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"That's not a name, that's a lousy meal."
He said nothing.
"You don't fool me," she said. "This mute thing, it's just a cover. You came up here on purpose." He kept his silence but it stabbed at him, that she had figured him out so easily.
"Kids for this school, they're chosen because they're smart and they've got initiative. So of course you wanted to explore. The thing is, they expect it. They probably know you're doing it. So there's no point in hiding it. What are they going to do, give you some big bad piggy points?"
So that's what the older kids thought about the pig list.
"This stubborn silence thing, it'll just piss people off. I'd forget about it if I were you. Maybe it worked with Mommy and Daddy, but it just makes you look stubborn and ridiculous because anything that matters, you're going to tell anyway, so why not just talk?"
"OK," said Bean.
Now that he was complying, she didn't crow about it. The lecture worked, so the lecture was over. "Colors?" she asked.
"Green brown green."
"Those launchy colors sound like something you'd find in a dirty toilet, don't you think?"
So she was just another one of the stupid kids who thought it was cute to make fun of launchies.
"It's like they designed everything to get the older kids to make fun of the younger ones."
Or maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was just talking. She was a talker. There weren't a lot of talkers on the streets. Not among the kids, anyway. Plenty of them among the drunks.
"The system around here is screwed. It's like they want us to act like little kids. Not that that's going to bother you. Hell, you're already doing some dumb lost-little-kid act."
"Not now," he said.
"Just remember this. No matter what you do, the teachers know about it and they already have some stupid theory about what this means about your personality or whatever. They always find a way to use it against you, if they want to, so you might as well not try. No doubt it's already in your report that you took this little jaunt when you were supposed to be having beddy-bye time and that probably tells them that you 'respond to insecurity by seeking to be alone while exploring the limits of your new environment.'" She used a fancy voice for the last part.