T A K E N

chapter eight

Chelsea Brooks 

The sounds of distant chattering cause me to blink my eyes open. I stretched out my legs from under the covers as I pressed my eyes shut, after a few seconds I relaxed my body allowing the good feeling I always get after to wash over. I opened up my eyes to look at the chipped ceiling above me, 

wait, what the fuck. Why does my ceiling look like that?

oh. 

When my mind catches up to my eyes, the memories of yesterday came back causing me to lay motionless not wanting to get up and face my new reality. Instead I let my eyes wander around the room, the bunked beds to my left were empty and there sheets were pulled neatly over the mattress–Tessa and Julia were probably In the living area. My eyes then wandered over to the door seeing as it was open just a crack allowing the sounds of 2 girls voices to seep into the room, I then looked above the door to see the white clock that hung above it, 

11:53 am

I sat up after reading how late it was, I was wearing a plain white t-shirt that hung down to my mid thigh, and a pair of baby blue shorts that was hidden under my shirt when I stood.

 After my long shower last night, I put on the cloths that I got from my drawer and cleaned my teeth with a new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste that I found under the sink. I went straight to sleep last night when I left the bathroom with out talking to anyone, so my hair was definitely going to be a mess this morning. 

I stepped out of bed and stretched out my back, while rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand I pulled the sheet on my bed over the mattress to make the room look a bit nicer.  After I was done I walked towards the door pulling it open, allowing the sounds of Tessa and Julia's conversation to flood my ears as I walked towards their voices, 

"hi" the sound of my voice caused their conversation to pause and their heads to turn to where I was standing in the opening of the hallway. They were both sitting on the couch eating some kind of granola bar. 

"hey" Tessa spoke first giving me a small smile, "come sit we were just talking" 

At her words I sat down next on the couch facing them "hey um, sorry I went straight to sleep last night I was just really exhausted" 

"no need to apologize, we figured you would be tired. Here have a granola bar" Julia said as she handed me the small bar of food, I didn't say anything I just took the bar from her hand and unwrapped it,

"so um the guards will be here to get us in less than an hour, so we should start getting ready soon" Tessa said before she took another bite of her food,

oh yea. I forgot about that.

"okay, do I need to wear anything specific or" I asked as I continued to eat,

"You have to wear one of the lingerie sets that are with your clothes, otherwise they will force you to change when we get up there. But apart from that you can just wear sweats and a hoodie on top, they set out clothes for us to change into when we get up there. " Tessa replied, 

"oh ok" I mumbled in response with a mouth full of granola, this all still felt like a weird twisted dream. 

After a about 20 minuets of eating granola bars and me asking a line of questions about what I should or shouldn't do upstairs, the time was already 12:30 so we got up and decided to start getting ready so we didn't get in trouble. 

I tossed my empty granola wrappers in the small trash bin next to the sofa before I followed Tessa and Julia into our room. We all walked to the dresser to get our clothes out for the day. I was still rummaging through my clothes when Julia and Tessa started to change.