Chicken

7. Home Sweet (Chilli Chicken) Home

"And this, ladies," says the counselor. "Is home."

Anna manages not to say it, but Stacey speaks for all of them.

"Oh. My. Not-in-a-million-years. You have to be kidding, right?"

The girl in the Fowl Play T-shirt looks pretty embarrassed. She shrugs, continuing to hold the door open.

"It's got a roof," she says. "Be grateful for that. Some of the cabins round here leak more than, I don't know, a leaky thing."

Stacey steps inside, and Anna follows. This cabin is nothing like the one she used earlier. For one, two of the windows are broken and boarded up, making this place a home to a million shadows. They all seem to come to life at once, swirling from wall to wall, unhappy to be disturbed. Anna squints, making out four bunk beds and an old sofa. No TV, no games, no sign than anyone has been in here to clean for the last thirty years.

"When was the last time this place saw a cloth and some antiseptic?" asks Stacey, reading Anna's mind the way she always seems to. "A hoover, maybe?" She flinches, backing into Anna and reaching for her hand. "Wait, was that a rat? Please tell me that wasn't a rat."

Their guide shrugs again from the safety of the door.

"You do sometimes see rats," she says. "They're pretty friendly."

"Oh Christ," says Stacey, and her and O and Chloe all yell out at once, "Bagsy a top bunk!"

Then there's a free-for-all as they run to stake their claim, seven girls surfing on a wave of dust as they pile onto the beds. Stacey and O collide with one together and Anna thinks it's going to topple over, then Stacey's up and grabbing the mattress like it's a piece of driftwood in the ocean.

"Dammit!" says O, pushing another girl out the way and clambering onto the next bunk. Chloe has nabbed a top bunk as well and the three of them eyeball the rest of the girls in the room, daring them to lay siege. Anna shakes her head and walks to Stacey's bunk, happy enough to be below her. She's pretty sure it wasn't a rat, just a shadow. She's seen enough optical illusions since arriving here to know that, in the dark, nothing is really what it seems.

"So yeah, welcome," says the girl at the door. It's pretty obvious she doesn't want to come in and Anna can see why. Or smell why. The room hasn't exactly been Fabreezed. Over the same pungent odor from outside Anna can detect something sweet, but not pleasant. Sweet like gangrene, she thinks, even though she's never smelled gangrene in her life. "Take a few minutes to settle in and then come meet me outside for the tour. Yeah? cool."

The counselor walks away, thankfully leaving the door open behind her. Anna lies down on the bed, the duvet clammy beneath her. She wonders when it was last washed, and who slept here before her, and her skin starts crawling like there's an army of termites bristling up from the dirt floor.

"Pokes?" says Stacey, leaning over the bed and drowning in her blonde hair. "I don't like it here."

"I think somebody might have died in my bed," says Anna. "It feels... corpsified."

"Ew," says Stacey. "Come up here, you'll be safe."

It isn't an invitation she'd ever refuse, and Anna climbs the ladder, the whole bed swaying as she clambers onto the top bunk. She feels a flutter of nerves, and it's only partly because of the height. Stacey wraps her arms around her, pressing her face into Anna's neck, and the room cartwheels with such force that Anna has to cling onto the wooden frame.