Stay...Calm

Chapter 26

It took a lot of effort to calm down Anais. She was in a locked bathroom for hours, with only Ms.Kion, Mrs.Daniels, and the occasional resident who she was most familiar with. By dinner time, it was decided she was tame enough to join everyone for a meal. And from the looks of it, the residents had a lot to...discuss.

Everyone was at the dinner table, using every chair they could find. Even those like Edd and Lee, who didn't usually like to eat as a big group, found chairs squeezed them into the few remaining empty spaces. The serving was just one thin slice of fish and a handful of baby carrots per person. Anais was seated at the right hand of Ms.Kion, with Thelma right next to her friend just in case of another outburst. The large group ate in silence for about five minutes before someone was finally brave enough to address one of the many elephants in the room.

"Why have we been eating squat lately?" Pauline asked, quietly; though quietly was too loud for a room that tense.

"Because" Ms.Kion bitterly responded. "This is all we have left."

"Where'd you even get this?" Lee wondered aloud.

"God, did you kill the fish?" Horace called out.

"Did you kill Starco the shark?" Buckely cried out, causing even Victorine to glance up, dismayed.

"Let's just say: desperate times call for desperate measures," Ms.Kion vaguely answered.

"You killed the shark, didn't you?" Horace stated. "And we cooked and ate its corpse."

"Hush up and eat!"

And so they did...for about thirty seconds.

"Y'know," Lee grumbled. "We wouldn't even be eating our pets if we didn't take in so many people."

"We were showing hospitality, young lady," Mrs.Daniels justified in her firmest tone. "Let me remind you that you were 'taken in' as well."

"At least you had a remote clue who I was," Lee snapped back, getting defensive. "You just let in these two little brats, and whoever the hell Edd is, and the gambling sap and her friend."

"Hey!" Yolanda yelled. "Jacey knew someone here."

"Then why'd didn't he bring her here when we first came, huh?"

"Sorry that my friend had a family to be with."

"Like you had a family to abandon."

"Like you did either! Other than those four weirdos! No offense, Victorine."

She mouthed the words, None Taken. It took Lee a little bit to shoot back a combat, but she found one.

"Well, I was able t' four people who needed it most," Lee snapped back.

"Like that's even a competition. I did what I could. And I'm much better at keeping my head. Hell, I'm sure I could do anything better than you."

"No, you can't."

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't!"

"Yes, I can!"

"Before this escalates," Asha chimed in, "we should think about if we really need to argue-"

"Oh, shut up!' Horace groaned, standing up. "Why do you always have to act like the peacekeeper? Like that's even gonna help. I mean, you've seen it. You've seen all of it! All the battles and the death and the sadness. It's been going on since we were born! And it's only getting worse. Remeber last year when there were twenty school shootings in a month? And when people got so afraid of other cultures we built walls around them? And when there were so many attacks in big cities that people were too scared to go outside for a week?!"