Finally returning to this one, although don't expect an update after this soon because I'm on pretty bad writer's block for it. Team Plasma gets its first mention! Although they're a little different than before...

What I've Got To Say

I got used to hospitals.

In all, I must have spent at least half of my days there, getting stitches and bandages changed out, having consultations, attending physical therapy sessions to regain the strength in my arms and legs, and even having surgery again on my broken leg, since there were not one, not two, but three separate breaks on my shin, which needed pins in order to heal properly.

"Were you stepped on by an elephant?" the surgeon exclaimed upon looking at my x-ray.

My response was something I had said too many times: "I don't know."

Luckily enough, everything seemed to go smoothly - no complications with the surgeries, I made steady progress in physical therapy, and the deep scratch wounds I'd gotten healed without too much issue. While I was still required to go back to the hospital for consultations, after hundreds of stitches, leg surgery, and hours of physical therapy, I was bandage and cast free.

I still had scars though - a half-healed pink gash across my cheek and ending at my jaw, four small white cuts surrounding it, the last of which ended inches from the right corner of my eye, a massive diagonal slash wound stretching from the right side of my chest to my left hip, which remained discolored and purple even after I had been pumped full of antibiotics to turn back the infection in it, and seven - I counted - patches of shiny, white half-healed flesh in the shape of claw and teeth marks on my left arm. My leg surgeries left several more sutures up and down my shin, a large one and two smaller ones.

It was around this time that I discovered how unusual my effortless understanding of animals' thoughts was. The psychiatrist I was seeing, who worked part time at the hospital, asked me question after question about it, frowning more and more the more I talked, scratching notes on a clipboard.

Then, without warning, one day he brought a dog into his office. He - the dog - was a patchy, black and white male, his feathered ears and tail giving away he had some collie in his ancestry somewhere.

I sat on the couch, surprised, but politely held my hand out for the dog to sniff.

"Hey, kid, you smell like a fox," the dog ruffed warily.

Without thinking, I replied, "I met one. He lives around here and he visits me a lot."

The psychiatrist looked bewildered. "Come again?"

"Oh, sorry, I was talking to him," I said, gesturing to the dog, who was still sniffing me, trying to determine whether the scent of my companion meant I was a threat.

"What's he saying?" the psychiatrist said, pencil poised over his clipboard.

"He smelled Zorro on me and got nervous. I was just reassuring him. He doesn't like foxes."

"Zorro?" the psychiatrist replied, scratching on his clipboard.

"The fox who brought me to the hospital," I clarified. "I still see him every so often and he insisted I call him that. It was a name he got from another human he knew."

"Right," the psychiatrist said, shaking his head slightly as he wrote on his clipboard. "He seems fine with you now."

"He just needed an explanation, that's all," I replied. "Animals tend to take to me."

"I've noticed," the psychiatrist said flatly. "Buck, sit," he ordered the dog, who was trying to climb up onto the couch next to me.

After that session the doctor told me not to bring up my unusual ability again. I didn't need much prompting, though. It felt awkward to talk about it with someone who would never understand.

The foster home was… difficult. The director, a stern old woman aptly named Ms. Sharp, didn't seem to like me, whether it was because of my fondness for animals or my many expensive surgeries or the fact I was eighteen - old enough to be on my own - but the hospital dictated I have a legal guardian until I had recovered more or my blank record that made paperwork on me a crisis and a half to get in order or how I always seemed to say the wrong thing.

I spent much of my time outside of the hospital in isolation - a small dark soundproof room, locked by an electronic padlock I was sure cost twice than what she spent on feeding and taking care of us. It was furnished with only a chair where the only source of amusement was to stare at the wall and think about what one had done to be put in there, which I suppose was the whole point.

I developed a love-hate relationship with that room. On one hand, it was easier to think in the darkness and quiet. On the other hand, something about being shut in, completely alone in the dark, with help a padlocked door and four sturdy soundproof walls away, made me nervous. Ms. Sharp reassured building inspectors every safety check that the electric lock was designed to unlatch in the case of an evacuation, but part of me didn't want to chance it. Hypothetical emergency evacuations aside, the door remained tightly locked until she (or another person with a copy of the key) came by to unlock it herself, and until then the unfortunate person in there had to sit and wait and hope she was in the mood to let them out.

I heard a rumor that once, Ms. Sharp locked a little girl in there and then forgot her completely, for upwards of twenty four hours. It wasn't until the nighttime cleaner came by and opened the door that the girl was found, hungry, dehydrated, and having wet herself.

I doubted the rumor was true, since that egregious type of neglect was bound to get Ms. Sharp at least suspended from consideration as a foster home director. But part of me worried about it every time I was locked in there, which, as I mentioned, happened… a lot, let's just leave it at that. Almost for every little thing I said, it felt like.

