"Wake up, everybody!" Alice sang, the high sound ringing through Hedy's ears. She groaned and tried to turn – and promptly flipped off her hammock, landing hard on her stomach, knocking the wind from herself. They'd tied them relatively low to the ground, but she still felt the impact hard on her chest. She'd also landed on a root.

"I'm embarrassed," she groaned to herself, torn between embarrassment, exhaustion, and hunger as giggles erupted around her. After someone had been kind enough to carry her to bed, she'd still made an ass of herself.

"You're a buggin' mess." Newt's voice above her, superior and fighting laughter, made her blink her eyes open, scowling at the rising sun. Newt and Nick stood above her, Newt grinning and Nick carrying a slight smile that softened his features.

"Five more minutes or I'll die." Of embarrassment. She tried to ignore the chattering voices, curling into the soft earth. A high pitch giggle sounded next to her. She turned slightly to see Alice flipping her hammock back into its proper position.

"C'mon now, breakfast and a full day's work ahead now." Alice said cheerfully, a complete turnabout from the attitude she'd had the night before. Whatever she'd done to conquer her terror, Hedy wanted to try it. If it had been sleep, Hedy wanted to try it right this instant.

"Yeah, we got big plans, gorgeous!" Saph called from a few feet away, digging into one of the unloaded boxes.

It was an almost cheerful morning for everyone, but Hedy sat and brooded over the breakfast of under cooked eggs. She disliked the texture and the taste and she was irritated by the rising sun in her face and the excited, almost panicked chatter around her. Either this situation still sucked, or she just wasn't a morning person. Or both.

"Alrighty." Turning to listen at the chipper voice, Hedy swallowed a bite unwillingly and drank from the water Saph had brought up from the creek and boiled. The small, alert, and prepared young girl clapped her hands, same as Newt had done yesterday, though the gesture seemed somehow commanding on her in a manner he hadn't conveyed. Everyone immediately quieted to listen. Inane chatter, really. It was hard to remain in shock when the situation before them seemed so permanent. They didn't have time for shock, only for movement. After they got themselves together, that's when they could weep and figure everything out. "We need to set up a fence for those pigs, and a section for the goats, too. We need a spot that's near the center, but not too near our beds. Also, we should name them."

"There's the creek down by those trees, maybe there." Minho supplied, wolfing down the plate, scraping it with his fork.

"Better to plant there." Newt said, his mouth full, a little bit slipping out and falling back onto his plate. Morosely, Hedy watched her plate's contents slowly dwindle. Rubbery, dry, and without seasoning. Anyway, the texture of eggs in general seemed rather chewy and unpleasant to her anyway. She wondered what she liked to eat.

Nick glared at them all, unwilling to repeat his words from the night watched him. His eyes were dark and angry, but mostly they showed just how downright scared he was. With the heaviness of sleep still hanging over her head, she understood him better than yesterday – they all had the common ground of fear, though Alice and Saph and Minho and Newt were able to hide it.

But they needed to keep busy.

Better to be busy than sit around, starving and asking unanswerable questions. Better to prepare. Who knew how long this warm weather would last? Hedy distinctly remembered snow covered trees. It was an image that flashed before her mind during the night. Snowmen. But nobody she'd made them with, nobody she'd walked with along icy roads, no snowball fights shared between friends or parents to make hot chocolate with. For the second time, she felt tears sting her eyes. She stood, suddenly, leaving her food. There was only a few bites left anyway, and she was disinterested in meals right now. Maybe when they figured out the stores, there'd be better food.

"Are you gonna eat that?" Minho, who had suddenly appeared at her side, asked. When she shook her head, he took the plate that she proffered, but he didn't eat it like she'd expected him to. She didn't know why she expected that – language, she supposed, still held the same meaning and context. They hadn't lost their communication centers, despite whatever else had been tampered with. Was his meaning implicit in his words, or was she just making an assumption? Had she been asked that question before? He looked at her, still holding the plate in front of her: "You should try to."

She blinked, surprised at the advice. Despite his attitude, he seemed even-tempered enough. Nick, who had been silent all morning, agreed. "You're gonna need strength for whatever is happening regardless."

"Is it too early to throw a hissy fit?" She asked, a little wryly. "Someone start talking. Distract me."

