The Voice of Reason

Chapter 7: The Historical Center

On the other side of the pink curtain was a bouncing ball of energy: Cherry, Cal's roommate. She was babbling excitedly to Cal. The first thing I noticed about her was her age. She couldn't have been more than six years old!

Cherry spotted me and gasped with excitement. She ran up to me and wrapped her small arms around my waist. "You're the new girl that Cal found! You're really pretty! How long were you asleep for?" She looked up at my face.

"Umm, I don't know," I answered honestly. "I don't remember."

Cherry let go of me and started jumping up and down on her yellow bed. Cal was changing and getting ready for the night as Cherry kept talking. "I don't sleep very much; I was one of the first people to wake up! What's your favorite color?"

"Uhh," I hesitated. Cherry stopped jumping and looked at me expectantly. I guess it was important for her to know my favorite color. I ran through all of the colors in my mind. "Purple," I decided.

"Dark or light purple?"

I thought of the vibrant shades of purple that sparkling on the walls of the west tunnel that we had come from. "Dark purple," I responded.

"Dark purple is pretty," Cherry reflected. She went back to jumping. "My favorite color is yellow. What's your sentiment?"

"We don't know yet, Cherry," Cal answered her. "She hasn't done the Allocation Ceremony."

"Oh, okay," Cherry reached up and brushed her fingertips against the ceiling as she continued jumping on her bed. I sat down and started pulling off the brown boots. "Guess what my sentiment is!" Cherry squealed at me.

"Um, are you excitement?"

"No," she giggled. "Guess again!"

"Energy?"

"No," Cherry repeated. Now I genuinely wanted to know. She was literally the only child I had seen in the entire Atrium. Wait, maybe there was a reason for that!

"Are you childhood?" Cal raised her eyebrows at me and Cherry gasped.

"Wow, you guessed right!" Cherry squealed, jumped off the bed, and hugged me again. I laughed, and stroked my fingers through her cherry-red hair as she looked up at my face. "Almost no one guesses right!"

"No idea why," I remarked. It seemed quite obvious when you think about it.

"Okay Cherry, no more pestering the new girl," Cal called out to her. "It's time for all of us to sleep."

"Awww, I hate sleeping!" moaned Cherry.

"But guess what!" Cal exclaimed with mock excitement as she smoothed out her light blue bed. "You get to sleep with me tonight!"

"Oh, yey!" chirped up Cherry. "A sleepover!"

"Oh no, that's okay!" I piped up. "You can both keep your beds! I can just sleep on the floor. I'm used to it!"

"Nah, don't be so selfless," Cal responded gently. "There's plenty of room for Cherry and I to share my bed. And I promise Cherry's bed isn't as dirty as it looks."

"How would you know if it is dirty or not?" Cherry asked Cal quizzingly. "You said that germs are invisible."

Cal grabbed Cherry and started changing her into her pajamas. "Germs are invisible," she explained to Cherry as she pulled her arm through a small, pink sleeve. But when we take clothes and bedding to the Seamstresses, they wash them and make all the germs go away."

"Ohh," Cherry considered thoughtfully. "The Seamstresses must be magical if they can make invisible things go away."

Cal laughed. "I guess so. Time for bed!" Cherry crawled up onto Cal's light blue bed. Cal turned to me as I sat on Cherry's yellow bed. "Hey, are you okay sleeping in those clothes? They're still clean."