Chapter 20

I was out of bed before my brain was awake. The girls swarmed me as I staggered and blinked. I grabbed my arm around Suzi’s shoulders; she was a perfect height to hold me vertical. The kicking of the cupboards started.

“Zoë’s in there.” I muttered. Xiomara walked me forward two steps before my brain had caught up to my waking up. The energy I had taken to bed with me should’ve kept me awake all night. I was here. I was with my girls. I let go of Suzi and I dashed.

“We weren’t sure if we should let anyone in,” Connie stepped in front of me. She looked exhausted. She hadn’t slept. “We might not’ve been the first to figure out how to leave the boxes.”

“Hey, hey in there.” I had rushed by Connie and rapped the cabinet door.

“It’s really cramped! Open the fucking door!”

“That’s my sister.” I took a deep breath and yanked the door of the far cabinet open. Five legs stuck out. Very pretty, very sweaty, very womanly legs. The blonde inside was folded in strange shapes. I grabbed the matching fairest legs and yanked Pat out onto the floor.

“You’re safe!” I blubbered. Connie had picked up Pat’s hands and helped her to her feet. I near tackled her trying to hug her. She rolled her hips, grabbed my shirt, I hit the floor.

“Shit!” Pat swore. “I’m sorry. No I’m not! You called me Patricia!”

I just reached up and pulled her down on top of me and dragged her onto my chest. She fought me until hugged she me. I whispered, “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Dean!” Renée called out.

“Stop molesting that girl and come here.” Zoë’s voice turned my head.

“You’re not Kia...” The blonde hid behind my sister. My stomach turned. I had to get to my feet myself and I was awkward at it as I swung my knees underneath me and climbed up. “My God, Zoë. You brought her here.”

“She was stuck with a gay guy,” Zoë walked Elizabeth out in front of her. “Basically, on the hook for Reggie. If I had left alone, she’d be his now.”

“She couldn’t have left alone! She passes out hard every night.” Elizabeth stared at me with moistening eyes. “She would’ve fallen without me.”

Elizabeth, Zoë, Pat, and myself, to a lesser extent, were glitterbombed with an orange dust. Elizabeth and Zoë wore pajamas, purple and silver. I could tell that there was envy in my girls, for any change of color, knowing there were other colors. I tried to look around, but it was hard to read. Xiomara hovered an arm’s length away from Zoë, worried about the orange in my sister’s dark hair. Suzi ran a finger down Pat’s arm and looked at it. Renée glared daggers at me.

“OK, welcome to our room.” I said with a big breath. “I’m so glad you’re here, Elizabeth. I owe you more than you can imagine for helping my sister.”

“Is he going to call her by her full name every time like he does you, X?”

“Don’t make it a thing or he’ll start calling you Constance.” Xiomara chomped back at the black girl. She was shedding the last bit of tension. The modicum of emotion, of fear, that kept her from grabbing my sister and hugging the guts out of her.

“My name is Connie.” The cheer captain frowned.

“I don’t understand. Why is it only you? Where are the other boys? Why are there so many girls?” Elizabeth shrunk from anyone by Zoë. She twisted and stared at everyone with big blue eyes. Connie stepped forward.

“The clipboard said we were Ark OE 9-1. Zoë said your number was 5-5. That must be the ratio.”

“Where’s Kia?” I asked Pat quietly.

“She moved on. Don’t bring it up while we have everything else to deal with.” She warned. I hugged her against my chest again. She wiped her face off on my shirt.

“Jesus, you’re getting covered in the black shit.” She worried after stepping back. She swatted with her hands.

“It’s orange, sweetie.” Marin spoke up. She rasped a little. She suggested, “Why don’t we sit Dean on his stool and you girls can get cleaned up?”

“His stool?” Elizabeth asked. Andrea waved from the locker side of the table and nudged my stool with her foot.

“He can’t watch us from here.” Andrea explained. “He respects us.”

“He ... Oh my God!” Elizabeth grabbed Zoë’s hand. “He’s not going to make us do anything!”

“Not yet, I’ll help him get over that. Now come on. You got so much orange on you you might as well have been bukkaked by Marin’s family.” Zoë pulled Elizabeth a step towards me.

“What is this stuff?” Suzi sniffed her finger. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”

“It’s on the catwalks and ladders.” Pat explained. “It puffs up when you disturb anything.”

“So we can be tracked if we leave the room.” Suzi asserted. Everyone but Zoë, Connie, and me widened their eyes.

