Chapter 6 #2
We reach an elevator, and I’m comforted to know that I guessed right about being underground. It makes me feel a little better to know my mental faculties haven’t bene completely shut down by hunger. The man pushes me inside, and they step in with me and hit the button to rise to the second level.
When we emerge, the smell of food hits me so forcefully it almost brings tears to my eyes.
My stomach growls so long and loud that it echoes in the corridor, along with their footsteps.
There’s a quiet murmur of conversation interrupted by a loud crack, then silence.
The wheels of the chair squeak on the floor as they push me into what Patricia called the mess hall.
“Now, you just sit with your peers and get some food in your belly,” Patricia says, leading the way to a buffet style setup. “You’re the last one to eat, so you can serve yourself today.”
“Thank you,” I agree, using the lever to stop the chair. I push myself up from it, though it feels like a herculean task. I start scooping the food, not caring that I’m left with the dregs of soggy cafeteria fare in the bottom of the trays.
“Now, now,” Patricia says. “Don’t get greedy.”
“Sorry,” I mutter, leaving the scoop, even though I want the blob of pasty mashed potatoes in one corner, a dried sheet of the stuff peeling off the edge of the metal pan.
“You catch more honey with flies,” yells out someone at one of the tables.
I turn, but I can’t tell who spoke. I take a second to search the room for her, but there are too many people.
“Fifteen to twenty-five looks like your age group. Is that right?” Patricia asks, setting a plastic spoon on my tray and gesturing to the long rows of tables.
The man with the wheelchair tells me to sit, but I shake my head. “I can walk.”
Halfway to the table Patricia indicated, I wish I had let them push me.
Not because I can’t walk—though my knees are so weak I want to sink to the floor just to rest for just a minute, maybe take a nap while I’m there—but because everyone is watching me.
Some are pretending they aren’t, but most of them are, even the ones with heads down.
Some are outright staring with no shame.
I never had to do this, walk through a cafeteria with no friends.
I was homeschooled, and at Thorncrown, the dining hall is open for two or three hours for each meal, so students come and go as they please.
No one bats an eye at a girl walking in alone.
The few times I’ve gotten jealous looks from girls, I’ve been with the guys, so it didn’t really bother me.
Now I make my way to the table on trembling legs, clutching my flimsy Styrofoam tray.
My heart is slamming against my sternum when I reach an empty chair, the second before a walkway and then the next long table.
I set my plate down and try to pull out a chair, but the leg is caught on the one next to it.
“Sorry,” I mumble, yanking at it in vain, afraid I might start crying. I just want to sit down, to eat, to be left alone.
“Jeez, chill,” says a girl with a wide, flat face and freckles. She scoots over, adjusting her chair to free mine.
“Thank you,” I sigh, collapsing into my chair in a relieved heap.
“No talking,” barks an orderly who’s patrolling the next table over, which is filled with boys who must be in the same age range Patricia mentioned.
I take note that my table has only girls.
Each of the girls is wearing the same uniform as me.
The boys’ uniform is grey, and they each wear a matching canvas ballcap.
I search the girls’ faces, trying to find my friend.
Is she here? How many of these facilities do they have? Or did someone buy her?
I shiver in horror at the thought and take a bite of the overcooked, salty but otherwise flavorless food. It tastes like heaven.
“Ten minutes,” says a woman in teddy bear scrubs, checking her watch as she walks along our table. “More eating, less staring.”
A lot of the girls are still darting looks my way, but I don’t need another warning. I start shoveling mushy green beans and gluey potatoes into my mouth even though my stomach twists in pain at being given anything after days of starvation.
“Manners,” warns the teddy bear lady, stopping behind my chair.
I cower, chewing quickly before swallowing and trying to cut the slice of reconstituted chicken with my plastic spoon, the only utensil provided.
“Miss Sarah,” says a skinny Latina girl across from me, sitting up straight and raising her hand. “I need to use the restroom.”
“It can wait.”
“It can’t,” the girl whines. “You know I can’t hold my bladder.”
A chorus of agreement goes around, along with some disgusted looks indicating that she’s failed to hold it before.
