The first night she spent in the Glade, she laid in her hammock for five hours straight. No matter what position she tried, sleep eluded her. Not that she had a choice… she couldn't drown out the noise of far off deep, ground-shuddering and seemingly endless explosions. And then there were all the boys around her—strangers to her, who now shared a cramped living quarters with her—many of whom snored quite loudly, she might add.

And if all that wasn't enough to keep her awake, the shrill, chill inducing shrieks were. The first time she heard it she actually fell out of her hammock and landed on her wrist in a way that made it pop and caused fiery pain to shoot up her arm.

She gasped, tears pooling in her eyes, and she knew that was it for sleep. Her heart raced in her ears. She longed for some feeling of comfort, some sort of protection from the nightmare outside the walls and relief for the pain in her wrist.

She could even hear blood whirling in her ears, and her wrist began a steady throbbing. Tightening her hand into a fist made it worse, and she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead tightly into the dirt. Begging herself not to cry. Wishing she were anywhere but there. Wishing she was deaf, just so she could have some peace and quiet.

"Hey!" A nearby voice scream-whispered, startling her into silence. "Whoever that is: pipe. The shuck. Down."

Her jaw dropped in shock and then slowly closed as resentment boiled deep in her stomach. Oh, there was a war carrying out over the walls, fit with explosions and demonic shrieks—but she was what kept those fools awake? She was the one being too loud?

She bit her lip and drew in a trembling breath, shuffling back to her hammock to stare at the thin fabric that did nothing to keep the night air off her back, which was much colder without a roaring fire blazing. To top it all off, she'd been shivering all night. The boys around her had already fallen back asleep, all of them lumps with a head of hair and the occasional sleep-filled murmur. And of course, there was her brother, passed out like nothing was wrong. Totally unbothered.

Elsie turned around and saw that there were still some dying embers at the bonfire. She sighed and decided to head over. She sank on the ground and scooted as close to the pile of scorched wood as she dared. Heat slowly seeped into her skin as the wind blew it toward her, and she drew her knees to her chest, cradling her wrist as she worried her bottom lip.

Time passed. She started to keep time with the sound of the shifting walls, imagining a symphony playing along with them, and her mind drifted into a delirious concert of some unnamable song that she used to know.

A foot kicked her thigh and she gasped awake. Elsie didn't even realize she'd somehow fallen asleep—she was convinced it would be impossible, in fact—but now she was being shaken and she could hear snickering from nearby.

Rubbing at her eyes, Elsie hissed as her wrist flared painfully. She glared up at a bright-eyed, smirking Newt. "Morning! Welcome to day two, greenie." He looked her over, eyeing the little spot she'd made for herself by the extinguished fire. "I have to confess, I didn't expect you to take me up on my suggestion last night."

Elsie blinked. "Huh?"

Newt gestured down at her. "Your new sleeping spot. I think the others think you're weird now."

She scowled at a few boys who made zero effort to disguise the way they pointed and laughed at her. Her cheeks heated and she grumbled at no one in particular, at the world in general. She'd nearly forgotten that the tall blonde had suggested she should sleep out under the stars. That part of the night felt so far away now.

"Not to worry!" Newt hurriedly assured her. "It's hardly the most embarrassing thing to happen around here, I swear. Just last night someone apparently walked in on Alby in the klunker."

Elsie gasped. "I did not!"

Newt's eyebrows rocketed. Immediately, she regretted her words, wishing to all that was holy that she hadn't just admitted that she was, in fact, the weirdest one in the Glade. He tried to suppress a chuckle and said, "Oh, greenie. We've really got to work on your cover stories. You'll get eaten alive out here if you admit every single embarrassing thing you've done."

Fed up, she pushed off the ground with her good hand and brushed dirt off her clothes. For yet another discouraging turn of events, it seemed that her clean tank top was already stained from dirt and sweat, and she ran a hand over the now frizzy braid that she'd put her hair in last night.

While she was dusting herself off, Newt had continued to try and assuage her humiliation. "It's not so bad, really. As long as you don't get a nickname, you'll be fine."

A sigh escaped her lips and she felt her shoulders slump. "Yeah," She grumbled. "What did you do to get stuck with a name like Newt?"

His mouth opened, then closed. Then opened again. "What? I didn't get stuck, that's just my name!"

Elsie's eyes widened and she covered her grin with a hand. "Oh!" She said, her voice strained from the effort it took not to show her amusement. "I mean, my bad. Yeah, that's a… a perfectly—"

"A perfectly normal name," He finished for her with a nod, his eyes narrowed into a frown. He crossed his arms. She giggled, and his scowl deepened. "You know what? I don't feel so bad anymore about what I came here to do to you."

