Haven

Chapter 2

The room was small, but they had made good use of it. There were chairs all around the room, in corners, in the middle, along the walls, everywhere. And all of the chairs looked like they had been salvaged from somewhere. There was a purple and blue dotted one in the corner that looked like it had been burned, and a green one almost right in the middle of the room that looked like some kind of wild animal attacked it. All of the other chairs were in similar states. "This is our living room," Terra said. I suddenly wondered if I had fallen into a trap. All of this just seemed too great to be really true. I didn't want Terra to know though, so I just kept going with her, wherever that was.

       "To tell the truth," Terra said, "we don't really use this room for lounging. This room is really just here so that if the Watchers come and look here they see this. They'll think that this room was attacked and that we all fled, so they will leave. In reality, we all live down here." She then walked over to the green chair in the middle of the room and flipped it over. Underneath it, there was a ladder leading down.

 

"New kids first”, Terra said and I climbed down. At the bottom, my feet hit carpet. “Carpet?”  I thought, “No ones had carpet in the last 20 years!” I had only seen carpet once in my life, and that was at a museum. Of course I had heard all about carpet, but I had never stood on it. It amazed me how soft it was.

       "Hey," Terra called down, "move so I can get down." I took a few steps away, and she jumped, from the top, some 15 feet higher and landed perfectly.  I stared at her, but she didn't seem to notice. She walked in the only direction we could at this point, which was away from the ladder. We were walking through a tunnel that was getting smaller and smaller, and I was beginning to get scared. We were crouching down, almost crawling, when the tunnel suddenly opened up into a huge room, full of tech and people. "This,” said Terra, with a dramatic pause, "is our lounging space."

        The entire room was full of people, and all of them were teens. There were kids looking at information on huge computer screens and others simply lounging in much more comfortable looking chairs. As I looked around, I noticed that everyone was almost impeccably clean, and that I looked like a rat in my dingy clothing. No one was really noticing me, until of course Terra opened her mouth. "Hey everybody!" Everyone stopped and looked at her. "We have a new recruit!!" Dead silence. "Her name is Moxy!" The room erupted. Everyone was cheering, but I wasn't sure if they were cheering for me or for Terra. "Okay, Moxy, this is where I leave you," Terra was talking to me. "Max will take care of you."

        Who was max? I wondered. To answer my question, a girl a few inches taller than me walked up and introduced herself as Max. "So, you're the new kid? All right, now I'm guessing that Terra chose your name, it stinks, but you're stuck with it. I'm Max. Follow me." She walked off, right into the midst of the crowd, and I had to almost run to keep up with her. Tons of people I didn't know were tapping me on the back and saying hi.

"Hey Moxy! Nice to see you, I'm Spike." It was a short kid, but his hair was all spiked up.

"Yo Moxy, I'm George. Welcome aboard Haven." It was a very tall boy with brown hair.

"Hey, good luck. Max is tough." This remark came from a girl who had long blonde hair that was perfectly straight.

"Welcome, soldier, I'm Big Joe." Big Joe then slapped me on the back and I almost fell over. Instead, I landed on Frodo.

"Hey, careful," he said, but I could tell he wasn't mad. "Better hurry up, Max doesn't like waiting."

I saw Max ahead of me and sprinted up to catch her. She didn't seem to notice or care that I had gone missing. As we walked, more and more people kept congratulating me and slapping me on the back. I felt bad, because I couldn't remember any of their names after two seconds of meeting them. I noticed that no one was really greeting Max, and that a lot of people were giving me warnings, so I decided to keep a close eye on her.

        As I was watching her, I noticed that she walked like she had been through a lot, and that she would prove it to anyone who challenged her. Her face was beautiful, but she had frown lines etched far to deeply into it. Her hair was in a tight braid down her back, and there wasn't a hair out of place. Watching her made me sad, so I looked away and tried to take in as much of the surroundings as I could. Everything here was clean, but also home-like. The walls were all a light shade of blue and the floor was carpeted. All of the doors were made of wood that was probably oak. As I was wondering about how on earth they got oak and carpet, Max stopped in front of a door.

"This is the girls’ dormitory," she was emotionless as she spoke, but I could tell that she was hiding her true feelings. "This is where all of the girls in Haven sleep. The boys’ dorm is over there." She pointed towards another door down the hall. She went inside the girls’ dorm and I saw two rows of perfectly made beds. Each of the beds had the same lavender bedspread, and crisp white sheets, except for one. The farthest bed from the door was unmade, but it had a pile of neatly folded linen on it.

"That is your bed," Max pointed to the un-made one, "you need to make the bed, if you want to sleep in it. Otherwise, you sleep on the floor. You have five minutes."

"Um, ok." I stuttered out, unsure of when the time started.

"Well stop standing there, make the bed!" Max was yelling now, and it was scary. Her voice got a steely edge that made her seem like a tried-and-true war sergeant.

        I scrambled across the room and hastily made the bed, hoping it was up to Max's standards. After I had finished, I looked up, expecting Max, but I didn't find anybody. I sat down on my bed and thought to myself about what I had just experienced. What is this Haven? Why am I here? Should I stay? Should I leave? These thoughts raced through my head and I knew that they wouldn't find answers unless I searched for them myself.       

        With that, I stood up and set out to explore. I walked over to the door and knocked, not really knowing what to do. The door opened, and I stumbled back, surprised. Standing at the door to meet me was a girl, much younger than myself, probably 7 or 8, standing with her head bowed. "I am at your service ma'am," she mumbled to the floor, and then she hastily added, "You did call right?" 

"Call?" I asked her, confused by what she meant.

"You knocked three times on the door, calling us to your service."

"I - I didn't mean to call you." She started to walk away, with a bit of a spring in her step, then I opened my mouth again, "but now that you're here, I want you. Come in. Sit down."

        She gave me a look of utter surprise and dragged her way into the room looking behind her nervously like she was being watched. "Sit," I repeated. She looked exhausted and I wanted her to simply rest, but she shook her head saying, "I cannot ma'am. I'm terribly sorry, but I am required to stand." What was this? I wondered to myself. I looked over at the girl and saw that she was malnourished; she looked like she hadn't been fed in a week.

"What's your name?" I asked her, hoping to get her to tell me a little bit about herself, maybe I could get her some help.

"I'm sorry, I'm not permitted to tell you that." she looked to the floor, and I could hardly here her at all when she said, "Mrs. Miloes said that I can't."

"Come again?" I asked her. In response, she started crying and ran out of the room. "Wait!" I called, "come back!" I sat down, discouraged because I had failed to help that poor little girl. After a few minutes, Max came back in. "Dinner time, come on." She walked off and I followed her, vaguely aware that something was off, even though I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was.