Retreat (ddlb)

3

"Hey, what's up?" Jasper greeted the boy who he was still calling 'Hot Guy' and sat next to him on the long white couch. "Oh, hey. Did that suck as much for you as it did for me?" 'Hot Guy' snickered, leaning back onto the couch, seemingly a little exhausted from that afternoon's events. "From the look on your face, probably not." Jasper replied, grinning at the other boy. "Oh, uh... I forgot to ask earlier, but what should I call you?" Jasper asked, suddenly realizing that it's probably getting a little weird to keep calling this kid 'Hot Guy' in his head. "Hah, I guess we'll find out tonight." The boy replied, with a seemingly bold smirk on his face. Jasper was confused, and made no effort to try and hide it from the other boy, who quickly realized this and changed the subject. "Sorry, that was a joke. My name is Ezra, how 'bout you?" Ezra half-jokingly stuck his hand out, to which Jasper reached out and shook it, feeling a rise of butterflies in his stomach from the touch. "I'm Jasper. Thanks for the smoke earlier, by the way."

Ezra grinned after remembering that morning's events and slowly let go of Jasper's hand. "No problem. You're a good liar. It was funny. You made this day suck just a little less." Jasper smirked and nodded. "Well you were pretty damn helpful, I don't know if they would have bought it with just my act alone." The two boys kept eye contact for a few seconds, before Ezra decided to ask Jasper a question. "So uh... what made you choose this program specifi-" But unfortunately, he was cut off by the soft whistle of one of the leaders who Jasper recognized to be his own, Ms. Lindsey. 

"Okay kids! It seems that everyone has finished with their testing and baggage claim! Now I know that you have all had a really long day, but it is now around 6:00, which is when we like to eat dinner, so go ahead and leave your stuff where it is right now and we'll go and eat and then afterwards we will go over the results  of your tests and get you moved into your dorms!" Ms. Lindsey clapped her hands and started to lead her way back towards the cafeteria, which Jasper was now realizing laid out in a rainbow, with each row of tables being a different color in a pastel theme stretching across the room. He also notices that the room now smelled heavily of home-cooked food, with one side of the room  containing a buffet and the other side also containing a buffet with different food in it. 

"Tomorrow we will have more rules set in place, but for tonight feel free to eat from either buffet and sit where you would like." Ms. Lindsey ended her announcement by stepping back against the wall to watch the new patients with the other leaders. Jasper suddenly wondered how strict this place was going to be, seeing as though they might restrict what he eats and where he sits at meal times. Ezra noticed him frowning, though, and casually bumped his shoulder with his own. "Wanna grab something to eat?" Ezra asked him, which made Jasper thankful for the distraction and he nodded and they decided to head over to the left side of the room and start at that buffet. 

1st person pov

While we were standing in line at the buffet, however, I slowly realized that the food at this side of the room looked different: the food was all cut up, had a softer texture or was in childish shapes as well as the plates and silverware having plastic handles with characters and shapes and glitter on them and what really caught my eye was an arrangement of... sippy cups? upon further inspection, I slowly started to realize that there were also baby bottles... and even bibs! I realized that this was probably for other kinds of patients who might need this stuff, which made me feel a little better. But then I froze, because I didn't really know what to do with Ezra standing right behind me, but I really didn't want to go through this line with him for some reason. I felt my neck heat up as I turned around to take a glance at him. "Hey, why don't we go to the other line? The food looks better and the line is shorter." I really hoped he didn't notice the buffet or at least that I had noticed. 

"Uh, oh, yeah, sure, why not?" Ezra seemed to be surprised about something but his face smoothed over so fast that I just assumed he wasn't paying attention at first. We left this line and went to the other one and got our food and sat down at a yellow table.