"Distract all of us." Newt answered, smiling at her softly, his front teeth a little crooked. It was a nice smile, full of friendship. Already, she liked this tall boy, friendly and level.

"So, buildin' a pasture." Saph continued when nobody else spoke. The silence was awkward, but Saph plowed through easily, not feeling the strange burn of the quiet. "We need wood. No, not your wood, Minho, so stop scratchin' at your junk in polite company." Alice giggled at that, but Saph wasn't waiting for laughter, continuing blithely a she gathered the dirty dishes."Maybe 'bout a food taller than the pigs? However tall they are. 'N keep 'em all around the same height. How big should we make it for just two?" It was her thinking aloud, not asking a question. "We can always expand it later, too. So get about... twenty. Then find the longest sticks you can, 'bout as thick as your hand, 'n get as many of those as possible. Somebody start going through all of those boxes, see what we have and how we can organize that. You big, beefy men," she pointed at Nick, who blushed and scowled, though his face wasn't as hard as usual; Minho, who smirked; and Newt, who hid a grin at the title - Saph was the smallest of the group, not even five feet tall and on the underweight side. Her elbows looked like jackknives. "Go get what I need. Gorgeous and Giggles, we're unpacking."

"I don't appreciate the title." Alice said, pouting, understanding immediately which one was her. Hedy smiled a little at that – she wasn't even sure what color her hair was, cut short as it was, but it was a reassuring nickname, even in a place where frivolous things like that seemed irrelevant. She looked down at her arm now, registering the deeply tanned shade.

"Princess, I'll call you all sorts of things." Saph winked gaudily, and turned away, nagging at Nick and Newt to hurry and finish the breakfast she and Alice had made so she could wash the utensils.

"Who put her in charge?" Minho wondered loudly at her, though she either didn't hear him or chose to ignore it.

Hedy shrugged neutrally, watching him stand and brush pieces of egg from his pants. "She's right, though. But I'd rather help with the pasture, get it over with. Like a bandage." The image came from nowhere - the pain of glue being ripped from skin, like... tape.

"Good that. Now, who gets to decide the nicknames? I vote for mine to be Big Beefy Man 1. Of all of them, my name's the most accurate." Minho flexed.

Hedy looked down at herself. "Well, I don't have any mirrors, but I think I look pretty tough." She flexed a bicep of her own, watching the muscle bulge from her arms with gratitude and distinct pleasure. Tough enough to gather wood, at the very least. "We need to get this done, and it'll be better in pairs."

"Tough, but with the face of a buggin' angel." Newt complimented her they moved towards the trees. The words didn't sound cheesy – they sounded genuine, and she found herself feeling fond of the tall boy. Even if it was bullshit, positive affirmation was exactly what she needed to bring her mood up. A small smile quirked despite herself, the left side of her lips moving upwards automatically.

"Thanks, doll," she said sarcastically, trying to hide her smile. "Now you can tell me I'm pretty all day, but come on and hand me a knife while you're at it."

The names meant nothing, she knew that. What good was a pretty face right now? As far as they knew, they'd be here for weeks, and there would likely be no access to anything like a mirror. As far as she knew, they were all being sarcastic and she was an ugly fool, but it was irrelevant. She sawed at the first appropriate branch they found, with Newt pushing down on the outer part of the branch, to snap it more quickly, when Minho, working with Nick, said thoughtfully: "Y'know, I've been thinking about this hellhole. I think... it's an experiment."

Hedy would've fallen out of the tree if it weren't for Newt's steady shoulder, keeping her in place. "Please," she spluttered at him in disbelief. If anything, she thought, this was a prison.

He scowled, resenting her laughter at his idea. "Like… there's a purpose to this. This isn't real life. It can't be!" he ended his statement with an insistence that had Hedy staring at him, suddenly sympathizing a little more with his idea. "I was thinking about what I can remember… I remember things just fine, but no people, no specifics." His brows were drawn tightly together, his lips pursed. Everything about his face suddenly seemed anguished, though she doubted he would've been happy to

"I can't remember my family, but I remember my name, and hot meals." Nick said it quietly, finally contributing to the conversation. "I understand. Everything's vague."

