Hopeless Place

Chapter 5

Her leg moved up and down. It was a stupid habit she couldn't seem to get rid off. Whenever she got nervous her right leg would bounce up and down until she noticed and focused on stopping it.

For the past 20 minutes she had been sitting here, all alone, waiting. The worst part was that she wasn't sure why she even was here. The man from the meetings, turns out his name is Mike, had just told her to go here and wait. What really made her nervous though was the way Juliana had looked her when Mike told her. The frown on her pretty face, her obvious confusion. It must have meant that this was not something normal.

She tried to think of a reason. Maybe they had figured out that she had help steal all those snacks, maybe they were gonna explain the rules to her again. But then why wasn't Juliana sitting next to her. She had been the one actually stealing, Valentina had just ran after her. There was also the possibility that maybe this was something Eva had requested. In fact Valentina had been very surprised it wasn't some kind of facility for the super rich and famous where she'd be going through her withdrawal with some pop singer that she didn't know. So it wouldn't be entirely absurd that Eva had demanded special one on one therapy for her younger sister.

The door finally opened and a woman appeared. "Miss Carvajal, you can come in." She spoke and disappeared into the room again, this time leaving the door open.

After taking a deep breath, Valentina got up and walked into what she assumed was the woman's office. The woman pointed at one of the two chairs in front of her and the younger girl got the hint. She sat down, again waiting.

"Well, I'd like to start by saying welcome to this facility, I hope you'll find it good here. So can you tell me why you are here?"

"I'm assuming it has something to do with my drinking." Valentina replied, noticing her mouth had gone dry. The woman wrote something down on her notepad before looking up at her again. Right at the moment the woman opened her mouth to speak again a loud alarm interrupted the conversation. The woman frowned but got up, opened the door and looked outside.

She then turned back to Valentina and said: "That's the fire alarm, come on."

The words took a second to register in Valentina's mind but once they did she jumped up and ran out of the room. The hallways were one big chaos. She could see Mike on the other end of the hallway trying to keep to calm down the patients who were running passed each other to get to the exits as fast as possible.

Someone ran into her causing her to move in the same direction as everyone else. Valentina had to think back to one time at school, she and her friends had skipped class. They had been waking around the building when one of her friends, Sergio, had come up with the idea to drop a smoke bomb in the girl's bathroom. She had thought it was an idiotic idea but Lucho had laughed and patted his friend on the back and the two had ran to the bathrooms. Within minutes the smoke had filled every part of the school.

So she didn't understand how there wasn't a hint of smoke right now. If a part of the building was actually on fire, how come there was no smoke at all. It didn't make sense.

The parking lot was filled with people. All of them staring at the building, waiting patiently for the flames to destroy it. But nothing happened. The building stood as it had been standing the day Valentina was dropped of here. It had only been two days ago but it felt like a lifetime. It was unbearable for her to keep looking at it, so she looked away. Her eyes landed on a young girl, with dark brown hair, staring at her. A small smile was present on Juliana's face.

That smile felt like puzzle piece filling the last gap. Valentina walked up to the other girl. "It was you, wasn't it?"

"What are you accusing me off?"