"You're in D-tent" the guy behind the desk- Mr. Sir he said his name was- told me, spitting a seed into a bucket. I grimaced. "You're counsellor's Mr. Pendanski. He'll be here in a minute".
"Does he know I'm a girl?"
"Nope, and you're gonna keep it that way. If anyone finds out, then you're gone like that" he leered, clicking his fingers.
"This ain't gonna be easy girlie" he said, lowering his aviators to glare at me, "Don't think we're gonna go easy on ya, just 'casue you're a girl. This ain't no girl scouts camp". I rolled my eyes.
"I get it already" I muttered, not really caring if he heard, although he didn't respond if he did hear. He had been going on about the girl thing for the last twenty minutes. He seemed so sexist, I was tempted to tell him that women could actually vote now, but I didn't want to kill the old guy. One murder was about my limit. He handed me a cap and nodded towards my head.
"You want me to wear this?" I spat, staring at the ugly orange thing he had handed me.
"Unless you want me to shave all your hair off, you better" he said, adjusting his cowboy hat and I glared at him.
"Alright, alright, I'm putting it on" I told him, pulling my dark brown hair up under the hat and ramming it firmly onto my head. It went nicely with the ugly orange jumpsuit that I was also being forced to wear. I surveyed myself in the mirror and gave an approving grunt. I looked like a lanky traffic cone, but at least I didn't look like a girl. With no hair, and no figure, even I wouldn't have known I was a girl. If the jumpsuit did one thing for me, it made me look even skinnier, which was probably not a good thing. I had always been thin, and with all the stress of the fight and the trial lately, I had grown even thinner. The baggy jumpsuit only enhanced this, especially where my darkly tanned forearms appeared from out of the rolled up sleeves. Oh well, I had never cared what guys thought of me before, why should I start caring now that I was meant to be one? I looked away from the strange looking form in the mirror as I heard the door to the office open.
Another man walked in, wearing bad clothes, and a huge wad of sun block on his nose. I frowned at him.
"What the hell is on your face?" I asked him, too shocked to try and deepen my voice. Much to my surprise, he laughed.
"You must be Hayden. I'm Mr. Pendanski, your counsellor, here to help you become a functioning member of society. If you follow me, I'll take you to your new home" he grinned and waved his hand in a friendly way. I glared back, unable to take my eyes off his nose.
"Yeah, righto" I muttered, and followed him out the open door, into the stifling heat outside of the office. Thank god for air-conditioning.
There were six tents all with their own letter. 'F' Mr. Pendanski told me, was for counsellors only, and completely off limits to me and all the other boys. 'D' was where I would be spending the next three years. There were four boys in the tent when Pendanski threw open the flap and revealed a large number of beds and not a whole lot of anything else.
"Rex, Theodore, Hose, Zero meet your new tent mate Hayden" Pendanski told them, a huge smile plastered over his face.
"Mom, let me make the introductions" the guy Rex said, looking me up and down with slight interest, "I'm X-ray, that's Armpit, Magnet and Zero". I gave a nod of acknowledgment, a slight frown on my face which was thankfully mostly covered by my cap.
Maybe it was because I was used to the super tough gang crims, who all had tattoos by the time they were twelve and smoke ten packs a day but none of these guys really looked like what I had been expecting. Maybe X-ray was believable, but that little one on the bed, Zero, I couldn't believe that.
"Yes, the boys all have little nicknames for themselves, but I prefer to call them by the names that-"
"Society will recognise. We know Mom" grinned one of the two boys who had just come over from wherever all the boys had been before they came here. Whatever they were doing, both the boys were covered in dirt. The one who spoke was the a bit taller than me with brown hair and a doo rag. I pulled my cap down a little lower on my head, to try and cover my smirk. Where did this kid think he was, Compton? He looked at me and the grin disappeared.
"Who's this?" he asked, looking at X-Ray.
"His name's Hayden" Pendanski answered before X-Ray got the chance. That 'his' sounded so strange. I reckoned it was going to take awhile to get used to it.
"This is Squid. And Zigzag" X-Ray said, pointing to the talking boy and then to another who I hadn't looked at until then. I had to say, if I was the type of girl to catch my breath, I would have done it when I saw that guy. He was extremely tall and he had some of the best hair I had ever seen. It was like this giant ball of fuzz on top of his head. I stared at it for a few seconds, raising my cap up so I could see it better. I was dead jealous. I wanted interesting hair, or at least interesting something. All round I was pretty boring.
"Hey" I said, making my voice as low as I could. As far as I could tell, I just sounded mental, but none of the guys seemed to notice.
"Sup" said the Squid guy, and I resisted the urge to pull a face. He was officially the biggest loser I had ever met.
"Hey.." said Zigzag slowly, looking me up and down with a frown. Oh shit, he knew, I knew he knew. It was the hair. I should have just let Mr. Sir cut it off. This was a freakin' disaster. Now I would have to go home and I had only just gotten here. I coughed awkwardly, waiting for him to say something. But he didn't. Instead he looked at Pendanski, who gave an approving nod.
"Well, try to make Hayden feel at home boys" then he left the tent. As soon as he was gone Zigzag glared at me.
"You're working for them aren't you?" he said, looking around as though expecting to see something. I choked on air I was so shocked and then I gave a chuckle. I was actually worried that he knew? I was getting paranoid.
"Man, I didn't know they had drugs in this place. Where do you get them?" I snorted, and Magnet laughed.
"Ziggy's always like that" Squid said sitting down on one of the beds, "he has acute paranoia". He sounded out the word real slow, like he was reading it off a sheet or something. I groaned and sat down on the only bed that was still empty. This ought to be interesting.
...
Haha, acute paranoia. No idea why that makes me laugh, but it does.
So, I'm probably, like, not gonna update this for a while, cause other than someone finding out that she's a chick, which was obviously gonna happen, I don't really know where to go with this...
whereas I have like, a tonne of ideas for PI right now so I'm just gonna go with htme and leave this for a while.
Thanks for reading and thanks to my reviewers!
I just looove reviews, hint hint...
LOL
Oh and Stanley won't be in this, sorry people who love him, but hayden's kind of there instead of him you know.
peace owt hehe
xx
Bee