“Are we going to get in trouble?” Hannah asked.

“Bring it.” Pat scowled. “I’d rather be in trouble than just ignored.”

“This means you could be followed to this room.” I frowned. “OK, Zoë, take Elizabeth and get showers. I’ll clean myself up with Pat after everyone else.”

“Hey! I want this shit off of me too!” She moaned.

“Then you shouldn’t have got it all over me.” I countered. “I need a shower buddy, remember.”

“We’ll pick out some clothes for you.” Connie said to Zoë. “You can wear anything of mine, Marin’s or Xiomara’s, I guess. You look about Suzi’s size, Elizabeth.”

“Not for everything.” Elizabeth shook her head.

“We can try on that stuff later. You’re bit more petite than Marin, so her band might be too large for you. Do you mind being without support?” Hannah asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I--I better get a shower.”

“Wait,” Zoë pulled Elizabeth in, pressing herself against Elizabeth’s back. I was sitting on my stool facing the beds. Pat was down next to me, but she was swivelled towards the shower. “Dean told me he sets the dress code.”

“What?” Elizabeth feared.

“That was one time. He just bullied me and Andrea into dresses when everyone else wanted to dress up.” Pat shook her head.

“I wasn’t bullied.” Andrea sat next to me on the corner. “I just didn’t pay attention to what everyone else was wearing until Dean told me to wear a dress.”

“So, in conclusion, Dean, what’s the rule today?” Zoë cracked a broad grin.

“Uh,” I considered for a second. Everyone was still in pajamas. I almost said pyjama party but there was something purposeful in getting dressed and keeping up appearances. “Let’s make it easier for Elizabeth to fit in. If she doesn’t get support, I don’t think anyone else should.”

Pat smacked my arms with like five open palm slaps. She was smirking and angry all at once.

“Sold! C’mon Lizzie, let’s get naked.” My sister boomed.

“The rest of you should get your showers too.” I looked around the room. “Pat’s going to join me.”

“I don’t have to.” She grumbled to herself. I rubbed her head and littered orange dust onto the floor.

“He’s really not looking.” Elizabeth said in wonder. I wanted to look at that but I smiled. Renée and Connie were walking by holding folded towels. I smiled for them. Renée sniffed her nose up into the air and tossed her hair as she stomped by me.

“I wish I could tell you,” Connie frowned. I don’t know what that meant. I believe she was saying she didn’t understand Renée right now. She could’ve been saying she wasn’t allowed to share. She had picked her words so she could defend a position of power.

“No,” my sister directed. “Suzi and Xiomara join us. You four go over there.”

“She’s bossier than Connie.” I tried to joke with Pat.

“Connie’s not bossy.” Pat countered. “That was only eight of them. Who’s not getting a shower?”

I wasn’t afforded the right to look back and see. Pat frowned. Ahead of us were empty and unmade beds.

“Tell me about outside the room. It’s cold? It’s green?”

“The lights are green. There’s this stuff.” She flung some dust onto the table. It stuck to her skin and clothes worse than glitter. “There’s two almost apartment buildings of rooms likes ours, on either side of a bunch of cranes. They store food and stuff up above us. There were catwalks which made it easy to get to the the cranes where the ladders were.

“It’s pretty easy to get around. Our name, Ark OE tells us where to go. Ark is across from Blk. O is how far down the hallway we are and E is how high up. There are so many rooms.”

“And Zoë said it was cold?”

“It’s like a brisk spring morning. It’d be fine if I hadn’t gone out in my nightie and pyjama pants. The floors were really cold, but they were like this.” She stomped her feet. Looked over her shoulder again. “I wish we had shoes.”

“Who is waiting for us?” I asked.

“I don’t want her flakes all over me.” Andrea said to the back of my head.

“But you’re waiting to join us in the shower?” Pat scowled. She went red when she looked at me. “How about you get a deck of cards or something?”

“Not until you clean up.” Andrea demanded. I sighed. I drummed my hands on the table. My shirt and pants-front and arms had some of the orange on them but my hands were clean after a couple of slaps on the tabletop. Zoë squealed.

“Why is Suzi getting a hug like that?” Pat asked me.

“I lost my virginity.” I half smirked.

“Congratulations!” She gleefully slapped me. “And then Suzi, too?”

“Who do you figure was first?” Andrea demanded the girl. “We were all thinking it was going to be you. Until you abandoned us.”

