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why’d you sign up anyway?” I finally ask after what feels like forever, and for a brief instant, Emma’s face hardens into a grim mask. Before I even know what I’m looking at, though, the emotion’s gone and the lost little girl is back.
    “You’re from upstate too, right?” she asks, glancing in my direction before returning her gaze to the darkened streets below.
    “Yup. Ontonwa Falls,” I answer. Emma’s from some podunk little village a good fifty miles north of my hometown. I forget the name, but the town’s so small that Ontonwa is like a boomtown in comparison.
    “Then you know what it’s like.”
    I sigh and shake my head, and my breath crystallizes in the freezing night air. I may be from upstate, but I ain’t psychic and I have no idea where she’s going.
    “Pretend I ain’t from up there,” I tell her. “Imagine I’m some stupid city-boy from SoCal or something and explain it in my language.”
    “You? A SoCal city-boy?” she snorts. “Might as well tell me to pretend you’re a minotaur or something, Cage.”
    “Would it help if I mooed?” I ask with a grin, and she doubles over the railing in a fit of laughter. I don’t think my joke’s quite as funny as she seems to, but I’ll take it wherever I can get it. The frozen cloud of Emma’s laughter quickly disappears into the night, and she rolls her eyes at me before answering.
    “Cage… what’re all the girls from your high school up to these days?”
    “Dunno, really. Haven’t given them too much thought lately,” I answer, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot as I lean over the railing beside her. Somewhere off in the distance, a car alarm goes off. The apocalypse came and went and people still ain’t learned how to shut those stupid things off.
    “Any of them make it out?”
    Out of where? Oh, I see where she’s going now. I shake my head.
    “Nope. Last I heard, pretty much all the ones I knew from my class are still in Ontonwa.”
    “Exactly! You think it’s hard for guys to get out? Take a look at us,” she all but spits at me. I don’t think the venom’s directed at me, but I still take a step back to keep a respectful distance. “We all end up stuck there doing whatever the hell we can to make ends meet. Strippers maybe, married to our old high school sweethearts if we’re lucky, probably mothers by nineteen…”
    “It ain’t that bad, Emma,” I protest, but I already know I’m full of it. She rolls her eyes at me again and scoffs.
    “It is and you know it, Cage,” she says, looking me straight on with a fire in her eyes I ain’t seen before. “You wanted to know why I’m here? That’s why. I’m here because it was my only way out.”
    She turns away again, her anger spent, and all I can do is lean against the railing beside her in silence. Damned if I know what to say to her after something like that… you and me both, Emma? No, it ain’t really both of us. I could’ve worked in the mines if I stayed, but they would never have hired a tiny thing like her. She’d have ended up trapped and helpless just like everyone else.
    The one thing I can honestly tell her finally comes to me.
    “Sorry.”
    “Ain’t your fault, Cage,” she says, still not looking at me, and silence takes over again. Now her story’s told, too, and there really isn’t anything left to say.
    Emma shivers after a few minutes, or maybe more. I have no idea how long we’ve been standing out here in the cold, and I only just now realize she’s not wearing a coat.
    “You want to head back in? You won’t be much use if you get yourself sick, Emma.”
    She shakes her head. “No, not yet. Still need some time to think.”
    “I thought you said the snoring kept you up?”
    “Sure… let’s go with that,” she answers, shooting me a thin-lipped smile. “It’s as good an excuse as any.”
    She looks disappointed that I don’t follow up on her invitation to talk more, but one, I ain’t a junior