silence.

“I did. Graduated undergrad, actually last spring. Started med school this fall. I’m working at Monroeville.” She winced when she said the words. For anyone else, that might have been impressive, but Rowen had been in Monroeville, even if for just tests and to go home. She knew the reality more than most, a fact which her silence seemed to confirm.

“That’s wonderful, Charlie. That’s what you wanted, right?” Rowen wrapped her arms around her middle, tight. How could she still look like such a frightened child?

“I guess,” she murmured in reply, kicking at an empty can at her feet. It clattered and echoed in the alleyway, and they both traced the bounces with their eyes. The can slowly settled out of the halo of light they stood in, and the awkwardness began to mount. Without the doctor to break the silence between them, they didn’t know how to end the conversation. “You should go back inside. Find your friend.”

Rowen rested her head back against the brick, her breath fogged over with cold. “I don’t think he would have waited on me, but I appreciate the sentiment. I think I’m going to just go home, actually.” She uncrossed her arms and gave Charlie a small wave. “I’ll see you later, Charlie.”

Charlie gave her only a half-wave and a small, disgruntled sigh.

In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost, and what you had, and what you lost