Outliers

Chapter 5: Fire Alarmed Theft

          A half-unwound roll of white gauze made a messy blanket over most of the Med-Kit's contents. Xavier picked the roll up from the box. Stray gauze hung down from It. It was almost as tall as his pinkie and twice as thick. He began to roll it back up, and I grabbed for the next item I saw.

          "Someone had priorities." I let out a short laugh and tossed Xavier the MintPower mouthwash.

          "Fine." He put it on the ground beside himself. "Don't have any."

          "Hey." I put my hands up in mock surrender. "Not saying I don't appreciate it."

          I picked up a small booklet. "Ooh. First aid and CPR guild." I slid it across thefloor to him. "Ari'll be all over that."

          "Hey." He looked at the first page of the booklet. "There's stuff on burns and cuts too."

          "Cool," I said.

          Xavier picked up a white-and-red tube that looked like toothpaste. "Jackpot." He waved the tube in the air. Pain relief cream.

          "Good," I said, letting out a breath of relief. He put it on the floor with the other things.

          We ended up with a good array of supplies and quite a bit of burn gel.

          "Do you have any idea how to use half this stuff?" I asked, as we began to neatly pack the contents back into the Med-Kit.

          "No clue." He shook his head. "But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe we shouldn't use trial and error." I picked up a couple small, paper wrapped rolls and read the front of the label.

          "What even is ammonia inhalant?" A brief smile appeared on my face as I shook my head. I put more items away in the Med-Kit.

          "A respiratory stimulant," Xavier said.

          "How'd you know that?" I asked. "Chem project?"

          Xavier had always had a niche for chemistry, especially when he got to blow things up. "I read the back of the label." He tossed one of the doses into my palms, and I put it in the Med-Kit.

          "Label of what?"Ariana asked, appearing in the doorway. She yawned loudly. "Why'dyou guys let me sleep like that?" She rubbed a hand over her neck.

          "We found a Med-Kit,"I said, gesturing to the box. "All sorts of presents in here for you."

          "Like what?" she asked, sitting cross-legged beside us. There was hardly any room to move in the small bathroom.

         "Lots of ointments," Xavier said. He slid the box over to her.

         "And a booklet about treating stuff," I said. "Thought you'd like that."

          "Yeah," Ariana said, smiling. "This'll be, like, perfect since we're all cut up and stuff."

          It didn't take long to disinfect all the little cuts and gauze the larger ones. We even figured out how to treat my burn from the electrocution wand, then bandaged it up.

          All the medicine in the world couldn't fix our hunger though. We needed food. If we were going to find a way to earn credits to buy food, we needed new clothes and soap. Which also cost credits.

          "We could try and get a food-stick," Ariana said. The government handed out those sticks to poor people who registered, and they could use them in place of a cred-stick to get a certain value of food products. But that wouldn't work for us.