CHAPTER 98

Seth woke up to a blinding fluorescent light. "Agh," he groaned.

Kyra was standing over him with a couch cushion in her hand. As she walloped his gut with the pillow she said, "Hey, jerk. Way to keep all the couches to yourself."

Seth rolled away and grunted, "You were asleep. I didn't want to wake you guys up."

She hit him with the cushion again. "There's no excuse for not being a gentleman."

"Ok. I'm sorry."

Kyra bopped him with the pillow once more, this time more playfully. She started looking around at all the leftover junk food. "Do you always binge eat when you're stressed out?"

"I had help." Seth sat up. "Actually, I could use some real food."

"We ate it all," Kyra said with a straight face.

For a moment Seth looked as though he actually believed her. His half awake brain wasn't registering the sarcasm.

"Come on." Kyra dropped the pillow. "There's stuff in the cafeteria."

As they left the room Seth said, "I see you got one of these nifty jumpsuits too."

"Yeah, there all the rage right now." Kyra nodded to Shelly who was also wearing one in place of the clothes she had on yesterday.

Shelly was sitting at the table she had previously been sleeping on. In front of her was an assortment of apples, oranges, and bananas along with a pile of mini cereal boxes and small cartons of milk.

Seth did a half wave. "Hey, Shelly."

Shelly didn't look up. She just shrugged. "Hey."

She was mixing a soggy bowl of corn flakes that looked like they hadn't been eaten at all. Her jumpsuit was several sizes too large for her, just like everyone else's, but she had neglected to roll up the cuffs. From the looks of it her baggy sleeves had dragged through her milk more than once.

Seth and Kyra exchanged glances as they sat around Shelly. As Seth cracked open a banana he took note of the skylights above. It looked like the sun hadn't been up long which made him wonder how much sleep he'd actually gotten.

After a minute he noticed that nobody was talking. Kyra was halfheartedly peeling an orange, and Shelly was still poking at the mush in her bowl. The more Seth sat there watching them the more he was reminded of what had transpired the previous day. He stopped eating his banana mid chew and stared at the table. He started thinking about how Dallas had been killed, and it put him into an even deeper trance. It wasn't until Kyra shoved him from across the table that he snapped out of it.

"Hey, are you ok? You've been holding that same bite in your mouth for the past five minutes."

Seth blinked and swallowed. Kyra went back to pulling apart her orange. A moment later Shelly shoved her bowl away and disappeared toward the bathrooms. Tears were in her eyes. Her milk was splashed all over the table. Near the edge of the room she turned back and screamed at them, "He's dead because of us!"

Seth looked after her. He knew it wasn't true. He knew it wasn't anybodies fault, but it still made him feel like shit. He stared at the table for a while and then said to Kyra, "Do you think she'll be ok?"

Kyra balled up her orange peel and tossed it like a basketball into a nearby trash can. "I don't know, Seth. Are any of us gonna be ok?"

Seth looked down at his banana. He had crushed it in his fist without knowing. "Crap." He dropped the mush on the table and wiped off his hand. "I guess I'm not all that hungry anyway."

"Why don't we find something to do then," Kyra said. She looked off in the direction Shelly had gone. "Just give her some space."

"There's video games." Seth nodded to the side room.

"Actually, I was wondering if they'd let us go out in the valley again."

Seth chuckled and then caught himself. "That's not even funny."