"Ms. Sharp, have you seen my animal encyclopedia? I swear I just left it on my bed."

"You shouldn't have left it out. Off to isolation with you, I'm busy."

"Ms. Sharp, are you aware that the sting of an Irukandji jellyfish can cause an overwhelming sensation of doom?"

"I don't care what the whatever-it-is jellyfish does; go to isolation until you can learn to stop being so morbid."

"Ms. Sharp, I found a cat outside. It's freezing out there, can't she stay just one night?"

"Yech! Get that filthy beast out of my sight or you'll be locked in the isolation room from now until Christmas!"

"Ms. Sharp… why don't you like me?"

"What I can't stand are sassy brats like you who talk back! Go to isolation until you can mind your tongue! Gah, I eagerly await the day those greedy state agents decide to let you be adult society's problem, you ridiculous manchild!"

I wasn't sure why I kept trying to talk to her, hoping one of these conversations she would listen. Perhaps part of me wanted someone human to latch onto, a parent, especially since no such figure arose from my past as the doctors hoped. But in the end, I was forced to accept that as much as I wanted her to be a mother - my mother - I was not her child, only a source of income. She was always fussing about money, how the state was paying her less and less every year and how tightly she had to scrimp and save to afford all her charges.

It became a habit to not talk when she was around for fear of saying something to draw her attention and risk another evening in the oppressive quiet of the isolation room. Then I slowly stopped talking even when she wasn't present.

I made my world quiet for her, and even then, I was still regularly being sent to that room. That was just the way it was.

Several weeks after my cast was taken off I was allowed to start school for the first time. It started out fine enough, I guess. I wasn't allowed to bring Zorro or any of the other animal friends I'd made around the foster home, and I couldn't help but feel isolated as I walked inside.

People were interested in me, mostly peppering me with questions about my lack of memory, but after the first week, I was mostly ignored.

I was fine with that, since I wasn't truly alone. No matter where I was, even at school, I could hear the voices of my friends waiting for me.

Then the bullying started. It was small things in terms of the physical - getting tripped or having my foot accidentally-on-purpose stamped on - but spiteful words and laughter followed me wherever I went at school, and even outside of it on occasion.

The main culprits were a group of boys and girls who sat on the top rung of the social ladder, the boys involved in every sport at school and their girlfriends on the cheer squad. I thought I would avoid their attention given how it was a habit for me to sequester myself somewhere and listen to the much-friendlier voices only I could hear. But unfortunately, I stood out, despite my best attempts to blend in.

Like today.

"Watcha reading, Francis?" A boy from the soccer team whose name escaped my memory snatched my book out of my hands, flipping through the pages, before snorting and throwing it into the dirt. "How can you read this? There's no pictures!"

I tried to reach for my book, only for the boy's friend to grab my arm and pull me away. His girlfriend picked up the book and looked it over.

"C-Careful, that's from the library!" I told her, trying to escape the second boy's grip and take the book back. I was tall, taller than the boy holding me, but the months I'd spent in the hospital had left me weak. I wasn't as strong or as fast as either of these boys, although the first one was younger than I was and the second wasn't much older than him. "I need to return it!"

"Hmph! Do you think you're better than us because you read these big boring books?" the girl laughed.

"Give it back, please!" I yanked away from the boy holding me and snatched my book back. A large smear of dirt ran across the cover, and the pages were bent out of shape. I carefully tried to remedy this as I pushed past the group of boys, trying to ignore them as they followed me.

"Yeah, go back to your books and pets, you tree-headed freak!"

"Leave me alone," I said, speeding up my walk so they would stop following me.

"'Leave me alone'," the first boy imitated mockingly. "Aw, is wittle orphan Noah crying?"

My eyes were stinging, mainly because I was already tired and upset. I'd spent much of the previous night cleaning Ms. Sharp's office top to bottom and then locked inside the isolation room because I'd asked her if I could go to the animal shelter on Saturday to help put up posters. I didn't see the correlation between the punishment and the crime and had protested - to which Ms. Sharp had grounded me until further notice. I wasn't allowed to leave the foster home except for school, which, since animals weren't permitted to come in the foster home either, meant an undisclosed amount of time I wouldn't be able to visit my friends, too.

"Baby! Seniors in high school shouldn't be crying over a book!"

"I said, go away!" I snapped, trying to clean the mud off my book.

A teacher looked our way, then, so they stopped insulting me - after the second boy's girlfriend stuck her foot out to trip me, desperate to have the last word.

Stumbling from that, I shifted my grip on my book and kept walking.