Hedy groaned at the melancholy discussion. If they kept at it, she'd cry, and she didn't want to do that. Not now, not in a week, not when they'd settled, not ever. "Can we just... do this for now? I don't want to think about this." Whether they were a part of a prison or an experiment, she wondered what they had done to deserve this, and if they'd consented or if anything was real. Vague stories came to mind – the story of a turtle, the story of a rib, but she found herself unable to remember details. It was frustrating, to grasp at straws and have them fall from her fingertips.

Minho scowled again, but didn't push the issue. They remained quiet and methodical, with Hedy and Minho climbing branches, as Newt and Nick pulled and gathered them into a pile.

"That's twenty of the kind she specified, right?" Nick counted.

"Yeah, and now let's get the others."

The four of them collected the branches and found some hammers and nails in one of the boxes.

It took hours to create - and the most difficult part was chasing the animals. She and Alice had been trying to coax one of the enormous pigs, whom Saph had dubbed Chub, into the pen before they finished the last few feet - they couldn't quite manage to create a door - when one of the goats began bleating and chewing at Alice's clothes.

Shrieking, the girl swatted at it, running as quickly as she could. The animal followed her desperately around the clearing as she shrieked and cried. While Saph, Minho, and even Newt nearly collapsed in laughter, Hedy and Nick chased after Alice, trying to get her to calm down. The girl wouldn't listen, and eventually climbed a tree, leaving the goat disinterested and wandering off to go lay down.

"It's gonna kill me if I come down!" Alice wailed, hugging the branch she was securely settled on.

With a roll of her eyes, Hedy called up: "The goat is asleep, you can come down."

"Why goats? Why not sheep? Why not a cat or a dog?"

"Just get down. Saph's making dinner right now." They'd skipped lunch, opting to save food and time. Instead, they decided on an early dinner, with Saph, the self-dubbed chef, their new cook. Already they'd been numbed. The opening of the walls had been commented on excitedly, but by the time they'd closed, they'd learned the truth. They weren't being kept in. Something was being kept out.

By the end of the first day, they were comfortable with one another. By the end of the first week, they were taking shifts doing laundry and unsurprised by one another's accidental nakedness and body fluids.

Vomit, they'd seen a few times. Saph had thrown up with the sheer effort she was exerting. Hedy had stumbled across Newt squatting against a tree. Alice cried – often. Once, Nick had laughed so hard at one of Minho's antics he'd pissed himself. None of it bothered them anymore. They had zero sense of social norms any longer, what was considered polite and what wasn't.

There were instincts that weren't lost – wearing clothes, basic hygiene, and the lingering feeling of teenage awkwardness.

Nick was the oldest – seventeen, perhaps. Alice was the youngest, hardly older than fourteen. They were guessing, all of them, based on their looks. However, it seemed to be more instinctive than that. Saph, though she was small, was sixteen, they decided. Newt, Minho, and Hedy guessed they were about fifteen. There was a rather large margin for error. For all they knew, Saph was eighteen and Newt was fourteen. They decided on their ages, arbitrarily. Perhaps they'd change their minds later, deciding on older or younger, as they got to know each other and themselves.

Life was a guessing game.

It continued like that for several weeks. The supplies that Alice and Saph found were packaged neatly. Tools: some lumber, hammers, nails, real saws, hoes, shovels, watering cans, seeds and animal feed. Actual bedding, some food – perishable, unfortunately. Spare clothes that seemed to fit them all perfectly. Toothbrushes, which had Hedy rejoicing internally. Scissors, a sewing kit, a hairbrush, medicine.

"We stink." Minho said bluntly, one day, a few days into their sentence, as Hedy privately thought of it. "We need to build a bath tub or something."

So far, they'd been sleeping in their hammocks and washing their spare clothes in the stream, laying them out to dry in the sunniest part of the field. Any bathing was done quickly and reluctantly – the water was always cold.

"Even if it's worthless, even if it doesn't matter in the end," Hedy said it firmly. "We need to be busy." They'd all agreed. They'd tilled a huge garden and begun to plant, as well as building a – rather haphazardly constructed – where they cooked the little food they had. It was hard at first, the rationing – their stomachs growled desperately in the morning.

