Free The Hourglass by Casey Donaldson

and she swivelled,
tense and ready for whatever might happen. A sigh of relief escaped her as she
realised it was just Marland. 
    “Morning,” said
Marland. Sarah turned to look at her. She was still making agitated movements
with her hands, and her eyes still flickered around the room, but she wasn’t
trembling anymore and there was almost a smile on her face.
    “Morning. How’s
your roommate?”
    “Actually,
better than I thought. She was a bit, um, well that’s her,” she said, pointing
towards a hulking mass of a girl with greasy hair, “if you know what I mean,
and it was a bit terrible at first, but then she found out that I burned down
that shed and she became totally sympathetic. Bit of a fire-bug herself,”
Marland added with a crooked smile.
    “Right.” Sarah
couldn’t believe that she was in a place where arson, something that killed
people, was used as a bonding point. Surreptitiously she pinched her arm in the
mad hope that she would wake up surrounded by normal, sensible people. It didn’t
work.
    “How’s yours?”
enquired Marland politely.  
    “She’s ignoring
me.”
    “Probably not a
bad thing?” Marland suggested.
“My thoughts exactly.”
    They were nearly
at the door now and had reached a slight bottle-neck as the girls slowed down
to pass through. Sarah took this opportunity to stand on her tiptoes and swivel
around so that she was looking behind them.
    “What are you
doing?”
    “Looking for
April. Hey did you hear something last night? Like a thud that came from her
cell?”
    Marland
shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m not sure it was April’s.”
    “Yeah,” said
Sarah softly, “same here.”
    The flow of
girls carried them through the door, down a corridor and up a set of stairs. A
guard was standing next to the stairs to make sure that they all went up and
not further along the corridor. Sarah turned around again, hoping to catch
sight of April, and saw that a guard had appeared at the rear end of the group
and was herding the slow walkers onwards. April was still nowhere in sight. At
the top of the stairs there was a short corridor that ended in a set of double
doors flung wide open. They walked through to find themselves in a large room with
tables and benches bolted down at regular intervals. Along one side of the room
was a buffet style breakfast set-up. The boys had apparently arrived earlier
than the girls, because most of them were already in line, waiting to be
served. Sarah wondered if this was planned and they were woken up earlier, or
if they simply had a shorter distance to travel. She spotted Finn fairly easily
because of his white hair, but he was deep in conversation with Justin and
didn’t see her. They joined the line along with the rest of the girls. It was
all surprisingly civilised. Occasionally one of the girls would branch off and  join
up with a boy and vice versa. Once she got to the front of the line a pimply,
bored looking boy served Sarah some horrible looking porridge and a glass of
rehydrated milk. She looked at it dismally and moved on. Marland joined her
shortly afterwards and they found a table that had nobody sitting at it. Sarah
glanced around.
    “There’s
actually not that many of us,” she noted, “I mean look at all those empty
tables. Clearly the ship was designed for more people.”
    “So?” asked
Marland, pulling a face as she ate her breakfast.
    “Nothing, I just
mean, well, you hear of people getting sent away all the time, don’t you? So
where are they?”
    “Probably where
we’re meant to be, on those farms.”
    “Yeah,” mumbled
Sarah, unconvinced, “maybe.”
    “That or they
were thrown overboard for some infringement.”
    Marland looked
like she was about to expand on this more but Sarah wasn’t listening. She had
been scanning the crowd again for April, only this time she found her. April
was hovering at the back of the food line. Without knowing why Sarah felt comforted.
Turning back to the table she tackled her