There was silence for a moment then letters enlarged onto the screen. ‘My, my, my. Such a direct question.’
Travis ground his teeth and worked to stay calm. “Yeah, and what’s the answer?”
Letters put themselves together from blocks and splashed pink against a sudden yellow green. ‘More the opposite. You’re just the Jiminy, Travis. She’s the boss.’
That explained a lot to Travis. If she’s mad and I get mad, then she’s making me mad by being mad, right? So, if I try to be happy when she’s mad, will that make her less mad? And if that’s right, then I have to figure out how to keep it together when she starts to lose it?
He continued to gaze at the screen. The view remained on the window. it felt so wistful, and terrified at the same time. She knows they’ll be waiting for her out there. What can I do to change the situation? My first reaction would be to catch them alone and beat each one to a pulp, but that’s not gonna work. Size counts and this girl’s a twig compared to those thugs. I gotta be smart about this.
‘Point for you’ scrolled across the wall as Travis was concentrating.
“Yah, right,” he answered without really paying attention. There had to be a way. He was on a time limit. It might be, at most, another day that they’d keep her here. After that, she’d be back in the general population, which meant those girls would be looking her up again. Travis scanned the screen for things that could be used as a weapon, or modified into one. A sense of unease stirred as he studied the view on the wall. Why is this bothering me? If we have a weapon, we can protect ourselves better, right? He thought about that sibilant voice he’d heard earlier. The venom and hate hidden in the words, seemed to slap him in the face as he recalled them. The more he thought about them, the less palatable the idea of a weapon became. He was so deep int thought that he almost missed the slight tremor in the floor.
Travis looked up, and saw that she’d stood up. The perspective was much more ‘downward’ as the girl looked at the IV in her arm, then at the tray holding a paper cup filled with ice and a clear liquid. The hand appeared at the bottom of the view, and picked the cup up. There was a faint slurping sound, and the cup was set back on the tray as the view shifted left and up towards come closed cupboards. They slowly enlarged on the wall screen as she walked towards them. What’s she doing? The arms reached up to the leftmost cupboard doors, then slowly began to open them. The screen swung back towards the partly open door and back to the doors rapidly.