10;

"Riley."

"Hm?" The brown-skinned girl was on the edge of giving in completely to the relaxation of the lake.

"It's gotta be getting close to lunch. I could really go for some food."

Riley groaned and rolled onto her side facing away from Ellie. "I don't think I can move."

"I'll help you up." Ellie pushed herself off the ground first and held out a hand to Riley who ignored it completely. "I hate to leave too, but we'll come back here later."

"Later is now."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is."

"Come on, give me your hand." The silence grew frustrating. "Riley."

"Alright, fine. You're no fun."

"I'm even less fun when I'm hungry."

"Less fun than no fun?"

"Yeah, that's right. I'm negative fun." Ellie tried to remain serious but a smile snuck through her forced demeanor.

Riley leaned up and grabbed the outstretched hand and let it pull her up to her feet. She followed alongside Ellie as she began the walk to the edge of the park while casually observing the movement around the lake.

They headed out of the lake area and back onto the streets of the neighborhood. They trudged along the now uphill walk, a much slower process, and made their way back up through the winding street and eventually ended up at the alley that initially introduced them to the neighborhood.

They walked back past the back doors, garbage cans, fire escapes, and random trash laying around before ending back up on the storefront street. They took the same path back to the orphanage and headed up the pathway to the large wooden door at the top of the porch stairs.

Riley pushed the door open first and held it open for Ellie. "After you, Your Highness. Your food awaits."

"Why thank you peasant." She remained straight faced as she strutted slowly through the door with her nose held to the air.

She continued on to the eating room to find that the tables were a third filled, yet no food laid out. "Crap. Better not have missed it." She spotted Sam and Tino sitting on a couple of the chairs surrounding the board game table. "Hey. Lunch hasn't been served yet has it?"

"Not yet. Soon though." Sam kept his head lowered as he studied the small lettered tiles in front of him, occupied with trying to find the highest scoring word he could.

Tino was reclined in his chair and prepared for a long wait. His patience for Sam to play a move was far gone. "You guys barely made it. Where have you been anyway?"

Ellie spoke up before Riley had a chance to respond. "We just did our normal thing. Walked up and down the storefront street checking out what's new. Not much." She spotted Riley giving her a confused look out of the corner of her eye but ignored it. "How long have you been at this?"

"I swear an hour now. Sam here won't make a move."

"I'm concentrating."

"It's Scrabble! Just throw pieces down to make a word!" Tino groaned as he let his head fall against his chair. "See what I have to deal with here?"

"Well, you should know by now how Sam plays."

"I was gonna play with you, but you left before we even got up."

"We'll do it later. But for now, I think you're stuck."

"Lunch!"

The source of Evette's voice suddenly became the new focal point of everyone in the room. She laid out a couple of trays of food with not much in either. One held reheated frozen chicken nuggets and the other the leftover mashed potatoes from the night before. Alongside these were small milk cartons usually found in elementary or middle school cafeterias.

"Finally." Tino stood up quickly, clearly hungry, or perhaps anxious to escape the game.

Sam stayed put while the other three hurried over and lined up behind half of the orphanage already waiting. Tino lost his spot directly behind the girls to a few others.

As they slowly shuffled along Riley leaned in and whispered accusingly. "What's up with keeping the lake a secret, huh?"

"I just forgot to mention it. Why?"

"You're a terrible liar."

"That obvious?"

"Very."

"Whatever. I don't know, alright? They're my friends, but I just… don't want them intruding on our little haven area. We found it. It's ours."

Riley's surprised reaction turned into a smirk. "Wow. You're kind of a bitch, Ellie. I like it."

Ellie strained to keep her voice down. "I am not. Just drop it alright?"

"Alright, alright." Riley's smirk shifted to a grin as she threw her hands out apologetically.

Ellie grabbed her plate as they finally reached the front and slid it along the countertop. Evette's assistant scooped up some of the chicken nuggets and dropped them on her plate. She scooted down a station and Evette herself slopped the potatoes onto the other half of the plate.

The food must have caused a reaction on Ellie's face due to Evette speaking up. "Sorry darlin', it's all we got. Dinner will be a bit better."

"No, it's… fine. Thanks."

She continued sliding the plate down and grabbed one of the cartons near the end with her free hand while balancing the plate in her other. She navigated her way back to the table with Riley soon after her, and Tino soon after that.

They dug in with only minor hesitation and had managed to only get a few chicken pieces down and a couple spoonsful of potatoes before they saw the old man wandering out from his office. Edgar would periodically join them for dinner but would bring his own food for lunch. So to be seen outside his office at this time was unusual.

He hobbled over to the front of the eating area and cleared his throat.

"Excuse me everyone, I have something important to say." His voice wasn't strong at his age and didn't project well. Most kids failed to notice his presence and kept talking. "Please, quiet down!"

"Hey, listen up!" Evette's voice, once again, took control of the room.

