“You know, I just don’t get it,” I said, chewing on some of the questionable grub they served for lunch every day.

“What don’t you get?” Gin asked, mouth half full as she scarfed down her food as always. Honestly, dogs were cleaner eaters than she was.

“Everything.”

“Have you been hitting the bong again or what?”

“I’m serious. I’m trying to understand it all, but I just don’t get it.”

Gin raised her hand in front of me to tell me to stop talking. She took a moment to wipe her mouth with her sleeve, swallowing her bite of food before continuing. “You know, you’re being really fucking cryptic right now and I’m not into it. What don’t you get. Everything is not an answer unless you’re an absolute brainlet.”

“I just mean like… What are we doing here?”

“If you’re going to have an existential crisis can’t it wait until after lunch?”

“We have drills after lunch-- Oh, you want to get out of drills.”

“Uh, duh,” Gin said, rolling her eyes at me, “Obviously. Just like, pretend you’re having a panic attack or whatever and I’ll take you to the infirmary, then you can have the day off.”

“Pretty sure that’s not only illegal but also insulting to people who have actual panic attacks,” I replied.

“Elaine, please. You’ve had panic attacks, do you find it insulting?”

“Yeah, a little bit!”

There was a short bit of silence. Gin stared at me, then took a sip of her juice, then stared again. “Damn that wasn’t the answer I was expecting.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I reached over and nudged her in the arm, to which she gave me a very firm punch in the shoulder in return. “You’re such a dumbass, Gin.”

“Yeah, that’s a big insult coming from Miss ‘I just don’t get everything’.”

“I just don’t get it!”

“Which is heavier,” Gin started, with a very fake and very bad Scottish accent, “A kilogram of steel or a kilogram of feathers.”

“Oh, don’t make fun of me!” I laughed, shoving her in the arm again. She was grinning from ear to ear.”

“Steel is heavier than feathers, Elaine.”

“Stop it! I’m being serious!” I exclaimed, except that it was clear I wasn’t being serious because I was busy laughing too hard to really process it all.

“But steel is heavier than feathers.”

“Gin! I’m trying to have a serious think here!”

She bust out laughing and began eating again, barely containing her smirk. “Really? Because it just sounds like you’ve got nothing to say other than you don’t get it.”

“I just… I really don’t get it!”

“What don’t you get?”

“It.”

“I really would like to return you to wherever I picked you up from because with conversations like this I think I’d prefer a refund.”

“Gin, I just want to talk to you seriously for one moment. You know?”

“No, not really,” Gin said, her smile fading for a moment, “Why does everything have to be serious with you anyway?”

“I’m not always serious. Just sometimes.”

“You know, I don’t really care if you get it or you don’t get it, Elaine,” she stated, and I could hear the irritation laced into her voice. “I don’t even know what it is. Just because you keep repeating it doesn’t make it more clear to me.”

“I just--”

“Don’t get it. I get that. But you haven’t explained at all what’s confusing you. Is it what we do here, is it the work we do every day, is it the food? What is it?”

“You don’t have to get angry, Gin.”

“I’m not angry, I’m--” she took a deep breath and sighed, “Trying to understand you feels like pulling teeth. I keep asking and you don’t have answers.”

“That’s the problem!” I exclaimed, “I don’t have answers, but I want answers.”

“But what do you want the answers to? You can’t get answers if you don’t have any fucking questions.”

“I… I don’t know, okay?”

There was a silence between us. Gin picked up her tray and stood up. “Where are you going?” I asked, quickly packing my things to follow her.

“I’m going to get ready for drills,” she said without looking at me, “Find someone else to ask about what you don’t get and what you want answers to because I don’t have the patience.”

“I just wanted to talk to you, to--”

“Pick a topic next time, Elaine. Not all of us understand that whacked up head of yours.” She tossed her tray haphazardly onto the conveyor belt, then stormed off. I watched her go, feeling increasingly dejected and alone as I put my own tray away.

----

It was a warm summer day in July. Or as warm as a Scottish summer could get. The ground was wet and the sky was blue. I sat there, plucking at the blades of grass and gathering the broken pieces in my hands, blowing them away like dandelion fluff once I had enough.

“Elaine!” I heard a voice call from behind, I turned slowly and saw the distant silhouette of Charlie against the sunlight. He was waving at me, so I waved back. He rushed over, his bicycle trailing beside him.

“Hey Charlie,” I greeted, “How’re you?”

“Good. About to head into town to pick up some groceries for mum. Want to ride with me?” he asked, patting the handle of his bicycle.

“You sure there’s enough space for both of us?”

“Of course! Plus I could use the company.”

So I sat behind him on his bicycle, arms wrapped around his waist for safety. He rushed down the cobbled roads without a care in the world, laughing as he made sharp turns on his way to town. We stopped by the shop and I waited outside for him, and when he came back he showed me a pack of cookies he had bought.

“Your mum’s gonna kill you for that.”

“Me mum’s not gonna find out.”

“You gonna eat it all right now?”

“No, Elaine, we’re gonna eat it all right now.”

We rode back to our spot in the park. The sun was setting, the grass was still wet. He leaned his bicycle against a tree and we sat together, watching the colours in the sky shift and change. Five cookies, two people.

We split the last one in half.

“Shouldn’t ye be heading home?” I asked.

“Me mum’s still at work,” he replied, “She won’t be home for hours.”

“Well, the sun won’t set proper for hours either.”

“Can’t a guy spent some time with his best friend?”

I laughed, “I guess so.”

We sat there, silent for a while. I start plucking at the grass again absentmindedly. I glanced over to him and saw that Charlie was staring out into the distance. I tried to trace where his eyes were going, but they seemed to go nowhere.

