"Candy?"
I lifted my eyes up, but only my eyes. I was ready for this day to be done, or, well at least it [i]felt[/i] like it was day time; for all I knew it had already switched over to night. Was I in trouble? Had I moved out of turn? Not possible: I'd been sure to keep my eyes on my work, but the empty lines on the paper showed what good that had done.
Concentration wasn't my strongest suit and the more time I spent here the worse it became. But I knew that if I hesitated longer than I already had then I'd be in for real trouble. Poor Castiel had lost meals for a week before, and I wasn't keen on feeling the stabbing pains of hunger today.
"Yes ma'am?"
My voice was cracked from dehydration. With my grades going down over the past month, I'd lost rights to the hall pass. It was just as well that they banned me from it since they always seemed to come up with any excuse to keep us from escaping this cell of a "class room".
"Would you like to come to the front of the class and present your findings?"
[i]Of course not.[/i] I couldn't just say that, but I wanted to. How much longer would we be stuck in this study? Since turning twelve and beginning puberty all children were forced into the facility, but I was sick of it. Only on your eighteenth birthday would you be freed back into the world, but I have no idea what they were still trying to learn from us. Begrudgingly, I answered,
"Yes…ma'am."
Pushing up from my desk, I moved with careful steps towards the front of the classroom. My papers were left at my seat since they wouldn't prove to be much help anyways with their bareness. As I walked I made sure to keep my eyes away from anyone just as I'm sure they were doing with me.
The room felt colder today; they must have turned off the heat. Was it winter outside? There were no windows allowed so it was nearly impossible to tell. Some kids believed that we might very well be underground…the idea made my stomach turn: as if I could feel any more trapped than I already was.
Whenever we [i]were[/i] allowed outside it was for a very brief amount of time, hardly enough to tell what season it was, much less the month. The screen that acted as a black board for us had our assignments on it and I turned my back on it so that I could face the class. Most of them kept their heads down, but Castiel's grey eyes lifted up. They seemed duller today than usual; no doubt the hunger was getting to him.
He wanted out of this place just as much as I did, probably more since he always showed the most defiance so readily.
"Well, Miss Sen?"
My eyes moved over to her when she addressed me in that ironic way that she did for all of us: with a mockery of respect, as if anyone here cared about us at all. We were tools and nothing more. Rather than make a snide comment, I looked forward again,
"The affects of petite females on male peers."
I breathed out slowly and began my explanation on what I'd found out. Our purpose here, after all, was to study relationships and go through simulations. I was due for another one soon, and I'd grown so distracted that I pretty much had resorted to making things up as I went when brought back to the "class room", even now. What were they expecting from us that would be different from the thousands that had come before us?