"Thank you." The elderly man nodded at her. "As many of you may know, I've been the head of this orphanage for quite some time, and I love it dearly. But also, as you may have noticed, I'm not quite as young as I used to be. The work I do here, while physically easy, is mentally taxing on an old man like me. So… while I hate to announce this, I'm afraid-" His voice got stuck for a moment before he cleared it. "I'm afraid that I'm going to be stepping down from my role as caretaker here."

There was noticeable reaction to his declaration. Most kids were looking around amongst each other and murmuring quietly.

"I can see there's some confusion. I want to reassure you all that there won't be much changing within the orphanage. A new caretaker will be taking over on my behalf to keep this place running as smoothly as possible. I love what I do here, but, for my sake, I know I must step down. I wish the best of luck to you all and I hope every last one of you finds a loving family. That has always been my goal for these many years."

His stopped for another moment to take a deep breath and stop his voice from choking up. "Today will be my last day. I know it's sudden, but matters outside the orphanage have made it necessary. Tomorrow my replacement will be coming in to introduce themselves and to take the reins." He looked around sullenly before sighing. "Thank you everybody."

He stopped his speech and, as abruptly as he appeared, gently made his way back to his office. The room grew back to normal volume level when he disappeared around the corner into his room, though the change in dynamic was obvious.

"Well shit, that was unexpected."

"No kidding. He was a nice old guy. Hate to see him go."

Riley casually continued where she left off with her food. "But he's old. I don't blame him for wanting to stop working."

Tino had finished his food while Edgar was talking and simply waited for the other two to finish. "He definitely didn't want to stop. Seemed like he made that pretty clear."

They finished up their food and sat down back at the table where Sam was still sitting and apparently not hungry.

"There you are. Check this out." He dropped a few tiles onto the board and arranged them into the small square outlines. "There, 'Bayou,' ten points. Double word square makes that twenty."

"Seriously, it took you that long to lay that down? I mean, it's a good word, sure, but that… never mind. Doesn't matter." Tino, within just a few seconds, dropped a few of his own tiles onto the board and pushed them into place. "Fort, seven points. Triple letter square brings that to fifteen. Done, your turn. See how quick that was?"

"See how I'm still ahead?" He lowered his head again and studied the tiles.

Tino threw his head back against the chair and groaned. "This is madness."

The girls found it funny but wanted to avoid getting sucked into their game.

"Yeah, so, Ellie and I are gonna leave you guys to it."

"Fine, just leave me then."

"Have fun."

"I don't even know what that is anymore."

Riley smiled at his misfortune before leading Ellie over to the couch in front of the TV and collapsing onto it. Ellie fell onto it next to her, causing the couch to give off a straining sound from the collective abuse it's endured over the many years. Ellie grabbed the remote off the table in front of her and flipped through a handful of channels before giving up.

"Screw it, there's nothing good on. Never is." She looked at the sofa table off to Riley's right side. "Grab one of those magazines. Maybe something interesting in one of them."

Riley reached over and grabbed one of the stacks. She fanned them out in her hands and held them up in front of Ellie. "Choices are: Time, Nat Geo, Motor Trend, and something called Academy."

"I don't care." She pointed at one of them in a half-assed effort. "The yellow square one."

"You mean Nat Geo?"

"Whatever." She yawned and rested against Riley's shoulder, the exhaustion from their morning was just beginning to catch up to her. "Just read some of it to me."

"Really? I'm not exactly a storyteller."

"Well you're not exactly telling me a story."

"Actually I kind of-"

"Just… read it."

Riley rolled her eyes and contorted herself around the girl now half-asleep on her shoulder. "Alright. How about 'New Faces of Hunger'?"

"What's it about?"

"Um… about how rich countries still have hungry citizens."

"Depressing. Next."

"Okay… what about 'Inside the Sahara'?"

"Sure."

Riley felt a bit awkward about reading out loud, but the feeling quickly disappeared and she soon settled into a storytelling mode. She finished reading through the article and started up some more, most having to do with foreign policy or the local animal populace, neither of which were of any interest to her. The combination of disinteresting stories and that the person responsible for her reading them was already asleep on her shoulder forced her to give in to her own weariness.

The hours proceeded as normal as they slept on the couch. As dusk rolled around Tino woke them up for dinner, which was a hodgepodge mixture of leftovers and other Evette selected items. The four of them grabbed whatever was available and ate with the majority of the house, with the rare exception of Edgar.

A while after eating, lights out was called and they prepared themselves for the night. All thirty-some kids started shuffling into the same room, as if herded, and began occupying their beds. Both Sam and Riley took their places on the bottom and top respectively on the bed near the back.

Ellie walked down several rows of beds and one toward the window to take her bunk. She fell down onto the mattress and threw the sheets over her as she listened to the shuffling and general breathing noises from around the room.

She fell asleep thinking about the day's events and about Edgar's words, and what tomorrow held due to them.

Care to guess who's taking over? It's one of my favorite characters!