Exposure Day ( Part 26 )

Everywhere I looked I saw faces.



Faces of different sizes and different colours. It was too much to take in because our faces are all the same colour, although some of us go red when we get flustered.


They were talking and shouting and banging their hands together so that they made a noise. I saw men too. Lots of them and some of them with hair on their faces like Noah. I tried my best to find him but I couldn't see him anywhere but then that would have been stupid because I dream him. He isn't real.


Bag was holding my hand so hard I thought that mine was going to break. It was light too. Much lighter than we are used to and a different kind of light. A big yellow ball was floating above us in a strange blue ceiling. I wanted to turn around and run back the way we had come and judging by Bag's face she wanted to do the same thing.


'Dunstt.'


I see her mouthing my name but I can't hear it's sound. The faces all around us are making too much sound and it drowns out my name.


'I can't hear you,' I said. But my words are blown away from me before I could hear them.



I turned around and saw Stick standing behind us. Her eyes looked liked they were on stalks and she was frozen.


Then I noticed the banners that the people were holding. Banners with all our names on. I saw Coin and Ink and Mentha and other names that recognised and others that I didn't. Somebody was holding up a life sized picture of Bag but I don't think Bag saw it. She was shaking and holding her face in her hands. Somebody shouted my name and he had hair on his face like Noah. then others started to to shout my name and Bag's.

We were stood on a round piece of floor surrounded by all the people who we didn't know.



'It's Friday and that means it's Exposure day.'


The voice was louder than anything I had ever heard. It was louder than the warning bells.


'All week you have been voting for the person that you want to leave the house.'


I looked around but couldn't find the source of this voice. It was as if it was coming out of the air all around us. My legs were wobbly and I realised I was shaking as much as bag and it might have been me who was squeezing her hand rather than the other way round.


Everybody started to shout our names. My name and Bag's name. They became one word mixed together just like what happens sometimes on Booth Day when our names get mixed up on the doors.
I have never seen so many people. They all looked as if they were joined together like a chain of paper people.



'Bag.'


Her name was spat out like a pip and everybody started to cheer and to bang their hands together harder. They were smiling and calling out her name. Then somebody came from the faces and grabbed Bag and took her away. It was all too much. I was getting a headache and would need to manifest a Yoogle. I tried to  find  Bag again but she had dissolved into the sea of faces. Now I was alone on the floor. A shaking wreck of a person. I turned round to find the door and to look for Stick but something hard landed on my head and everything went dark.