The rest of the day wasn't much better. I ended up having to pay a fine on the book I had borrowed because of the damage, as much as I protested I hadn't been at fault. In addition, since this was the fifth book that had been returned damaged or not returned at all in several weeks (a girl had dropped one in the sink, two had been confiscated by Ms Sharp after I had left them on my bed instead of on the shelf and I had yet to get either back, and the fourth had been torn in half at the spine after I placed higher than the school quarterback on exams), I was barred from taking out books for the next two weeks.

Not only was I grounded, but I had no new books to occupy my time until the punishment was lifted.

Throughout the day, those same students from the soccer and football teams continued to follow me, insulting me and pushing me around.

"Oops! Sorry!" the quarterback said mockingly as he deliberately shoved into me, stepping on my foot for good measure. ""I didn't see your pathetic face because I was so wrapped up in how stuck-up you are!"

"Get your head out of the clouds and interact with us mere mortals," his girlfriend drawled.

Another boy from the football team tripped me. "See, you wouldn't have tripped if you weren't constantly daydreaming or looking at those dusty old books!"

"I think the dust has gone to his brain!"

Stuck-up, that was what they defaulted to. Because I kept to myself, because I always had a book with me, they were convinced I secretly looked down my nose at them, thought I was better.

I thought no such thing. In fact, part of me was envious at how effortlessly they talked and laughed with each other, how easily they got other people to like them. I wondered why it came so effortlessly for me to speak to my friends, but making friendly conversation with another human was so difficult.

The torment continued in class, albeit less obviously.

"What do you think the title of 'The Scarlet Ibis' has to do with the subject matter of the story?" the teacher asked us.

I cautiously raised my hand, aware of several other students doing the same.

"I dunno, it's just a bird, right?" the girl who had taken my book earlier said.

"A-Actually, I think…" I began, only for a chorus of laughter and a series of dirty looks to interrupt me.

"Please, go on, Noah," the teacher coaxed me.

"I think the ibis represents the little brother - Doodle. Both are incredible - the ibis as a rare bird and Doodle managing to survive longer than the doctor said he would, but fragile, and… The ibis was pushed where it wasn't prepared to be by the storm and died, and the narrator pushed his brother where he wasn't ready to go by forcing him to learn to walk, which killed him." I sighed and put my head down, embarrassed at the rambling, disjointed thoughts I had just thrown out into the world. Why couldn't I ever get across what I meant, succinctly, like the people around me did?

"It's about time you stopped talking!" one boy crowed from the back of the room.

"Yeah, sit back down before you hurt yourself!"

"That's enough, settle down!" the teacher scolded. "That was a good answer, Noah, thank you."

After school, I covertly texted Jamie, the shelter manager, as I was walking home.

I can't make it tomorrow. I also won't be able to come in for a while.

'Why not?' Jamie texted back almost immediately.

'Ms. Sharp grounded me yesterday when I asked to come tomorrow.'

'She WHAT!?'

'She grounded me, Jamie; I just said that.'

'I know, I know, I was just shocked. Listen, I know you're already in hot water, but if Adoption Day is going to go off without a hitch, we need as many people as possible to go put up posters. I'll cover for you if you need. Sneak out if you have to. We need you here.'

I sighed. I wanted more than anything to help, and if Jamie promised to cover for me…

'I'll try to be there,' I finally texted, before stowing away my phone as I approached the steps of Ms. Sharp's foster home.

Ms. Sharp met me at the door. "Isolation room. Now."

I didn't know what I had done to get in trouble, but arguing would only extend my sentence. My deepest current fear was being locked in that room for long enough I became the next urban legend passed around Ms. Sharp's home by a new generation of her charges.

So into the isolation room I went. At least Ms. Sharp was so angry and eager to get me out of her sight that she didn't check me for my phone and didn't confiscate my backpack. I had lost credit on assignments in the past after Ms. Sharp got it in her head to take my backpack, homework and all, and refused to give it back until it suited her.

I spent much of my time in the isolation room that day doing schoolwork by the glow from my phone's flashlight. First off, English, which was answering comprehension questions about the story we'd just read, "The Scarlet Ibis". I didn't struggle with any subject, but English was by far my most difficult. Not because I didn't understand the reading, quite the opposite, actually, but much of our credit came from communicating this comprehension to the teacher and one's peers, and, as I admitted before, verbal communication is not my strong suit, and voicing my thoughts in writing doesn't come much easier.

I figured it would be best to get that finished first.

Spanish was… better. It helped that I had a good memory for vocabulary words. It also helped that I seemed to have an instinctive grasp of Spanish language rules.

Were any of my birth family members Spanish-speakers? I had wondered on occasion - one of the few times I thought about my origins, those things that had disappeared from my memory the night I was attacked.

I put those thoughts out of my mind and focused on my homework.

Next was History, which consisted mainly of reading from the textbook and copying specific passages that contained important dates, names, and places. While it was easy, it was also tedious, sitting in an awkward position on the little stool - I was too tall for it but knew it wasn't worth it to ask for better seating arrangements in this room - bent over my book, earmarking and highlighting things and then copying them down to better commit them to memory. That assignment probably took the second longest.

