Four weeks. That's how long it's been since prom night.
You're in Trevor's bathroom, the door locked, sitting on the edge of the tub with the pregnancy test balanced on your knees. The little plastic stick feels impossibly heavy in your trembling hands. Two pink lines. Clear as day. Unmistakable.
Pregnant.
The word loops through your mind, foreign and terrifying and somehow inevitable. You've been nauseous for the past week, exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix. When you missed your period, you told yourself it was stress. Transfer student adjusting to a new school. Final exams approaching. Anything but this.
But here it is. Two pink lines.
"Maddie?" Trevor's voice comes through the door, worried. "You've been in there forever. Are you okay?"
Your mouth is dry. "I'm... I need a minute."
"Did something happen? Talk to me."
You stare at the test. At your reflection in the bathroom mirror—your soft face, your thick glasses, the body that's carried you through three months of a life you never planned to live. A body that's now creating another life entirely.
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of your consciousness, something stirs. A fragment of memory that doesn't belong to Madison Chen. A flash of someone else's life—dark rooftops, the weight of a cape, a cave filled with computers. The image is there and gone in a heartbeat, leaving only a dull ache behind your eyes.
"Maddie, you're scaring me." Trevor jiggles the doorknob. "Please let me in."
You unlock the door. He nearly falls through, catching himself on the doorframe. His eyes go immediately to the test in your hand, to the two pink lines, and all the color drains from his face.
"Oh," he whispers. "Oh god."
You both stand there, frozen, while the enormity of it settles over you like a shroud. Trevor's mouth opens and closes, searching for words that don't come. His hand reaches out, stops halfway, trembles in the air between you.
"We're sixteen," he finally manages. "We're... we're just kids, Maddie."
"I know," you say, and your voice sounds strange to your own ears. Distant. Like it's coming from underwater.
Trevor sinks down beside you on the tub's edge, his shoulder pressing against yours. He takes the test from your hands, staring at it like it might suddenly show different results.
"What do we do?" he asks.
The question hangs unanswered in the small bathroom, while outside Trevor's window, Gotham's skyline glitters with lights that once meant something to someone you can barely remember being.