Rain streaked down its grimy windows, turning the outside world into a smear of gray. Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed a sickly yellow, casting long shadows across peeling linoleum floors.

The air smelled like bleach trying desperately to cover up something older and sadder.

A tired-looking woman in a cardigan sat behind a battered reception desk, her glasses perched on her nose as she flipped through paperwork with mechanical boredom.

Standing in the doorway, dripping rain and grinning like a jack-o-lantern, was a woman who looked like a candy store had exploded on her. Bubblegum-and-cotton-candy pigtails. A jacket stitched with diamonds. Combat boots with scuffed skulls on the toes.

She was holding a giant mallet over one shoulder like it was a handbag.

From down the hall, muffled footsteps. The sound of children—quiet, too quiet for kids—shuffling in colorless rows toward supper.