Freakshow

Chapter 3

Tap, tap, tap, I slowly became aware that someone was knocking on my door. I rolled over and looked at the clock, it read 5:08. My eyes went wide, 5:08?! I screamed inside my head, we had arrived here at 12:30 this afternoon. Swung my legs over the side of the bed and walked over to the door to answer it. Outside it stood Jamie and Elizabeth, now that I could get a good look at them I noticed that they looked a lot alike. They both had wavy brown hair and beautiful chocolate eyes, but Jamie's was hair was cropped short while Elizabeth's trailed down her back to her waist.

"Hey there," Jamie said, "my name's Jamie, and this is my little sister, Elizabeth." Elizabeth raised her hand like we were in school, "you can call me Lizzy," she squeaked. Jamie leaned in and lowered her voice, "she's really shy right now, but she'll open up," she assured me. "Anyway," she said, taking a step back, "we are supposed to take you to the mess hall for a little grub." I yawned and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Jamie looked at me curiously, "were you sleeping?" she asked, I nodded, not really in the mood to talk, "oh," she replied. I wondered if there was something wrong since was the shortest thing she had said since I arrived at the institute.

Jamie and Elizabeth led me down a different hallway than the one I had come from, I tried to take in every detail so I could remember my way back the my room. The mess hall was mostly white like the rest of this place, but I gasped when I saw the ceiling. It was a big dome above the room but instead of plain glass, it was stained beautiful blues, greens, and yellows. As I looked longer I saw that it was actually a picture of a brook running through a wooded area. Elizabeth must have heard my gasp because she turned around and smiled, "its beautiful, isn't it?" she asked looking up at the ceiling. I nodded, "it is."

Jamie led us over to a table where about fifteen kids my age sat. I quickly did a mental count, there was actually thirteen sitting plus Elizabeth and Jamie. I thought about that for a second, the institute had fifteen kids in their "program"now I made sixteen, they must be doing something right to have so many. Jamie and Elizabeth didn't sit right away, instead they called everyone's attention to us, "this is Rose," she said. Everyone burst out into applause, a few boys that looked like your average high school jocks let out some whoops and hollers. I blushed and timidly waved to everyone, "hi," I said quietly. One of the jocks stood up, " you're going to have to speak up around here!" he yelled, "we're a pretty loud bunch!"

He walked over to me and held out one of his huge hands, I was going to shake it gently, but he nearly took my arm off. "My name's Beau," he said, "it's good to have a new person around here." He leaned down quite a ways since he was almost a foot and a half taller than me, and whispered in my ear, "especially one as lovely as you." I giggled and was certain that my face was as red as a tomato. Looked up at him and he was smiling, "here, come sit by me," he said but just then Jamie let out a big laugh, "not so fast Beau, us girls gotta stick together. You can sit with us, Rose," she said and motioned to three open seats at the table.

I sat down next to Elizabeth, the girl next me had bouncy, flaming red hair that put Merida from Brave to shame. Freckles dotted her cheeks and nose and around her dark blue eyes. "Hello there," she said, I half expected her to have an Irish accent. "I'm Sally," she told me, "it's good to have you here." Throughout dinner several other girls introduced themselves, Autumn, Britney, Madison, Kendra, and Laura all from different parts of the country. I found out Sally was from Wisconsin, Autumn was from Minnesota, Britney was from Missouri, Laura and Madison were both from different parts of North Dakota and Jamie and Elizabeth were from California. By the time the dinner was over my head hurt from all the new names and faces. We were all ushered out of the mess hall to our rooms and it was about 8:15. I hadn't met any of the boys that had sat at the other end of the table but I was told there would be plenty of time for that. I opened my still plain door and flopped down on my bed, not even bother to take my jeans and T-shirt off. I was exhausted and sleep soon overtook me.