A/N: Okay, here we go, chapter 2. Took down the note because it was annoying and stupid and... yeah. Review, and be brutal. If there's a typo, I wanna know about it; if I ever get anywhere with this story, of if one day I'm just really, really bored, I'll come back and edit everything. If anyone wants to help me individualize my dialogue, THANK YOU!!!!!!! Say so in your review, please. Oh, BTW, I actually wrote this this summer and just finished going over my beta's edits now, so... blah, I dunno. Enjoy, and please take the time to review; I really want to know how I can improve my writing.

Center for Distressed Youth

Chapter II

The room was tiny and drab, all gray. There was a window across from the door letting in a bit sunshine that brightened the room, but not much; it was small and square, with gray curtains on either side, and, Kari couldn’t help noticing, iron bars. She gulped.

A tousled head of auburn hair appeared over the barrier on the top bunk of the set of bunk beds on the left side of the room. “Geez… what time is it?” asked the girl groggily. She lifted her head and looked at Kari, blinking several times. She shook herself awake.

“Oh, wow,” she said, yawning. “Sorry, I was taking a nap… I thought you were a teacher or something and I’d overslept a class.” She swung her long legs over the bar. “I guess you’re my roommate?”

“Uh…” said Kari, quite confused. She hadn’t expected roommates. She had quite expected everyone at the “Center for Distressed Youth” to be kept isolated all the time. “Uh… I guess so,” she said uncertainly. Then again, said the part of her mind that always assumed to worst, she could have been assigned the wrong room. Maybe she was supposed to be locked up in a padded cell. Or maybe her roommate was the one who needed a straightjacket and padding on her walls.

The girl stretched to wake herself up. “Well… hi. I’m Meg. Is this your first time at the ‘Center for Dysfunctional Youth,’ or were you here before and get kicked out by your foster family?”

This person didn’t seem insane. And she looked nice enough. There was something about her that Kari liked, a kind of aura of trustworthiness. Relaxing slightly, she told Meg, “It’s my first time here. And I’m Kari. And…” she realized what Meg had said. “’Dysfunctional?’ But I thought it was the ‘Center for—‘”

“It is,” her roommate answered. “But everyone here is pretty dysfunctional.” She grinned.

Kari sized her up. She looked to be maybe sixteen, thin, and a good three inches taller than Kari, although muscular. Reddish-brown hair cascaded to her shoulders at the same time as it frizzed everywhere. Her eyes were dark but intelligent, with a good-natured sparkle.

“It was tough for me when I’d just gotten here,” said Meg sympathetically. “My roommate left a week after I got here, so I’ve been basically alone for the last few months. A lot of the people here are real head cases.”

“Is it really that bad?” asked Kari worriedly. “I mean, I’d heard stories about this place, I was just hoping that they weren’t true.”

The other girl shook her head sadly. “Nope, they’re true. For the most part, at least. This is the ‘special cases’ orphanage, so you’ve gotta be really careful who you’re friends with. Not everyone is as sane as me,” She grinned a little, but paused and looked at Kari, who looked uneasy. “Oh, sorry. I should probably tell you that I got sent here because my step-dad is an asshole and didn’t want to deal with me. I didn’t, like, kill someone.” Kari laughed uncomfortably. Somehow, it didn’t seem all that funny; for all she knew, there were people here who had killed somebody.

There was an awkward silence in which Meg stared calculatingly at Kari and Kari avoided her eyes, scanning the room. It wasn’t a bad look that Meg was giving her, but it still made Kari uncomfortable. Finally, Meg dropped her gaze and broke the silence, glancing at her watch. “Uh…well, I guess I’m going down for a late lunch… Do you wanna come, or are you gonna stay up here and unwind a little?”

Kari thought for a moment. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I’d probably get lost if I went down on my own.”

Meg smiled, pushing open the door to their room. “Okay, let’s go.” She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at Kari. “Welcome to the Center.”

Several flights of stairs and a hallway or two later, Kari was standing in the cafeteria, a basement room lit by the huge, power-saving lights that schools used. There was barely a speck of color in the place; the walls, floor and ceiling were gray cement and the few people still eating were wearing the gray uniform that Meg had on. One or two people that Kari recognized vaguely as being on the bus with her still wore street clothes.

Meg led her over to the counter, where a glowering woman in a shower cap and an apron snapped at them, “Ham and cheese or tuna?”

“Tuna, please,” Kari said politely, just as she always had in the cafeteria of her old school.

“Ham and cheese,” said Meg. The cafeteria woman gave them both trays and a moodily slapped a cellophane-wrapped sandwich onto each. Sliding the trays down to the end of the counter, they each took a milk—the mini-cartons favored by school cafeterias—from the cooler, and Kari grabbed a plastic spork and spooned herself some wilted-looking salad from a metal bowl on the table with sporks, straws, and little salt packets.

Meg took her tray to one of the many tables (the kind with built-in benches) and sat down. Kari followed suit, thinking how much like a school this was starting to look. It was relieving, in a way. She was in a new and scary place, with only a friend she barely knew, but she felt comfortable here, in this environment. Well, maybe not comfortable, but she knew what she was supposed to do.

Meg unwrapped her sandwich, took a bite, and grimaced. “I hate this food,” she complained. “It’s all they give us, though, so…” She took another bite. “You did okay there,” she commented, watching Kari put wilted lettuce from her salad onto her sandwich. “This is your first time here, right?”

