Immunity

7

I stare at the opened can of Baked beans in my lap, slowly stirring and mixing it up with plastic spoon.

I couldnmt believe it. They actually gave me food. Food. If there was a list of rules made for what was happening around the world right now, I would bet fifty bucks the number one rule would be: Dont give your supplies to anyone you dont know idiot!!

I look around at the kids eating so quickly, scooping out mountains of their food and stuffing it into their mouths. How often did these children eat?

Suddenly, I wasnt in the mood to eat anymore, knowing that they had just given me something that was almost considered gold now. But, I also knew i should eat.

Instead, I simply stall. 'So, how old are you guys?" I ask.

Some of them freeze and stare at me, like I'd just asked something like 'Have you guys ever killed someone?'

Hugo continues eating like its nothing.

"Well," Jax stammers "Some of us dont really know..."

"What?"

"We dont know how old we are," He repeats, "Only Hugo knows his age, right Hugo?"

He nodds, wiping a bit of tuna off his lip. "I'm fourteen,"

My spoon drops from my hand, "fourteen?!"

He nodds again, "Yeah, what about it?"

He looked too young to be fourteen. I mean, when you looked at him, you would have thought about eleven or twelve. You'd be pushing it for thirteen. I couldnt believe he was the same age as me.

"Nothing, I just thought you were younger," I say.

It goes quiet for a moment, you only hear the scraping of spoons against tin cans.

"H-How old do you think we are?" Aggie asks timidly. Her little green eyes shining as she speaks.

I look around at each of them again, at all of their young and fresh little faces.

"Well," I begin, "Aggie, you look about nine or eight,"

"Leo and Izzy look about five or six,"

"Jax, you look about eight or nine too, maybe ten, same for Ace," I practically feel Hugo smile when I mention Ace.

"And Ria, you're about ten or eleven," She frowns, as if she thought she was older. Or maybe it was because I knew her name.

I watch each one of their faces light up as I tell them how old I think they are. I try to imagine what is going through their heads right now. I'm eight years old. EIGHT!

It was cute.

We finish our... 'meals', tossing the cans and spoons out into the libary. I frown as they do so, what a waste of a libary. Once a place of knowledge and imagination, is now just a dump for a group of little kids.

"Wassup?" Hugo asks, looking at my face.

"It's just... the books could be used for something else," I say.

"What? For the fire? Sorry, its not that cold, we only light fires when its really cold," He says as if its nothing, but in my mind, I see great literature going up in smoke.

"No!" He gets startled by my loud responce, "I mean, why dont you read them when you're bored?"

All of them laugh.

"Ha! Like those guys can read!" Hugo laughs.

It astounded me. The kids couldnt read. I mean... what?