“Sometimes, I just don’t get it,” he said.

“What don’t you get?”

“It. I just don’t get it.”

“What is it?” I asked, a little more irritated this time. He slowly turned to look at me, and our eyes locked for that moment as he smiled. His smile always made my heart warm.

“You know, it.”

“I don’t know it.”

“It. Life.”

“What about life don’t you get?”

“What are we doing here?” he asked, leaning back slowly until he was lying down on the grass. I looked down at him from my sitting position, admiring how the low sun illuminated the curves of his face and the hook of his nose.

“Well, we were eating cookies weren’t we?”

“As in, what are we doing in life? We go to school every day, then we’ll go off to college if we’re clever enough, and then we’ll go to work if we can, and then we work and work and work and then we get married, have kids, send those kids to school, and then we grow old, retire, and die, and the same happens to our kids. It just keeps going, endlessly.”

“Well… that’s life, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but, I don’t want that. I don’t want that to be my life,” he stated. “I want my life to be like those comic books. Or those stories, you know? I want to save the world.”

“But you’re not exactly that special, Charlie.”

“Hey, you don’t know that yet, I could be a late bloomer.”

“Charlie…” I paused, watching him in silence for a moment before lying down next to him. “I don’t think we’ve got to save the world to make our lives worthwhile.”

“Yeah, but there’s got to be more to life than this, you know?”

“I guess… but I kind of like this.”

“How can you be so complacent, Elaine?”

“I’m not, I just--”

“There’s so much out there, so much we haven’t gotten the chance to see, and you’re going to say you just want to stay here?”

“It’s where I grew up, Charlie.”

There was another silence between us. I stared up at the sky, watching the purples darken and colour the sky.

“If it makes you feel better,” I said after a long while, breaking the silence, “I don’t get it either.”

We were silent again. I felt something brush against my finger tips. I glanced down and saw that he was trying to hold my hand. I laced my fingers through his and we laid there, watching the sun go down.

“You always chatter without having a destination,” Charlie said out of the blue, interrupting my train of thought. We were 15, it was Spring and far too cold for the flowers to start blooming.

“Well, why do we need to have a destination?”

“I mean, you just talk and you talk and you talk, and it doesn’t seem to go anywhere in particular.”

“Oh… I’m sorry.”

“No, no don’t be sorry!” he exclaimed, taking my hands in his, “I think it’s endearing. It’s so… different. At school we’re surrounded by people who just talk with an end goal in mind. Kids who know which University they’re going to apply to already, kids who know they want to be Oxbridge graduates and work in Medicine… You… you’re refreshing.”

“Really? Because my mum says I’m dumb.”

“You’re brilliant, Elaine.”

“I’m pretty sure your mum thinks I’m dumb too.”

“Why does that matter? You’re Elaine. Nobody thinks like you and that’s what I love the most about you.”

I smiled and kissed him softly on the nose.

I sat at the dining table awkwardly waiting for Charlie and his mother to return from their little argument in the kitchen. I could hear them clearly, but I pretended not to.

“Charles, why won’t you listen to me?” Ms Theresa stated, “They’re dangerous, you can’t keep hanging out with those kids.”

“They’re my friends, mum!”

“No, they’re not.” she exclaimed, voice very close to shouting, “They’re bad people. They’re dangerous. They could hurt you.”

“No they can’t! They’re my friends, they can’t do that.”

“It’s not whether they’re your friends or not, Charles. They’re uncontrollable. Do you think that their Anomalies give a shit whether you’re their friend or not? No, they’ll hurt you, whether they want to or not.”

“Mum, why can’t you just let this go. I’m 16, you can’t control me.”

“You’re my son.”

“Why can’t you let it go, mum?” he pleaded. There was a pause, then he sighed. “Let’s go back to dinner, we shouldn’t keep Elaine waiting.”

“You really ought to not lead her on, darling.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need a clever girl to talk to, not a girl like her.”

“Mum! I love her, okay? Just because she’s not booksmart doesn’t mean she’s stupid.”

“I didn’t mean it like that--”

“Just… let’s have dinner.”

Needless to say that dinner was silent and awkward. I kissed him goodnight and walked home alone. I couldn’t stop the tears that were bubbling in my chest as I walked through the encroaching darkness. I cried as I walked home, trying my best to ignore the tears falling down my cheeks. It hurt to hear it. The only thing that made this bearable was Charlie; my Charlie. He loved me. He loved me. And I loved him.

Charles Fraser MacDuff died in an accident caused by an out-of-control Anomaly. He was 16 years old. His mother was forced to identify his body at the morgue; he was barely recognisable in the pieces he was left in.

I threw up into the toilet several times that night when I received the news.

“Elaine,” his mother sobbed into the telephone receiver, her voice hardly understandable, “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, “Charlie… he… he was caught in an attack, he’s… he’s gone.”

My world stopped spinning when he died. He was everything I had. Just like that, he was gone, gone from my life, gone from this world. Gone.

I ran out of tears at his funeral. Everything passed like a haze. Theresa hugged me and we grieved the loss of Charlie together. I felt helpless, I felt lost, I felt like…

“I just don’t get it,” I’d hear him say in my dreams. I just don’t get it.

I don’t get it.

Theresa invited me to Purity when I turned 18, promising me the chance to avenge Charlie’s death. I was lost in limbo, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I chattered and lived without a destination, and without Charlie guiding me through life I was stuck. So I took her offer and enlisted without a moment’s hesitation.

Revenge. Vengeance. Anything to make my heart feel like it was beating for a reason. Anything to make me feel like I had gotten it; like I had gotten life. This life that I got and I never used, maybe now, maybe here, I’d finally use it. I’d finally be useful, I’d finally write a happy ending for Charlie’s little story.