Part 2

“Alright,” announced Sophie. “Alright, quiet please. It’s time to begin.” She looked around the table. “Is everyone here?”

A girl raised her thin hand. Black hair curtained her large dark eyes.

“Yes, Abigail?”

“The little ones are in the playroom and Cheyne is under the table.”

Sophie pressed her lips into a line and nodded. She held up one index finger to the group before leaning down in her seat to poke her head under the table. Cheyne rocked back and forth with her knees pulled up to her chin. Her vacant eyes stared, her lips moved to shape words Sophie couldn’t hear. The girl’s deep blue hair drifted raggedly across her forehead.

“Cheyne?” said Sophie. “Cheyne… do you want to come up and talk with us for a little while?”

Cheyne didn’t acknowledge the older girl, but her whisper became more distinct. Sophie strained to hear what she could.

“He always comes,” Cheyne was saying. “He always comes. He always comes and we always eat it even though we’re not hungry and it always tastes the same… and it chokes. … it chokes….” Her voice wandered.

“What tastes the same?” Sophie asked.

Cheyne didn’t look at her. “All the blackbirds fall into puddles and he puts them into a pie and he makes us eat it… but it chokes and we’re not hungry….” Her hands clenched her hair in two fists. The rocking became more pronounced.

“Cheyne,” said Sophie again. Then she bumped her head on the table as Cheyne turned in a sudden motion, shouting.

“Take it away!” Her eyes held that intensity that meant she was seeing something no one else could. “Take it away!” she shouted again. “We’re not hungry!”

Then her face glazed over and she rocked, her chin on her knees, her eyes drooping.

Sophie sat up in her chair. The rest of the gathering was silent and watchful.

“O-o-okay,” Sophie rubbed her head. “Cheyne is… out for the evening. We’ll proceed without her.”

One of them grumbled, “It’s beyond my comprehension why we attempt to include her at all.”

“She’s one of us," Sophie told her. "How would you feel Lila, if we left you out?”

“Well,” sarcasm colored the reply as the girl adjusted black rimmed glasses over honey-colored eyes. “I’m not quite sure exclusion would bother me all that much, if I were insane.”

Abigail looked from Lila to Sophie and back again with wide eyes. Sophie sighed. A small girl sitting to Abigail’s right, who had been making deliberate marks in a notebook since the meeting began, now gestured to Abigail. Abigail raised her hand.

“Yes, Abigail?”

“Echo wants to know if we’re going to be crazy like Cheyne when we grow up, or if we’re going to be like you and Isabel.”

Sophie looked at Isabel, who lifted one hand from where they were folded in a gesture that said, Your turn.

Sophie thought for a moment. How best to address this sensitive subject among the younger girls? She clasped her hands on the table before her and looked at Abigail and Echo.

“What you have to understand,” she chose her words carefully, “Is that Cheyne acts this way because bad things have happened to her. She doesn’t understand them, and she’s doing the best she can to make sense out of everything. I don’t think she’ll be like this forever. She’ll get better. ” She paused. “What I’m trying to say is, Cheyne wasn’t made this way from the beginning, and neither were any of you.”

Echo shook her head at her notebook.

“No,” said Abigail. “That doesn’t make any sense. Cheyne has always been like this, from the beginning, from when she first came here. I know. I remember. You might be older, but you’re new. You don’t remember.”

She waited for Sophie to respond, but Sophie was silent.

Abigail went on. “You said bad things happened to Cheyne and she’s trying to figure things out. Me and Echo figure that something hurts inside her head, remembering the bad things, so that’s why she acts that way. But bad things have happened to all of us, so why wouldn’t we end up like her?”

Sophie looked helplessly at Isabel, who looked back with a steady raise of her eyebrows. She offered no advice.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Abigail,” Sophie said at last. “Can you give me some time to think about it?”

Abigail shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Echo was just wondering. If it happens it happens.”

Lila examined her fingernails. “It won’t happen to me.”

Sophie ignored this. “Is there anything else anyone wants to talk about?”

“Birds!” came Cheyne’s voice from under the table.

The younger girls glanced around the table at one another, wondering if Cheyne had just named the new topic of discussion. Sophie and Isabel exchanged a look.

“I have something,” said Lila. “Speaking of going crazy…”

Sophie raised one eyebrow in her direction.

“I’m going crazy in here,” the twelve year old indicated the ceiling with annoyance. “There haven’t been any new books in weeks. I can’t just pass the time contemplating the turning of the universe like the rest of you seem to be able to. I need something to do.”

Sophie tapped her fingers on the table top. “Have you put the books we have in order?”

“That’s it?” Lila scathed. “That’s your suggestion? I reorganize the books three times a week, Sophie. Right now they’re ordered by genre, with subsets by author alphabetically. Anything else?” She rolled her eyes.

Sophie refused to be baited. “Have you tried the movie room? I haven’t been in there for a while. Maybe there’s something good.”

Lila stared at her. “No, Sophie. It’s not good enough. I want new books. I want new things to see, new faces to feel, new minds to explore. I want to get out.”

Sophie shook her head. “Well, you can’t.” She continued in a gentler tone when Lila groaned and removed her glasses. The girl rubbed her eyes and leaned forward to knock her head on the tabletop. “I’m sorry, Lila, but you can’t. None of us can. You know what it’s like when we get out. Bad things happen.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Lila. “I don’t care what bad things happen. They don’t happen to me. And I don’t care how she feels about it. This is what's driving me crazy!”

“Well, I care,” countered Sophie. “I’m working too hard to let you ruin everything just for sake of a few books.”

Lila pushed her chair back and picked up her glasses. Glaring at Sophie, she stood up. “I’d like to see you try to stop me,” she said. She swept away from the table, down the shadowed hall to the back rooms.

Everyone sat without moving. Echo broke the silence by tearing a page out of her book and throwing it in a crumple over her shoulder.

“Echo,” entreated Sophie. “Please don’t leave your papers lying all over the room.”

Echo didn’t look away from Sophie’s face as she deliberately tore another page from the book, letting it slip from her fingers to the floor.

“Echo!” said Sophie.

“Leave her alone,” Isabel spoke for the first time. “Lila will come through and pick them all up anyway.”

“Agh!” exclaimed Sophie. She pushed away from the table and looked down at Isabel. “Can I talk to you in private, please?”

With no comment, Isabel stood and followed Sophie down the same passage Lila had taken. Echo was drawing again, long perfect rows of tiny circles. She didn’t look up at the sound of Abigail’s voice.

“Are we done?” said Abigail to the empty table.

“We’re all gonna die….” came Cheyne’s voice from the shadows underneath.