Me

Chapter 2

"Get up!" I feel a hand on my shoulder, shaking me back and forth.

"What do you want?" I ask, my words slurred.

"You need to come with us. Quickly." I hear the voice clearly this time. It's a man's voice, deep and ringing with authority. Probably one of the scientists.

"Why?" I ask suspiciously. Scientists never come for us in the middle of the night, and they only test once every two weeks. My most recent test was last week.

"It's urgent." I can tell that the man is holding back his temper. I decide to comply to what he is saying, hoping that whatever he wants is important, otherwise it would be a waste.

I rub my eyes and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. The man leads me to the front of the room, and I can barely make out the figures of three other men leading May, Reyna and Carolyn to the door. On the way out, I splash cold water on my face, making myself alert. I look to the men, who aren't men. There are four boys standing in the door way, smiling like something funny has happened, or is going to happen. I look over at Reyna, May and Carolyn, still groggy from being woken up. I flip the lights, thinking that it was my eyes playing tricks on me, but with the lights on, I see that it wasn't. Reyna's hair is bright pink, Carolyn's a dark blue and May's yellow. I run into the bathroom and see that they've dyed my hair dark green. I can hear the boys outside laughing their heads off.

"What have you done?" I hear May scream. I hear more laughing and a loud thud. A boy with black hair lies on the ground, with May sitting on top of him, hitting him hard enough for the boy to feel it, but not hard enough to hurt him. All of them are doubling over with laughter, except the boy on the ground.

One of the boys attempts to speak without laughing. "Don't... don't worry," he bursts into another fit of laughter before continuing, "it washes out."

May is on the floor laughing, lying next to the boy, who's name I can't quite remember. The other three boys are Jack, Will and Alex. Slowly the four of them stop laughing. The boy on the floor picks himself up and plops on the couch, the other three in suit. They channel surf while we wash the dye out of our hair. May takes the shower while Reyna uses the bathroom sink. Carolyn and I take turns with the kitchen sink.

"You know," Will says, "Zack and Dillon are behind it all."

"Oh, I am going to kill them," I mutter. I wrap my hair up in a towel and sit on the floor in front of the TV. Will starts channel surfing, while Carolyn starts cooking eggs. She loves cooking. It's her favorite thing to do, besides reading. Will settles on a channel just as Zack and Dillon burst in.

"HEY!" they exclaim together.

"Man, you should have seen them. It was hilarious!" Jack says.

"Yeah, sure. Why'd you do that?" I ask.

"Because. It's to boring around here. We figured some of them might need a laugh," Zack explains. He jumps onto the arm of the couch and grabs the remote.

"Hey," I hear Will say in the background. I stand up and walk over to Carolyn, jumping onto the counter. She's always been really quiet, just like the others in the Appearance group.

There are four groups here, appearance, ability, cure and adaptability. Those are the four tests they do. They use eight kids to experiment on per group. I'm ability. Every two weeks they test. Sometimes they change things. If they wanted, they could change some of my traits. So one week I could know nothing about stealth, and then, after a test, it could just come naturally. They insert instincts. They take them away. Depends on what they want. I have no control over it, nor does any other kid.

"Hey Carolyn," I say.

"Hey."

"What's up?"

"Well, a bunch of nine year olds dyed my hair blue." Even if she is quiet, she has a good sense of humor.

"We're thirteen," Alex chimes in.

"Whatever." Carolyn grins and turns the stove on. All of a sudden, her hand twitches, shaking the pan.

"What was that?" I ask her.

"I don't know. Probably nothing," she replies. I believe her.

***

The lab is dark, and the table is cold. A pillow props my head up, so I can just see my feet. The MRI machine beeps loudly, making a lot of noise. There's music being pumped through the headphones around my ears, but not loud enough to drown out the noise of the equipment.

A sudden jerk startles me from my thoughts as the table moves out, then up. "Everything seems fine," one of the scientists say. "The x-rays looked good, so does this. Nothing's changed."

"Great," says Dr. Falkman. "We don't need problems, especially now." He turns to me as I stand up. "Jasmine, you are free to go."

I walk out of the lab door and run to the recreation room to meet up with Dillon, Zack and Reyna. "Why do we have to continuously be checked? I hate lying on a metal table inside of a tube for two hours."

"We all hate it," Dillon mutters. His voice is barely audible over the kids talking and laughing with one another. Most of the kids stick to their age groups, fifteen, oldest, thirteen, eleven or nine, youngest. They stopped after the fourth group, maybe because they thought that housing, feeding and entertaining thirty-two kids was enough.

The door to the hallway opens and three scientists come in, grabbing three kids, one of which is Carolyn. I just catch her hand twitch up and down.