Abruptly, her giggles cut out. Newt seemed mollified by that as her eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

"Come with me." He turned with an almost gleeful smirk, and something she couldn't quite name shone in his eyes. "You'll see soon enough."

As they walked Newt cheerily waved at a few boys who called out to him. As of yet, not a single one of them had bothered to also greet her. Although it was possible that it was simply because she didn't know them, she couldn't help but wonder if there was a little more behind it.

This only deepened when she actually saw a few boys start to approach Newt, only to spot her and quickly scurry away. Some even outright spun around on their heel and walked back to where they'd come from. And all because they saw her with him. Then, of course, there was the way they still leered at her, from the way she'd braided her hair, to the fact that she had breasts. Elsie scowled to herself.

Moving a little closer to Newt as they walked, she leaned in and murmured in a low voice, "Is there something on my face?"

Newt raised an eyebrow and turned to look at her. Having been invited to inspect her, his eyes roved from her eyes, down her face, then continued down to look at her sleep-wrinkled clothes. He looked back up and his lips twitched. She resisted the urge to cross her arms. Finally, his gaze shifted to watch where they walked. "You mean the Look-At-Me-And-Die sign on your forehead, or the dirt on your nose?"

She gasped and instantly started to scrub her nose. "Where? Did I get it?"

Newt laughed and elbowed her. "I'm joking, you absolute greenbean! Why are you worried about how you look, anyhow?"

Elsie growled at being so gullible to such an obvious trick and really did cross her arms, glaring at a couple boys who veered away to avoid her. "Well with the way that everyone is turning to run every time they see me, I thought maybe I had a leech stuck to my face or something."

"Oh, that?" Newt waved her off. "That's not your fault."

Gratified to have her paranoia confirmed, she hurried to catch up. "Then what is it?"

Newt almost seemed reluctant to explain it to her, but he must have seen something on her face that told him she wasn't about to let it go, so he gave a resigned sigh. "I mean, it's a camp full of teenage boys, Elsie. What exactly did you expect to happen when the only female they've seen in years finally showed up?"

"Well you aren't bothered," she pointed out. "So how daunting can it really be?"

Newt side-eyed her. "You know, it's a little insulting that you assume I'm not brave enough to confront something that intimidates me."

Elsie's eyes widened briefly, and then she felt an unfamiliar sensation surge inside her, and a gradual, smug grin inched across her face. She was practically radiating satisfaction when she turned to Newt. "I intimidate you, Newt?"

He deliberately avoided her gaze. In lieu of responding, Newt pushed through a door and limped into what could only be a kitchen. The early morning sunlight streamed through a window and Elsie took in the sight of light-colored wooden counters lined with jars, bowls and various kitchen utensils.

There was a large wooden island in the center. Behind that, to her great surprise, was a woodburning stove. There was even a fridge and a microwave, bizarrely enough. She hadn't really noticed any artificial lights since she'd been here—only torches and lanterns. But there must have been some type of electricity in order for them to actually use a fridge and microwave.

A boy squatted in front of the stove to stoke the flames inside. He had black hair, dark skin and he was already sweating pretty heavily—no doubt because of his proximity to the stove.

"Frypan!" Newt called, drawing the boy's attention. "Got a greenie here for ya!"

Frypan? Elsie tried not to look as uncomfortable as she felt when the boy took one look at her face, and then threw Newt a dirty look. "Seriously?" He complained.

Newt's lips pressed into a thin line as he tried and failed not to glance at Elsie and shook his head. It was his way of silently sparing Elsie from further derision.

Frypan picked up on his signals easily enough. He looked reluctantly back to Elsie for a moment before apparently deciding something. He slapped his hands to his knees, because he was still squatting, and beamed. "Yeah! You know what? I could use some help here in the kitchens. None of those useless klunks can be trusted with a spoon, so maybe this will be good."

Newt patted her black encouragingly. "Yeah!" he said in the same upbeat tone. "I think this will be the easiest placement yet, don't you?"

"Whoaaa." Frypan held his hands out and shook his head, climbing to his feet. "Let's not get hasty. Luckily this morning's breakfast is one of my favorites, one of my very own recipes." He grinned widely like a salesman.

Newt snorted. "They're all your recipes."

Frypan made a shushing noise. "Slim it! As I was saying, today I'm making Meat Hash Surprise for breakfast."

