Free Thinking Straight by Robin Reardon

folding clothes. Lots and lots of clothes.
    I felt like I needed to giggle. Not wanted to; needed to. And I almost did. With all the white, including the white linoleum floor, the place seemed positively antiseptic. The kids all looked like so many little robots, all dressed in similar clothes, all with similar haircuts, all moving in this regular, automated motion. No one looked up, and no one talked. Some of them had yellow stickers on their shoulders. Like me. Antiseptic white everywhere, like a sterile toilet seat, with the occasional yellow spot of piss.
    â€œYou must be Taylor.”
    The voice startled me, and maybe saved me from giggling, which probably would not have been a good idea. I turned toward the guy, the black guy who’d seen me come in, and opened my mouth, and he held up a hand. I nodded.
    He took the paper from my hand. “I’m Sean. Come with me and I’ll show you the ropes.” He jerked his head sideways and led the way down to the lower level, while I, following behind, watched his ass. I couldn’t help it. The guy was gorgeously built, muscles showing through his clothes as he moved.
    He showed me the ropes, all right. Not that he needed to. I was put to work folding towels, which were—can you guess?—all white. Sean told me that after lunch I’d be learning how to run the washers. In my head I told him, Can’t wait.
    So I stood there on the white floor in front of the white table folding white towels, looking down at my work like all the other kids, except when I cheated and looked around. Not that it did me much good; what was there to see? Pretty soon, after spending some time contemplating how weird it was that a black kid with an Irish name was supervisor over this blindingly white environment, I began to zone out from boredom. I kept my mind occupied by humming one of the tunes Will and I like—the usual stuff about being in love, with a few references to, um, the physically enjoyable aspects, without getting too terribly explicit. But it also talks about touching souls. I could barely hear myself, though; the place was humming itself, what with all the machinery. I was thinking, just before the bell rang for lunch, that if I could do mindless stuff like this and keep my own thoughts, I might just make it through without incident.
    At lunchtime, the quiet and coolness outside the laundry room were a bit of a shock.
    Charles was watching for me, standing just outside the dining hall entrance. Was this normal behavior, I wondered? Not that there was much I could do about it. I couldn’t complain even if I wanted to. But to tell the truth, I was actually kind of glad to see him. Since I couldn’t talk to anyone, I couldn’t make any connection with the other kids in the laundry room. And there were so many of us with yellow stickers that anyone who wasn’t in SafeZone probably didn’t talk out of—I dunno, maybe courtesy? Or maybe they’d been told not to talk at all so they wouldn’t accidentally speak to one of us? Anyway, it was a relief to be with someone who had even the vaguest idea of who I was.
    This time Charles took no chances about having troublemakers sit with us. He steered us to a table with two guys already seated, and after he said grace for us, he introduced me to Hank and Sheldon. Sheldon had a yellow tag like mine, and when Charles introduced us and we nodded obligingly, he said that Sheldon was Hank’s new roommate. So we were a matched set, though Hank seemed almost as humorless as Charles, so no one who could talk made any cracks about bookends.
    Lunch conversation went from how great it had been to have Kelley—whoever she was—open up at Prayer Meeting last night about her sexual escapades with any boy or man she could get and how Jesus had led her to safety, to anticipation of the dinner on Friday. Hank, it seemed, had not convinced any girl to “accompany” him, as they kept