teenagerenegade | (no subject)

"Good thing you've already made a decent first impression or I'd be very put off," she answers lightly, smirking up at him. "Sit down. You're all wet."

They're unrelated, but she's already passing him napkins from the dispenser, hoping he's not uncomfortable as all hell. She'd gotten a little wet herself, but only just, and her hair is already dry, even if her makeup is a little smudged. It works, though. She figures it's a look one would expect from her.

Charlie blots himself with the napkins and shrugs out of his jacket. When a waitress floats past, he orders himself a chocolate milkshake.

"So," he says, with a broad smile. "What's happening, Maeve?"

"Got a question for you," she says, having already ordered her own milkshake. He'd told her they were good, after all, and weirdly, she sort of trusts him. He reminds her of Otis at times, which should be enough some days to chase her way the fuck off, but maybe he's a better version. Maybe he'll actually be the friend Otis claimed he could be.

"Do you know much about what I'd need to do to get out of going to high school next year?" she asks. "It's different here than it would have been back home and since they won't let me take the exams this year, I just want to figure out what I need to do to check their stupid boxes so I don't have to go next year."

"Well," says Charlie, settling back in his chair. "I know that Barton doesn't necessarily need you to complete high school the traditional way to facilitate application. Rosie and Sabrina's boyfriend, Nick -- he's never been to a mortal high school and he got into Barton last fall." He thinks about it for a second. "Back home, I'd tell you to just get your GED."

"General Education... something," she says, not knowing what all the letters stand for, but understanding the gist of it. "Do they have something like that here, then?"

While it might not be how she wants to finish high school, things have changed whether she likes it or not. She's here now, she's in Darrow, and it seems like the sort of thing that's going to stick, so she needs to think about her future, such as it is. If there's a way for her to avoid going to high school next year, she's going to take it.

"General Education Development," says Charlie, smiling his thanks when the waitress delivers their milkshakes. "Which makes no sense, but whatever. So it's four exams, I think - Maths, Science, Language Arts and...shit. What's the other one?" He thinks for a moment, taking a sip of his milkshake. "Social Studies, I think? And it's the same as getting your diploma. At least back home it is."

Maeve leans forward to sip her milkshake thoughtfully, then nods and says, "I can do that."

She hadn't really doubted it, but four exams is nothing, especially if it gets her out of going to one of the high schools next year, where she knows it'll just be more of the same. She's never been the sort to just keep to herself or keep her head down, not when other people are dealing with bullies and their bullshit, so it's no surprise to her she's already not particularly well liked at either school.

"Yeah, I can do that," she says again, then leans back. "I'm just not too keen on another year of that shit."

"I can totally help out, if you need me to," says Charlie, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watches the look of determination settle onto Maeve's face. "I've never taken the GED, but I took those classes. Or whatever. I'm used to the content, I mean."

"Probably the most help I'll need is figuring out where to go to sign up," she admits, smiling finally. When it comes to the work itself, she's not too worried. Maeve doesn't always talk about the fact that she's smart and she'd mostly flown under the radar back home, but when she'd met Charlie, they'd talked about it. About the quiz team, about knowing a lot. She thinks if she's a little bit arrogant here, he's not going to fault her for it.

"I bet you will," says Charlie, grinning as he sips his milkshake. "I just wanted to. You know. Offer. So you know that it's there if you need it."

"Thanks," she says after a moment. Even now, Maeve doesn't trust most people. There has just been too much shit in her life to make that really possible, but despite that, there's a part of her that wants to. Having friends back in Moordale hadn't been something she was going to have, not with the way most people talked about her. She had Aimee and then she had Otis, but for the most part she was alone. Darrow's giving her other options. They make her nervous most of the time, more than she'd like.

"That's cool of you," she adds with a faint smile.

"I just always feel like I want people to know that they can have support if they need it?" says Charlie, taking a sip of his milkshake and then leaning back in his chair. "Sometimes, life can be really shitty and difficult, right? I figure it's easier knowing if you've got someone in your corner or not."

Maeve is pretty used to her corner being empty. Not even her parents or her burnout brother managed to be there for very long and Charlie's words get under her skin in a way that's not entirely comfortable. It's not uncomfortable either. It's just the sort of thing she's never really had to sit with for very long.

"Thanks," she says again, softer this time, then takes a sip of her milkshake to cover any confusion she's feeling. "Anyway, so you're going into your last year in September?"

Charlie shakes his head.

"I graduated actually," he says, with a little smile because, God, nobody really expected him to actually manage to graduate from somewhere, let alone his mom (and she thought he could do anything. "Starting at Barton. I'm going to major in Psychology."

"So if I'm there in the fall, I'll have a friend," she says, even though she knows fall is likely pushing it. Winter semester maybe, but September really isn't all that far away.

"God, I have no idea what I'd take," she admits. "Philosophy and probably sex education. Women's studies. There are so many options."

"Yeah, you will," says Charlie, with an emphatic nod. "Those sound like interesting classes. I like philosophy. I thought about, like, English Lit or Drama or something but..." He shrugs. "I've always been interested in Psychology."

