I see a blue door and I want it painted red
No colors anymore I want them all dead
I see a girl walk by dressed in her combat clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I knew it would arrive eventually. The pay back for my outburst. I was expecting it to happen in less than a week, but nothing came. No retaliation or attempt of putting me down.

The guy I had injured claimed a rat had bitten him, which was altogether a smart way both to justify his lips’ state and disguise an insult in my regard. Even I respected that. He was sent to the hospital to get stitched up and following that unfortunate event, he enjoyed a somewhat fame for having wrestled with a giant rodent.

But I wasn’t expecting him to remain quiet and just let it pass. Seeing the obvious trouble I got into, I thought it would be better to get prepared instead of waiting patiently for=the wave to come at my. I started theorizing on the possible scenarios I could encounter, crafting and simulating all the hypothetical solutions for each of them and the consequences those options would generate. That inner game of mine painted my mind with an infinite panel of possibilities, all going from bad to worse, and none of them resulting in anything close from a compromise; an eventuality that was progressively getting me exited. The more my choices were increasing, the more tempted I was to pick the worse. Like a primitive instinct that if I could go through it, I would probably survive anything. 

Still I wasn’t stupid enough to provoke it. 

I thought that as long as I didn't add fuel to the fire, there was a chance I could delay the outcome so I could up my game a bit. So I stayed on my guard, not scared, just vigilant. Keeping my eyes and ears open to murmurs and giggles, to glances and smirks. And since my pattern habits were to mostly stick it to my room when I was at the center, my opportunities of interaction with any of them were rather limited.

Logically, there was only two openings for them to really nail me: at school or during our chores duty. 

For the latter, the supervisors were the one assigning tasks and assembling groups. We had no regard in that matter. I was going to be on laundry duty for the next month, then it would be the kitchen; two positions that were carefully attended by the adults, precisely to avoid incidents. As for my potential rivals, they were apparently given gardening routines for the present time which would keep them at bay.

However, school was a fickler territory. I have observed in many occasions how it offered perfect grounds for cornering and isolating an individual, no matter how hard they try to stay safe. To be exact, the very action of hiding or avoiding certain encounters was usually the best tool to trap someone. But hiding in plain sight or mingling with the crowd wasn’t a safety net either, since students enjoy public lashing and can also turned against you, unless you have yourself a large pack to back you up. And let’s face it, it wasn’t my case.

Fortunately, for lack of better word, things took a different road rapidly. Due to the shooting damages, our school was being closed until funding for renovation would be unlocked. Which we all knew wouldn’t happen anytime soon. There were talked about sending us elsewhere but in the very first days following the massacre, we got restrain to the center facilities for police investigation. Some douche nozzles came on the morning following the incident to interrogate us, requesting our full cooperation in order to sort out why a group of teenagers suddenly decided to purge an entire school.

They made us round up and one by one, called us in the headmaster office for a little chat. Lip Boy, who I discovered then was named Jeremiah, missed the first act since he was getting fixed up that day. Note to myself: if they could have fixed him completely, I wouldn’t have complained.

The police’s Q&A wasn’t really pertinent. Assuming we all got the same, they made us look at a list of mugshot, asking us if we recognized anyone in it. I studied the list rapidly, highly doubting that all of them were involved in the shooting, and found fascinating how different they all looked. Long faces, round faces, big noses, pointy noses, flat aisles, black eyes, gold or blue, fat or thin; all average, all ugly and beautiful. And most of all, all humans.

I don’t know if the intention was really to have us identify someone or to make us paranoid on the fact that anyone could become an enemy, but it sure was efficient. I could have hold a mirror to look at my face and put it in the same bucket as the other. This was a very strange experience.

As I was going through their little library, wondering which of those poor photographed bastards were dead, alive or simply here for decorum, I suddenly fell on Adla. I stared at her bald painted face and her dead eyes, then glanced nervously at the two officers who were talking to one another. When I came back on the picture, a girl with curly black hair was smiling at me, instead. A girl that once asked me out and that I turned down in two seconds. It was a photo of her old self but somehow I was yearning for the other one. I turned the page hoping I hadn’t stayed too long on her, unwilling to attract too much of our dear forces’ attention.

But none of my hosts seemed to have noticed anything. Once officers Proper and Clean were done rattling on, they carried on with their queries, now wanting to learn my daily routine and what I knew about the Blues. I noticed their back and forth followed a certain pattern of random banal questions followed by one specifically related to gang activities, as if they were trying to badly hide the center of their concern with a weather related smoke screen pep talk.

It wasn’t really hard to guess what they were after: unearthing if other Blue seeds had been sowed. Though, none of it really gave me the impression they wished to confirm if a suspect was susceptible to eventually take action or was offering an opening to be converted back.

My session lasted a good half an hour and the feeling I got from it was unsettling. It was only when I got back to my room and spent the next three hours rewinding the interview, asking myself how I felt about the Blues that I figured out why. The interrogation wasn’t meant to sort the bad apples, but to sniff out which of us had the potential to rot. Like a corruption forecast.

They came back, the next day, for additional profiling, this time picking only a selected number of kids; meaning they already had established a primary listing, which I made, to my annoyance. They started with casual questions about what I liked and disliked. Then they asked me to talk about my experience of the shooting, promoting the benefit of venting out concerns before a difficult episode turn into PTSD. I believe it was at that moment I became less cooperative.

They made me come back and sit some more on that uncomfortable chair in the headmaster's office, my interviews lasting longer each time. Without peeping a word, to the staff's distress, I’d look at them rolling out their questions, wondering how long I would be able to make them last, while spinning in my head more of my Jeremiah’s countering scheme.

