"Amber. Tess. Wake up!" a voice whispers.

"Huh?" I ask groggily.

"Up! Now!" I open my eyes and see Lee and Marigold in Tess and my's room.

"What?" Tess asks, sounding concerned.

"Just get dressed and come out," Marigold urges. "Quick!"

I realize that whatever it is, it's important. So I hop out of bed and get dressed, quickly, as always.

Tess is still laying in bed, so I motion for Marigold and Lee to come over to me.

"I have an idea," I whisper. I whisper my idea to them and it puts smiles on their faces. Each of them grab their necessary items, and I grab mine.

We creep over to Tess's bed.

Marigold and Lee smack her across the face with socks, and I hit her with my pillow.

"Up! Up!" We chant.

"Okay! Okay! Enough!" Tess exclaims. "Stop! I'm getting up!"

Tess dresses quickly, and the four of us head out into the girls common area. Everyone is grouped around a portable message board, similar to the ones that are in our classrooms.

The dorms for the '56 girls are being reconfigured.

The new dorm assignments are as follows:

a: Sadie/Zoe

b: Marie/Aria

c: Paige/Erica

d: Ana/Jenna

e: Beatrice/ Maggie

f: Amber/Tess

Thank you for your cooperation in these switches. Please report to the common room after the necessary girls have moved their things. There, there will be instructions on the message board regarding the day.

Everyone seems to be puzzled by the news. I look around, but don't see Sadie out yet.

"Someone's name isn't on the list," states one of the girls from up north, either Jenna or Ana, I don't remember.

"Dawn," I say blankly. Why is she gone?

Sadie enters the room with a tear stained face. "Is it gone?" she asks, sadness evident in her voice. I guess she's referring to the message on the board.

One of the '50 girls shakes her head, and envelopes Sadie in her embrace.

Tess has left my side, and is now talking with Paige. I head over to Aria.

"So," I say. "No more Duckface."

She nods, but both of us know it's not really funny.

"But why did they switch me?" Aria asks. "I mean, they could have just moved Zoe, Paige or Marie into Sadie's dorm, but instead they did a whole bunch of switches."

"I have no idea," I say. "Kind of how I feel about a lot of things around here," I add sadly.

Aria nods in agreement. "Do you know anything about Marie?"

"I have no idea. Ask Paige, they were in the dorm together."

"I never talk to those people, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah."

Aria tried to reassure me by saying, "It's okay, Amber. Don't feel bad. I'm used to it."

But hearing that only makes me feel worse. There's nothing weird about Aria. Sure, she has an eating disorder, but she's a great girl. How can we overlook people in such a way? Were there people in Winnipeg like Aria that I didn't even know existed? All because I was happy having Tasha as a friend, and was convinced I needed no other friends?

"Amber?" Aria asks, sounding really concerned. "Are you okay? You've gone white as a sheet."

"Yeah-uh. Yeah. I'm okay."

"You sure?" She asks, definitely not convinced.

"Certain."

"If you say so."

"Yeah. Let's go to breakfast."

"First I have to move my stuff out of dorm c and into b," she tells me.

"Oh, right." Facepalm. "I'll help you. Then we can go to the common room and see the messages for the rest of the day."

"Sounds like a plan."

We leave the girls area and head into Aria and Duckface's room. Paige is already there with some stuff.

"Oh hey Amber," she says. Then she turns to Aria and says, quite rudely, "Hey, you, move your stuff."

I'm shocked that Paige would be so rude. That's not going to help Aria's problem.

"Amber, how come you're here? I don't need any help getting settled," Paige says, continuing on like she wasn't just incredibly rude to someone.

"I'm helping Aria," I state blankly. Aria grabs one of two piles of stuff and leaves. I take the other pile and hurry out of the room to catch her.

When we enter dorm b, Paige's old bed is empty, Zoe is still packing up her stuff, with the help of her minions. And Marie is just sitting on her bed.

Aria dumps her pile on the empty bed and flees the room. Once again, I rush to catch her, but I don't see her outside in the common room.

Crap. I have to find her. Everyone else is heading out into the main common area, but I have to find Aria.

I go to the bathroom door and open it, hoping this will be easy. But the bathroom is empty.

She wouldn't have fled to the main common room, right?

I check her new room and her old room. Then I head into my room. It's a long shot, but maybe.

I slowly push open the door to my dorm. I hear quiet crying.

"Aria?" I ask. She's sitting cross legged in the middle of the floor. She looks up.

"Aria. I'm so sorry," I say as I take a seat beside her on the floor.

