A Sour Taste (for Jay)

It was warm, unnaturally warm for a February day in North Dakota. Unlike the way she'd been bundled up since Thanksgiving, Ava found herself without the thick coat, her hair in a ponytail to keep it off her neck. Occasionally, she felt a breeze against the back of her neck and she shivered. The sun was out, however. It lit the streets of Rosebury with a soft glow through the thin clouds that still covered the sky.

Glancing up the street, she took a long draw from the cigarette that was still burning in her hand. She tapped it, knocking some of the ash loose on the pavement. The taste in her mouth was sour. Ever since her meeting with Ed, she had been rethinking this habit of hers, something that had been a major part of her life for months. Disadvantages far outweighed the advantages, but she was too dependent on the relief it brought her. Even as she reached the end of the paper roll and tossed it on the ground, crushing it underfoot, Ava itched to reach for another.

She sat back on the bench, hands shoved in the pockets of her sweater, looking up and down the street again. She wasn't sure if Ed would show up today, but she knew how desperate he was, and he knew where to find her. She ignored the looks of passersby. She'd been sitting here a while.

Maisie walked up the Rosebury street, a street populated more so than usual, its tenants eager to get a springlike walk in the middle of February. She hated the cold weather more than the next two people combined, but she hated crowded streets more. Rosebury walks were what she actually spent class thinking about. It was what she wanted to do instead of sitting there, and there were few things she wanted to do anymore. Jonathan was still in a coma, and her rooftop was still locked, and everything was getting worse. She deliberately ignored her mom. Living near her was the absolutely worst.

Casually, she withdrew a cigarette, glancing out of the corner of her eye at the people walking around her, not by want of their approval but want to not set them on fire. She cupped her hand around the butt of it and the lighter, waiting for the time where she could finally breath. Truly breath. Her mother was trying to get her off those things. The school faculty was definitely trying to get her off those things. Her own hatred for life overpowered even her own worries at the end of the day. Fuck everyone. Black lung was the best option in that shitty town.

She flicked the lighter a few times. It didn't light. Her lighter was out of fluid. How was it already out of fluid?

"Fuck." She considered tossing it into the grass, but there were too many witnesses to retort if they called her out. She passed a trashcan and threw it out, pitching it into the small aperture and glancing around for what to do. It was when she saw a girl on a bench, a sizzle nearby whose trail led Maisie to her. She had been smoking. She had to have a lighter on her.

"Yo." The girl approached her, fair-haired and uniformed but bearing the face of a girl who'd had enough. Everything about her was dry, from the long-past-humored glare in her eyes to the threatening, threatened smirk on her face. She sat down next to her, and stretched longly, spreading her legs out and her arms over her head, and curving one over the distance between them on the bench backing, said, "Can I get a light?" She was waiting for a lie, glancing sideways and biting her lip impatiently. While her right hand draped over the bench, her left hand reached into her pocket, and wiggled an unsinged bleach-new cigarette for clarification.

Never one to be very observant, Ava hadn't noticed the girl until she sat beside her on the bench. She tried to make herself as small as possible, tucking her elbows into her sides and squeezing her knees together in the hope that it signaled that she didn't want to be spoken to. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work.

She looked at the girl who had asked for a light. They looked to be the same height, and while Ava knew that some people looked way younger than they actually were, they were in Rosebury, and the majority of young-looking people were actually students at the school. Wanting to kick her own habit, Ava suddenly felt responsible for this girl.

"Aren't you a little young to be smoking?" she asked, studying the girl's face with a slight sneer.

Maisie looked at her a second, before turning her eyes toward the crowd and giving a humorless smile. She shook her head. "I haven't heard that one in a couple of years." A sideways glance, and her rigid lips repeated, "You got a light or not?" How old was this girl anyway? She didn't look that old herself. How dare she bring up her appearance like she was a little kid. She could make decisions for herself, and damn well gave the atmosphere of this. She was practically an adult.

There were a few more seconds of indecision on Ava's part before she pulled out the lighter she'd been handling in her pocket. She stared at it a second, praying there wouldn't be karma of some kind later in life for enabling a minor. Finally, she extended the green object to the girl, her thin fingers cold despite having been in her pockets for so long.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she said, her face graced with a humorless smile of its own.

"Yeah, well I don't need your shit." It was fine to be unfiltered now that she had the lighter, that she could flick the cigarette to life. She did so, and the smoke entered her mouth in a sweet, headache-relieving fervor. "This school is bad enough as it is, I don't need some moral compass handed to me by a stranger." Despite the caustic remarks, she tossed the lighter onto the lap of the girl, and almost squeezed against her own side of the bench, murmured, "Thanks." After sitting down, she realized she didn't want to get back up, as the crowded street had not let up.