Miss Sarah slaps a thick strip of rubber against the end of the table next to me, and everyone jumps in their seats, and the room goes quiet again.
That’s the sound I heard in the hallway.
From the reaction, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t just hit the table with that thing.
Only the sound of chewing and breathing and the whisper of plastic spoons can be heard after her warning.
“I’ll watch them,” says the guy patrolling the boys.
Miss Sarah nods, her lips tight. “Let’s go, Chelsea. But you don’t get extra time to finish when we get back.”
Chelsea casts a quick, sneaky smile to the other girls like she got away with something, then leaves her half-empty plate and heads for a restroom off the side of the dining room, Miss Sarah right behind her.
The moment they’re past the last table, an Asian girl who looks about my age leans forward across the table. “What are you in for?” she whispers.
“I…” I glance around, not sure what to say. Can I tell her I was kidnapped? “What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s an asylum,” she says, like I’m stupid.
“Why’d you get committed? Like, Chelsea’s here because she wouldn’t stop starving herself.
That’s why they go to the bathroom with her, so she doesn’t stick her finger down her throat.
I went off my meds and drove off a bridge.
” She lowers her voice to the quietest whisper and cuts her eyes to the girl beside me, who’s trying to have a conversation using only gestures with the boy across the aisle.
“Emily burned down her house with her parents inside, but they got out alive, and I guess they didn’t want her in jail, though if you ask me, she’d be better off. What about you?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Frankenstein’s the doctor and the monster,” yells a boy at the end of the next table, his voice surprisingly high.
I thought a girl had yelled the thing about honey and flies, but I recognize the voice came from him when I hear it again.
He’s sitting catty-corner from the girl next to me, and when I look up, he’s staring straight at me.
My heart jolts. His eyes are wide and wild, but he’s pretty nonetheless, though his delicate features are shaded by his hat being pulled low over his eyes.
“That’s Grayson,” the girl across from me says. “I think he’s schizophrenic or something.”
I do a doubletake, since that’s the name of one of the Sincero boys, but this is definitely not the same person.
“I heard he gets electroshock,” says another girl, a pretty blonde who looks like the youngest in our category. “That’s why they pull him out so much.”
“I heard he’s Dr. Augustine’s son,” says a tall Black girl with a scar on her chin, nodding sagely. “And he was born here.”
“I think he’s a spy,” whispers the girl beside me, the one with freckles and reddish-brown hair named Emily. “He reports back to the doctors.”
“Frankenstein is the doctor and the monster,” he yells again, slamming his fist down on the table.
Everyone jumps again.
“That’s enough, Grayson,” says the male orderly.
“Frankenstein—”
“Shut up, Freakenstein,” yells a blond boy with a deep voice, lobbing a slice of chicken in Grayson’s direction.
It hits the dark-haired scowling boy beside him, and the boy shoots to his feet like a Jack-in-a-Box and hurls his full plate back down the table in one motion, like he’s been waiting for his cue all along.
Pandemonium erupts. In seconds, food is flying from every direction, people are screaming and shrieking with rage and glee.
The girls are throwing handfuls of mashed potatoes, soggy green beans, slices of white bread and gummy chicken, their faces twisted into masks of demented joy or blazing rage.
I know that feeling all too well.
It’s what brought me to the Slaughterpen, and probably what brought a few of them here.
For a moment, I consider starting a real fight, showing them how good I am, that I’m worthy of respect.
But I’m not strong enough yet, and keeping my secret a little longer might benefit me later.
So I don’t move from the table, even though everyone in the room is on their feet, hurling food from the table and floor.
I sit quietly in the chaos, eating quickly but neatly, ignoring the food that splatters onto me when someone misses their target.
Everything is soft, so I’m not worried about getting hit.
A scream rings out, and after a second of searching for the source, I see that the boy who hurled his tray has bitten another one’s arm, latched on like he’s trying to tear a piece of flesh away. The blond boy who threw the chicken is cackling maniacally and swinging a chair.
Suddenly a deafening alarm blares through the place.
The instigator falls to the floor, covering his ears, his face twisted into a terrible grimace of agony, blood streaking his clenched teeth.
The others are covering their heads and ears, most of them having abandoned the food fight in favor of saving their eardrums.