The Orphanage

Chapter 2

Isabelle's POV:

"Wake up! Isabelle it's time to wake up!" I hear.  I am awake, I think to myself, why on earth is Gabriela trying to wake me up? I mean it's quite obvious i'm awake, just ask my parents over there.

Suddenly Gabriela screams in my ear. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?" I ask startled and annoyed.  

"To wake you up" Gabriela says simply with a shrug.

"It's too early" I whine while looking around the room for a clock.  I finally find one on the nightstand and it reads 5:00 am. "What in the world! it's definitely way to early to wake up" I exclaim as I roll around in bed getting comfortable and then I close my eyes and wait for sleep to take me again.

However it seems as Gabriela has other ideas as she throws the covers off me and pushes me out of bed.  "I told you it was to early" I grumble "school doesn't start till 8:00, so I need to wake up at around 7:15."

"But we have chores to do before school, and I mean apart from the typical making your bed thing, so trust me we will need all this time."

Hearing this I get off the floor and start getting ready, throwing on the grey knee length dress that seems to be the uniform.  This place really needs more colors.  I quickly throw my hair into a ponytail and and add some eyeliner to make my eyes pop before following Gabriela out the door.  She stops in front of a bulletin board at the end of the hallway in the lounge and starts checking it.  I look at the bulletin board questioningly.

 "It explains what our chores are going to be for today"  Gabriela explains and I shoot her a grateful look while I search for our names - I mean numbers.  This number thing is really going to take some getting used to.

I spot my number.  It says:

582 and 465: bathroom duty

Cool, so i'm with Gabriela I think before letting out a groan as it sinks in that I'm going to have to clean bathrooms.

With Gabriela's help I clean up all the bathrooms in the orphanage.  Talk about a long disgusting job.  Especially Mrs Topoxi's bathroom.  I think she just makes sure it's super dirty so that we would hate having to clean it.  If that's the reason it's so dirty then it worked.  All the time I was there I was wishing for a mask, some gloves and a cleaning suit.  I hated having to get the uniform dirty, even if it was a dull, boring grey.

When we finished Gabriela headed straight to class, not wanting to be late, but I went to bathroom  that all the girls between the ages of 13-18 share to take a quick shower.  After my 10 minute shower I quickly pulled on a clean uniform, put some eyeliner on and put my hair in a quick messy bun before heading to class.  I was about 10 minutes late to class but I figured the teacher would understand my need to get cleaned up.

When I got to my first class (which Gabriela had showed me yesterday) everyone turned to look at me with a grim expression on their face.  Well, everyone except the teacher that is.

"NUMBER 582, WHY ARE YOU LATE?" Mrs Parkison reprimanded me.

I flinched slightly at her tone, but responded honestly saying how after my chores I had to take a shower.  I mean who wants to go to class being all yucky and smelling like a dirty bathroom?  Talk about yucky.

"Number 582, I get that you are new, but you need to respect the shower schedules and as far as I know, your shower schedule says that you have to shower Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 8:30 pm.  Nowhere does it say that you shower Tuesdays before class."

"I know" I respond bowing my head in shame, "But I really needed to shower and didn't think it would be that big of a deal to take a quick shower".