On the fifth morning they called me in, I didn’t bother sitting down. They had just closed the door when I decided it was time to end this game of hide and seek. I told them I knew what they were after and I wasn’t interested in joining the Blues. The chairman blabbered something about quieting and taking a sit, but I remained up. “Listen. I don’t know why you are so focused on me, but you should revised your profiling manual. Because if it says I am a potential recruit for them, it is massively misleading you. I am not a big fan of the shaved fashion. And blue really doesn’t match my skin tone. So can we cut it off now so I can go back to my room?”

Doodle Dee and Doodle Dum looked at me surprised, while the chairman was professing apologies on my behalf. They wave at him, in sign of understanding then told me I could leave. I didn’t wait to see if they were going to change their mind but on my way out, I saw one of them writing something on his fancy pad.

This was the last time they came to interrogate us. I didn’t know if this whole game had any repercussion in the end, but two days later, we got divided in an uneven numbers of groups and dispatched in any of the neighboring schools that could welcome us.

I landed in a small institute, called “Earthius Supertes”, aka ESI, fifteen minutes away from my original school, while Jere-my-ass and co disappeared on the other side of our district, reducing my chances to meet with them to a satisfying percentage.

But that was a limited in time package-deal. Once the semester was over, the center would start the call for summer’s programs and internships, and if school was already an ideal picnic to snatch me, summer training would be an open buffet. In the end, it would all depend on how good I would perform on my finals, to ensure the top of the internship registration list. Which was something I never really tried to work on, until now. And I wasn’t sure if getting beat up wouldn’t be less of a hassle.

ESI was relatively different from what I was used to. Smaller, older yet cleaner, and above all more crowed. There was surprisingly more kids attending this one, although ESI not being usually associated to any care centers might be key component of that phenomenon… That or it was simply better at tracking down their students.

The first time I stepped into my class, felt like the first time I left my grandmother’s building on my own: unsecured and exposed, minus the odor discomfort. I sure wasn’t accustomed to see so many heads being present in a room with a black board, and, while not being really known to dig in human interaction and eye contact, this time I was noticing every details on every faces looking at me. I suspected my recent adventures were the reason why I felt all my defenses erecting before I even reached my sit. The desk, the walls and even the smell of the room, all of it was putting me off.

I couldn’t focus there. The class was quiet. Excruciatingly quiet. Not the empty and contemplating quiet I was used to. Not the spacing out rumors and chattering that I learned to concentrate on either. It was so oppressing and awkward that I found it nauseating at best. Every time I tried to think, I was disturbed by my heart beat, or the noise of a running pen. Even the tapping of the chalk on the black board became like a hammer knocking in my ears. All of it was just leaving me with the urge to run back to the center and go straight on ripping off Deadbrain’s stiches. I wanted to get it on, to go on a rampage. When I realized I literally spent a full hour fantasying on seeing Jeremiah's blood again, I remained baffled for several minutes. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

At the end of the day, I was completely drained.

As I was packing up, thinking I had to get this lingering feeling out of my system, my new teacher, a tall and stoic man with dark skin and blond hair, walked to my desk to over view with me and the other transferred girl what we had studied so far, so he could prepared us an adjustment document for the coming exams.

He was efficient, not worn out, disconnected or defeated like the teachers you normally ran into. Listening impassively to his guidance speech, I pondered if it was a result of ESI's ecosystem or just the teacher himself being immune to the local destructive environment.

The moment that idea popped up in my mind, the sight of a man falling on the floor with a bullet hole on his forehead flashed in front of me. Caught me by surprise. But the discomfort came after, when I realized the vision wouldn’t go away. Not during dinner, not during shower, and certainly not in my bloody bed. It was still there the next morning and I could tell it was here to stay. It was comfortable in my head, probably thinking on buying a permanent residency. Even now, if I try to remember what I did during those days, all that will come up is that picture, that scenery. And nothing else.

Every time I was looking at my new teacher, every time I would look into the mirror, he would be here, with his begging voice. Just putting on my glasses was enough to trigger him. And she would be there too. With her smile and her painted blue cross on her face, the only part of her body recognizable. A pestering nuisance. 

In the end, I had to watch both my back and my head.

In the few moment I wasn’t zoning on dead people visiting me, my ears would catch bits of conversation. Gossips of what everyone thought had happened that day. Not very interesting, but from the rumors, my former school had apparently become a recruiting turf for the Seagulls. The Blues had made several attempts to infiltrate it but as the results were unsatisfying, they decided to wipe it clean instead. Fear was among their predilection tactics. Show of strength and gruesome violence were some other ones. They were not trying to prove they were more efficient or stronger than the Seagulls. They were just demonstrating they were worse, and it was better for everyone to not be in their way.

I didn’t know how much of it was accurate but I believed it to be somewhat true. Yet again, some other gossips talked about how police handled the whole debacle with tact and proficiency. So what do I know?

But the part that stuck to me the most was the nickname given to those fighting in the gangs’ forces. It was like speaking about the soldiers of two military factions at war. The Bullets. The persons that go on the front when things need to get dirty.

In the general eyes, my former school was a sort of gangs’ armory but now the business had closed, its stock was dispatched in the wild, a true loos of profit. Like a bullet that had missed its target. And maybe all of it was the intended goal.

Sending their defenses to destroy the enemy reserves. Bullet versus bullets. And nothing more than that. I looked at Adla and my teacher, both standing in front of me and thought all of it was just a fucking waste.

To my biggest surprise, I ranked first at my finals that year.