I saw you today. You know that, of course, but still it bears repeating. It deserves being written down. It is, quite literally, noteworthy. And you came to me. It was the last thing I expected. Especially after … well. The phone call. Not my strongest moment. But, in my defense, the past few months have been … unideal. Especially now, I thought I was making strides, I thought that maybe I could … I don’t know, make an actual friend. Try a little bit of that normal life that people are going on about.

In retrospect, making my one friend a teenage girl and spending the rest of my time trying to figure out how to exact revenge on a government organization while simultaneously trying to get my ability back may not have been the best way to get to normal but we all make mistakes. I hadn’t hurt Rose. Not yet. Not in the way she thinks.

I lied to her. She came over, twenty minutes after you left, if you can believe it. I hoped thought it was you. I rushed to the door so fast I don’t know why. You made it pretty clear that you’re never coming back.

She wanted to know if all that stuff that you told her was true. I didn’t deny any of it, didn’t even try to explain my side of things, even though that’s what she was begging me to do. The damage was done. Despite what she said, there’s no way she was going to give me a real chance to prove her wrong. I know what I sound like from the outside. My actions have always been an effective poison against me.

So I lied to her. I told her I manipulated her, that I made up everything I told her. It wasn’t fair of me to give her false hope, even if it was based on something true. Maybe the AM really will make something that could help her dad, but I really do believe they’d already have told him if it was a possibility. But I had to tell Rose that it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t have stopped, she’d just keep burying herself deeper and deeper into the AM looking for something that might not exist and I … I needed to give her a concrete reason to write me off.

That was the right thing to do, right? I have no idea what the right thing to do was—that’s what I had you for—but all I know is that there were no good choices.