“You okay?” Canvas said to Rubix as she stirred mixed vegetables around her plate. The small girl blinked up at him and then looked skittishly away, eating a small piece of carrot and nodding unconvincingly.

“I wonder when the skinny girl’ll come back?” Treble asked to the rest of the table, talking with his mouth full of cornbread and spraying Apothem with crumbs. The older boy blinked several times, a little annoyed, and pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket to wipe it away.

”If she comes back,” Padlock corrected from Rubix’s right. “I mean what, she seemed pretty torn up about it. Bet she cries herself to sleep.”

“Do you ever stop talking?” droned Quill, raising an eyebrow at him. He recognized his parroted words right away and pantomimed being shot through the heart, making a pained but obviously fake face.

“Oh, I am slain! Slain by your cruel words! Gee whiz, can’t you take a joke?”

“That’s the worst line in the history of Shakespeare.”

“What?”

“’O, I am slain!’ Paris’s death in Romeo and Juliet.”

Padlock didn’t respond.

Quill sighed. “Never mind. It went over your head.”

“Besides,” said Canvas before Padlock could protest, “it’s nothing to joke about. I mean, I bet if people call you short or something, you take it pretty bad too.”

Padlock scoffed and skewered a piece of beef with his plastic fork. “Compared to you, an ogre is short. I’m not about to be offended.”

“Ogres chew with their mouths open,” Apothem said flatly, taking a sip of his cola. It wasn’t directed at anyone, but everyone except Padlock himself seemed to pick up on the implications.

The dark-haired boy caught on about thirty seconds later. “Wait, you callin’ me an ogre? Listen, pal, I’m not sure I like your attitude – “

“If you don’t want to be called an ogre, exhibit behavior that proves otherwise,” Quill advised, lifting her tea to her lips with one hand and scribbling a quick note on her pad with the other.

“And who are you to talk, yeah?”

“Look, some of us are trying to eat in peace – “

“Trying so hard,” February agreed on her way past as she took her tray to the counter.

“ – and other people are simply messing it up,” Quill finished, stuffing potato into her mouth.

“Yeah. She is,” Padlock argued, pointing in the direction of their rooms. “The stick-girl. She did.”

“And then as soon as Silverman left, you did too,” Treble countered meekly. He exchanged a look with Canvas and fell silent; maybe trying to take sides was a bad idea.

“You got somethin’ to say, you little pansy?” Padlock growled.

“You can stop yelling, he’s two feet away from you,” Apothem put in. He rose slowly to his feet and pushed in his chair. “Besides,” he added, lifting his tray and gesturing with his head, “you’ve frightened her off.”

As he walked to the counter to return his dishes, the other four turned to see Rubix’s empty chair. Canvas and Treble glared at Padlock and Quill gave an irritated sigh before finishing her tea.

“It’s not my fault,” Padlock said defensively, a little too quickly.

“Geez, ease up,” Canvas chuckled, downing the rest of his lemonade. “You’re wound so tight.”

“Everyone keeps leaving,” Treble sighed, slumping onto the table and almost knocking his apple juice over. “I hope Rubix comes back too...”

His hopes were in vain. Rubix shuffled nervously down the hallway to her room – room two, though she hadn’t answered earlier – and slipped in quickly, almost as if she were being watched. The door latched with an echoing click and she leaned her back against it.

The room she would now know as hers was large and empty, with three narrow windows set high on the wall opposite the door. Walls, ceiling, and floor were a smooth cement gray. Rubix looked up in an attempt to see out the window and noticed the running string of red emergency lights right next to the ceiling. She remembered Redman telling them about that after they got off the buses.

Mounted on the wall next to the door was a metallic box that must have at one point been painted blue. She went over and lifted the lid but found nothing save a small blue plastic rod with a green sphere on one end. Rubix pulled it out of the box and turned it over in her small hands. In doing this, she noticed three red, squarish buttons on the side of the rod. She pressed each one in turn but nothing happened.

Footsteps past her door told her the others had left dinner. She wasn’t too keen on being around them again just yet. More importantly, she was trying to figure out what this rod did. She tapped the sphere end against the wall and again, nothing happened. She tapped a little harder and even banged it loudly after a moment, but still no results. She sighed, defeated, and dropped it back into the box, shutting the lid and looking around her room again.

The only furniture she had was a small bedcot, almost the same color as the walls. She was in the process of shoving it to the center of the room – into a place where the sunlight would hit it at least sometimes – when a loud cry of “whoa!” sounded from the room next to hers. She looked at the shared wall, questioning, but continued with her bed until the stampeding feet blew past her door. Intrigued despite her best interest, Rubix stuck her head out of her door to see Sycamore and Treble standing there, the latter flailing his arms excitedly and using words that Rubix couldn’t process because he was talking so fast.

“Calm down!” said the tall girl, gripping him firmly by the shoulders. “What is it?”

“The DecoRod thing!”

