The Trouble Toddler

Chapter 5: no filter

The whole room was filled with screaming questions from all the kids who were in the room. I just sat back, shocked. How the fuck were they going to shrink us? Oh no! I was so glad I was so close to the age of eighteen and now I must start all over. It is just like one of those stupid video games. You reach almost the end of the game, being in one of the last levels to be killed.

Nancy was shouting questions as well, but not many answers were given. When everything quieted down, I saw that a small and frail girl was being picked up by some dude. Probably her 'guardian'. Soon more and more teenagers were being picked up, still asking question but now at their guardians.

Nancy and I were one of the few ones left. "So, what do you think?" I asked. "Well, they could have told us this before we agreed to this, but now I think about it I will now really get a childhood I always wanted." Nancy mused. I agreed with her. She was the one person for who I wished she got a chance for a better childhood.

"And you?" She asked me back. "Well, I would have run away if I knew it was either this or stay with my parents. Only I do not think I can get out of this one, so yeah. Let us be babies again!" I faked cheered. Nany chuckled at my response.

Right then two guardians walked in, one of them being Dennis. The other, I assumed, was the guardian of Nancy. She was an old lady, which looked friendly and not the creepy kind.

"Lexi are you ready to go?" Dennis asked. "Yeah, yeah whatever."

The four of us walked through the building and we finally arrived at our destination. We needed to wear this hospital kind of bracelets with our name on it. "So, we will bring you to your dorm room. There you will find you uniforms, and you have to fold your old clothes so we can take them." Dennis said. But Nancy and I were busy with talking. Then the lady repeated it again. We had heard it, but we did not want to respond. I know it was rude, but it is also rude to not tell us an important piece of information. They showed us the room and repeated it again about our clothes, damn if they keep up with this, they are just as annoying as my parents.

"Yes, yes we know! Change into the uniforms and fold our old clothes, we got it!" I said angry. "Gosh, they are so annoying, telling us what to do!" I told Nancy. "I think they are only trying to look after us, you know, to be a good guardian and all." She shrugged her shoulders while speaking. Why was Nancy always the nice one of the two of us? Why couldn't I just stop my snarky comments? Well, I hope I will not do that when I grow up again. Looking into the room the same small and frail girl from earlier sat on a bed.

"Looks like we are not the first to arrive in our room." Noticing our presence, she wiped her tears away. Damn leave you crying at home, I thought. "Talking about a depressed atmosphere. Jeez I thought we would leave that behind us when entering this building." I walked up to one of the beds, which had a zebra stuffie on it. I threw it on the ground next to my bedside table.

Then of course Nancy was once again the goody-goody one of us.

"Don't mind her, she is just adjusting to all of this in a different way then we are," Nancy told her. Why was she siding with her? "Hey!" I shouted. "What? It is true. You express a difficult situation with anger, she with sadness." well thanks bestie! My irritation growing towards the situation. "Well anger is better than pitying yourself," I sassed back. I knew I went too far with that comment. I could not stop myself, like I said I am not the goody-goody person. This mouth had no filter.

"Lexi please, we are all in this together let's just try and get along with each other oke?" Nancy scolded me. Damn, I really hated it when her mother mode went on, which she got after babysitting all of her siblings.

"I'm sorry for that, I'm Nancy and as you already heard that hot headed head is Lexi. What's your name?" She asked the other girl sweetly. "A-Alice." A stutter, how cute. And hot-headed head? She could do better than that. "Well Alice, it's nice to meet you," Nancy said with a smile on her face. "Likewise," Alice whispered. A scoff escaped me from lips, now I am in a room with two sweet people. One who likes to insult me and one who is terrified of me.

"Do you know each other? Like are you friends?" Alice asked hesitantly. "Unfortunately, yes," Nancy answered.

"Hey! Well nice to know you too, bitch!" I said half hurt and half joking. Like I said, she likes to insult me, especially when I cannot behave myself. I will have to say her insults do not help me to get less sassy.

Alice had a confused expression on her face, probably because of our weird friendship.

"We have a love-hate friendship." Nancy explained.

I knew Alice was afraid of me, so I tried to warm her up to me, but maybe I got off too strong. When I was done with changing into that stupid and ugly uniforms, I let myself fall onto the bed. "Why are you here, elephant girl?" I asked her. She had put her stuffie away and remained silent. Didn't she want to speak? "Are you a mute or something?"

Like I said no filter. Not my greatest feature, I admit.

"Lexi please, leave the poor girl alone," Nancy said quite stern.

"What? I'm only trying to make conversation; you know getting along and all that shit you were just babbling about." I sassed now at Nancy. "Well yes, but I don't think Alice understands your way of expressing things, so play nice." She scolded me, but stayed nice, nevertheless. Damn she was good.

"Yes mom," I whined.

"Well?" I pressed, "Why are you here?"

The small girl shook her head and whispered, "I don't want to talk about it."

I then explained why we were here, so maybe she would have to courage to say it after hearing our story. But she was still a stubborn girl, who I think does not like to speak to other people. After me picking on the girl we were taken to the cafeteria where we were welcomed by the head of the Rehabilitation of Children Programme. She babbled about hoping for us to have better futures and shit, but I did not care as I was to busy to look at where the food was.

Then we finally got our food. Nancy and I were talking about all kinds of stuff as we normally did when we would meet up at our spot. She talked about how one of her little brothers got a Lego piece so far up in his nose even the doctor at the local clinic could not get it out. They had to go to a hospital. I laughed quite hard at that. Her siblings were very funny, well her younger ones.

When we were done, I could not help but to notice how Alice almost did not touch her food. She even had to stay, like kids had to when they do not want to eat their vegetables.

Nancy and I went back to our room and chatted until the guardian of Alice told us not to stay up to late. Alice felt right asleep when she laid down in bed, so Nancy and I went to sleep as well. 

*Edited*

A/N: I will not write as much as I did about Alice during her time at the institute. Also I will skip some scenes as I have the feeling I'm coping a lot right now from the other book. So if you are curious about that I recommend to read that book first and then this one. 

I hope you don't mind that. 

Please let me know what you think and what you hope to see from Lexi, in the comments. 

Thanks for reading and stay safe!