The white building towers over all the other buildings, and the trees. It looks like the pointy thing is watching over the town, and it has a big yellow metal slab at the top that makes noise when you hit it. I don't know if it can see or watch over anything, because some things can make noise but not see, and some human things speak or see but aren't living, but it's comforting. It's a pretty building.

In one of the movies we watched the day Dylan was in charge (which will never happen again), part of a building fell on top of a man. The sky behind him was red, because movies are weird like that. I took the remote and pressed the arrow so we could watch it again and again, even as it twisted my stomach. It was so awful but there was something about the red of the sky, the way the building caved in on its own, and the cry of the person that made it worse. I started breathing heavily and Addie was next to me, holding my hand, but it was more to make herself feel better than me. Addie and I lean on each other like that.

Addie has my hand and Trace has her hand. I have to wait for Angel all the time, which is the worst, because Angel thinks I'm stupid. Blah, blah, books, blah, blah, I want my hands on your neck at all times. Angel thinks Adaline is something worse than stupid. I got off easy, because I can't even do things by accident.

Red is scared of Adaline too. I can see it in his eyes.

Adaline is like the cars on the street before us. You just have to put the key in and the metal flares to life, making choked noises, and then it'll start moving and no one can stop it. The difference is that the person inside of Adaline's head never tells us when they're turning the key.

The building is waiting for us across the street.

I grin, and Angel looks down at me. She has this smug expression when she does something we want to do, the way she purses her lip like you're welcome and I feel light in my belly. It doesn't go anywhere, but I want to spring up a few extra inches like Dylan or Mary and yell something at her. There is a lot of light in my body lately, but it's not as bad as Adaline's, so I don't like to talk about it. "We've got to see if they'll let us in," Angel says.

No one is at the door when we cross the street. Inside, the building smells kind of like a library, all paper and people and incomprehensible rite, and it's lower than I expected. The floor even feels like library floor, but there's more food in it. There must've been people all over it. I take in the creme walls, the empty plates littered with crumbs, and it occurs to me now that the air hums. I'm serious. It's not even a radiator or anything. It hums like summer crickets.

"We're in," I say, making my voice gravelly.

"Where are the windows? And the high ceilings?" asks Adaline, looking around for what we saw from the outside. It's a small room, so it's definitely not it.

"Are you looking through the sanctuary? The doors are right there. Furthermore, are you members? May I interest you in learning more about our church?" asks an old, grizzled man from a corner. He's got so much stuff in his hands and his feet are turned, his head tilted our way with a friendly smile.

"Where are the people?" I ask. One day, back so many cities I can't count them, Adaline and I watched the procession of people spill out of one of the white buildings, like a spill of iridescent blood. It wasn't actually a white building, but it was the same kind of building, with the arch, like a cat with its spine curved upwards. Like Mimsy in the sun, yawning. This was back when Mimsy still talked to us, a little.

"The service concluded this morning." The man says. "We'll have another at this time next week, and our Bible study group meets on Wednesdays at eight." He definitely senses the confusion in our eyes, because his smile wavers, just a touch. Most of us can guess the exact moment people turn on us. It's rarely a dangerous situation, but you can't trust people. You can't even trust others of us, or at least Angel says, and Adaline agrees for different reasons, but you really can't trust people.

"Can we go in the sanctuary now?" I ask, the word foreign on my tongue. It's so long.

"Of course we can go in the sanctuary. Thank you so much, sir." Angel loves the word sanctuary. I can tell by the way her voice clicks over every syllable, dripping with satisfaction. Angel likes long words. She likes us because we're like the longest words ever. She looks at us like how she looks at books she likes. We're fascinating.

I open the door, my hand jumping out of Adaline's grip. I feel her fingers go for my hand but I'm standing under the thousands of lights already, cosmos away from either of them. I feel breath leave my mouth, the color spinning in my eyes. I almost fall down just from the impact of the concentration. The pictures bleed into each other, overwhelming light gushing out of each. I breathe quickly, placing a hand against one of the desks, and realize that I'm smiling from ear to ear.

Drawing a hand across my face, I permit myself to look back at the heavens and laugh. Angel and Adaline are a ways off, and their hair is so light that it, like their skin, is completely colored over.

The fractured lines between colored segments trace up Adaline's arms and across her face. "It's beautiful." she says. Her face twitches. I can almost see the thing trying to tear it up from inside her. "I need to go."

"You do?" I ask, holding her hand.

Adaline looks to my hand in hers, to the ceiling, to Angel, and lets go, her fingers back in her hair. "Yeah. Can you stall her?"

Angel is holding a thick book in one of the aisles, her thumb sliding across the cover.

"Not long." I say. "Get out of here."

Adaline smiles at me, relieved, and dashes down the hall, into the darkness. All the doors lead to darkness, now. I hadn't realized there was more light to stand in, but this room, white-walled and patterned with a dozen fractured rainbows, is more beautiful than any sky I've ever seen. I spin, feeling my hair fly up around me, and grip a structure in the middle. Someone's filled it with water, but that's vibrating with energy too. I close my eyes, wondering if this is what was humming, but it's the whole room. I blink open, and see a huge set of metal tubes, with holes poked through. Slowly, I walk up the stairs and am greeted by a set of teeth, elevated on a huge, wooden table. It's the worst table I've ever seen. I don't think you could put anything on it.

It is watching me. I close my eyes again and press a finger into one of the middle teeth.

The room wails. The color intensifies, my senses inflate, and everything seems to hover in the second as noise rocks my bones, so intense that I can hardly even breathe.

The entire world is trembling right now.

The windows seethe with light and I begin to shake, as if I've done something wrong. The rainbow walls close in, the thousands of hands in the murals reaching out for me, trying to get their hands on my body and take it off my skin, to find whatever's underneath...

Footsteps.

I take my finger off the key, hearing the muted sound of someone speaking in the distance. Angel is leaving the man and coming back up the aisle. My hand withdraws itself back into the other. "Sorry," I say. "I didn't know it would do that."

"Where's Adaline?" Angel asks.

"White rooms." I tell her.

"It's called a bathroom." I hate the way her voice peaks when she's angry. I can taste the poison on it.

"I like ours better." I mutter.

"All the rooms in the building are white," Angel snaps. "It's not practical."

Yes, but what's practical about a ceiling like this, or a giant machine like that? There has to be something more than practicality to humans, something they have that we don't understand or can't do. My mouth moves with the right name for it, but I don't know the word. I don't think Angel knows the word either. She takes her hand and holds me with two fingers, dragging me out.

"Awfully sorry for the disruption." she tells the man on the way out.

I stare far into his eyes as I can, trying to see through him. I think he might be smiling at me.

Adaline is hunched in the corner of the bathroom, looking at the floor tiles. She moves back when we enter, drawing herself up onto her feet but keeping her legs bent. Her hands hit the tile and her breath gets frantic, like her throat is closed.

"Addie. You're not having a fit, are you?" asks Angel.

"N-no...?" Adaline says, "It was just loud outside. Sorry. We should go home. I mean, we don't have to... but we could, if you d-didn't want to stick around."

"I want to stay," I say.
"We're definitely leaving," Angel replies, helping Adaline up onto her feet. Adaline falls into Angel's side, and we walk out of the white room and out of the building. I feel the doors closing behind us, and the vivid greens of the grass around us dance in my eyes, filling the space left by the lack of sensation outside. Angel starts at a quick pace and then accelerates, looking back at me the whole time like how dare you. How dare I what? I didn't even do anything this time. This is dumb. I want to be back in there. It was the first remotely interesting thing we did all day.

The sun is making friends with the trees, reddening as it brushes the highest branches and colors the tips of buildings. My head stings a little, but I'm not tired. I don't feel awake, either, though. I grab Adaline's hand again, and she squeezes it.

We stop in a glade of trees at the edge of town, out near the road that never stops going. "They'll be looking for us--this was supposed to be the meeting place, so I can only assume we're early or they're late. They better be here soon. I have to speak with Dylan, anyways." Angel places her hands on her hips. "And then Alex. He should be able to put right some of what I've worked out today."

I shiver at her mention of Dylan. I'm going to miss those movie privileges.

Adaline frowns. "At least we won't watch anything scary anymore. I'm kind of glad, ac-ctually?"

"Yeah," I say.

Others appear around a corner, and I know just by their outline that it's them. I can feel something inside of me pull towards them--natural attraction. What was it called? Opposite pieces of metal... that's ridiculous, metal can't have opposites. It's all rocks. As soon as Angel hits Dylan, I jerk Addie back towards the edge of the group, and then we scoot towards the trees. I help her down behind a tree and stare right into her face.

"I was so having a fit!" Addiee yell-whispers.

I lean in. "Right in front of her?"

"Especially in front of her. They're worse in front of her." Addie clutches at her hair.

"You said they were getting better." I ask.

"Maybe they're not getting better. Maybe I'll never get better. I'm just bored and restless and everything hurts and--and--and--" Addie has her hands on her stomach now. "I didn't even do anything, and no one did anything to me, but--but-- my innards are made of stuffing--"

I place my hand on her shoulder and squeeze hard, until her cold cheek touches mine. It's a little white, paler than normal, but the glow from the red sun returns to it as she leans against me. Her eyes are like pools covered with ice, deep in the winter, which is just a memory for both of us.

"She would kill me if she found out."

"So then don't tell her." I say. "We should... shift older." My mind tilts back towards all those hands. I think about them molding my body instead of trying to tear it off of my skin, lifting me upwards towards that light. It doesn't make me feel any older, or even any more human, but it's stuck in there, on repeat. A shard of discolored glass through one of the murals.

"I don't want to be older. I'm not responsible enough to be older." Adaline whispers.

"I'm... not either." I say, suddenly. I hiccup. "It's okay to be freaked out. That building was weird."

"I didn't even... we don't have to go in one again, do we?" Addie asks.

"It wasn't anything to do with the building!" I object.

"You just said--" Addie complains.

I move my other hand. "I mean, but it wasn't the whole reason. Plus, I'd rather be in the white buildings than the library."

"Libraries don't moan."

"You heard that?"

Red's voice sounds from behind the tree. "Can you two come over here? You're not in trouble, but we're leaving." I catch the glint of his glasses from around the branches of the tree.

"We're coming!" I yell back.

No one tells Red what to do, that's for sure. I should ask him to take us to a building. Actually, he might not want to be around people. Red's weird. "You two didn't stress Angel out too much, did you?"

"Dylan's in trouble." I sing.

"Not in as much trouble as the middle kids are." laughs Red, dryly.

That's not our problem. I lift Adaline out of the dirt, and she grips my hand tight. "It'll be okay," I tell her, quiet enough so she knows that she's the whole world right now. "We've just got to keep walking, and then, one day, they'll let us go wherever we want, and we could go somewhere like the white building, but way out in the woods, and real quiet."

"I like the woods," Adaline says, adjusting her scarf.

I like the moments we can steal to ourselves.