All Summer Long

Punishment

Alex:

Ari and I stand in front of the orphanage. It's almost too dark to see anything but a massive structure. Grandma is making us work at the orphanage from sunrise to sunset every Saturday for four weeks. Today is our first day.

"Wow," Ari said, "Is this a castle or an orphanage?"

"I don't know," I said. We walked to the front door and rang the door bell.

"I hope we didn't wake anyone up," Ari said. We stood outside the door for a few minutes and then all the lights went on. We heard noise and feet. A few minutes after that, the door opened to a stern looking woman.

"You must be Alexandra and Ariana," she said looking down at us. She had glasses on the tip of her long nose. She reminded me of a nun.

"Um yeah," Ari said, "Alex and Ari."

"Come in," she said. We walked in we both gasped. There were like eight stairs cases. Three of them were directly in front of us and then many more were to our right and left. It reminded me of Hogwarts. The thing that shocked me was that on each stair case, there were a bunch of kids lined up. That reminded of the Sound of Music. The boys were wearing plain gray T-shirts with black shorts. The girl were wearing black skirts that went a little past the knee with the same plain gray T-shirt.

"Uh," Ari said her eyes wide.

"Good morning children," the woman said.

"Good morning Mrs. Hanser," they all said. I felt like I was watching a movie, or was in the movie. Ari and I were totally out of place. She was wearing short-shorts with lace pockets and a pink tank top with vans. I was wearing black ripped skinny jeans with a black shirt with the batman symbol on it.

"We have some new guests with us," Mrs. Hanser said, "Alexandra and Ariana."

"You can call us Alex and Ari," Ari said, "It's a lot easier to say."

"Here, we go by our full names," Mrs. Hanser said staring down at Ari with stern eyes, "and why do we do this children?"

"Our names are gifts from our parents. Changing our names will look like we do not appreciate the name they gave us," all the children say. Did this wacko women really make them memorize that?

"Edward," Mrs. Hanser called out, "Show our guest around." A boy started descending from the stairs. He looked around, thirteen or something.

"You may take leave," Mrs. Hanser dismissed the rest. The all filed up and disappeared into the rooms.

"Good morning," Edward said.

"Not so sure about that," I mumbled.

"Excuse my friend," Ari said, "I'm Ari, nice to meet you."

"You can't actually enjoy living here do you?" I said.

"Alex, shut up," Ari said. The boy bit his lip.

"Here we only talk positively," he said. I laughed.

"It's just what we do as best friends," I explained, "Like, I can tell her I hate her, but I really mean, I love her so much that her stupidness doesn't bother me."

"Or I can tell her that she's ugly but I really mean that she's so pretty that I want to punch her. But I don't really mean I want to punch her I mean that I wish I was as pretty as her," Ari said. The boy blinked slowly.

"Never mind," I said.

"Alright then," he said, "I'm Edward."

"So I've heard," I mumbled. He started showing us around using all this proper english. He uses words like, shall and exquisite. That can not be healthy for a thirteen year old boy.