Otis's mum is the only brain doctor she's ever known and even then, she doesn't really know her. Besides, sex therapy and psychology are different things, she thinks, even if there's overlap. Even without knowing any psychologists, she has a feeling Charlie would be good at it. He seems to care about people anyway, which she figures plays a big part of it all.

"Any particular branch you're interested in?" she asks.

"I don't think so. Not yet," says Charlie, shaking his head. "I kind of like the idea of working with kids my age, though? Everyone always acts like kids' problems don't really matter...or they act like they can just be fixed with drugs." He remembers the psychiatrist that his family had always had on retainer, and how easy it had been to get all of those prescriptions. "But I might go in the social work direction? Honestly, I change my mind every day, so..."

"Yeah, you're just a teenager, so you don't understand what it's like to have real problems," Maeve says with a roll of her eyes, knowing exactly what Charlie is talking about. That sort of attitude was at least part of the reason she never said anything to anyone about the state she was in, having to take care of herself, scrounging to pay rent and the like. She doesn't regret it, though. The second anyone took her seriously, she'd have ended up in a place like the Home she's in now.

"No real problems, but you're expected to know exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life," she adds, huffing out a laugh when Charlie says he changes his mind every day.

"Isn't it ridiculous?" says Charlie, rolling his eyes. "Most of the grown-ups i know don't know what they want to do forever, either. They just know what they've ended up doing right now."

"And most of them hate it," she says. "My mum always thought I'd never amount to much and figured me for working at the mall for the rest of my life, but I'm pretty sure I'd just drop dead of boredom."

"I don't think my mom really expected me to do anything," says Charlie, blushing faintly, aware of how that sounds. "She didn't, really. Sat on boards. Went to lunch a lot."

"I think you and I had very different upbringings," she says with a faint smirk, trying to look more amused by it than she usually feels. She doesn't resent Charlie's mother being able to do stuff like that any more than she ever has Aimee's. It isn't their fault.

She just sometimes wishes Erin hadn't been such a fuck up.

"I think I had a very different upbringing to a lot of people," says Charlie, his own smile faint, too. He doesn't think that Maeve's pissed with him about it, though. "My family had a psychiatrist on retainer. How normal could I be?"

"Jesus," she says with a rough sort of laugh. "My mum probably could have used that."

Not that she'd have ever taken advantage of it. Being an addict is a hell of a thing, Maeve knows that well, and that whole thing about needing to want to get better is true. But sometimes even wanting it doesn't mean it'll happen.

"My mom mostly took a lot of pills that she probably shouldn't have been taking with wine," says Charlie. "Maybe she could have done with talking more, too."

"Mine was more into heroin," Maeve says before she gives herself too long to think about it. It isn't something she talks about much. Not back home, not here, but even with the differences in their lives, she understands what Charlie is saying to her right now.

Addiction is addiction. It doesn't matter if someone is smoking crack or taking too much Xanax. It comes down to the same thing.

Charlie's jaw tightens. With the table between them, it's not easy to reach out to Maeve so, instead, he shifts one leg under the table, just nudging his foot against hers.

"Hopefully, they'll both figure it out," he says.

Maeve only shrugs and says, "Mine's been gone more or less since I was just a kid. So I'm not exactly holding out hope for anything from her."

She doesn't mention that Erin had come back. That she'd been clean for awhile, long enough just to get Maeve's hopes up again, crushing them when Isaac and his brother had found her stash. There's no point hoping for anything better from Erin. Not now.

"And you're here now, anyway," he says raising his milkshake in a little toast. "So you'll figure it out on your own. Sounds like you've got plenty of practise at that, anyway."

So has Charlie, really. Just in a slightly different way.

"I think I told you I used to sell papers to make extra cash," Maeve says, lifting her milkshake as well before she takes a sip. "I figure if whatever money I get from this place doesn't cover what I need, I can go back to that."

Especially once she's in college. She's sure there are plenty of students who would rather party than write a paper. She's also sure she can charge more for same day results.

"We can team up," says Charlie, leaning back in his chair and smirking at her. "You can write the papers and I'll churn out the fake IDs."

"They'll need me to write papers if you're giving them a way to get into bars underage," Maeve says with a rough, quiet laugh. "That's a pretty perfect business model."

Maybe she won't need the extra cash, but it's always good, knowing she has a useful skill, something people will pay her for.

"Like a license to print money," says Charlie with a bright grin. "Though I should probably try not to get kicked out here. I don't exactly have anything to fall back on."

"Don't get caught," she shoots back, grinning as well. "It's not that hard."

She knows it isn't always that easy and she's mostly just giving him a hard time. It sucks to be kicked out of school, she's been there herself, and although she'd gotten back in, she'd never felt quite like she was there again. It had felt kind of pointless. Like she was just biding her time.

"You're right," he says, thinking of everything he'd gotten up to at Barton before he ended up in Darrow. "It isn't."

He drains the last of his milkshake, giving the empty glass a disappointed look.