Chapter Two.

Those Voices Aren't Real.

"Hey there," The schizo boy said, sitting down at my table in the cafeteria. I immediately stopped chewing and set down my fork. How dare he interrupt my eating?

"Hello." I said back, moving the little bit of food to the back of my mouth and swallowing it. I only chewed it 18 times. I clenched my fist that was under the table and took a deep breath. I wasn't allowed to purge it anyway.

"Can I sit here? Because everyone else scares me," He said, taking a seat before I could respond. So I nodded and took a sip of water.

"Why do they scare you?" I asked, hating the sound of my own stupid voice. Even my voice sounded fat, deep and low, unlike the high pitched and adorable sounding voice of a skinny girl...

...maybe I am crazy, I thought.

"Everyone looks like they're plotting something." He said, taking a huge forkful of fatty and disgusting food and shovelling it into his mouth like the greedy pig he no doubt was.

…you need to stop judging people based on the fact they eat, I thought, gathering up a small bite of chicken and rice and putting it into my mouth. I concentrated on chewing my food exactly twenty-six times before swallowing.

"That's because everyone is plotting something. How to get out of here," I said, pushing my mostly-finished plate of food away from me. They used to make me eat it all. Now they don't care as much. Fang had eaten with me earlier. He ate so fast, I hardly had time to process it. And then he was gone, off to probably try and sleep for a bit before the nurses forced him back into activities.

"I like it here," Iggy said. "They have lots of drugs to keep my hallucinations at bay." He told me. I shrugged. I didn't want to talk anymore.

"I'm going to go for a walk." I told him, taking my plate and standing up. I could probably run the empty halls for a bit and burn off half my dinner without getting caught, I figured. An attendant glanced up at from her clipboard. She was making sure I wasn't off to purge in the bathroom. I knew because she'd told me on the first day I'd been there.

I kind of liked the Iggy kid already, mostly because I was the only person that didn't scare him in here. Apparently emotionless is less scary than the scared, sad, or angry looks that covered most of the rest of the patients' faces. I contemplated this as I quietly ran up and down the halls, slowing to a walk when I so much as heard someone nearby. Last thing I needed was to be diagnosed as exercise bulimic and thrown back into the routine I had when I was watched 24/7. That would only create a longer span of time between now and when I got out.

Besides the fact that the Iggy kid hear voices and saw things, I wondered why he'd ended up in here. It's not like they could do much for schizophrenics besides give them meds. Maybe he'd tried to kill himself. That wasn't an uncommon reason to be here.

I looked at the clock, sighed at the time, and went to music therapy. I liked music therapy. I was a pretty decent piano player, and Fang was decent at guitar. He hadn't known how to play before coming here a month prior, but now he could play most basic songs and was making stuff up on his own. We tended to lead the group in playing. We weren't anything fabulous, just the best out of the 16 kids in here.

I wondered briefly if Fang and I would still be friends once we got out. There'd been talk that they were considering discharging the pair of us soon. We'd been making "progress". To them, we were becoming mentally stable; to us, we were just getting better at hiding our disorders.

My hands drifted over the keys of the worn down instrument, my fingers playing out the only five songs we all knew. I had to admit; this definitely calmed me down and made me feel okay for a while.

When I finally escaped this prison, I was going to get my mother to enrol me in piano lessons. Not only would it help keep me sane and out of here, but it would give me another way to keep myself from eating.

I looked over at Fang as both music and thought danced around my head and smiled slightly. I was lucky enough to receive a tiny, rare smile in return. I poured my heart into the music that night.

Authors Note:

I know this story isn't exactly very eventful.. yet.

I'm just sorta setting errything up, yo.

I don't know why I just turned into a gangster.

Anyway, reviews, please?

Criticism, plot ideas, etc.

Anything to help me improve the story.

Just no hate please.