Manipulate

Chapter Three

In the morning I hear someone shuffling around the room. I grab my combat boots dangling off of my bed and pull them on. I jump off my bunk onto the floor. Carefully, of course, so I don't wake Nick up. Theo comes over to see me.

"Hi, how did you sleep last night?" he asks leaning on a bed frame.

"Fine," I say with a slight yawn.

"Come on, let's go get breakfast. We have three minutes until they need us down there anyway," Theo says, glancing at his watch.

I follow Theo down to the cafeteria. We stand outside the doors waiting in silence.

"Breakfast doesn't get served for two more minutes. But we can wait in line," Theo says.

Theo and I wait in line. I can smell the bread being toasted, the eggs being scrambled, the muffins coming fresh out of the oven. I even smell coffee and potatoes. My mouth waters.

"If you smell potatoes, you're smelling home fries," Theo says.

I nod. The cafeteria workers come out with trays of food. They set the food down on a salad bar-shaped line. Theo and I grab trays and start filling up our plates. Theo guides me through a list of what's the best and what's the worst. In the end I end up with a plate of eggs, a lemon blueberry muffin, a fruit cup, and a cup of coffee.

I sit where I sat at dinner the night before. Theo joins me. All of the other people of TID come piling in through the cafeteria doors. The sound of plates clattering, of silverware clinking and the sound of plastic cups falling all fill the cafeteria with laughter. I drop my knife. It falls to the ground with a loud clatter.

The room enters into an eerie quietness. Then a round of applause goes around. Everyone joins in. There are a couple of whistles. I shoot a questioning look at Theo.

"It's a tradition if you drop something whether it's a water bottle, a cup, fork, knife, spoon, tray or plate everyone claps. It's normal. I promise," Theo explains to me.

I nod. "Thanks for the explanation."

"No problem," Theo replies. He picks up his paper cup of coffee and sips it.

I glance at the clock on the wall. It's six thirty-five now. Alia announced to the whole table that we need to be in the training room at seven. I pick up my empty tray and walk it over to the dirty dishes window. The lady rinsing off the trays smiles at me. I return the smile.

I start walking toward the doors. I exit the cafeteria. Nick rushes out behind me. He taps me on the shoulder, I whip my head around.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," Nick apologizes.

"It's fine, don't worry," I say.

"Are you looking for the training room?" Nick asks me.

Suddenly I realize that I have no clue about where the hell I'm going. "Yes. I don't know why I just started randomly looking for it," I say.

Nick chuckles. "Come on I'll show you where it's at. You know that TID is huge right?"

"I noticed," I say.

Nick shows me around TID. He ends the tour at the training room. I glance at the clock. It's six fifty-nine. Nick and I stand outside the training room. I hear Alia and Max laughing down the hall. Max has his arm around Alia's shoulders. Alia is laughing and her face is pink. Max is smiling. He looks at Alia in a way that I think that he might like her. They don't seem to notice me or Nick.

I glance at the clock again. It's officially seven now. Max and Alia stop talking and notice me and Nick.

"Sorry, I didn't notice that you two were there," Alia says.