Lost Girls Academy

Our lunch line is a hair rainbow. I’m the third or fourth blue, probably the darkest shade behind that girl who makes tooth jewelry. Everybody ahead is getting chicken nuggets… one of the few things from this place I eat. So for once I follow along in line, playing Dwarf Fortress with my thoughts. There’s a lot on my mind, as there often is, but more than anything I’ve been overcome by the sudden idea to spit in someone’s food. Like, the girl behind me’s food maybe. Nobody has ever eaten food with my spit in it before.

…That’s not true. Surely at some point or another, somebody shared a drink with me. Or maybe like, I’ve offered a bite of something to somebody. That sounds probable. But I can’t recall any one specific time in which someone has eaten food with my spit on it, that kinda irks me. I really want someone to have eaten food with my spit on it.

The second I’m about to exit the line with my chicken tenders in hand, I whip around to shotgun spew snow-white saliva onto the plate of the girl behind me, blabbering it out across my pudgy little tongue. Her nuggies are drenched, but she looks up with such a lack of disgust on her face that I am almost instantly enraptured by intense, romantic love.

“H-Hi…”

She looks like a puppy in headlights who just won a jackpot. That hair’s not dyed stark red or green, it’s soft, silky, natural brown. Crayola would call it Non-Confrontational Nougat. Her freckles look like they were sharpied-on, poorly drawn by God. The outfit’s too tight. A really innocent dress, funny little white thing speckled with green clovers. She makes it look slutty somehow. Probably because of how interested she seems in me and the spit covering her food.

“Hi.”

“I’m Bea…”

“E-Echo.”

“TO YOUR SEATS!!!”

I blink at Giselle, the lunch lady. Far from the only adult here who yells like that despite the setting. I’m caught between waiting for her to repeat herself and shriveling up from the gunshot noise that sends out more spit than I did a second ago. But Bea’s already running, so I trail behind her.

…

“It’s more than that. It’s like having a little bug to torture. You disassociate so much that the masochism becomes sadism.”

In a few minutes I’ve ingested all her lore. I really like her now, she ate all her nuggets. A part of me is deeply satisfied, and as much as I’d like to just repay her, I want more. This woman is sweet, sweet enough to listen to me and whatever I tell her to do.

“Do you wanna steal a car?”

“What?”

“The lunch lady’s. And get out of here?”

“That uh… wouldn’t we get in trouble?”

“We’ll be fine, I read a book where two girls got away with it.”

“Girls like us though?”

“They stole a car, how sane could they have been?”

“…Okay.”

Normally I can get a bit fed up with girls like Bea. They get so used to the ward they forget who they are, where they came from, start listening to the staff like parents. I’m sure in a lot of cases they’re just more scared of the outside world than this hellhole, but I find the belief that’s a binary option to be pathetic. There’s always a way out. Always. If you lose your defiance, you lose it all.

Before I know it we’re at a Burger King.

“Better nuggets here than at school yeah? Let’s have ourselves a nice early dinner.” I pick up a meat crown and start to shave it with my fingernails.

“A-are we dreaming…” She’s still shivering. Once I took her hand she just kinda stopped processing everything by the look of it. Went along with whatever I said. It was surprisingly easy though. That book was right.

“Nope! Enjoy. My treat.” I pass her the food she isn’t eating, insisting on it. “Or do you need me to spit on it again?”

“W-won’t someone notice we’re… we’re…”

“Bro, we aren’t “ill.” Like half the people in there didn’t need to be. And the ones that do weren’t as bad as in movies.”

“No not that…”

“Think people will think we’re dating?”

“N-not that either…”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. This is America, the last thing people want is to get involved with each other. We’re fine.” I suckle the fleshy white glob. “Mmm. Hey do you like Vocaloid?”

“A-a man is looking at us.”

“Are you hallucinating agai-“ She’s right. A man is staring at us. And not like, an employee concerned about why I skin the nuggets before I put them in my mouth. An old man. The smiling kind. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he’s not gonna do anything, it’s a public space.”

“I-I’m still scared.”

“We could go up and talk to him if you wanted.”

“E-Echo!”

“No no, like intimidate him. Show him who’s boss.”

“What if he likes that…” She averts her gaze to the window but her only view is the littered parking lot.

“I was just joking. So let’s just eat our food and then we’ll go do something fun, like look at all the different sauce packets.”

“Hello.”

This fucker is right in our faces, dressed way too fancy for BK or really anywhere in this country of captivity and with his hand shoved conspicuously deep in his pocket.

“H-hiya!”

Despite that- despite everything- poor scared little Bea is now completely cordial!

“Would you happen to be from the local… school?”

I take the lead. Someone has to do it, and it’s always me. Which sucks, because I’m actually a worm- but everyone in class is so much more of a worm that I have to shepard them.

“Not interested!”

“I-I mean the um, local… troubled youths academy.”

“H-how’d you know?” Bea clutches her hands together and makes herself look practically as small and defenseless as possible! GIRL!

“Oh, I uh, used to go there. Apologies.”

He backs up a bit, stops whispering. Straightens his tie.

“You… did?” At this point Bea is the only one of us doing the talking.

“Yes. Painful, isn’t it?”

“More so for you… I assume.” Bea examines him with great interest. I kinda am too. The Yu-Gi-Oh spell chain of his history forms in our collective imaginations like layers of sauce on a peeled chicken nugget.

“Ah, yes.” He giggles. “But it is hard for all of us. Don’t feel too bad for a boy.”

“H-how do you survive?!” Bea cries out, begging for his advice. “I want to know!”

“Survive? You already made it!”

He points to me.

“When I was your age, some crazy girl like her broke me out too. Now I’ve been free for sixty years.”

“B-but didn’t you have to go back??” She pleads.

“No?” He laughs too loudly for the space we’re in, humored as hell. “How much would you have to love that place to ever do that?”

“…”

I watched her stunned face as it shifts from Weaksauce White all the way into Realization Red. It has finally occurred to Beatrice that she has free will. Meanwhile, the man of culture has gone to inspect this building’s specific layout of complementary sauces.

“You’re welcome. Americans, huh?” I chuckle at her bewildered, frozen body. “Wanna go help him?”

“Y-yeah let’s do that.”

We both jog over with to see if they have generic ketchup or franchise-specific packets, I can’t remember. We end up taking one of each to go, a little spice to dunk our freedom in. It’s the little things.