Regulators, p.11
Regulators, page 11
Then again, Paige said people took other people’s things. I supposed if someone was desperate to have some tampons . . . there they were.
I put it all back and went about my business.
I went back into the main part of the bedroom after relieving myself and began sorting through all the nightclothes, or what I thought were nightclothes, trying to find something decent to change into. None of it seemed even remotely appropriate or comfortable. I looked down at what I was still wearing, catching a view of myself in a full-length mirror attached to one of the walls. I walked over to it slowly.
I only spent a little while staring at myself in confusion before deciding it wasn’t an intelligent thing to be doing. If this was what normal was, I would get used to it tomorrow. I didn’t know that I could manage it right now. Figuring that normal was shorts and a tank top, I found some of those in the presumed nightclothes, removed all my clothing, and threw on some infinitely more comfortable combination of the same. It actually was comfortable if not still awkward.
Removing the bra was one of the most magnificent feelings in the world, as it always was, but it felt much different than it usually did. I supposed it had something to do with the up part.
I didn’t look at myself in the mirror again when I began pulling back the blankets on the bed. I stopped part of the way through the process, went back into the bathroom and opened the cabinet beneath the sink, staring again at the box that had no business being where it was. It made no sense.
Armed with the knowledge that I couldn’t possibly sleep until I figured out what in the world they were, I let myself out of my temporary room, walked down the stairs to the floor below the one I would be staying in and began counting doors on the right. On door five, I knocked.
Paige opened her door, wearing a small dress that looked to be made of similar material as the shirt I’d chosen. I supposed she’d had the same idea about wearing something similar to what she already had on. That made me feel like I’d done the right thing and also made me confident that I’d chosen some sort of clothing to wear at night.
She frowned at me immediately. “I was hoping you would at least wait until tomorrow to want to know what you asked about.”
“I can’t,” I told her. Then I lowered my voice. “And . . . what is a . . . tampon?” That seemed more pressing to me than sex.
Her frown deepened. “So you found them too, huh?” She was looking at the door she still had hold of, shaking her head when she whispered, “I don’t know why they’d be here.” She looked up at me. “I’m kind of glad you came, actually. I couldn’t sleep either, thinking about it. Come in.”
I did, and as I was walking, asked, “Is it all really that bad?”
“It’s not that.” She leaned her back against the door once she’d closed it and stared blankly at the floor in front of her feet. “It just . . .” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Most of the things here make sense, but some of them . . . They just aren’t adding up in my head.” She shook it faster then. “I’m not used to that.”
“Maybe talking about it will help,” I offered. “Kelsey always does better thinking when she talks about it.” Or so she said.
“Maybe.” Paige whispered the word then straightened herself up. “Go on and have a seat on the bed. I’ll explain the tampons to you first because I think it will help the sex make more sense. Be prepared . . .” Her face scrunched. “I don’t think you’re going to agree with me about it not being bad. Just—” She stopped moving when she was almost where I’d sat down on her bed after telling me to do as much. She took in a deep breath and sat down on the opposite side from me. “Just try your best not to freak out, all right?”
I nodded, and she began.
I had no idea how long it took me to fall asleep once I’d gone back to my own temporary room, wrapped up in green blanket. Even though it wasn’t the same color as any trees I’d seen, I tried to focus on the feeling of being up in the branches of one, hoping it would help. It only worked as well as it did.
Chapter 09
Towel
I’d never been shaken awake in a bed before. Once in class. Never otherwise. My wrist always buzzed me when it was time to wake up, and that was always enough. The one time in a class, the Reg sitting next to me had done it before the instructor had caught it, before my com had even gone off. Usually, I woke up at the right time without assistance, but I needed it on occasion, particularly mornings that followed days which were more exhausting than usual in some way or another. It happened.
The first thing I did was look down at my wrist, wondering if I might’ve imagined and mentally exaggerated the amount of movement involved. There was no message on the com for me. How strange.
The second thing I did was look up and realize that it was Seb shaking me, which meant I’d initially been correct about the movement.
I sat up quickly on reflex once the knowledge of it actually stuck somewhere in my brain. It took me several seconds to notice that he was speaking.
“—let you all sleep as long as I could. I’ve been knocking on your door on and off for the past hour. Why are you looking at me like that?”
I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know if some part of me tried to or not.
I didn’t know if it was what I’d learned from Paige what felt like two minutes ago, the fact that I’d never had a male in my bedroom before, some combination of the two, or just . . .
I didn’t know.
I could hear my own heart beating so loudly as I looked at him standing there a few feet away, and . . . I couldn’t help thinking about what I’d seen of him the day before, when he’d been changing his clothes.
I just barely picked up the sound of another heartbeat as it changed—getting loud enough for me to be able to hear it—before Seb very slowly said, “Jaycee . . . take your pill.”
“I don’t—” I immediately jumped out of bed, frantically saying, “I don’t know where they are.”
