"On the walk back I'd felt like maybe I was fitting in and that seemed like a good thing. Maybe this school, for all the craziness, was better than any other alternative. The food was good, the paintball was fun, and I was making friends-real friends. But the graveyard had changed that. I didn't want friends and I didn't want food I wanted to get out."- Variant (118)

Variant was published in October 4, 2011 . This story is about Benson Fisher earning a scholarship to a private school Maxfield Academy, just to find out that this schools has a secret. No one is able to leave the academy. This school has four major rules: No sex, no trying to escape, no refusing punishment, and no violent fights. Break one of these rules then you get "detention". This school is student-run and the students are in "gangs". The largest gang is the Society- they believe that there needs to order, while Havoc believes that there should be no order, the smallest one and they don't have either Society's or Havoc's ideology are Variant or V for short. Benson doesn't want to be in either the Society or Havoc and automatically joined the Vs. He needs to escape but slowly is fitting in.

One interesting fact is that one of the first few that were enrolled in the school is still there and even then she doesn't know all the secrets to the school. Another interesting fact is that one student is passed gradating age but he is still in the school.

Benson is slowly fitting in and starts to think that it isn't that bad but then he realized that some students had been killed not by the school but by the students instead. Sometimes people think a situation could have been worse, and they would sprinkle fluff to hide root of our problem. He sees the true color of the problem.

The relationship between the picture and the quote is the feeling of confinement. Benson and the person in the prison can't escape and feel confined.

Both the quote and the painting mean to me that if I feel confined, I would need to break from there and get into freedom.