“Um. Haha, my heart’s beating so fast, because I’m angry, and I’m angry because you missed out, you know. Because even now? Even if I might get tortured, I’ll be happier than you are Chris. You missed out and you deserve to. There were glimmers of good in you like when you helped Rain, but you didn’t stick to that and you didn’t try. You were super cool when you stopped trying to be uncool, and I kind of loved you and now I kind of don’t. You’re being shitty by pushing us away and making something hard even harder and suckier because you’re scared and resentful and whatever. I know whatever happens next for you is going to be ten times as hard and sucky as what I have to deal with. You’re going to be just as alone and even more frustrated because you’re never going to be able to take a drug that changes you deep down inside and makes you any less of a pathetic miserable fucknugget.”

This from the girl who always found something nice to say about anyone.

He didn’t immediately respond.

When he did, it was a simple, “Say what you really think.”

“Okay,” she said. “There’s nothing sadder than someone who’s unwilling to change for the better.”

I looked across the room at Amy. I saw her look, saw her expression change, as she looked away. More different real emotions that weren’t her being wounded or blindly hopeful crossed her face in a few seconds than I’d seen since she arrived in the conference building.

“There’s something sadder,” Amy said. “When the rest of the world won’t let you change.”

There we go, I thought to myself. One shot and you missed it.

It was Amy who stormed out, giving Chris the excuse to follow.

They went to the lobby, and the rest of us, once the guards had picked through Ashley and Kenzie’s stuff, with Kenzie’s small pack having a change of clothes they provided, were let through another set of doors and a series of gates. Each of us had a wristband with a series of symbols.

Natalie saw us off. When the door shut, it separated us from her.

The prison was a series of hallways, with few rooms beyond an atrium area with a glass ceiling, where it looked like food was provided at other times of the day. The hallways were lined with thin mattresses, and it seemed to be first come, first serve.