Extracted

AnnaLee

We can leave dinner whenever we finish to go to the student quarters.

Without the instructors and trainers in the lounge area, the atmosphere is more relaxed. There’s even the occasional bouts of laughter. A few linger in the big recreation room with the windows, several ease back in larger overstuffed chairs and play on the gaming consoles. All of the games seem to be military type programs. Like we haven’t had enough sparring in real life. Others head to their rooms or showers. Cecelia said we have free time from seven to nine before lights out.

Finally alone, I sit on my bed and turn on my tablet. It boots up quickly, but all that comes up is my schedule—classes even on Saturday and Sunday—seriously? No weekends off? The map of the student areas: living quarters, gymnasiums, there’s a movie room that looks promising, cafeteria, director and staff offices and infirmary. The building is much larger than this, but those are the only areas marked. There’s absolutely no wi-fi signal or any kind of programs or apps to get a message out.

Frustrated, I deposit my tablet on my side of the shared desk. There has to be another way to contact my family. If I can’t get that Mitchell guy alone tomorrow, I’m just going to talk to the director anyway, tell him there’s been a mistake, that I remember who I am. All he’ll have to do is contact my parents and they’ll come for me. Except…I don’t look anything like me. Or the me I thought I looked like. What if they don’t believe I’m AnnaLee? 

My stomach takes a plunge at that thought, alarm bells going off in the way my stomach starts cramping. I have to figure out what is going on first. Why they think I’m someone else. Just a mix up. It has to be. I rub my head. I think I’m going crazy. Things like this don’t happen. Okay, say I did catch the disease after the accident, and it messed with my brain neurons or whatever, is it possible it messed with how I see myself too? Or how I believe I used to look? It’s just my outward perception of myself that got jumbled in my brain. I’m still me and I’ll look like me to them.

 If so, my parents will still know me and everything will be cool. 

I glare at the floor. This is stupid. The director is here to help. He’ll be happy to get hold of my parents.

But the sense that he won’t help persists.

Groaning, I find what I suppose is sleepwear folded neatly in a military type trunk locker at the bottom of the open closet. They look like hospital scrubs, white, which is a step-up from the gray.

I take those into the bathroom. There are a few others already in here—girls and boys, but there’s plenty of shower stalls open this close to the end of dinner so finding one empty isn’t a problem. There’s little bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, towels, razors, combs, toothbrushes, and toothpaste—everything we could possibly need—lined up in neat rows on the counter like in the infirmary’s locker room. I gather the supplies I’ll need.

I pull the thin shower curtain closed, grateful for any measure of privacy and sink beneath the warm spray. I want to stay in here for hours, away from everybody, especially any of the trainers gauging my reactions to everything.

Under the circumstances, you’d think they’d ease a person into their new life. Tears squeeze between my lashes and fall with the water. I don’t bother to hold them back. I don’t dare take too much time in the shower, afraid that I’ll take more time than allowed, and that someone is also inputting “shower time” data into my file.

At least there aren’t any security cameras in here.

I roll my eyes. How long I stay in a toilet stall will probably be documented as well. I’m tired, feeling snarky and overwhelmed. It’s been a long day.

I just woke up from a coma. I should be entitled.

I towel off, put on the sleeping scrubs and drop the ugly gray track suit into a wide hamper built into the wall like I see the other kids do.

The clothes slide down an aluminum chute, I guess to a laundry room in a basement below us.

I cross over to our room and sit on the side of my unmade bed, not knowing what to do next. The last thing I want to do is go out into the foyer where all those strange kids will sneak glances at me.

I work the comb through my short wet hair, my mind crowding with thoughts I’m too numb to think about. The quiet is uncomfortable, allowing my mind to stray on the strangeness of it all. How can I look like a totally different person?

I don’t bother making up my bed, just pull the blanket over me. Lying on my side, facing the wall, I’m too exausted to hold back the tears.