Ava watched the girl light up, the attitude she exuded reminding her of her younger self. She could almost see the blonde relax as she inhaled the smoke. Her own fingers twitched in the direction of her pocket again, but she managed to stop herself. She barely had the money to cover one pack a day, let alone the two she'd been going through for the past few weeks.

"Well, I'm not exactly the right kind of person to hand you a moral compass," she said without looking at the girl. Ava knew better than to reveal herself to a student from the school.

"You look it." Despite commenting on the girl's appearance, she kept her eyes to the side, her side, anywhere but to the person she was having a conversation with. She crossed her legs. "Though, the way your talking to me now, you seem like a fake. You're concerned for a stranger, speak to me calmly. You put on that look, the dark clothes and such, and you have the lighter, but I bet you go home and take it all off and watch Hello Kitty in your pink pajamas or something." A draw, a blow. There was something particularly comfortable in the way she went off on the girl, like she was a friend and there was no chance there'd be consequences. "I hate fakes. If you're trying to be something you're not, stop. Who are you trying to impress?"

Scowling, Ava stared at her knees, anger immediately flaring up inside of her chest, the heat rising to her head. Who did this girl think she was? She had just given her a light, hadn't she? Tossing her bangs out of her face, she looked over at Maisie, eyebrows creased.

"And you think you're rebelling with that cigarette?" she countered. She sat against the back of the bench and crossed her legs, her hands still in her pockets. "In a few years, you'll regret ever having that first smoke."

There was a pause. Maisie looked at her for a few moments, and when it seemed like she was going to slap her in the face or truly start something, she smiled. It was a faint smile, one that maybe couldn't have been perceived as a smile, and it rippled into a grin. She chuckled a little bit, into her knees and then upward. "You're annoying," she said. "But I like you. You're different, not many people sit with me. Maybe you aren't so fake after all." It was a strong maybe. Usually people would have lost their cool and gotten hostile with her or something, and there would be a lot of name calling and shouting, and someone would end up on the ground. It was usually the other person. It was hard to be on the winning side without throwing the first punch. They left a lot, too. People leaving her was nothing new.

People were annoying. Herself included. It was the people that could still deal with a girl like her with all sanity intact that were worth it. Maybe as a pushover to boss around, or maybe as one of the rare people who enjoyed her company. Maisie took a drag of the still-new cigarette, gave it a quick inspection, and tossed it to the grass.

"I assume you go here, Hello Kitty?"

Ava let out a short burst of air, meant to be a short laugh but sounding more like a cough. She shook her head with a small smile as she shifted in her place, finding a more comfortable position.

"I don't go to the school, no," she said. Though her exterior was calm, she was worried about the inevitable question of why she was there. She had no guarantee that Ed would even show up today. Sure, he was looking for information and a little recreation, but they hadn't corresponded. Nonetheless, Ava looked up and down the street again, hoping desperately that someone would somehow materialize and pull her away before this girl asked too many questions. "I assume you do, though?"

"Yeah." Sure enough, to Ava's fear, Maisie gave her a confused look. She blinked, cocking her eyebrow, and turned the conversation back on her. "What's someone like you doing in a village in bumfuck North Dakota if you're not from this school?" If she wasn't going to school, she had to be an outsider. There was no normal schools in Rosebury, as there were no normal people. Maybe she was from one of the international schools, the ones she'd heard about from some kids before class a few weeks ago. It was a girls' name. Sophia or something. Surely this girl didn't sound European, though.

She hadn't planned for this. Shit. Clearing her throat, Ava readjusted herself again, still not looking at the girl beside her. There was no good reason for her to be in Rosebury, no good reason for her to just be sitting around. She felt she could really go for another cigarette now. Shrugging nonchalantly, refusing to give away the panic she felt, she said, "I just heard there were some nice shops out here. I had to check it out." As if she had the money for something like that. Inwardly, she laughed.

"Yeah, Martha's Clearance." What was she hiding? Maisie gave her the longest look she had cast since sitting down beside her. She was a girl from out of town, not from the school. She had to have a gift; only the gifted knew of the town. What did that make her? She scanned her mind for the different kinds of gifted people, the people who would know about this town, half-asleep lectures about dangerous black-wearing--

Maisie's eyes widened. Her lips parted slightly, and she gave a few quick glances to the crowd. "You're..." It all made sense.

The girl's face said it all. Ava watched, terrified, as the blonde reached a conclusion, her facial features changing drastically. This was not going well. Determined to pretend she didn't know what the girl meant, she put on a confused expression, eyebrows furrowed.

"I'm what?" she asked, a bite to her words. She was ready to do what she needed to keep the girl quiet. If she got exposed, here, now, she wouldn't know what to do.