It was just when they'd begun getting used to everything – themselves, each other, the environment – when the scream of the Box, dropping off new weekly supplies, also happened to have a person in it.

x

They'd settled into a morning routine: Saph and Alice would cook - mostly Saph, but Alice was a ready and willing helper - and Hedy, Minho, Nick and Newt would wash their clothes, quickly. There was no sensitivity. Handling boxers and bras was commonplace. This was not a place to be embarrassed. After, they' eat, and then they'd get to work, feeding the animals, brushing them, watering the crops – and soon admiring the sprouts – and trying to figure out how to get their new hens to lay eggs and make butter from the round churner that looked positively ancient. But it was something. And it kept them busy. Despite all the fuckups and arguments and confusion, they were distracted from the looming possibility that answers were not coming anytime soon - or ever.

After four weeks exactly, Hedy and Nick were frowning at the carrots they'd pulled. "Why are they so small?" he scowled at his harvest.

"Maybe we planted them too close together?" Hedy wished desperately for a book that could dictate why the carrots they'd so proudly watched grow hadn't developed past the size of their pinky nails. "We can't eat this. Maybe put it in a stew, but it's not much."

"We can try shucking some corn, see if they're any better." Nick suggested. "The tomatoes look better, at least. They'll be ready soon."

Shaking her head, she answered: "The corn probably won't be ripe yet. They're too hard, still. Let's use Alice's idea, though."

"Shovel cow klunk over here?" Nick wrinkled his nose. The idea of fertilizer still seemed a little strange to him. Hedy wasn't fond of that word.

She wasn't sure when they'd moved from saying 'poo' or 'shit' and begun saying 'klunk', but she couldn't fight the satisfaction she felt when rounding out the syllables of 'shit'. The harshness of the sh sound and the snap ending of the t… it was a perfect word in her opinion. But Minho, whose vocabulary was even more colorful than her own, kept being reprimanded by Alice to find other words. So instead of shutting his damn mouth, he tried inventing ridiculous words, to prove to her how arbitrary her scolding was.

Alice had offered safe alternatives: 'fudge' instead of 'fuck', and 'darn' instead of 'damn', but Minho, apparently an aspiring creative, had gone forward another step, replacing 'shit' with 'klunk' – "Because it sounds like the noise it makes when it lands," he'd insisted, thinking it was hilarious. Hedy didn't quite hear it on her own bathroom excursions, but she let it happen. The others picked up the word as well, though Newt's vocabulary was already pretty interesting.

The shrill noise that alerted them to the Box's attendance went off. Nick hadn't quite gotten used to it, though they'd all become accustomed to the walls by the second evening. Days passed in seemingly no order. All six eagerly ran to the Box, to see what offerings had been left that week. After the ringing ceased, and the creaking slowly finished, Hedy and Newt got into position. It was tradition for them to open the doors. They needed little extras like that, little pieces that made them feel like a family.

Nick and Minho watched them open the heavy doors and drop in, Newt first, with Hedy right behind him. Every week, their supplies, which mostly consisted of food, water, and extra nails and screws, had been dependable, though getting smaller in size as their crops got larger, and it was always a relief. Another same-old-same-old of living in the Meadow. But lately, Nick had admitted to feeling like they should be preparing for something. Brushing it off, the others – including Hedy – had chalked it up to paranoia. Nick was the darkest of the bunch. At least, the most vocally dark.

Until Newt gasped, halting.

Hedy, eyes adjusting to the dusty darkness, tried to see what he was looking at.

"What is it?" Nick leaned in, hand on Hedy's shoulder, peering past Newt when they saw it.

A body.

"It's a boy." Hedy looked up at Saph and Alice, her voice tinny as it echoed. "He's unconscious... but he's alive."

"Well, shucking wake him up!" Minho ordered impatiently.

"A boy?" Alice murmured, a little fearfully. Saph did not admit to any emotion, eyes wide as saucers.

"He's a shuck." Newt's voice was tinny.

"What?" Nick blinked at the slang-term suddenly being thrown around, distracted from the immediate task. To him, shucking was a verb, synonymous with husking. It was something that meant corn, food, plenty.

"Out cold." Newt explained, and it made sense to Hedy. An empty husk. That description definitely fit the boy.

"Pull him out, then!" Saph bossed, hands on hips. "Remember how traumatic the Box was for us? Get him outta there!"

There was a shout from within the Box, and a bang. The four remaining outside peered in.

