When Astrid haltingly asked if she could sleep in her room one night, Diana instantly said no. It was a knee-jerk reaction, more out of mortification than anything. "There's hardly any room in here," she pointed out. "The bed takes up all the space."

Astrid's face was red, especially around her eyes. Diana felt a little guilty; it was clear she'd been crying.

"I know it isn't convenient," Astrid said, looking at her hands. Her hair was just long enough to curl around the cups of her ears; its short length had turned it wavy. Diana wondered if she'd keep it that way.

"I guess the couch is out of the question?" Diana asked, trying and failing to keep the edge out of her voice. Something about Astrid's demeanor bothered her. She guessed she probably hadn't taken her advice, since she and Sam were still having their tiff. They hadn't spoken to each other in days, making the houseboat particularly quiet. Whenever Astrid came to her room in the evenings to read, she did so in complete silence, which Diana found irritating. She was being left out of the loop.

Astrid raised her eyes to meet Diana's. She looked tired. "I've tried it already," she admitted quietly, crossing her arms across her chest. "It's too small to sleep in comfortably."

"Oh." Diana wasn't sure what to say next. Something heavy settled in her chest, and she struggled to suppress a sigh. I'm being good, she thought, thinking of the baby. "Fine, then," she said begrudgingly. "You can stay."

"Thank you," said Astrid, and her politeness somehow irked Diana even more.

"Just don't kick," she said as they climbed into the bed. She hadn't shared a bed with anyone in a platonic sense since she was a kid. It was weird, she thought. Astrid lay on the far side of the bed. Diana could only see her back. She turned her head and tried to ignore the faint sound of the other girl's breathing, which was nearly eclipsed by the sounds of the night emanating from outside. She was just about to drop off into a doze, grateful she wasn't gripped by nausea or pregnancy bloat, when Astrid spoke.

"Diana?"

"What?" she mumbled.

"I want to tell you something."

Diana briefly pondered the ethics of telling her to just go to sleep before deciding against it. "Shoot." Just make it quick.

There was a rustling of bedclothes. Diana turned her head, cheek pressed against her pillow, and saw Astrid's eyes gazing back at her in the darkness. "I've been thinking about leaving," she said softly. "I need to get away for a while."

Diana raised her eyebrows, taken back. She hadn't realized things were that bad. "Are you serious?" she asked, propping herself up on one elbow. Astrid's eyes glimmered in the dark. Diana sincerely hoped she wouldn't start blubbering.

"I can't sleep in the same bed as him anymore. It's just too much. He wants me too much." Astrid's voice was barely more than a whisper.

Diana frowned. Sam didn't seem to have a big sexual appetite—at least, no bigger than the average teenage boy's. Then again, Astrid had only recently shed her prudish Christian upbringing; what seemed like run-of-the-mill horniness to her probably seemed to Astrid like the beginnings of a full-blown sex addiction. Diana rolled her eyes at the thought, torn between sympathy and bitterness. Poor little Astrid, having to deal with teen boys. The horror. Didn't she realize how un-special that was? Diana had been dealing with that shit since she was thirteen. Twelve, even. But suddenly, now that Astrid "the Genius" Ellison had stepped off her Christian pedestal, it had to be such a revelation.

"I don't get it," Diana admitted, voice low. She looked into Astrid's eyes, disliking their big, pretty blueness, the way they shone with a sort of desperation. "I don't understand why that's so bad. The wanting." Some girls would kill for that sort of thing. Suddenly, her throat constricted. She felt keenly the state she was in—stomach grotesque and swollen, hair unwashed, the hollows of her malnourished cheeks still struggling to fill in. She wondered if Caine missed her, if he hated her for leaving.

She rolled heavily onto her back and looked at the ceiling.

"It's not him," Astrid was saying. "It's not his fault, it's mine. I'm too weak to say no, because I want it, too. But afterward, I feel…."

"Guilty," Diana supplied. She'd never been to Sunday school, but she'd heard of Catholic guilt and all the weird hangups religious people got around sex. It stunk of hypocrisy and self-flagellation.

"Yeah," Astrid said softly. "Guilty."

"I thought you weren't Christian anymore."

"I'm not," she snapped. When Diana bristled, she added, softening her tone, "It's just...complicated."

"Old habits die hard, I guess." Diana's tone was flat. She was tired of being sympathetic. She stewed in silence, pulling the coverlet up to her chin. Part of her wanted to snap at Astrid that she wasn't so lucky, that her boyfriend actually did genuinely terrible things and deserved to be broken up with. But she could visualize so clearly Astrid's reaction: the cold look in her eyes, the disapproving frown, judgement rolling off her in waves.

It's your fault, she could almost hear her saying, in her cold, clipped, know-it-all way. You got involved with him. You chose to have sex with him. You chose to be his girlfriend. You chose to be a whore.

Diana balled up a corner of the coverlet into her fist and squeezed. She tried to breathe deeply, to let it go. Think of the baby, she thought. You're not that girl anymore. You're going to be better for the baby.

Diana closed her eyes and put one hand on her stomach. She dropped off to sleep thinking of baby names. Secretly, she was hoping for a girl.

"Sam."

He didn't look at her, just continued to walk down the dock. Astrid caught up with him and, with some hesitation, touched his shoulder. He shook her off. I deserve that, she thought, struggling to stave off a fresh wave of guilt. Some kids wandered aimlessly nearby. Sam called them over and asked them what they were supposed to be doing. One of the younger ones had dirt smudged on his face. "Lick your thumb and clean yourself up," Sam said evenly. "How old are you?"

