Faith

Friends.

Her first day at St. Jude's started off as a bit of a train wreck. One of the kids, who had a condition that Faith didn't understand that rendered him completely tactless and made him constantly laugh uncontrollably, passed some helplessly rude comments about her wheelchair. She was seven. She slapped him petulantly. As she was wearing special gloves, he didn't die, but his laughing turned to crying, and Faith was wheeled into the Naptime Unit for some quiet time. She wasn't the only one.

Belove had a sharp, jagged smile. She had a straight jacket on, mostly because she had a habit of trying to cut her hands off with her serrated teeth. She looked perfectly insane, with crossed eyes and messy hair. She was ten.

Tainne Best was a freak among freaks. Her eyes were hard as ice, her hair was curly, dark blonde, her nose was a severe angle, and her smile always looked cold and sarcastic, even when it was sincere. Nobody liked her. She radiated waves of negativity that counteracted with the positive, self image boosting therapy that was universal at St. Jude's. She was nine, and worse at making friends than Belove or Faith, neither of whom had any friends at all.

Tainne looked up, and down her nose at Faith. "Oh look. Another particularly difficult child. What's wrong with you?"

Faith didn't know what her affliction was called, or that it wasn't all to normal, so she just said "Whoever touches me dies."

Tainne snorted. "You gonna kill me?"

"No. That's just what happens."

"Not possible."

"Everything is possible. Most things are just aggressively unlikely."

"Prove it." challenged Tainne.

Faith shrugged. "Got anything to kill?"

After pondering for a few seconds, Tainne looked over at Belove. "You hiding any mice today?"

Belove, who was rocking back and forth at quite a speed, shook her head so hard Faith thought that it would unscrew.

"Nopenopenope. Might be spiders or buggy things on me somewhere. Maybe." She started trying to scratch her head. "Yup. There's definitely an unpaying guest up there."

Tainne strode over to Belove. She was careful not to pull at her hair as she extracted a large, shiny, black beetle from Belove's head. Belove let out an out of place giggle.

Tainne crouched down beside Faith.

"Take off your glove." she said commandingly. She held the beetle between her thumb and forefinger. It was upside down and it was kicking at her finger like it knew that death was near.

Faith obeyed,  and Tainne dropped the beetle into her open palm. She peered at it as it scurried around.

"It's not dead." she pointed out.

"I know." Faith replied patiently. "Sometimes it takes a while."

A few moments later and the poor beetle had about as much life in it as a pebble.

"Wow."  breathed Tainne, a light in her eyes like she had just seen Santa in the flesh. Faith shrugged, as modest as seven year olds get.

"I'm Tainne," said Tainne, "and this is Belove. We're the craziest ones here, and someone like you would do better sticking with us."

Faith didn't see any reason to argue.