I sat in a comfy chair, surrounded by books and papers on either side. In the room with me were three people. There was the "headmaster" (more like the warden), the new labor manager, and an armed guard standing at the door.

"Would you care to repeat that little comment you spat to me in the hall?" asked the labor manager.

I took a deep breath. "Can we talk about this another time?"

"NO!" He shouted. "You will tell me now, or you will be expelled. You will have to live on the streets, no mom and dad, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. You'll be screwed."

"Ok, ok," I said. "I said this - I said I didn't respect your validity in this position."

He stood up to his full height of well over six feet tall and walked toward me, until his face was inches from mine. And before I had time to react, he had slapped me, sending me to the floor. The headmaster made a feeble attempt to stop the labor manager, but one look from him sent Mr. Headmaster right back into his seat.

I stood up, grabbing my face. "That is a perfect example of what I was talking about," I said, suppressing tears. "The old labor manager would never have done something like that. He was as kind as a labor manager could be. He was fair. He was strict, but at least gave us time to eat!" I turned to the headmaster. "And then you fired him."

The headmaster didn't talk. He just let the manager talk for him. "Now listen," he said to me. "Mr. Davis left. He was not fired. He left. And I don't want you to listen to the rumors, because if you listen to those rumors, they will swallow up every ounce of truth, and all that will remain are smoke and mirrors." By the end of that exhortation, he was bellowing. He then took a deep breath for himself and said, "You may return to your quarters. Just a reminder, you're on probation."

As I walked toward my quarters (really more of a cell), I realized the stark contrast between the comfiness of the office and the sparseness of the rest of the camp. And the contrast between the people as well. I got a few nods, a few admiring looks, but mostly everybody just went about their own business, working like there was no tomorrow.

And I felt so alone. Before my parents had passed away, I had felt like a man. Now I felt like a sad little girl, loving, kind, and powerless. It felt like I truly had nowhere to go.

A girl came up to me. I recognized her as Tanya. She was a taller girl, with spiky blond hair and a big smile. She, along with me, had protested the new manager. And, like me, she had been called to talk with the headmaster. Along with her came another boy named Zed. He was a boy about my size, with smooth black hair and a positive attitude, usually. He, Tanya and I were the only of the students to have tried to stop the headmaster's decision. Tried, and failed of course.

"What happened?" I asked them.

"Oh, they basically threatened to lock us up in jail," said Zed.

"For what? Not that what they said to me was much better."

"My god, it was crazy," said Tanya. "They caught us protesting the microscopic lunch hours. That's kind of a stupid thing to lock someone in jail for, isn't?"

"Not just microscopic hours," said Zed. "Quantum lunch hours. Hell, I bet you could affect those hours by observing them. I bet those lunch hours exist in another universe that appears and disappears in a blink of an eye."

I laughed. They were good at making me laugh. In the harsh reality of the camp, a little laughter was exactly what people needed.

I looked around me. One kid with red hair and freckles dug a ditch. Another kid was washing bananas. Another kid with blue eyes and short brown hair worked to repair a pipe.

And I knew that someday, the pipe that was this labor camp would just burst.