Smiling Oak's Academy for the Insane.

I hesitated.

Here it was, 10:55 pm.
I was in bed, and Stephanie was in hers, lost in her book of the week, "To Kill A Mockingbird".
The vent was right next to me, and the door was right in front of Steph. Well, if I went through the vent from there, would I get lost? If I just up and left, How would I explain it to Steph and the guards? Hm. I had to take my pick, and I absolutely couldn't bail on "Innocence". I didn't know what she'd do, but I knew it'd be bad if Stephanie was still wearing a bandage around her head.
I hopped out of bed and tied my hair back, making my way to the door.

"Where are you going?" Stephanie's voice rang from behind her book.

"Um," Think, Lydia, think. "I left my ring in the activity room."Yes.

"You'll be lucky if it isn't locked."

I quickly slipped through the door, tip-toed down the hall and, luckily, the activity room was unlocked. Though it was dark.
I pushed the door open, tip-toed to the corner where the vent was, and dropped to my knees.The vent was already unscrewed, so I flipped it open and slid through quietly.

As I'd gotten closer, I could hear "Innocence"s faint voice.

"She's coming. She's on her way."

"Bullshit." Skull retorted in a whisper as vicious as her normal voice.

"I can fucking hear her, Skull. What do you know?" Innocence sounded fed up already, and Skull couldn't argue with it.

Finally, I slid through the vent, into the academy, to find Harlequin, Basher, Skull and Innocence standing around the empty room, all in dark blue jeans and black hoodies, with the hoods over their heads and aligned, as if they were posing for a photo shoot. And there I stood, like a fool, in my blue teddy bear jammies.

"Did they follow you?" Innocence said plainly. But before I could answer, she said, "Of course not. Put these on." She held out a black hoodie and a pair of dark-washed jeans. "Come on now, hurry up. We won't wait for you."

I slipped on the hoodie, took off my jammies and slid the worn-in black jeans just under my butt crack for timing.

"Let's go." She led the crew over to the corner, dropped to the floor and closed her eyes. "Everyone," she said as we all dropped to the floor in a single-file line, "Hold on to your leading person's ankle."

I grabbed Basher's, Basher grabbed Skull's, Skull grabbed Harlequin's and Harlot grabbed Lorenna's.

"Don't get any ideas, Harlequin."

Harlequin giggled as Innocence shivered.

"Let's go." Innocence pressed her palm against the wall, in which formed a hole, just a little bigger than the vent.

We began to crawl through it. It was very dark and smooth, as if it were made out of steel. More like a circular vent. I was sure it was just more of "Innocence"'s witchery and lies, so I was less amazed than the the whole pancake breakfast scene that was that morning.

"We're almost through!" Innocence whispered.
There was no echo. It was more like surround sound in a full living room.
"Hold on!"

Before I knew it, we tumbled out of the tunnel that was about three feet from the ground, into a heap of ourselves.

Innocence stood up abruptly, flailing her arms. "Success!" She whispered as the rest of us groaned in pain.