“That blue box by the door?”

“Yeah!” he screamed. “No, really, come lookit my room!”

He bounced back to his room with Sycamore close behind. Rubix followed tentatively but hadn’t quite gotten there before she heard a door click open and shut behind her.

“What’s the big deal?” Padlock asked. Rubix jumped a little and turned suddenly to look at him. “Blondie’s loud, yeah?” When Rubix didn’t speak, he raised an eyebrow. “Makes up for you, I guess.” He walked over to Treble’s door and poked his head inside, then gasped softly. “What the blazing hell?” He beckoned Rubix over with a cupped hand. “You gotta see this to believe it.” Rubix shuffled over to join Padlock in the doorframe and gasped as well.

Spread over every wall and corner over Treble’s room was a giant green gridmap. In Treble’s hand, the DecoRod’s sphere was blinking yellow.

An androgynous electronic voice emanated from the device. “Please select a DecoScheme.”

“How the heck do I do that?” Treble whined, poking at the red buttons. “It’s not working!”

“Please select a DecoScheme.”

“I’m tryin’!” he yelled at it.

“Wonder what the heck it does,” Sycamore mumbled, stepping closer to Treble and examining the thing in his hands. “’DecoScheme’?”

“Please select a DecoScheme.”

Padlock groaned and darted over to the blond. “Let me see it.” With slight reluctance, Treble handed the object over. Padlock turned it in his hands a couple times, and then his eyes caught something.

“It’s here,” he said, pointing to the edge between the sphere and the rod. “See the notches? So, if you turn it like this – “

Padlock clicked the little green sphere two notches to the right and the walls around them changed. “Whoa!” Treble cried again, and Rubix and Sycamore gasped. Padlock was grinning – he had figured it out.

The walls had slid into a faded sage green color. Hanging from the ceiling were strings of black and green beads with feathers on the ends, and Treble’s bedcot had become a huge feather mattress with green sheets and big gray pillows. Under their feet, the floor was now a fuzzy, dark green carpet.

“That...is freaky,” Sycamore murmured, voicing the opinions of everyone in the room.

“I don’t like it,” Treble grumbled. “Gimme that.” He snatched the DecoRod from Padlock and began clicking it through the different schemes.

“Watch it!” warned the older boy, rubbing a scratched knuckle. “And cut your nails, yeah?”

“Do you know what kinda style you want?” Sycamore asked Treble.

Treble stopped clicking, leaving the room on a horridly shiny pink scheme. “I guess not,” he realized, dropping his hands to his sides. “I’ll figure it out eventually.”

“How’d you get that thing to work in the first place, anyway?” Padlock wondered.

“Well...all I did was open the box.” He walked slowly to the box, which still sat in its place mounted on the wall but was now coordinated to the DecoScheme of the room. He flicked the lid shut, and the entire room reverted to the drab cement. “That’s bizarre.”

Rubix looked a little defeated. “...I guess mine is broken.”

The other three jerked their heads to her, amazed that she had finally spoken. “Broken?” Sycamore inquired, as if she were speaking to a frightened animal. Rubix nodded timidly, remaining silent once more. “What do you mean?” The smaller girl darted from the room, returning to her own with the other three following.

Once there, she pointed at the box with the DecoRod. Padlock walked over first and inspected it, flipping the lid open and shut between two fingers. When that produced no results, he lifted the rod from the box and pressed every button before smacking it on the wall much as Rubix had.

“The hell?” he said. He tossed the DecoRod to Rubix and she fumbled, almost dropping it in the sudden movement. “Dunno what to tell you, kid. That thing’s just about as busted as they get.”

Rubix looked at the plasticine object in her bony hands, then around at the barren room that would remain that way. Sycamore walked over and put an arm around her shoulders. “Aww, sweetie, it’ll be fine.”

“I’ll switch rooms with you!” Treble piped up, pointing to the wall that separated hers from his.

“Well...” Sycamore started, “I don’t know if that’s the best idea. I mean, they probably assigned us these rooms specifically for a reason. I don’t want you guys to get in trouble.”

“Oh...well...” Treble looked at the floor. “Well, you can come and play in my room, then. I wonder if they’ve got one with video games!”

“I can come back tomorrow and look at it again, but I’m not makin’ any promises,” Padlock told her. Rubix shook her head and looked away, at the floor near the door.

Sycamore got the hint. “Come on guys, let’s leave. We should all probably be getting to sleep.”

“Sleep? When it can’t be too long after nine?” Padlock muttered to himself, but he just left the room shaking his head.

“Hope you’re...comfy...” Treble murmured as he followed the other two out.

The door latched loudly behind them, leaving Rubix with the DecoRod in her hands and a dark, empty room. Quietly, she walked across to the blue box on the wall and set the plastic device back inside. The metal lid shut with a clang that made her flinch, but then the whole room was silent.

She flopped down on the bedcot and stared at her broken ceiling.