Psion Beta by Jacob Gowans

me back to the Grinde r ? No , he assured himself. I’ll be gone before they realize it . But the possibility worried him.
    Exercising in the morning was both invigorating and exhausting. When he stepped off the treadmill and threw on his red hoodie, his legs wobbled like jelly. He was looking forward to a hot shower. It had been almost a year since his last one. The Grinder only had cool water, and at the grocery store, when they started to stink, they borrowed someone’s garden hose or washed in the restroom at the nearby Burger Palace.
    Brickert and Sammy picked out their jumpsuits and took them to the common bathroom. He undressed and laid his clothes over the door of his shower, then stepped onto the cool tile inside. He felt giddy. He had no desire to hurry, soaking in the warm water his palms turned to raisins. After three washes, his hair started to feel normal again. How had he lived without simple things like shampoo or a change of clothes?
    He turned off the water and started the dryer until he felt windblown but clean. After putting on a deodorizing powder, he reached over the stall door for his new jumpsuit, but couldn’t find it. His hoodie was gone, too.
    Someone had taken them. Someone had taken his hoodie—a terribly foolish person.
    He threw open the shower stall and scanned the ground. No clothes. Stark naked, he left the bathroom and marched down the hall to his bedroom. As he passed Kobe’s room, he heard laughter inside. Of course . He pounded on the door, cursing and yelling, “Give me my hoodie back!”
    The door opened and Kobe, Ludwig, and Miguel stood inside laughing hysterically. Sammy knew they had no idea what the hoodie meant to him, and he didn’t care. He grabbed Kobe by the collar and yelled in his face, “Give me my hoodie back, dickhead!”
    Ludwig and Miguel stopped laughing at once. Sammy was taller and built stronger than both of them. Kobe, however, did not seem to get the point.
    “ What’s your deal?” Kobe shouted back, wrenching his jump suit from Sammy. “It’s just a puke prank. Learn how to take a joke.”
    “ Kobe,” Miguel said, “maybe you’d better—”
    “ You really are a puke!” Kobe spat. “Here,” he shoved the clothes back at Sammy, “take your piece of trash hoodie.”
    “ Don’t ever touch my stuff!” Sammy roared, even more infuriated by Kobe’s response. “I don’t like you, and if you take my things again, I’m throwing it down. Get it?”
    Miguel and Ludwig both muttered apologies to Sammy as he passed them. Kobe, on the other hand, did not. Rather, he added for good measure, “Well, don’t come into my room uninvited!”
    Sammy didn’t need an invitation to leave. He crossed the hall, still naked, and entered his own room. Brickert had finished dressing, but noticed the hurricane that accompanied Sammy inside.
    “ What happened, Samuel—Sammy?”
    Brickert’s question didn’t register with Sammy. He was so inflamed from the encounter that his arms and hands shook. He clutched the hoodie to his chest, replaying the encounter over again in his mind, only each time he imagined himself saying something much worse and then punching Kobe in the face and stomach.
    It took several minutes before the anger collapsed on itself, and he came to his senses. He paced around the room to calm himself, afraid that he might do something really stupid. Byron had warned him about his behavior. It was hard, especially remembering the fights he had gotten into at the Grinder over lesser things.
    “ Sammy, are you okay?” Brickert finally asked again. He sounded so young.
    “ Fine,” he told himself more than Brickert. “They stole my clothes so I’d have to walk back here naked. I—I—argh!” The anger threatened to surge back again and he slammed his closet shut. For a moment, he thought he had broken the door. He blew out a long slow breath. “You wouldn’t get it, Brickert. Sorry.”
    His mind went back to the day he got the sweater.