Belonging

I gave up chasing anything - It comes to me or it's dead to me

"It's always so cold in here," Ryan complains, sitting next to Gerard. The older jumps a little each time they touch shoulders.

He's different, not too much to be a totally new person, but enough that each time Gerard looks at him his gut twists painfully. Ryan's hair is shorter, and his eyes are more round and trusting than Gerard remembers. Too wide and bright that they startle the newcomer —like car lights on a dark highway. His brown eyes flutter, and Gerard can't bear to look at them long enough to study their familiar hue.

Ivory sits on his other side. Her dark skin like coffee stains on the cream-colored-everything. Her frizzy hair sits in a rubber band at the back of her head, thick and unkempt.

"Complain to the undertaker," Estella hums, patting Ryan on the head on her way back downstairs. Her heels make indents in the white carpet but leave no mess.

"Here you are dear." Mei, the girl with the New York accent from before, comes back up the stairs after Estella comes down, a folded, fresh outfit sitting in her arms. Gerard takes the blue colored pile, nodding his head in thanks as she sits on the bed with the three of them.

The bed sits on the ground, a thick mat which is covered with layers upon layers of blankets and sheets. It goes on for seven feet both ways and sits in the corner of the open floor of the second level.

The gigantic room is as almost as big as the first floor, which wasn't huge to begin with. The walls are white, as is the short carpet. Besides the bed, not many things occupied the space. The stairs took up one side of the wall parallel to the bed-mat-thing. Four clear, cheap storage containers lined one wall to the left of the bed, two filled with what looked to be identical blue clothing to that what Gerard had been handed. The others seemed to hold random toiletries and miscellaneous things. A simple curtain hung in the corner, where Gerard walked behind to change into his new clothes.

"How do I look?" Ryan, Mei, and Ivory look up at Gerard and smile.

Blue drawstring sweats run down just below his knees, stopping there and showing off the bruise he had gotten earlier from being tripped by Bert's brother. His t-shirt is slightly baggy. It's cold in the bedroom, as Ryan had said, and he wishes for his sweatshirt back. The four of them match. He dumps his old clothes in the basket of dirty ones behind the curtain in the corner. As the lid closes, he whisks away the last piece of himself attaching him to his old life, unsure of what to come.

This couldn't be worse than the life at Bert's, could it?

Gerard lays back down on the sleeping mat, the other three silent with him.

The room is lit with nine simple daylight bulbs that are fixed in the ceiling, no windows or decor. Gerard's eyes dash between each wall as he lays on his back, staring straight up. He sits like a new pet rodent in its box, the mat his sawdust bed.

The stairs to the right go up one last level, the door at the top of the stairs locked and formidable. Mei had warned him not to touch it in a hushed whisper during the grand apartment tour.

Below on the first level, someone uses the sink and the pipes rumble with running water underneath him and in the walls. Estella is in her office at this time, doing whatever she does.

Steps thunder up the stairs and Bella walks over and flops down next to her roommates, completing the pack. Her hair sits straight up on her head, little tufts in odd directions. Her elbows are still damp from the water she had used to wash the dishes, finishing her chores for the day.

She completes the group, five of them now, two boys and three girls. Mei the oldest at eighteen, keeping tabs and making sure each one of them keeps to their chores and eats enough. Then Ivory, the tallest with the way her hair stuck up in a frizz, coffee colored skin and a sharp mind to match. There was Bella, the smallest. Her legs and arms sprawled around her like they were barely attached. She had to be maybe fifteen, personality making up for what she lacked in height compared to the others. Then there was Ryan, who Gerard still couldn't figure out.