Nightfall came and went, and I spent the entire process stowed away and awake in bed. Recent events played on a loop in my mind. It took me one sincere, pensive moment to realize the little judgmental voice in my head, heatedly demanding how I could be so stupid, wasn't Selena and was, in fact, myself. I truly live a charmed life.

When the sun became too obnoxious to ignore, I trudged out of bed and finally gave myself a thorough once-over for the first time since yesterday morning. The mirror in the tiny bedroom, directly across the twin-sized bed, looked disastrously vintage with its dark spots and cracked edges. I sized up my own body, unsure what I was looking for. I eventually decided to surrender my search and focused on a new, riskier task. Once I had somewhat managed my hair, now thrown in a hazardous bun, I began contemplating other arrangements.

I didn't even have a toothbrush. Or clothes, for that matter. Hell, I didn't even have a bathroom. Shit, I have to pee. I adjusted my shirt from yesterday, my burgundy school uniform which was wrinkly and scrunched up from sleep, and set about searching for the much-needed facilities.

I had barely snuck out of my room, when I ran into my first obstacle. I held my breath as Jonathan stared up at me with impossibly wide eyes and one familiarly cocked eyebrow which he must have attributed from Michael. I resisted fawning over what was clearly supposed to be an intimidating gesture and chose to ignore how adorable the mimicry, now beyond his powers, was. It was actually a bit relieving, watching the young boy participate in something so normal as being childishly impressionable towards someone he looks up to, despite how obviously far from normal the life he lived was.

His eyes looked serious, almost demanding, and I quickly caught on to why when I noticed how urgent the thoughts probing my mind were. You look messy, I heard, and tried not to be offended.

I knelt down in front of him, giving him what I hoped was a stern look. "Choose your next words wisely. I swear I will fight you right here, pal."

He stared blankly for one second, then another, and to my immediate relief dissolved into gleeful giggles, promptly smothered by his own hand. Once he regained composure, or as much of it an eight-year-old could manage, he pressed an urgent finger to his lips. Lucas will get angry if we wake him up so early, he thought intensely, so hush!

I nodded somberly. "Well, in that case, can you lead me to the bathroom? Can we talk normally in there?"

He stayed deep in contemplation for a few heartbeats, and eventually grabbed my hand and tugged me down the hall. It's three doors down from your room, he thought, and I filed this information away for future reference. When we reached the wooden door, identical to those of the other rooms, Jonathan had pulled me inside and closed it very carefully as to not make noise.

"Does everyone here use this bathroom?" I asked, observing the tiny room. It was extremely simple; one toilet, a sink directly besides it, separately only by a wastebasket, and a curtained tub pushed all the way in the corner. I briefly imagined the frenzy of everyone trying to maneuver around when I could barely fit inside with only Jonathan.

"Duh," he said, making a face. I scowled briefly. Smart ass. "Where else would we pee?"

I snorted. "I wasn't sure if there was another bathroom, is all."

"How many bathrooms did you have in your old home?"

"I don't know, like three or four," I thought out loud, and mentally calculated. "Yeah, like four."

His eyes widened comically. "If we had four bathrooms I wouldn't get locked out by Selena all the time," he said, matter-of-factly.

"I suppose not," I said slowly, and worried at my lower lip when I could see the gears working in his head. "But, believe it or not, I'm glad you guys don't have four bathrooms."

He gave me a skeptical look. "You like getting locked out by Selena?"

"No, not that part, really. But I sort of realized that when you have too many bathrooms, there's not a lot of room for love."

"Wouldn't there be more room?" he asked quietly.

I laughed at the innocent response. "It's a, um-"

"It's a metaphor, I think," came a familiar voice from beyond the thin door. We had one last second of peace before the door was flung open and Selena was maneuvering around Jonathan, ruffling his hair affectionately before shoving him good-naturedly away from the sink and into my arms. She grabbed a purple toothbrush from the farther edge of the counter and applied some toothpaste from the withering tube. "But not a very good one. You can borrow some clothes from me, if you want. Michael is cute and all, but he doesn't really think these sorts of things through. He knows how to properly kidnap a girl, brainwashing included, of course, but forgets to buy her clothes."