Elsie felt her face pale. She cleared her throat and stole a glance at Newt. "What if you're vegetarian?"

Newt smacked a hand to his face and Frypan slowly turned his head to sear Newt with a scathing glare. "You serious?" He said, not to her, but to Newt.

"Ah, look, it's not like she'll have to eat it, right?" Newt weakly tried. "Just… cook it."

Elsie would be lying if she said she jumped for joy the idea of cooking meat, but she somehow managed to keep those thoughts to herself and clasped her sore wrist behind her back while Frypan digested the news. He covered his eyes and shook his head for a moment, muttering to himself. Then, he pointed to the door, and said to Newt, "Get out."

Newt didn't need to be told twice. He shot Elsie a thumbs-up that felt a little mocking, and then the two were left alone for the first time. Frypan sighed again and then he pointed to indicate a towel covered bowl that sat on the counter furthest from the door, not far from the stove.

"See that?" He rhetorically asked. "That has dough for bread that I'm planning to serve with dinner. It's already mixed; I started it just before you got here. All it needs to be kneaded." He paused. "No pun intended. You do know how to knead dough, right?"

She shifted. "Um… you just… push it on a flat surface and fold it?"

Frypan looked skyward. "Why, God? Why can't you make them send me just one cook? Just one?"

Elsie couldn't help but grin at his theatrics. Frypan didn't seem to appreciate that she was able to find humor in what he clearly felt to be a depressing situation, and he sullenly went to drag the bowl out. Tossing the towel aside, he waved her over. He didn't bother to take the dough out and just showed her the proper way to knead dough while it was still inside the bowl.

After he stepped aside like he was about to hand it off to her, she moved forward. He reached out to stop her by her shoulder. "Hang on," He said. "You need to sprinkle flour on the counter first, or else the dough will stick. Now, I gotta go grab the meat. You good here?"

Elsie nodded with a shrug. "Sprinkle flour, knead the dough until it doesn't tear when I pull it. Then cover it back up."

He sighed heavily. "I'll hurry back," He said, like he was positive she would somehow ruin everything. And with that, he departed.

She turned to the jars of ingredients he'd gestured to when saying she needed to sprinkle flour on the counter. After investigating a few of them, she finally found one with flour, and she caught some between her fingers, scattered it across the wooden island, and began.

By the time Frypan returned, Elsie had attempted to adapt the way she kneaded the dough to using just one hand. Her other wrist hurt too much to use it. She worried she'd make it worse than it already was if she forced it, and she had also discovered that sometime during the night a swollen knot had formed on the inside of her wrist.

Frypan eyed her technique skeptically. Without commenting, he moved her out of the way and gave the dough a poke. "Uh-uh." He shook his head in disapproval and pointed. "See that? A hole. You gotta keep going."

She sighed and blew away wayward hair that had escaped her braid. "Right," she muttered. And she did. She kept working and, anxious to be done with the task, she even pushed through the pain in her wrist a few times so she could use both hands.

One thing she noticed was that no matter how much flour she used, the dough had begun to change texture—and not necessarily for the better. Instead of becoming more and more firm as she worked in the flour from the counter and kneaded the dough, it had started to almost shed. There were little pieces of the dough dotted all around where she worked.

It made a weird sort of squelching noise when she touched it. She lifted her hands, and there was a string of dissolved dough that stretched out. If she tried to rub it off, it almost smeared out, it was so soft—like a particularly dry butter. "Ugh."

Stumped, she gave up trying to salvage it and submitted to her fate. Surely Frypan would whack her over the head with a rolling pin for this, or something. But when she looked, he was gone. He'd left the kitchen again, and she hadn't even noticed.

The boy hadn't said another word to Elsie all morning. She wondered if it was because he was slow to warm to people, or the same reason that everyone else in the Glade avoided her like the plague.

Elsie cleaned her hands off with a towel as best as she could, sighed, and looked out the door. It had been propped open with a stone, she and realized that she was so engrossed in her work she missed breakfast. Not only was it afternoon already, but there was a rush of people outside. She heard voices and saw boys passing by, most carrying plates of what looked to be sandwiches.

She wandered outside in search of Frypan, and spotted him manning a table with a spread of sandwiches, doling out plates just as fast as he could load them up. There were too many people crowding the table for her to try and force her way in, so she chose to linger on the outskirts and waited for an opening. She rubbed at her sore wrist and tapped her foot impatiently.

"Greenie," drawled a familiar voice. "Hungry?"

