Chapter Eight - Meeting The Warden
Madeline lay on her cot the next afternoon, playing with her belly button ring and staring at the ceiling. She had already taken her shower and decided it was too hot to change out of the bikini top.
'Besides, they'd better get used to it. Summer's just warming up - no pun intended,' she thought with a wry laugh.
"What's so funny?" Zero asked as he walked into the tent. She looked up at him.
"Nothing. Just thinking. You know how that's like dontcha?" she said, sitting up. He sat down beside her.
"Yeah I guess."
"The first thing you ever said to me was that you thought everyone else thought you were stupid."
"I don't think it - I know it."
Her thoughts went back to when ZigZag called him stupid and she had punched him in the nose.
"I'm not stupid. I just... don't like answering stupid questions," he said, staring at the wall of the tent. Madeline pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear and studied him. He seemed so different from all the others. They were all high-strung and just plain jerks. But Zero was... Zero.
"Zero isn't your real name, is it?" she asked suddenly. He smiled.
"No. My name's Hector. Hector Zeroni," he said. She grinned and gave him a quick kiss on the lips before he could react.
"Well it's nice to meet you, Hector," she said softly, still smiling. "I'm gonna head to the Wreck Room, you coming?"
***
Later that night at the counseling session, Madeline and Zero sat beside each other. No one noticed and they were perfectly fine with that.
"Now I think that since we have Madeline here now that we should get to know one another a little better. We're going to talk about our families tonight," Mom said. "Rex, why don't you go first."
"Umm... I lived with my step-mom and my dad. Mom died when I was too little to remember. I have a big sister, her name's Rachel... that's pretty much it," X-Ray said. Pendanski nodded.
"Madeline - how about you?"
The brunette shifted in her seat and looked at the ceiling in thought.
"My dad ran out on my mom after he found out he knocked her up... so I never met him and frankly, I don't give a damn if he's alive or dead. I hated my mom. I have a little half-sister and we had a dog named Bam. My sister thought of the name. Personally, I thought it was stupid. Bam was a good dog though. Dunno what happened to him. Ran away from home when I was 13. Who knows what happened to Mom and my sister."
Zero looked at Madeline, who was now staring angrily at the ground. Pendanski looked uncomfortable.
"Alright... how about you Alan?"
***
Her heart felt so heavy as she stared up at the starry sky. Talking about her past had never been this hard to do. Maybe it was because Zero was there. Maybe she was embarrassed about her "family" and thought he would think differently of her. Maybe she just was finally feeling the past three years away from home catching up with her.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and closed her eyes; taking a deep, long breath. Her little sister as she remembered her flashed through her mind. It was of the last time she saw her. Madeline had run away that night and she wanted to kiss her goodnight. Her blonde hair had been pushed back into a messy ponytail, forgotten to be taken down as she laid curled up in the sheets in the room she shared with her half-sister.
"Goodbye 'lil sis. Don't grow up too fast, okay?" she had whispered to the ten-year-old. She sighed and placed a kiss on her small forehead. "And don't make the same mistakes I'll probably end up or have made."
By the next morning she was halfway to Chicago.
"Don't grow up too fast," she whispered, feeling hot tears press against her closed eyelids. She forced them back and stood up, walking back into the tent.
***
Zero wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He grabbed his canteen and took a quick drink. Before grabbing his shovel, he looked over at Madeline, a couple holes over.
She looked up at the same moment and instantly gave him a small smile, looking around at the others. He returned it and got back to work.
Around noon, Mr. Sir came around with lunches. He stopped Madeline after she grabbed hers.
"The warden wants to see you. I'm supposed to drive you back to camp after you finish eating," he said gruffly. Her eyebrow rose in suspicion and confusion. She looked over at Zero, who looked just as confused as she did.
She finished her lunch and grabbed her shovel and canteen. Mr. Sir told her to get in the cab of the truck. She did.
Soon they were back at camp, pretty much deserted considering everyone was out on the lake. Madeline had never seen it this way. She followed Mr. Sir up to the Warden's cabin and watched him knock. The door open almost immediately, revealing, to Madeline's surprise, a young woman with red hair and freckles covering any part of her skin that wasn't hidden by her jeans, boots, and tank top.
"Come in, Firecracker. Mr. Sir, you can return to the others," she ordered. The sixteen-year-old's eyebrows rose in deep suspicion. How did she know her nickname?
She walked inside. The room was air conditioned, thank God. A television sat on a rickety table in a corner of the room with a worn old couch in front of it. A coffee table sat in between the couch and television.
"Well now... I can't say we've ever had a girl here before," the Warden commented in the same words Mr. Sir had, standing a few feet away from Madeline. "I'm sure it's been stressed that you don't get anything extra just because of that, am I correct?"
She nodded, still not saying a word to the woman. The brunette most certainly hadn't trust anyone in this flea motel and she wasn't about to start.
Well... except Zero. She smiled in her head at the thought, but her lips on the outside stayed in a firm, straight line.
The Warden's eyes moved from her to the clock on the wall.
"I'd imagine you're almost done with your hole so you can go back to your tent," she said. Madeline nodded and walked out of the cabin. She hadn't said a single word the whole time.
***
"What did the Warden want with ya, Firecracker?" Magnet asked later as they all were back in the tent. She shrugged.
"I dunno. Just wanted to see me for herself," she said, not really thinking anything of it. ZigZag snorted. "What's your problem?" she asked, annoyed.
"Well she don't need to get you outta digging your hole just to see you."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Madeline asked, sitting up from her position of lying on her stomach.
"The Warden's got the whole placed bugged. She's got microphones and cameras everywhere," said ZigZag, his crazy hair suddenly seeming crazier. "You can't do anything here without her knowing."
She groaned and rolled her eyes.
"Like I believe anything you say," she said, rolling back onto her stomach.
***
Later, Madeline and Zero once again were sitting outside the tent while everyone else was asleep. They didn't have to talk, they just sat there and looked at the stars, and occasionally at each other.
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she asked out of the blue. He looked over at her.
"No," he said quietly. "Just my mom."
"You were probably lucky. I love my sis and all, but sometimes she got so annoying. And my mom and I never really got along at all. Most of the time I only saw her at dinner if I was lucky. She worked 16 hours a day at the local hospital, usually the night shift," she said. Suddenly her voice got soft and she sighed sadly. "Sometimes I wondered if she even brought half of the money she earned home."
Zero looked at her again. "What do you mean?"
"My mom did drugs. It wasn't like she was an addict or anything... but when she was really stressed out or when we were having enough problems with money as it was, she would buy drugs. I saw her buying from one of the street dealers once," she said softly. He looked at the ground.
"I'm sorry."
She smiled. "It's not your fault. She had her problems. Everyone does, right?"
"Yeah."
They sat in another round of silence before it was broken, this time by Zero.
"When did you start drawing?"
She thought for a minute. "When I was six... or seven. Before I got involved in softball when I got into the sixth grade I didn't really have anything to do besides taking care of my sister. So I just picked up a pencil one day and just... drew. Then it wasn't really anything serious, you know? Just like trees and houses. But one day my sister found a picture I had done of her from a photograph and she got all excited. She basically was what got me started drawing more seriously."
"That's cool."
"Yeah... after I got into softball I wasn't around much anymore. I think she missed me until she got older and we had begun to hate each other," Madeline said.
"Do you miss her?" Zero asked. Her face fell and she shrugged.
"Sometimes. But I just keep thinking she's better off without me," she said. With that, she stood up and walked back into the tent.
*~*
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