"He's four," said an older girl, who looked about seven. The boy obeyed Sam, glassy-eyed. The girl was wearing a woman's blazer and a dirty striped tank top; the blazer bagged to her knees. Her eyes were bright. She looked at Sam directly. It would've been cute pre-FAYZ, a little kid being so serious. Now, it was normal.

"He works with Sinder and Jessie," the girl continued. "They let him on break early 'cause he has a cold."

Astrid tensed and saw from the set of his shoulders that Sam was doing the same thing. After the Supernatural Death Cough, any sickness was suspicious. "Okay," Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "Good. Uh, keep an eye on each other."

Astrid caught sight of Sam's expression as he turned back towards her. He looked lost, distracted. She felt another stab of guilt, but kept her face neutral. I chose this, she reminded herself as they began to walk again. They continued on until they found a trailer about ten minutes from the lake. It was a beat-up old thing that nonetheless, by the look of the small mass of kid-sized shoes and socks by the door, was occupied.

Sam rapped on the trailer door. Astrid peered into the shaded windows and saw nothing. Of course, she realized, feeling foolish. Sam must have come to the same realization, because only a second later he murmured, "They must be working."

"We can't just evict them," Astrid said, suppressing a sigh. The kids must have moved in right after Diana left to live in their houseboat.

"They'll move," said Sam.

"Sam," said Astrid. She knew what he was like when he got this way. He was cool and collected and cold, giving her a taste of her own medicine. After the cold shoulder came the lashing out.

He was hurt. She knew that. Heartbroken. His girlfriend had come back from the wilderness for only a few short weeks only to leave again, and this time Astrid wasn't leaving her nightgown for him to sleep with in her stead. "I need to do this," she'd insisted a day earlier, a week and a half after that night in Diana's bed. She was practically pleading. Sam just ran his fingers through his dark blond hair, shaking his head.

"I can help you," he said, eyes wide, desperate. "We can get through this. You just need to tell me what's wrong, and I'll fix it!"

This isn't about us, she longed to say, but somehow her words got trapped against her teeth and sat there on her tongue. It's about me.

Astrid slid her bag off her shoulder and placed it on the scrubby grass. She wasn't bringing much, just some clothes and a few books she hadn't read yet. "You can go back to the boat," she said. "I'll wait for them to come home and tell them—"

"No," Sam said, his jaw set. "You can go in." He jerked his head toward the trailer. "I'll wait for them to come back and tell them they've got to move."

Astrid hesitated. The kids would move for Sam, but it still felt a little unethical to kick them out—not that she was in a good place to complain. "We should direct the kids to Edilio," she said. "Make sure they have somewhere else to live."

"I already talked to him about it," Sam said shortly. He turned away. Astrid took the hint and went inside. The trailer had little furniture, but that was fine with her. It was relatively a clean, shabby place that smelled faintly of cigarettes. She looked at the sunlight slanting through the window above the folded-out Murphy bed and felt a pang of sudden loneliness. Don't back out now, she thought, shaking off the memory of lying warm and comfortable in Sam's arms. This is for the best.

When she went back outside, she found Sam talking quietly to a small pack of twelve-year-old girls. Two of them had their arms crossed. "I'm sorry," Astrid heard him say to them. "We'll find you another place, I swear. A houseboat."

"We all want to be roommates," insisted one of them. "Before, we were all split up."

"Okay, sure. We can figure that out," said Sam. He sounded tired. Astrid remembered how much he used to hate being the mediator of the FAYZ's various squabbles. Edilio as mayor was an incredible improvement over their past circumstances, but some kids still clung to Sam.

When the girls left relatively satisfied, Astrid went up to Sam and squeezed his hand. "Thank you," she told him. "It'll just be for a little while."

"I'll miss you," Sam said after a moment. "I still don't understand why you need—" He stopped after seeing the look on her face. "Never mind."

"This isn't a breakup, it's just...a break."

"You know, the more you say it's not a breakup, the more it sounds like it is."

"I can't tell if you're being facetious or not." Astrid leaned in and kissed him, only to feel a twinge of regret when he pulled away too soon. "I love you," she said.

"Love you, too." Sam gave her hand a weak squeeze, avoiding her eyes. "Enjoy the trailer."

"I will." I'll be back soon, she wanted to say, but she didn't want to lie. She watched him go for a few minutes before turning away.

It was noon when she first arrived at the trailer, and twelve-thirty when she left it again. She walked, enjoying the mild day and the only slightly guilt-inducing freedom of not having to work. Soon enough, though, her thoughts turned to her trouble with Sam. When they turned to Sam, they turned to sex, and when those thoughts eventually turned to Christianity and her loss of faith. And that, of course, led to Petey.

Astrid stopped her walk. She wished she'd kept up on her budding marijuana habit, but she'd stopped after arriving back into Sam's arms. Now, even that had failed her.

She stood only a couple yards away from the trenches that made up the latrines. She looked out onto them and wrinkled her nose. The unlucky kids on latrine duty did their work diligently; they hardly even looked up to see her watching them. Part of her was glad they didn't, but part of her wished they would.

Before she'd lost her faith, she had passages from the Bible to distract her. Astrid felt a twinge, thinking of those days. Of course, she thought, could still have that—in a way.

With renewed purpose, she started to walk.