I eyed her warily, recalled the tight shirt from yesterday whose cleavage practically made Lucas cross eyed and politely declined, opting to ask Maya for one later. She seemed closer to my size, anyways.

"Your loss," she muttered around her toothbrush, shrugging and shooting Jonathan an annoyed look. "You can use a spare toothbrush from under the sink. For the love of god, find a color no one is already using."

Jonathan giggled to himself and climbed over the counter besides the sink to get leverage. Then, he grabbed his own toothbrush and brushed his teeth besides Selena. The domestic scene was almost a little too much for me. How did these kids, which no relation to one another besides, you know, powers beyond their control, manage to look closer than my own family ever did? I allowed myself to think of my sister, with her obnoxiously perfect long, black waves and brilliantly bright blue eyes, and felt nothing. I had no urge to brush my teeth besides her in the early morning light, but being here, watching Selena and Jonathan operate with ease and make relaxed conversation, made me want that with someone more than anything.

When Selena finished, she scooped Jonathan up in her arms with a promise to make him cereal. She moved to leave, but sighed when she reached the door. "I left sweatpants and a black shirt on top of my bed, so help yourself if you want, I guess," she said reluctantly, looking as forced as ever, and hurried out the door and towards the kitchen.

I let out a long breath, and bent down to find a toothbrush. I had just finished confirming that it was indeed a color no one else had, when I fell out from my crouch position and onto the ground with the aid of another flying door. "Shit, sorry. What were you doing down there?"

I waved around my new toothbrush as explanation, and accepted Michael's outstretched hand. He pulled me up and gave me a funny look. He dropped my hand, almost as an afterthought, and ran a hand through his hair. He turned to prepare his own toothbrush and passed me the toothpaste when finished.

We brushed our teeth in silence, me pacing around the bathroom and him opting to stand by the sink and stare at me in what I wanted to call fascinated confusion. His rinsed his mouth and gave me a wide smile, "The last time I saw someone brush their teeth with that much gusto was when Johnny was five and didn't like standing on the stepping stool."

I flushed down to my neck and shoved him to the side to rinse. "Yeah, well," I said, spitting into the sink with more vigor than what might have been necessary, "some of us creative thinkers cannot limit our teeth brushing to a mere standing experience."

"Noted," he smiled charmingly. "Hey, um, I'm heading out today with Maya and Blaise to restock. You good here? Lucas will most likely be asleep until someone comes banging on his door, so you won't have to deal with him, and 'Lena and Johnny should be up by now having breakfast or...playing games or something. Oh, and Jaz will likely be up in her room until ten or so."

I bit my lip. "Yeah, I ran into them already. And let me guess, I can't tag along with you guys because it's too dangerous?"

He gave me a wry look. "Yeah, actually."

"Is there a plan here?" I asked, splashing water on my face and leaning against the sink to meet his eyes. He was directly across from me, leaning against the parallel wall with his arms crossed and hair messy. He was still wearing sweatpants from sleep, and I briefly let myself eye his bare chest. Was the bathroom becoming even tighter or was that just me?

"Well, stay alive, for starters," he rolled his eyes, and walked around me and into the hallway.

I blew a hair out of my face and puffed out a long, frustrated breath. I chased him out the hallway and jammed my foot in his bedroom door just as he was about to shut it. I heard a muttered cuss on the other side and, slowly, the door opened again. "Okay, this really isn't going to work out if you keep me in the dark. I'm serious. I happen to know myself very well, and I have a sneaking suspicion that if I don't start getting some sort of answers right now, I'll start sticking my nose where it doesn't belong."

He cocked an eyebrow, gave me a once over and shrugged a completely unconcerned shrug. I was almost offended, until I remembered the true purpose of my little speech. His distraction had given me enough space to dig around a bit. "Who's the Order? And why are we hiding from them?"

"Fuck," he groaned out, trudging to a drawer besides his bed, which I realized had already been made to pristine, "This mind reading business is really incommodious to us average folk."

