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Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

Eventually activity ends and our free time starts, we can do whatever we like. I have a quick shower and lay on my bed in my Soffies and bra, thinking. Eventually Devin comes to my bed.

“Hey, want to play Apples to Apples? We just got it and Pan’s never even heard of it, come on,” she slaps my foot and walks away. “We’ll be in the café," she yells behind her.

I groan and pull myself up ,out of the bed, throw on a big comfy sweater and walk down to the café. All the Mind girls are there at our table waiting with cards in hand.

I sit at the end of the bench and gather myself up some cards. Alexia announces that she is the first judge and pulls one card out of the red card deck.

“Ugly,” she announces, reading it off. I look down at my cards: Titanic, Austria, Steve Martin, saxophone, camera, and orangutan. I slide the last card out of the group and onto the table upside down, knowing she hates monkeys. Devin slaps her card down triumphantly, grinning like a fool.

“I so got this one,” she says. Alexia says nothing, but flips all the cards over. “Charlie Sheen, orangutan, MC Hammer, Pancakes - wait, what? Pancakes?”

“Sorry, I didn’t have anything else!” squeals Pan from the other side of the table.

“We’re not supposed to know whose card is whose!” exclaims Figgie. We all laugh and shush Pan’s attempts to rectify her mistake.

“Continue!” I tell Alexia, laughing.

She clears her throat. “Charlie Sheen, orangutan, MC Hammer, pancakes, pirates, and-” she laughs out loud “-Martha Stewart! I pick Martha Stewart!”

“Yes!” Laughs Devin, “I told you all that I would win!” We put the used cards in a discard pile and get one new card each. Mine is The Berlin Wall.

I tuck it in my hand and pull it out immediately when Willa, the next judge, says “Historical." Everyone slams down a card, none of us looking too sure and laugh when the first one read out is Woodstock.

Then musical theatre, AM/PM radio, television, The Berlin Wall, Harry Potter, and Heels. Mine wins of course.

We play so many rounds I can’t keep track. Right up until the boys, never late, come in for lunch. I look at my watch, it’s a small dinky five dollar one I’d pawned off some guy in a little costal Californian town.

It had rattlesnakes around the time piece, which said it was noon, and the wrist strap is cloth.

We pack the game away in the game closet and get our lunches. I sit down with meatloaf and a salad covered in Caesar dressing. I pick out the lettuce with my fork and notice Brian waving me over to an empty table. I shake my head no. “Come on!” he thinks to me, “Just sit over here!”

I smile and get up from the cerulean blue bench, ignoring the stare from Alexia and the smirk from Devin. “Can we talk out loud?” I ask quietly when I sit down across from him. His thin eyebrows crinkle in confusion.

“Why?” He asks in my head.

I look into his gray eyes and think, “Because people think we’re together.” He bits his lip and scratches his head, messing up his brown hair.

“Ok,” He says out loud, his voice very quiet.

“Thanks,” I tell him, going back to eating the salad. I really like Brian, but I would never date him, he’s like that gay friend that every girl has, someone you really love, but a relationship is out of the question. The idea even makes me laugh sometimes.