Peter and the Lost Girl

The Disgusting Creation Called Slop

    Tommy started to look around at everyone at the table. He nodded at each boy and they nodded back, showing that they were all ready for what was to soon come. Finally he looked at Peter. Tommy nodded and Peter slowly nodded back. He was scared. What if it didn't work? What if they all got in trouble, and were beaten for not being behaved. He didn't know if they would succeed, but he hated the orphanage, and Tommy looked like he knew what he was doing.
    Slowly, but carefully Tommy stood along with the rest of the boys at their table. There were about thirteen tables in all,  with around six kids at each. The six at ours, including me, slowly walked up to the woman who had, for everyday of their whole lives, handed out the same bowls of the same disgusting slop. The six shuffled over to where she stood by the pot of grossness, led by Tommy since he was the oldest of the bunch at sixteen and counting. In two years he would be let out of the jail like 'home' and set free to the streets of London, but he was so fed up with everything even remotely connected to the orphanage that he couldn't stand another two miserable years there.
    All of the boys there seemed to look up to Tommy. There were boys there from ages one to seventeen, there were even some newborns who had been dropped of at the steps of the 'home' with nobody around to claim them, so the orphanage had to take them in. That was how Peter had gotten there. There all his life, he had never known anything but work, slop, work, slop, sleep. That was his daily routine. Everyday! No excuses!
  Tommy on the other hand had been dropped of at the boy's home at the age of twelve. He had been part of a poor family that lived off of the few scraps of food that he and his brother found in the garbage or had stolen. Tommy desperately wanted to go back to his old life, though no one could understand why. He told them it was about the adventure, the excitement, and the fun in stealing things and running away after being caught.
  His family of course, in the end, had died of a mysterious disease. No one knew what it was, but it had killed his whole family. Except for him. The doctors couldn't figure out why he wasn't dead, but they didn't want to waste their precious time with measly little kids, so they sent him off to a 'good home'.
  Here we are. Peter thought as the group stopped in front of the woman. What now?
  "Ahem." Tommy and the others watched the woman for her response. First she looked confused. Before we had walked up her head had been hanging low with her arms slumped to her sides. Peter realized that she must have been asleep. Now Tommy had just woken her up from her pleasant sleep dreaming of having tea with the queen, and instead of that she was now just the woman who served slop for a bunch of ungrateful children.
  "What?!" she nearly yelled right in Tommy's face.
  He flinched and for a second he looked like he was about to back down. "Ma'am." he said slowly and politely.          We'd...uh" He said motioning towards the rest of us. "Well, we'd like...another bowl." He said the last two words so slowly and quietly that I doubted that she could actually hear him.
  "Another bowl?" She asked quietly, like an animal creeping up on it's prey. "You want more food!?" She asked angrily. How could these children want more food?! Even if they only got two meals a day, that was all the orphanage could provide them with.
  "Yes ma'am...and I promise if you give the leftovers to us six we won't tell the others and we'll never ask you again." Tommy said in quick thinking. The woman glared. All she wanted to do was eat for a little while, was that too much to ask?
  She continued to glared at the horrid, pale, stick like 'children' standing in front of her. She tried to look down on all of them, but the leader of the group was almost taller than she was. "Give me those!" she hissed at them while taking their bowls out of their hands at the same time.
  Plop, plop, plop, went the slop into the wooden bowls, one by one. Tommy straightened up taller knowing that he had persuaded the woman into something she would have never done before. All in all, he was proud of himself.
  After they were all filled, the boys grabbed their bowls and quickly scored back the smaller rectangular table. They all smiled at eachother as they pick out the biggest chunks of meat and potato and put them into the small pocket. This would be the only food they would have once they left the orphanage for good.
  If they didn't have it, they would starve to death.