Psychotic (A Harry Styles Fanfiction)

Chapter 26

Rose fell under none of them, though. And I just prayed that someone else was listening, too, and would figure it out. It could be anyone, as long as they could help get us out of here.

But all of these thoughts were yanked away when I looked up, not realizing that Rose had already entered the room. She walked towards me in that hideous blue uniform which she somehow seemed to make look not so bad. "Hey," I smiled up at her once she approached.

"Hi," she replied with a genuine smile of her own, sitting on the ground next to me. "So . . . you're not gonna bake?"

"Nope," I said. "I usually just sit here and wait for it to end."

She looked at me quizzically. "Doesn't that get boring? Don't you want to do something other than sit there?"

"No," I answered. "Well, yes, but it's better than baking. Why would I go make cookies with lunatics that probably spit in the food. I mean there's not even any chocolate chips."

Instead of answering she stood from the ground and brushed herself off. "Why not?" she asked, offering me a hand. I took the cigarette from my lips and held it between two fingers as I looked up at her. I was unable to hide my grin, and I knew that I would give in eventually.

"Come on," she pleaded. "You're always complaining about how all they let you do is sit there in your cell, and now you can actually do something yet you choose to just sit here some more? It makes no sense. Plus, we still need to talk to the other patients."

I sighed, pretending to be annoyed as I took her hand and stood up. She was right; yesterday's "friend-making" didn't go so well. Most of the patients we talked to either ignored us or yelled at us or started saying things that we couldn't understand. We may have had one slight breakthrough, though, with that Damien guy. At first he didn't talk much, but as we were about to move on to the next table he had muttered, "Something's not right here. Something's not right here and we need to fix it." I wasn't been sure if he had been talking about something of his own mind or about Wickendale, but at least he had been talking in words that we actually understood.

But apparently that hadn't been enough for Rose. "You start over there, I'll go talk to people over here," she said. And then she was off, walking to the far end of a table in the middle of the room. I reluctantly moved to the opposite side and looked throughout my choices. There were well over a dozen other patients in the room, none looking all too pleasant. But I did notice Jane sitting in one of the few chairs at the table, making an unidentifiable shape out of dough.

I walked over and stood next to her, careful not to startle the girl. There were no rolling pins so I grabbed a lump of dough myself and started pressing it down with my hands. "Hi."

The woman looked up slowly, her eyes big when they looked to me.

"Your Jane, right?" I asked casually while pretending to be preoccupied with the dough, not wanting to make her nervous.

Her voice came out as a soft whisper. "Yes."

"I'm Harry."

She looked at me and then quickly back down at the table, saying nothing. Shit, now what? Rose was much better than this than I was. I mean I could easily talk to people, but not people like this. With them you had to do all the talking, and I was at a loss for words. Some were bright, don't get me wrong, but it didn't seem as if the more intelligent of psychopaths were here at the moment. All of the patients in this room looked haggard and lethargic as if they hadn't slept in weeks. Maybe they haven't.

I looked over to Rose for help and found her speaking with another patient, and they actually seemed to be having a conversation. I knew I was supposed to be doing the same but then I started thinking how much I liked Rose's hair down. She looked so much more natural with it falling in those long waves, the dark color around her face brining out her pink lips. And I noticed that the first couple buttons of her uniform undone, too. Not a lot, but just enough to reveal the very top of her chest. I watched as she leaned over to grab a plastic cookie cutter from the table and the fabric hung just a little more and - fuck, was she doing that on purpose?