I had no idea where my medicine was. I’d left it in my room, because we weren’t allowed to remove it from there, but hadn’t they said they’d be sending it with us? I’d never been given more medicine before leaving.
And regardless of the fact that I’d searched the room the night before, I began throwing drawers open in search of my pills. Maybe I’d overlooked them somehow, possibly due to the distraction caused by the tampons. Some part of me knew there was no reason for them to be in the room, but . . .
I needed them.
“I have them,” Seb said.
When I looked over, he had the standard pill dispenser in his hand, extended in front of him. I wondered if he’d been holding it right there the entire time. I walked over slowly, and when I reached out for it, my hand touched his a little. Regardless of touching him the day before, it sent my heart pounding again, a bit harder and a bit differently than what it was already doing. I couldn’t stop it from happening. I didn’t know what to do for it because I wasn’t sure . . .
He was staring down at me and I was staring up at him. His heart sped up. Every time he blinked, his eyes would dilate minutely and then contract again, for some reason. The pill dispenser fell onto the floor. I didn’t know who dropped it because I had no idea whether I’d actually taken it after touching his hand. I had no idea.
He bent over in front of me and picked it up, but I just stared through the open door with wide eyes, trying to calm down or make some sort of sense out of this. When he’d stood up straight again, he put the cold metal in my hand. He then wrapped my hand around the dispenser with his own.
“Take your pill,” he told me.
I nodded and he took two steps back before turning and walking toward the door.
He paused, looking back at me to say, “Breakfast is downstairs.” Then he was gone.
The instant the door had closed behind him, I ran into the bathroom, removed a pill, and drank water straight from the faucet to get it down. I didn’t care how it tasted, which was not like water. And I understood, in that moment, why they never let us out of our rooms until we’d taken our pills.
JCE-286 DENIED
Those things, the hormones Paige had told me about . . . they did not want to be suppressed. Such simple things—just seeing a person, touching their hand—could set them off. Apparently. It was the only thing I could make sense of my body’s behavior with because it had never . . .
I had never felt so out of control in my entire life. I didn’t know how to handle it or what to do. I had no idea what to do.
I felt like I had no idea about anything, but I looked at the mirror and discovered . . .
No matter how out of control I felt, my face was still mine.
It only took about a minute of sitting on the bed after brushing my teeth, using the bathroom, and putting my hair up in the usual bun before my heart rate began slowing to normal. Every few seconds I would think about the information from Paige, and it would start sputtering again. Then it would slow, and sputter, and slow.
Maybe what the medicine stopped wasn’t necessarily bad, no matter how it sounded. Maybe it was just unhealthy and potentially dangerous—the bodily reactions it caused. I didn’t know.
All I did know right then was that I had to get the hell out of the bedroom. I thought maybe removing myself would somehow help. I didn’t bother changing clothes. I just left the space, almost running to and then down the stairs.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I told the other ones,” Seb said the instant my feet hit the last stair, before I could even see him.
I followed his voice.
“I am not your servant. I will not prepare your plates for you. I’ve cooked breakfast, but you all are going to have to watch something to learn how to cook for yourselves because I am not doing it for the next two months.”
I was trying to figure out why the two boys were staring at me when I walked into the food area. They were sitting on the other side of the room at a table, along with Paige. It was strange, for there to be only one table.
Seb turned around, looked at me, sighed, and sounded very unhappy when he said, “You too.”
“Me too . . . what?” Had I missed something?
Paige chuckled and sounded as amused as Seb had unhappy when she said, “He’s complaining about our nightclothes.”
“Why?” I asked her from across the room. I wondered if wearing them down here had been somewhat inappropriate. Then I wondered how it possibly could be, considering what I’d worn for most of yesterday. I was actually more covered at the moment, even if only slightly.
Paige didn’t answer me, so I gave up trying to figure out what the problem was. I doubted I could get it right on my own. I moved over to the food and tried not to look at Seb while I was scooping eggs out of a pan and grabbing bacon from a plate. I wasn’t used to things just being . . . there and having to grab them. We always had our own specific meals ready for us on plates. It was very difficult to ignore a heart beating in my ears and the sound of Seb moving away. Difficult enough that I didn’t care about the oddness of putting together my own plate.
I looked at Seb, looked away, and then asked, “Are you going to sit down?”
Rather than answer me, he asked, “Are you going to sit down?”
I wondered if it had been rude of me to ask him that, but I still said, “Yes.” We had to sit down to eat.
“No.” He stuck a piece of bacon into his mouth.
I shrugged and walked over to the table to join the others where there was more hearts beating, loud enough to be heard clearly. Or maybe it was just so quiet that they could be easily heard here. I sat down, watching the boys stare between Paige and myself. Paige alternated looking at me and Brent. She spared the occasional glance at Garret and Seb.
Brent said, “I don’t know what it is . . . but there is something amazing about today.”
“Yeah.” Garret’s eyebrows furrowed, returned to normal, and then furrowed again. “I woke up feeling weird, though.”