Pat shut up and frowned. Her eyes watered but tears didn’t yet fall. She brought her hand up but the glitter of orange stopped her from rubbing her eyes. Andrea swept around to the lockerside and picked a small washcloth to deliver to Pat.

“It’s nuts. There’s so many boxes!” She shuddered as she wiped our eyes. “Eight boxes a column, sixteen columns, and then the second side.”

“256 rooms. There’s something wrong with that.” I grumbled. There weren’t 2500 students in our school. Not by 1500. From the two rooms I knew, there was only the senior class, and maybe our teachers. Pat didn’t go to school with us, and I knew the private school was much smaller.

“Shit.” I breathed.

“Yeah.” Pat duck-faced and nodded. One of the showers stopped. Not Zoë’s.

“Is that meant for Kia?” I overheard Marin ask Hannah.

“No, one of Suzi’s.” She replied. Andrea sat down next to me. She ran a fingernail on my hand to keep my attention on her while avoiding most of the orange.

“He’s not going to see your face today.” Marin laughed. “Jesus, no titty slings...”

“No makeup,” Hannah said. “A girl’s gotta use her best features.”

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about.” Snapped Renée.

Connie knocked on the other shower.

“Stop grilling her, Zo. We need to get Pat and Dean cleaned up if we’re ever going to deal with this orange dust.”

“I had to know!” My sister shouted back over her shower. At conversational level, I could let the shower overshadow the conversations inside. My girls had learned to talk in whispers to be careful. I frowned.

“Did Kia go to Reggie’s room?” I worried, focusing on Pat to keep my head out of the circus behind me.

“No.” She shook her head. “She didn’t want to risk being overpowered by boys. She went into the box overhead. Below us are 9-1s and above us are 8-2s.”

I wondered if there were 10-0s, but I couldn’t imagine it. I tilted back and looked up. We never heard a single footstep. No bangs or anything. I sighed. Kia was right above us but there had to be pipes or something between us. Still, she could be less than 15 feet away from us. I felt pangs in my gut.

“Thank you for coming back.” I said. “Thank you for looking out for Zoë.”

“Yeah.” Pat frowned.

Connie’s showermates started flowing back to the table around us. Connie was dressed in a pink tank top and black skirt. She grinned, was it ever clear she wasn’t wearing a bra! I felt my smile tug on my cheeks and melt my face into stupidity. Renée was right with her, hiding just opposite her cheer captain until she had to take her seat across the table from me. She wore a big black sweater and a longer pleated skirt. Renée was stacked, easily the champion of our room. That was an effective sweater. She hunched forward and pouted at me. She was still angry. Why was she angry?

“This is a look I can manage!” Hannah preened in a two-sizes too small blue t-shirt. She also had on a skirt, the same as Connie’s black almost-to-the-knee wrap. Same color too. It was a thing of wonder to see. She sat next to Pat and Marin settled down between Hannah to Connie.

Marin decided on a dress. The spaghetti strapped kind with the most cleavage. She looked floaty, not filling out the front the way she normally did. She wasn’t small chested, but for her height she appeared the smallest. She looked gorgeous and bit her lip when I looked up to her eyes.

“I can’t believe I asked them not to wear bras.” I whispered to myself. There was no to myself in the box. There was no to myself when the girls made sure I was paying attention to what they were wearing.

“Well at least this time you’ll be joining us.” Connie smirked.

“It was only no bra!” Hannah had a giggling ah-ha moment. I cocked my lips.

“God, you girls are the worst.” Pat laughed along. “I--”

Zoë’s shower had shut off with Zoë stomping out of her door. The water stopped after a few more wet footfalls on tile. I noticed but I wasn’t paying attention. She flicked her wet fingers all over the back of my neck. I twitched, spun on the stool, eager to tease my sister back.

Suzi and Elizabeth had towels covering everything. Xiomara was drying her hair. Her body still shone with her wetness. She inched behind Suzi, but was smiling. Zoë was stark naked.

My sister is a little shorter than me, a little darker than me, a lot hotter than me. She had always had guys falling over her and I had struggled to discover any interested girls ever. I had never seen her like this before. Not just naked, but sexualized. Her hair, still thick and saturated with water, clung around her face. Her blue eyes were just daring me to act. Water beaded on her skin. Her lips curled up in a wicked grin. She had tits, really nice tits, rounder and bigger than I expected. Her tummy was visibly muscled. She was hairless right to her toes. Her feet were shoulder width apart.