+++

Aria and I walk into the main common room together.

There are still a lot of people in the main area.

There are instructions on the message board, just as the girls board said that there would be.

Hello ADCCG children. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the earlier announced 'dance' is cancelled. The bell will ring when it's time for lunch.

Tristan notices me and comes over to where Aria and I are standing.

"Where were you?" He asks. "I was worried."

"I needed to be with Aria," I tell him. "Aria, this is Tristan. Tristan, Aria."

"Hey," Tristan says kindly.

Aria gives a shy wave. We stand there awkwardly for a minute or so, and then a guy sneaks up behind Aria and puts his hands over her eyes.

She giggles and protests, "Quinn!"

He removes his hands and joins our little 'standing around awkwardly' group.

"Amber, this is my friend Quinn that I told you about." To Quinn, she says, "Quinn, this is Amber, and her friend Tristan."

The boys do their head nod greeting thing. Aria leans over and whispers in my ear. "Quinn has trouble speaking, so he probably won't talk to you right now, it embarrasses him. He often uses sign language or writes things down."

"Okay. Good to know."

We make small talk for a little while and then Tristan asks if we can talk in private.

"Did something weird happen with the girls?" He asks. "No one will say anything."

"Promise not to tell?"

"I swear on my life."

"K. Our mentors woke me and Tess up because everyone else was already awake. We went into the girls common area, and everyone from the '50 girls to our age was there. The dorm assignments were changed because Dawn is gone. Sadie was in tears. And they didn't just put one person from the triple dorm into Sadie's dorm like they did with you guys. They did a whole bunch of rearranging. And now the dance is canceled too." Tristan nods. Then I realize something. "Wait a second. Did we have breakfast?" I ask.

Tristan thinks for a moment. "Nooo...the message says the bell will go at lunch. What the heck?"

"What's going on?" I ask. "This is all so confusing."

Tristan nods again.

"Oh!" I exclaim. "Paige was also really rude to Aria."

"Hmm," is Tristan's response. "Not that I don't like Aria or anything, but when did you guys become friends?"

"Well," I start. "We met a while back in the bathroom, late at night." I see his puzzled expression. "Don't ask. Then we became friends, but for some reason we never talked around everyone else. But today we just did."

"Cool. The others are being kind of weird lately," he observes.

"You've been noticing that too?! I'm not going crazy!"

"No, definitely not. Daniel was all weird with you and now is ignoring you. Tess is fighting with you, and the tries to be your bff. And no one else is normal."

"Yeah. And-"

Someone taps my shoulder. "Amber?" Aria asks. "There's someone looking for you," she motions to Mitchel. Quinn is with her too.

"Hey Mitch," I say. "What's up?"

"You need to come with me and Kendra. We need to talk with 'our friend.'" He must mean Greyson. "It's important." He pauses. "Do you trust them?" He asks, motioning to Tristan, Aria and Quinn.

I know I trust Aria and Tristan. And if Aria and Quinn are friends, then I trust him too.

"Yes," I say. "Definitely."

"Okay. Then they can come too. Come on."

He leads the four of us down a hallway similar to the one we went down when Mitchel and Kendra took me to meet Greyson.

Mitchel opens a door and leads us into a storage room. Kendra, and Greyson and another guy wait inside.

"Hey Amber!" Greyson gets up and gives me a big hug. "How's is going?"

"Meh," I say.

"And who are your friends?" He asks.

I hesitate. "It's okay Amber," Greyson tells me. "I told Mitchel you could bring friends. But just these three. No more."

I nod. "This is Tristan, Quinn and Aria." I say.

Greyson smiles. "I'm Amber's big brother."

"Greyson, right?" Tristan asks.

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"I was with Amber when she found out about you," he explains.

"Oohh."

"So anyway," Greyson says. "To our youngsters, we're here because something weird is happening around here. We often have meetings like this in secret. So I tend to be in charge, this guy here," Greyson says, gesturing to the guy beside him, "Is Jay, that's Mitchel, and that's Kendra. So what exactly happened with the girls this morning?"

Kendra recaps the events of this morning. It is confirmed that there has not been breakfast.

"Well," Jay says, "Like everything else around here, there's not much we can do. Unless-" he pauses and whispers with Greyson, Mitchel and Kendra. It appears that they decide not to tell us whatever it is that is so classified.

+++

We head back into the common room, which is full, because everyone's hanging around there.

Someone looks up when we come back in. "Everything's locked. We can't get back into the dorms. We can't get to the cafeteria. We're stuck here. The message board is empty."

+++