"You can replicate the entire animal kingdom and you're talking about being 'average'?" I asked, bewildered.

"I never said the entire animal kingdom," he corrected, pulling on a plane black shirt. I took the opportunity to watch his muscles of his back stretch while he moved, pulling away just in time to meet his eyes once more. "Just the animals I'm preprogrammed to."

"Preprogrammed to, as in, by... the Order?" I asked hopefully, desperate for an explanation.

"I was hoping you would have forgotten."

"I'm far too stubborn for that sort of thing," I said, letting the resurgence of familiar number phrases soothe my nerves. "So?"

"Okay," he sighed and I silently reveled, "the Order is the business that created us. That's not their real name, but it's catchy, don't you think? We all come from relatively poor families, so it's not too absurd to think they may have paid our parents to mutate us, or whatever. I'm sure they weren't too detailed about what they wanted, and I doubt any of our parents really cared to prod further. They now want us back, and we don't want to go back. Does that satiate you?"

"That doesn't make sense," I mused. "My family isn't poor. We're middle class, at worst, and my mother didn't like strangers, or anyone, for that matter. I can't imagine her letting anyone mutate me, or whatever. No matter what lie they made up, or however much money they offered. Then again, she doesn't particularly like me, so."

"So," he repeated, agreeably. "How well do you know your mother."

"Probably not well enough to overturn this theory of yours," I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck. It did make sense, for the rest of them.

He moved to walk out of his room, and I reached for his arm. "What now?"

"I have more questions," I said, pulling him back inside. "Like, how did you find me?"

"I should be asking you that," Michael said slowly, regarding me curiously. "You called out for me."

I rocked back on the heels of my feet, biting my lip and letting go of his arm. Now that he was engaged, I was less worried he would leave again. "Yeah, you said that before. The thing is, I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't call for you. I didn't call for anyone. Before yesterday, I didn't know this was even a thing. I thought I was schizophrenic. I was told I was schizophrenic. I took medication for schizophrenia up until a few years ago." Which my doctor still thinks I'm taking, by the way. I learned fairly early that pretending my powers didn't exist was easier than dealing with the repercussions of nobody understanding them.

"That can't be right," Michael said, his voice low and muddled as he worked through my words. "I heard you, for days. Weeks, even. You were calling to me, to someone, I'm sure of it. You said you needed help. I heard your voice in my head, as clear as it sounds right now."

I pursed my lips, crossing my arms over my chest. "You heard me?"

He nodded, his eyes bearing into my own as though he were searching for something there. I found myself wanting to give it to him, even though I wasn't sure what it was exactly. "You said you needed help. I heard you every night, like clockwork, a voice in my head for the past few weeks. You told me your name, Ella Louis, said you needed me to find you. Said you were trapped, and that you needed my help-"

"That's," I cut him off, swallowing hard, "That was praying. You heard me praying."

He licked his lips subconsciously, still staring. "Praying?" His voice sounded hoarse, and his eyes looked lost.

"Yeah," I said. "I don't how you heard it. I don't even pray aloud."

He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something, then promptly shut it again after second thought.

I decided to change the topic. "Why do they want us back?"

"Why wouldn't they?" He said, with a slight undertone of duh. He looked surprised at the shift of tempo in our conversation. Whatever expression I saw in his eyes was now replaced with a slight hint of patronization. "We have powers, Ella. You can read minds. You don't understand the significance of that? We're sort of scientific breakthroughs. Pretty badass, if you will."

I hummed, and moved to sit down on the edge of his bed. He watched me diligently, and eventually sat down a few inches away. I wrung my hands in my lap. "I've been called everything from loony to psychotic, but this may be the first time I hear 'scientific breakthrough'."

"You can't expect them to understand," he said, his lip twitching in something that may have been a smile. "People like us, we're unheard of. They'll try to write us off as something they do understand, but it'll never come close to what we know is the truth. They'll never grasp, let alone accept, who we are, so we're on our own."

"What a new and outlandish concept for me," I deadpanned, and this time he really did smile.

"That's the attitude. Now, if you'll excuse me, I actually do have to start heading out now," he said, standing up and smoothing down his shirt. "I should be back in an hour or two."