“Me too,” Brent told him. “Maybe it’s just being away from there, like getting too much air or something. My head felt funny a few times yesterday. I think that might be why.”
They seemed to be past the arguing of the night before.
Garret nodded. “Maybe.” There was a long pause before, “I don’t want to be the one to state the obvious, but . . . Why are all our hearts beating like they are, apart from Jaycee?”
I glanced up at Seb for the briefest moment before putting my left elbow on the table and resting my temple on it to look away from him.
“There it is,” Brent said. “Why’s your heart racing like that from looking at him? It wasn’t yesterday.”
Paige’s hand went over her mouth for a few seconds before she stood. “Excuse me. I’m not hungry anymore.”
She’d barely began walking away—sharing a glance with Seb as she went—before Garret laughed and asked, “What’s wrong with her?”
I knew what was wrong with her. I knew it with certainty when I stared at Seb across the room and heard my heart racing again. I believed he was pretending to be far more occupied by eating than he actually was. I’d seen him eat yesterday, a lot, and he didn’t have to focus so much on it.
He didn’t look at me until I said, “Seb, I think you need to tell them.”
“Tell who what?” Brent asked.
I felt very lightheaded and just . . . strange when I stood from the table and said, “I’m not hungry anymore either.”
I was going to just walk past him. I was going to, but I stopped, feeling my eyes watering with my heart sounding and feeling like it was going to break out of my chest. “They’ve done something with our pills, haven’t they?” I essentially mouthed it.
They had to have done something, with bodies behaving differently even after taking pills.
Seb was looking at the space above my head when he said, “Something like that, or so it seems.”
“Have the talk with them,” I told him. “They’re going to make even bigger asses out of themselves if you don’t. It’s already bad enough.” This was so far past bad.
Garret laughed. “I thought you were supposed to keep both eyes on her?”
They hadn’t heard what I’d said, but they probably hadn’t been listening.
Seb’s eyes met mine and then closed tightly. I just barely heard him say, “Son of a bitch,” under his breath before he turned—with his eyes still closed, at least until they were out of my sight—and walked over to the table. He sat himself down with his back to me.
“Oh, is this about doing sex?” Garret asked excitedly.
“Something like that,” Seb said again. There was a very long pause before he looked over his shoulder at me. “Jaycee, please leave.”
Brent’s brow was furrowed. “Why’s your heart going like that, Seb?”
Seb turned slightly and put his head in his hands, muttering off a rather impressive string of profanities that I’d only heard half of before. I assumed that was what the rest of them were, at least.
“Seb . . .” Garret no longer sounded excited. He sounded wary. “What’s going on?”
“Jaycee!” Seb shouted into his hands.
I felt a tug on the back of my shirt and turned to find Paige standing there, looking quite . . . afraid.
Let’s go, she mouthed to me.
For some reason, I didn’t want to, but I did. Part of me thought that maybe I was just curious how Seb would explain this, like he might potentially say something different than what Paige had told me. Possibly more. Possibly something easier to understand. Possibly something that made more sense overall. I wondered if, maybe, I was just curious about the words he would use and how he would describe it.
It was as I was walking away that I realized another part of me didn’t really care. It just wanted to stay right there, for no comprehensible reason.
Leaving was probably the best idea.
“Have you seen what’s behind the house?” Paige asked me when we were on the second floor, still in the hallway.
“No,” I answered quietly.
She dragged me into her room at that and opened a window.
The light of it felt like it was blinding me, but I could almost see . . . “What is that?”
“The ocean,” she told me. “I figured we should go out there this morning, maybe see a few people, get some learning in and whatnot. People go to the beach and do things. It would be a good, safe environment for people-watching. Though maybe not with the, um . . . complications. I’ve already found myself a bathing suit.” She gestured to a bit of what seemed to be nothing on her bed. “Let’s go up to your room and find you one. I swear . . . it’s like they knew which rooms we’d pick. All the things in this one are my size. But I suppose if you’re good with statistics . . .”
“I was wondering about that,” I admitted.
She clearly forced a smile at me to say, “Bodies react when they see things they like.”
“I know, but . . .” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen the color of green my blanket is.”
She didn’t say anything in response to that. Just, “Come on.”
I let her lead me from her room, carrying the small bit of strange-looking fabric in her hands, and take me to mine. The first thing I did upon entrance was begin making the bed—ensuring I got the green blanket perfectly in place—while she dug around in the dressers. I’d never stepped out of my room without making my bed before.
JCE-286 DENIED
“This one,” she said, holding it into the air and looking at me, then at it, then back to me. “With your body shape?” She nodded. “Perfect.”
“You expect me to wear that?” My eyes felt like they were on the verge of ripping apart at the edges. “Under something else, maybe, you mean?”
“This is what people wear at the beach.” She shrugged. “You’ll see when we get there. Some people wear way less than this.”
“That’s not possible,” I told her slowly. Not unless some people wore nothing at all to the beach. Maybe people did that, and in which case? I didn’t want to go. Especially not today.
