Oh, there's something called fear outside of my sheets and something named worry inside them. There are no streets, only crossroads that fill up the room and send my bed hurtling down, down, down... The ceiling caves like putty and my head grows hot.

Wouldn't it be better if I were really asleep?

"Hi, I'm Makayla, I came in last night. I'm sixteen and I go to Bluestone High School." 

The girl who slept diagonally from me waved her hand in the awkward circle us roommates involuntarily formed in the morning, her long dark hair frizzed funnily at the nape of her neck. Like most of the girls, she looks to be of hispanic or latin descent, but she's skinny and a little tall for most sixteen-year-old girls. I remember hearing her crying intermittently throughout the night, and her eyes were puffed a sour red like blushing walnut shells.

She looks like she'd be one of the popular girls at school, or at least the popular girl's reliable friend. 

"Oh, sh*t, Bluestone? I'm from Clement High, I think we might've seen each other before. I'm Sophia."

The girl who sleeps next to the bathroom and opposite to me starts a little at the mention of Bluestone and happily opens up. She's shorter, rounder, and has a head of bouncy tan and brown curls that are neither too long nor too short. Compared to the other girl, her voice is calmer, without the hoarseness detected in the former. She seems more mature, and yet, she tells us that she had just turned fifteen.

Suddenly, the image of Penn and Teller pops up in front of my eyes. No way. It's too similar.

These two seem like a duo straight out of the television.

"I'm Ilise and I don't go to either of your guys' schools. I'm fourteen."

The third girl is also tall and skinny with black hair and a hispanic air. She speaks with a slurring accent that I have heard before but don't know what to call, and on her nose sits a pair of wire-rimmed rectangle glasses.

The other girls hummed and commented a bit before turning expectantly towards me.

I still hadn't decided whether or not it'd be a pain to establish relationships with anyone, so I spell my name out using sign language, and when that fails, I try to write it in the air with my finger.

"Mh...Okay." Makayla's eyebrow twitches in attempts to not frown.

"Is it alright if you tell us your age?" Sophia continued to look at me with anticipation in her eyes.

Right...It seems that I was going to turn eighteen in a few weeks.

"What? Seventeen? Honestly, I thought you were her age or something." Makayla points to Ilise who rapidly nods in agreement. "You were very lucky then, huh. If you came in a little later, you'd have to go to the adult ward."

Sophia caught on to this bit of information and asked, "Is it bad in the adult ward?"

Makayla's face when she nods looks too serious and pressures me to laugh, which I valiantly did not. Ilise was also curious and leant in to listen to Makayla's gossip: "One of the workers told me about that place before -- you don't want to be there."