"And if you're not?"

"Presume me dead," he shrugged, shooting me a teasing smile. "No need to worry, though. I can hold my own pretty efficiently." His pupils squeezed into yellow slits and I bit back my surprised gasp. "Animal kingdom, baby."

"Definitely not your baby," I said, cringing, "and if you come anywhere near me with that line again, I'll have to do more than presume you dead."

He snorted, and stood by the door. "Well, have a ball, but I really do have to go now. I'll see you in a bit. You sure you're okay here?"

I most definitely am not. "Yeah. Have fun."

"A blast." He sent me a cheeky grin and left me alone inside his room. Well, I reasoned, glancing around, he did leave me here with nothing to do besides hang out with an eight-year-old and a girl who can't stand me. What else am I expected to do besides explore a bit?

With that thought in mind, I stood up from my place on the edge of his bed and began rummaging through his drawers and, admittedly few, possessions. To my surprise, I found a lighter buried deep beneath his limited shirts and a small, half-full cigarette box in the back pocket of one of his jeans. I also found an old, polaroid picture of what must have been himself, Lucas, and their mom from years ago.

Upon closer examination, I saw the vivid similarities between the boys' past selves and their present. The boys in the picture, however, had significantly chubbier cheeks and floppier hair. The woman sitting between them, with extended arms holding them close to her sides, looked skinny and frail- the opposite of her young sons. She had pale skin that clung to her bones and hollow eyes that made her smile look insincere. She had a lit cigarette, far too close to either boy for my comfort, clutched loosely between her teeth. With a mother like that, I wondered why Michael would dare even attempting to smoke. I regarded the box with curious disgust.

"What are you doing?" I heard a voice from behind me, shocking me into dropping the photograph and lighter. I resisted the urge to curse, and took a moment to start formulating my excuse. Before I even tried to lie, Jaz continued, "Don't bother. I don't have to be a mind-reader to see through bullshit."

All I could manage was a small, half-assed, "Um. You're up early."

"Yeah, there's this new girl living in my house that, for some reason, I can't exactly bring myself to trust. Good to know I wasn't just imagining it."

Well, she might've been on to something. "Did you know Michael smoked?" I asked before I could filter my thoughts appropriately. At her disbelief, I held up the used box of cigarettes as explanation.

"No," she said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She plucked the box from my hand, picked up the dropped items, and tucked them back where they belonged. "Because he doesn't. That's something of a momentum. Something you should not have snooped around to find."

I nodded, my throat dry, and took a brief pause to consider the girl in front of me. She had her arms crossed over her pajama-clad chest defensively. Her thoughts were a bit jumbled and took me a minute to sort through. She certainly wasn't my biggest fan. She seemed to have the same style of distrust that I had picked up from Selena. Daddy issues, maybe?

Jaz gave me another lingering look with her piercing dark eyes. "Look, Michael has faith in you. He's like that. Don't... Just don't ruin that kind of faith, because I can assure you that you will never find it so wholeheartedly from anywhere else. Keeping him on your side starts by respecting his privacy. So, if you leave now, I'll keep this to myself."

I gave her a once over, and pursed my lips considerably. "So, is this like an initiation thing?"

"What?"

I pressed a finger to my temple. "You didn't forget I could read minds, did you? Next time Michael puts you up to something, you should have him teach you that neat little number trick he does."

She bit her lip, and nodded. Despite the worry, she didn't seem too concerned with my new accumulation of knowledge. "He knew you would go through his things. He asked me to scare you a bit."

"It worked for a minute," I admit, and stepped around her and outside the room. "Don't worry, I still got the message. I'll keep to my own. I'm gonna go grab breakfast now, if you don't mind."

She nodded slowly, looking a bit confused. As I began walking down the hallway, I heard her say, much more timid than before, "I may not trust you yet, but I know you have good intentions and... I'm willing to work towards it."

I returned her gesture with a smile and managed a small, "I'm glad," until returning to my trek down the hallway and mentally preparing myself for what will no-doubt become the most awkward meal of my life.

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- eli