I saved Chemistry and Math for last, as they were not only my favorite subjects but also the ones that came easiest. Math just clicked for me; it made sense. I found it easy to perform arithmetic in my head, and quickly. The only difficulty I had in math was showing the required amount of work, because, again, I had difficulty articulating the process I used since so much of it was done entirely in my head. Chemistry also came startlingly easily, and discovering all of the intricate rules and formulas that governed how the world worked fascinated me. The fact that it involved a good amount of mathematics also helped. Today's work was no different, and I had finished Math and almost finished Chemistry when a sharp knock on the door startled me.

"You can come out, boy. Dinner is on the table. Eat before it gets cold," came Ms. Sharp's cold, impassive voice through the door.

"Yes, Ms. Sharp," I replied quietly, before scooping up my books and stowing them away in my backpack. After a moment of thought, I hid my phone in there, too. She'd attempted to go through it in the past, and the last thing I wanted was for Jamie to get in trouble for encouraging me to sneak out.

Dinner was potatoes and corn, lukewarm by the time I stowed my backpack somewhere where it would pass housekeeping inspection later.

The foster home had an uneasy peace to it, similar to school - we ignored each other apart from light conversation. There were close-knit friend and sibling groups, but for the rest of us our cohabitation was out of necessity and little more than that. The same was true today, as most people still in the mess hall by the time I was released from isolation were too focused on their food to talk. I did get a few isolated greetings from the people who sat nearest to my table, but apart from that I was left alone. Luckily, none of my bullies from school lived here.

"Hey, Noah. Finally out of solitary confinement?" a girl named Keisha asked dully.

I nodded.

"Good. Joey and Lawrence set a frog loose in her office, so she was on the warpath today."

"How…?"

"How bad was it? She saved the worst for you. As usual." Keisha casually took a bite of potatoes. "I think she cooled off, but you should probably stay out of her way tomorrow."

"I'll be careful," I replied softly.

"Good. Here. I got this leaflet at school." She reached into the pocket of her baggy hoodie and pulled out a brochure carefully folded into eighths. The brochure was a weathered brown color like tree bark - although the weathered look may have been due to it being folded and unfolded so many times.

I unfolded it, revealing the image of a silver shield embossed with a stylized letter P on the front and, in gray lettering that matched the shield, the words Team Plasma.

"It's a new nonprofit group that just showed up in town, passing out brochures in the park. Call themselves Team Plasma. They do a lot of environmental stuff - picking up litter, planting trees, taking care of and rehoming sick, abandoned animals. I figured they'd be right up your alley," Keisha said.

"They just showed up?"

"Yeah. They already attracted a big crowd, though."

I flipped through the leaflet, finding it to be rather simple and straightforward: a brief summation of the group's mission, which aligned with what Keisha said - to improve the lives of humans and animals and work toward a peaceful coexistence between them. The brochure also had pictures of some of the members of this group, mostly candid images of them working - playing with and feeding animals, covered in dirt but not seeming to mind as they carefully scooped earth over a tree sapling's roots, and gathering crushed beer cans and other assorted trash into dumpsters. They all wore pale blue uniforms marked with that same shield design. On the back of the brochure was a number to call if one was interested in joining them.

"They're having another project in the park tomorrow. I'm planning on seeing more of what they're about. Wanna come?"

I blinked - Keisha, while friendly enough, hadn't gone out of her way to be around me much - but then frowned. "Ms. Sharp grounded me yesterday."

Keisha frowned. "For the whole weekend? But you have that job at the shelter on the weekend. Didn't you say you guys were putting Adoption Day announcements up?"

"We are," I replied. Lowering my voice to a whisper, I added, "Jamie texted me and said she'd cover for my absence if I snuck out to join them."

"Does she want a girl on the inside? I'm in."

"I can't ask you to do that, Keisha," I said. "I don't want you to get in trouble too."

"I'll be fine, Noah," Keisha said. "I'm always down to wear a little on old Ms. Sharp's deficit patience. And, hey, maybe you'll run into Team Plasma while you're out there."

"Are you thinking about joining them?"

"Maybe. It's a community nonprofit, and I'm all about those as much as the next girl, but I want to see them in action first."

I looked over the leaflet again, wondering why that silver shield looked so familiar - and why that familiarity made me so anxious. "Maybe I will check them out. They do seem like they're doing a lot of good. If I see them tomorrow…"

"I know, shelter comes first. By the way, they're partnering with a lot of other environmental organizations, including animal rescues, so be sure to show that to Jamie. With the publicity they've gotten it could be great for the shelter."

I nodded, carefully refolding the brochure and pocketing it.