Just Jump

4

“Ray, whatcha readin’?” Sheila asks him.

Ray doesn’t say anything, but he does hold up the book so we can see the title. Flowers for Algernon. 

“Haven’t you already read that?” Darcie asks. She would know, she remembers everything.

Ray grunts.

Darcie blinks and plops herself down on the tiled floor. “I’ve been thinking…” she says.

Sheila, Paul, and I exchange glances as Ray continues to read. 

I sit down next to Darcie. “What have you been thinking about, Darce?”

“Y’know how they say we can’t Jump in the Precinct?” She stares at me with her unnerving eyes.

“Yeah?” Sheila has joined me on the floor now, but Paul is nowhere to be seen.

"I can Jump,” Darcie whispers.

Ray drops his book on his lap as if it was on fire. “You can’t get outta here, Darcie. I’ve been here almost eighteen freaking years and there’s no way outta here. I’ve looked everywhere.” His grey eyes penetrate ours and ruin our happy demeanor. We gaze at him in surprise. “What?” He snaps. “There’s no way outta here. We were born here,” Sheila shudders at this part, “and we’re going to die here. We’re always gonna be these stupid lab experiments gone wrong, stuck inside this invisible cage like…” he pauses to take a breath. “What’s it like? Oh, God, what’s it like…? Pandora’s Box! We’re those tiny little demons trapped inside the box until some outside force intervenes. We’re stuck here.”

“Are you comparing us to evil?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes.

"Ray?” Darcie says quietly.

“What?” He snaps.

“Isn’t there hope in Pandora’s Box too?”

“Not in this one,” he replies.

“So… he’s not comparing us to evil?” I say.

Sheila reaches over and slaps me.

“Ow!” I scowl at her.

She raises her eyebrows at me and gives me a “shut up” look.

"What?” I ask.

“How long has Ray been seventeen?” She says.

“Ray has been seventeen for exactly one year, five months, two days, ten hours, fifty-three minutes, and six seconds,” Darcie says without looking up from the tiled floor.

No one asks how she knows.

“You’re an adult,” I say to Ray.

“Yeah, I’m also a superhuman freak who can teleport,” he argues.

"That is true," Darcie nods from the floor.

“No Ray, you don’t get it! We could get outta here! You’re legally an adult!” Sheila points out.

“None of us know our actual birthdays,” Paul protests.

“It’s all in a room near the X Ward. Birth certificates, secret files, everything,” Darcie murmurs.

“How do you know that?” I asks.

She shrugs.

“Darce, in that room, do they have the explanations?”

This makes her look at me with her mismatched eyes. “What do you mean?” The way she fidgets she could almost be classified as uncomfortable. Almost.

“Is there a reason why we’re here? Why are we different?”

"We’re not different from each other.”

I clench my hands into tight fists. Getting any information out of this girl is impossible.

But so is teleporting.

“Ben?” Sheila puts her hand on my shoulder. Her hand is warm, warmer than I thought it would be.

But I still shove it away, stand up, and walk out of the ward.