The next day was another horrible one. Testing different things, doing work for other companies.

The orphanage was always horrible, but perhaps today was even worse for Oliver. Once his fingers had tasted the feel of bound paper pages they wanted to touch nothing else. Even if his eyes couldn’t feast on a book of written word, his fingers longed to get back to that book.

Oliver had never been so eager to get to bed, even skipping out on hair brushing and teeth cleaning to get towards it. A bad idea, considering the food he’d tasted that day. A good dose of minty toothpaste would have been nice. But he wanted the book. Wanted to make it his own. His diary.

So he’d stolen a pen.

He rushed into the second sleeping room on the left, walking to row 4 of the beds, the seventh bed down. The rotten taste in his mouth was a worthy price for making sure that he had the right bed, claimed it before anyone else could.

Now he just had to wait for the Lights Out call to retrieve his treasure.