"He's bloody awake." Newt grumbled, unnecessarily. "Oi, shuck, what's your name?"

"I'm Tim…" the voice was timid, cautious, high pitched with anxiety. "Who are you?"

"I'm Newt," he gestured at himself. "This is Hedy," she waved. "Out there are some more of our friends." His voice was suddenly gentle and calm, and he stuck out a hand to the frightened boy. "Do you want to come out and meet them? It's a bit dusty in here, huh?"

The boy stepped into the sunlight, thin and dark haired and maybe sixteen, older than all of them except maybe Nick, who could be seventeen. He looked perfectly healthy and strong, with nothing hurting him but the familiar skittishness that they'd all experienced. He looked at Hedy and smiled timidly, and did the same to the others, who were quiet and as unsmiling as she.

Taking up the role of mother-hen, Saph stepped forward. "Hey there, greenbean." She said it kindly, softly, as though he were a frightened, wild animal. "You said your name's what?"

"Tim…" he said it quietly, but the mechanical echo of the Box was gone, letting his voice free. He spoke louder. "My name's Tim."

"Alrighty, Tim. That's Nick, our big boy. You met Newt and Gorgeous, but this is Giggles." Saph had immediately adopted a motherly tone.

"Alice," the other girl corrected, smiling a little at Saph's effort to invite him into what had become an easy dynamic between six people who'd gotten to know each other very well in very little time. Everything for him must've been out of sorts.

"You heard her. And Minho, but don't worry about him. He's not as scary as he looks."

"My good looks can be kind of intimidating," Minho admitted breezily. "But what's a handsome face in the Meadow?"

"The Glade." Nick said, looking disgusted. "Meadow has such a nice ring to it. Doesn't seem to fit."

"Good that," Minho smirked a little at Nick's comment. They'd gone numb to it. This was just the average, everydayness of their lives now. This boy didn't have that privilege. "So, I bet you have a ton of questions."

"We'll get to that later." Nick interrupted. "For now, let's unpack our stuff and let this guy get settled. Don't want any explodin' brains here."

"Want somethin' to eat?" Saph asked kindly. Hedy didn't know how she did it, but the self-appointed cook had kept them alive for the past month, with no deficiencies. All of them were strong and sturdy – maybe healthier than they'd been before. "Or somethin' warm to drink?"

"Let me take you around first," Hedy shook her head at Saph. "Show you everything. Then we can grab you a bite and a place to sleep. You must feel... strange."

A little startled, a little sheepish to admit his fear, Tim nodded. Motioning for him to follow, Hedy led him away from the others. They'd need to discuss what to do with him, what the implications of his presence were. So she took him away from that. Perhaps Saph would be better at it – she had a knack for always knowing the right thing to say – but when Hedy had been in his position, all she wanted was a break. That's what she gave him. A break. Not even a tour.

They sat at the edge of the empty woods. Nothing had been put there yet. They weren't sure what to put there. For now, it was just a quiet place to grab a moment of solitude.

"Just take a minute," she told him steadily.

Looking at her unevenly, his eyes began to well until he cried, folding his body into a ball and shaking, crying and hiccoughing and swiping at his face almost angrily.

"Where are we?" he wept desperately, his voice small and rough. "Why can't I remember anything? I don't understand!"

She let him cry. Nobody came after them, and she suspected they understood why she'd taken him away, to privacy. "I don't know. None of us know. We came here, the same way you did."

Crying harder, it was a few moments until his next question. "Will I remember?"

Heavily, feeling the weight of the word on her tongue, she answered him. "We still don't have our memories, and it's been a month. For whatever reason, it's permanent memory loss. All we have are our names."

It took perhaps half an hour for him to finish crying. They sat silently together, and she hugged her knees.

"Why are we here?" his tone was helpless, hopeless.

"We don't know," she replied, feeling tears sting her eyes and a lump grow in her throat. Blinking and swallowing, she stood and offered a hand. "Saph... she'll cook you up some food. You're probably starving."

"Is my face all puffy?" he asked, sounding embarrassed but taking her hand.

"Yes," she said, honestly. "But Alice cries almost every day, and we all want to about as often. So nobody will say anything."

Still holding hands, they began to venture back to the others. "Thanks, Hedy." he said quietly.

"We're family," she said firmly. "And now that includes you."