A Different Virus - Laura's Story

Chapter 10

I glanced at Diane for permission and she nodded. I wandered between the stacked up dressers. The blue one was nice, but it wasn't a small one. I didn't like the trim on the white one. I looked up, perhaps there were more dressers stacked up higher. A glimpse of purple caught my eye.

I wandered around the one stack of dressers to get a better look at it. It was a darker purple with small white and yellow butterflies on the sides. I loved it. For some reason it was in the rafters instead of being stacked up with the rest of the dressers.

I glanced at the Diane and the man who were talking with one another while watching me. I pointed to the dresser, "Can I have that purple one please?"

They walked forward so they could see the dresser around the stacks of desks and dressers. The man blinked as he saw it and grinned at me, "I am surprised that you spotted that. It isn't going to be easy to get it down. Are you sure you don't want one of the others?"

There must have been a reason it was in the rafters. I looked sadly at Diane, not wanting to be rude to the man. I had really wanted that dresser, I loved purple and it was the only purple one here. Diane crouched down and motioned me to come over. I came forward and she slipped two Kitkat bars into my hands. I blinked in confusion, she knew I didn't really like candy. She motioned towards the man.

I caught on and spun around with a grin to hold the candy bars out to him. He stared at the candy for a moment and started to chuckle, "Well, you sure have some strong bargaining items in your hands. If you want that dresser I can trade those two chocolate bars to get it down and put it in your room."

He held out his hand sideways, I looked at Diane in confusion. She smiled, "If you want to do the trade shake his hand to seal the deal."

Oh, I now remembered my Dad doing that when he bought a car once. I whirled around and shook his hand, passing him the chocolate bars. He stood and pocketed them with a grin, "I haven't had a chocolate bar since summer." Diane just chuckled, as if she had known exactly how he would react when presented with candy.

We moved to the area with the beds. Diane and the man discussed which bunk bed might fit into the room she had. Her room was quite small and the roof sloped down at an odd angle that prevented most bunk beds from fitting. They finally found one that might work. I looked around while they discussed what they had to do to it for it to fit. I saw her pass him a box of smarties as a trade.

Diane and I left the man so he could go about his work. We came into a huge room that smelled of cooking food. I wasn't particularly hungry, but my mouth started watering with the smell of fresh bread and roasting meat. It smelled much better than stale crackers.

Diane led me over to the tables that had big trays of food on them. She showed me how to grab a plate and dish up whatever I wanted to try. There were so many different things and I wanted to try a bit of almost everything. We took a seat at an empty table. There were only a few people in the room, but there were lots of tables so there were probably a lot of people who ate here.

Most of it tasted delicious. I forgot how good scrambled eggs had tasted. The fried onion tasted terrible though, Diane said that I could just put it on the side of my plate since I had tried it. She showed me where to put our dirty dishes before we headed off down the hallway again.

I was beginning to feel hopelessly lost in this place as we went up one corridor and down another hallway. This place was huge and I doubted I had been down any of these hallways yet. I just followed Diane and tried to memorize the path we were taking for the future. She eventually opened up a door and went into a room. No one else was here. The room had a book shelf, toys, and an exercise bike in the corner.