“Yes,” said Kari wearily. “I went to a public school for most of my life, though, and this—the cafeteria, at least—is exactly the same. Right down to the kind of bad food they serve and the cafeteria worker that hates everyone.” She yawned and started eating her sandwich. “So,” she asked between bites, “what’s a normal day here like?”

“Well…” Meg thought for a moment. “Well, on a weekday, we’ve got classes, with these really tough teachers just there if we get out of hand. I mean, we don’t actually learn anything. They’re really, really stupid, and they treat us like ,” she added after considering, “most of the people here are. But anyway, we do classes, Math and English and all the basic subjects. Then, once a week, we get this place’s lame excuse for PE. At least they give us that, though. I’d go nuts if they didn’t let us run around once in a while. So, classes, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and some free time to hang around in your room or go to the tiny little library that doesn’t have any good books. I’m actually amazed how much free time they give us,” she mused, “for people so paranoid about some problem child running amok with a kitchen knife and slaughtering everyone if they’re left alone.”

Kari’s eyebrows went up. “Wow… this is some place.” She felt uneasy again. “People here are really that bad?”

Meg gave an apologetic smile. “Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little… most of the people here are okay, just a little odd. There are some people who are really nuts, but they’re usually in one of the “special cases” rooms. The teachers really suck, though, and the people who run this place are such morons. They assume that everyone here is completely crazy, and that we all have deep dark psychological problems, or something. They’ll drag you off to see one of their shrinks whenever you do something that they think is weird. And,” she added, “they barely ever talk to you. You’re not a person to them; you’re just some weirdo. And it totally pisses me off,” she grumbled.

“Well, that makes me feel a little better…” said Kari uncertainly. “I guess…”

“Hey, good.” Meg smiled and polished off her disgusting cafeteria-sandwich. “TGIF, man. You newbies get tomorrow and Sunday to get used to things. Want the tour?”

Kari shrugged, then nodded. “Sure,” she said, taking her and Meg’s trays and dumping them in a trashcan.

Meg slid out from the bench and beckoned for Kari to follow her. “Okay, first stop, our crappy library.”

Kai felt like crying. It was horrible. He was here, in this strange new place. He knew nobody. Everyone he passed, adults and other kids, treated him like a crazy person, or someone carrying a highly contagious disease, giving him a wide berth and suspicious looks. His father had always told him to keep his head held high—that was before he had gotten pumped full of lead while on the police force. His mother had left when Kai was five, along with Kai’s younger brother, who had been only three at the time. So, with his father gone, too, he had been sent here.

Not directly here, to the “Center for Distressed Youth”; he had gone to a different orphanage first. They had put up with him there for a time, but they threw him out eventually. So did his first foster family. And the orphanage after that. Because of the strange things that happed around Kai. Things moving, falling off of shelves, bursting, inexplicably smashing against walls… they were all too scared. It wasn’t my fault! thought Kai fiercely now, recalling this. None of it was my fault! But they threw me out anyway. They sent me here, and this place will get scared and throw me out too, and I’ll have nowhere to go…

There was no color here. Everything was either drably gray or surgically white. The little room Kai had been assigned—with no roommate to help him get adjusted—the uniforms that everyone wore… even something as small as this now added weight to the burden on Kai’s shoulders that made him want to collapse and break into sobs.

Men didn’t cry, though. His father had taught him that.

So he bore his burden in silence. Not that there was anyone to tell about it, anyway.

He asked one of the older kids, someone wearing the gray uniform, where he could get some lunch. That was how he had found his way to the colorless, high-ceilinged cafeteria. He walked between two rows of tables to the counter at the end of the room. Or, at least, most of the way there; halfway down the row, he went sprawling over someone’s leg.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry!” cried a voice.

“It’s okay” Kai said, rubbing a bruised knee. By the looks of it, he had tripped over the girl’s leg as she stood up. He took the offered hand and got to his feet, but jumped as he felt a tingling sensation shoot up his arm. His head snapped up, and he locked eyes again with the girl from the bus, the one that had given him that killer headache. He rubbed his temples again as the resumed throbbing. “Uh…”

The girl’s gray eyes widened. The taller girl behind her leaned forward, breaking the awkward silence. “I’m Meg, Kari’s roommate,” she said, a bit overly cheerfully. “And you are…?”

“Kai,” he muttered, feeling his cheeks flush.

“We… met… on the bus,” said the girl—Kari—whose face has also acquired a rosy tinge.

“Well…” Kai fished for something to say. He just wanted to get out of this, this situation. “Well, I, uh, have to go,” he heard himself say, as if from a distance. He turned and walked briskly out of the cafeteria, even though he hadn’t eaten yet. He heard the voice of that gray-eyed headache-giver, say, as he slipped out of the doors and into the hallway, “Meg, I’m exhausted, and I’ve got a headache. I—I think I’ll just go lie down…”

He hurried up the stairs, taking the route he remembered, until he had reached his own room, opened the door, and collapsed on the bed. Lying facedown, he thought about his encounter with Kari again. And wondered what it was about her that excited him so. He should talk to her again, he told himself. It wouldn’t do any harm to know someone here.

Here… here…

He lay there, his thin gray sheet soaking up several hot tears.