My Saving Grace (Book 3)

May 5, 2030

"Tell me, Toby, what do you like to do?" Penny asked. She held her usual sickeningly sweet smile which made Toby want to barf. He hated being there, he missed his home, his bed, his parents, his sister. He had cursed his dad for finding him and letting him come to such a place. He was on his own here and nothing could distract him from his demons.

When he thought about it, though. It was helping. Even just after a week of living there, he felt clearer and maybe even happier.... Not that he had made any friends.

This question, though, it struck a chord in Toby's brain. He had grown to like Penny in the last week, even if she was delusionally optimistic. He trusted her and decided that telling the truth was probably for the best. He really did want to get better and this was the only way to do it.

"I don't really know," Toby started, his voice slicing through the silence. This is what he didn't like, this attention. It made him feel completely vulnerable, like being stood in front of a crowd in only your boxers. Confidence and courage was so hard to dig up inside of him!

It also made him uneasy knowing that he was being watched. He had clocked the cameras upon his first day sat in that room. They had told him that it was standard procedure and that they only watched them at times of emergency but paranoia had set in and Toby didn't like it one bit. It was the one thing that made him uncomfortable about this place.

Toby looked around the room for some inspiration. The room was quite large, with four walls, a wooden door and a shining glass window. A desk stood in the middle, which they were sat at, Penny on one side in the swivel chair and Toby in the soft leather armchair on the other. A computer stood in the middle of the desk with a screensaver of two small children both with piercing blue eyes and curly black hair. The keyboard and mouse were tilted slightly to the left for easier access and were pristine and white.

The walls were a pale blue, mixed with turquoise and green and darker blues. This reminded Toby of the ocean in Fiji, they had gone there when he was four and he could remember every last minute of it. The way the sun glimmered against the sea. The way the waves rolled into the shore, barely creating a sound. The way the heat turned your skin golden brown.

Against the left wall stood a book shelf with book upon book piled neatly on top of each other. It was so full that a collection had started to form in a stack on the floor at the base of the book shelf. This relaxed Toby, an organised mess was better than no mess at all!

On the right wall was a quote, seemingly from a book that Toby had never read. It said, 'happiness can be found in the darkest of times if one just remembers to turn on the light.' The words were in cursive writing and Toby pictured a paint brush swishing against the wall in attempts to keep it neat. Suddenly he knew his answer.

"I like art." He whispered. His voice barely sounded but Penny had caught every word. Toby looked up and saw her genuine smile, urging him to go on. "I like looking at pictures and drawing and imagining what words would look like in art form." He continued.

Penny turned around and grabbed something off of the bookshelf. A piece of paper and a pencil were thrust into Toby's direction. "I'm going to leave and you are going to draw something. Anything you want. I want it to reflect your feelings though." She told him, standing and exiting the room quickly.

Toby couldn't quite believe that he had been left alone. For the week he had been here there was always someone watching him. Yeah, the cameras were on right now, but this was new. There was no one in the room with him. The only time he could remember being left in a room alone all week was at night. He relaxed and quickly got to work.

The pencil in his hand seemed to come to life as he began to draw, slowly at first and then quicker as his brain began to work. The pencil moved in strokes and lines, covering the page all over. The white disappearing into different shades of grey as his thumb ran over the shading. He had watched Alex do this before when he and Noah were young. The swish of Toby's hand moving across the page was relaxing and it seemed to be not long before he was finished.