xx48.11.10 / 15:39 / Thursday

FINALLY caught up with Other Charlotte. I didn't see her all day (I didn't see Veronica either, thankfully) but then after school finished I spotted her on the other side of the grounds, I was really puffed out by the time I caught her at the gates. I think maybe super-agility also carries with it a secondary power of, I don't know what to call it, enhanced respiration? Super breathing? Not-getting-puffed-while-you-run? Anyway, what I'm saying is that my breathing's gotten heavy after exercising before, or after going through training courses, but I've never had to spend a few seconds just bent over trying to get my breath back. I mean, I DID run as fast as I could and it's not like I'm unfit, I mean even without super-agility I'm pretty quick and I got a lot of stares as I ran, but it's a long way from my apartment to the school gates (I was actually at my door when I saw her). Maybe I should start doing running practice. Anyway, she waited patiently for me to get my breath back enough to talk, then I started things off with:

"I have no idea if I should apologise to you again or not, so could you please tell me if I should?"

To my surprise this actually worked really well! She perked up straight away and even smiled, and she said:

"No, you don't need to apologise to me. Thank you for asking."

Well, that made my day, as you can probably guess. She's not mad at me!

"Okay," I said. "Wow, good. I'm so relieved. I thought you were avoiding me or something."

"I thought that perhaps you wanted me to avoid you," she said. That really threw me!

"What?" I said. "Why would I want you to avoid me?"

"I don't know," she said. "I thought that the possibility existed and without further information it was safer to assume you didn't want further contact with me, and I acted according to that assumption. I now see that this assumption was incorrect, so from now on I won't avoid you. Is that okay?"

"Yes, of course," I said. "Um, you might have noticed, I'm new here."

"Yes, I did notice," she said.

"Um, so," I said, "actually I wanted to ask if you wanted to do something together."

"With you?" she said.

"Um, yes," I said. "With me. Who else would I be speaking for?"

"I don't know," she said. "But I thought I should check. I'm sorry if it was strange to do so."

"Sorry to ask this," I said, because I really thought I had to, "but you're not a robot, are you?"

"No," she said. "I don't think I am."

"Okay," I said, "just checking. Um. So, what do people normally do around here?"

"Study and work," she said.

"Oh," I said. "Um. What do YOU normally do?"

"Study."

"But aside from that?"

Other Charlotte thought for a moment about that, staring down at a patch of grass.

"Regular biological functions?" she said, as if asking approval from me. "What do you normally do, aside from studying?"

"Oh, well ... not much at the moment." I had to be careful then. I want to get to know Other Charlotte more but at the same time I don't want to just blab out everything about me. If she asked me directly 'are you a superhero?' then ... well, actually I guess I COULD say 'no', it's not like I have any powers now and I haven't felt very heroic lately. Huh. Maybe not having powers is actually GOOD for creating a Public Identity, it means I won't accidentally be forced to reveal anything. Then again I've barely even thought about that in days—losing my powers I mean—because there have definitely been more pressing issues. Anyway, back to Other Charlotte:

"Are you finished talking to me?" she asked. I guess I must have been quiet for a while. "I should go home."

"Oh. Um. Okay, yes, I guess you should. Me too, I have to ... eat, I guess."

For a while Other Charlotte just stared not-quite-at me, then she said something that made me feel better than anything anyone has ever said to me before:

"Do you want to eat with me?"

So now I'm on a bus, sitting beside her, writing this out as we go to her house. She lives on the edge of town, apparently. I'm going to meet her parents! It's weird but I didn't think of her as having a family, I kind of thought she was like me—you know, utterly alone—but it turns out she grew up here. I have to admit I'm half-dreading meeting her parents, if they're like her then it might be an awkward evening. Don't get me wrong, I kind of like how she is, at least it's interesting and she's not weird like the other students ... um, well, I mean, she IS 'weird', but in a different way to everyone else. Weird in her own personal way, instead of weird in a general kind of way. I don't even know what I'm writing now, I'm doing the journal equivalent of babbling so I'm just going to stop. I think we're close to her house anyway, she's getting a bit fidgety like she doesn't want to miss her stop, so I'll write again later.