Free Charlotte Powers 1: Power Down by Ben White

noticed, I'm new here."
    "Yes, I did notice," she said.
    "Um, so," I said, feeling really nervous, "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—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.

xx48.11.11 / 20:58 / Still Thursday
     
    I had so much fun! C2's parents are LOVELY! (I'm calling her C2 now, it's my special 'friend' name for her, because now we're friends!) (I was going to write 'she still calls me Charlotte' but actually she doesn't, she doesn't call me anything. That's just her funny little way, though!)
    Okay, let me start at the beginning. We got off the bus in C2's neighbourhood which was kind of nice but at the same time kind of ... I don't know, 'raggedy'? Not bad, not poor, not like the slums I've seen on TV shows but definitely not the best part of town. Not the worst either, of course. Her house was near the bus stop, the garden is quite overgrown with lots of these wide-leafed flax plants everywhere. Her house is pretty small and the hallways are narrow, but EVERYTHING is narrow out here in the 'real world', it's one of the things I miss most about home (aside from my family of course), our house is REALLY spacious, I never appreciated it before but now I realise just how great it really was. Everything out here is like 'square', there were hardly ANY 'squares' at home, aside from the