She rolled her eyes and elbowed her brother. "Slim it, Alexander."

He smirked and they shared a brief moment of ironic amusement at her use of Glader slang, and the moment passed, and he held out a hand. "Apple?"

Elsie gasped and snatched the fruit eagerly. "Where'd you get this?!"

"Ohhh..." He jerked his head to flick the hair out of his eyes. "I have my ways…" When she elbowed him again he laughed. "Clint gave me one. I told him you were vegetarian. I'm working with the Med-jacks today."

The Med-jacks? She leaned back to raise her eyebrows at him in surprise. "Oh?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Let's just say that Clint is pretty mad at me for taking some of his bandages without asking first."

"That's ridiculous. It's not like he was around, anyway. What were you supposed to do, wait until morning?"

"I mean, not that I think it would've killed me to wait, but I can see the other side of it too. He said he's supposed to evaluate injuries and determine whether they're severe enough to justify using up medical supplies." Alex sighed and shook his head. "I guess they aren't sent up very often. Anyway, there's not really anyone around here in need of a Med-jack at the moment, which probably means I'll get stuck doing odds-and-ends jobs."

She snorted. "Hmph. Lucky you."

"It's probably better that way for everyone involved. I'm not really the type for bedside manner." He looked around. "What about you? Where did you disappear to last night?"

Elsie scuffed the ground with her boot, suddenly very interested in the dirt. "Uh, I couldn't sleep because I was cold, so I went over by the fire and ended up… kind of… sleeping there."

"Hey!" Frypan interrupted before Alex had the chance to extrapolate on that. "What do you think you're doing? What happened to the dough?"

Elsie took a deep breath. "About that—"

Frypan zeroed in on Alex. "Oh, hey other greenie. I heard Clint is looking for you. You sorry son of a klunker."

Alex swore, head darting around as he went to hide behind Elsie. "What'd I do this time?"

Frypan laughed and grabbed onto her shoulder to haul her away. "I don't know but you're not using my greenie as a shield! Good luck, you're gonna need it!"

She wrested herself free of his clutches and tried not to look as nervous as she felt, but it hardly even seemed to register with him. He led the way back into the kitchen and went to check her work. When the counter she'd been working on came into view, he ground to a halt.

Blankly, he stared down. Once it got to the point that Elsie could hardly stand it, he threw his hand out and shouted, "What the shuck did even you do to it?!"

Her hands fluttered fretfully, and she shifted from foot to foot. "I don't know!" she exclaimed. "I did what you said!"

He shook his head firmly. "No. No way, if you did what I said—"

"I'm sorry!"

Frypan barked out a laugh and reached out to poke at the dough. His face scrunched in disgust when a piece of it dissolved into the tip of his finger. "It's… melting."

She made a weird noise with her throat, her hands over her mouth as she awaited him to dole out her punishment.

He lifted his finger to squint closely at it, turning it this way and that in the light. Then, he gave it a sniff. "Hmm." His tongue shot out and Elsie choked in a mixture of surprise and disgust. "Hah! You stupid klunker! You used powdered sugar instead of flour." He paused. "I think."

Elsie covered her face, ashamed. But Frypan went and scraped up the mess from the counter, then deposited it into a trash bin with a flourish. He made a big show of dusting off his hands and shook off a particularly stubborn chunk of the yellowish, grimy mess, watching with repulsion as it plunked against the side of the bin. "Okay then! You ruined the bread for dinner."

Elsie grimly nodded in agreement and rubbed absently at her wrist as she watched him look all around the kitchen thoughtfully.

"You… should start rinsing the potatoes. Think you can handle that?"

She looked at the tub that nearly overflowed with the brown vegetables and suppressed a sigh. "That should be fine."

Frypan gave her an unconvinced look. "They better be. If you ruin those, we're gonna have a problem. Those better not take you all day, either. I need your help with peeling the husks off the corn."

"Shucking." She said it without thinking first.

"Huh?" Frypan didn't stop what he was doing. The blade of a chef's knife ground against the wooden block it was stored in as he tugged it free, a shing! noise cutting through the air. "What'd you do now?"

Elsie blinked at the question and then thought back to what she'd said. She'd forgotten that they used the word shuck as an expletive here. "Nothing—it's just—you said 'peeling' the husks off of corn. There's a word for that."

Frypan did look up now. He stopped peeling off the thin outer layer of an onion and gave her a strange look. "What's wrong with the word I used?"

"Nothing!" She said again, but a little higher pitched this time. