Kamden's POV:

Word spreads quickly through little children. Whispering to the next person in the line. The upperclassmen don't care. But being thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. The word spreads a lot faster.

A guy named Sam stands on a chair and announces anything he sees worthy of an announcement to the rest of the room.

"Another transport is coming!" He yells hopping down and running out. Running past the girl's dorm he bangs twice as we all file out slowly behind his rampage.

Heads pop out into the hall behind us as we ascend the stairs to stare from the upper floor windows. The teachers have already built a barricade by the front off and door to stop the few unknowing students that try to look there.

The throng slowly grows behind me as the younger kids run in between our legs to reach the windows first. In the faint hopes of a new playmate, they whisper and crowd watching for any indication of the soldiers reaching for their radios.

Two French soldiers wait outside the chain-link fence. The barbed wire obscures our view of their heads. Another pair waits at the door. The faculty and staff wait inside. Along with more soldiers stationed along the halls. Inside the office waits a cloth bag with basic belongings and then a stack of papers. I know as well as anyone here that the most exciting thing about that bag is the idea of clean clothes and a new toothbrush.

There is an explosion of dust at the end of the road on the horizon increasing the smog in the air. The weak links that puffed their way all the way through the hall gather around the window to see the newest member in our society of broken children.

The staff begins clamoring below. It has been weeks since the last new student and they're just as antsy as the rest of us. The older students climb up over the broken railing and press their bodies against the windows as their feet balance precariously on the thin ledge above a two-foot gap, with the welcoming tile floors on the first floor lie below. If, they were to fall their skulls would bash in. We're not even across the sea fighting.

The younger kids shout in protest then push away from the rail, and find a new window space to gawk at. A dusty city transit bus pulls up, makes a small loop then stops with the door at the mouth of the gate.

The pressure in the room increases by tenfold and everyone draws a collective breath. And we wait. She steps down. In what must once have been mustard yellow slip-on Vans. Leather pants covered in dust, except the clean swipes where she must have been wiping her sweaty fingers. She had on a white blouse covered in multi-colored paint splotches. Her greasy hair is tied up in a messy knot to keep it off her neck. She has pale skin and white hair. Her skin is covered in dirt. A second skin of dust made scales. She looks tall. Her legs are long, and she doesn't have much of a chest. 

The soldiers fall behind her on either side as she hesitantly begins to walk up the concrete steps. She has something clutched in her arms, but I can't make it out. The kids peel away when they saw, that yet again they have been robbed of a new playmate.

It would really suck. Growing up and having a childhood in Gratin. When someone's parents both gets shipped off to hide somewhere in Asia. The government sends them to the nearest boarding school. Glorified juvenal detention. My grandma was watching me for three years before they took me. Granted, she has stroked out, I couldn't fly below the radar when she was in danger, so I took her to get help. She died. And they sent me here.

But, at least I was eight then. I had had some of a normal childhood. The war started in 2091, I was three. My Mom signed a paper saying that if they needed more people that she was WDF. After they announced the draft was coming, my Mother became a Willingly Drafted Female. They left when I was five. It's almost been a decade since I've seen them. Six years since I've seen anyone I'm remotely related to. So I kinda take it back, I had half my childhood here.

The girl falls out of view and she enters the doors below us. A bell rings throughout the school and everyone walks to the stairs. Standing with your age group, we wait. Once you turn eighteen you get to move to the top of the stairs. Boys on the left side and girls on the right. 

The sound of clicking heels comes through the hall, Ms. Venting comes in view with her nice shoes on and lip gloss. She went all out. She clasps her hands together tightly and looks at all of tightly.

"Be nice." She sighs dropping the fake demeanor and becoming the mother we all know.

The new girl comes around in her new clothes and her hair combed out. She has the cloth clutched in her slender and she looks down at the floor and her dusty shoes. It's not fun, looking up the noses of all those people. 

"Jeepe, Draine, and Rette. Show Ms. Koen to her new bed." Ms. Venting instructing looking off the post-it on her fingers.

Three girls, prone to giggling, breakaway and weave down the steps, with big fake smiles. It's disgusting. Because this is not a happy place. Stop pretending. They smiled, two take the arms of the Koen the third leads. I hear them start to mindlessly chatter as they draw further down the hall.

And just as quickly as she came, the girl with white hair was gone.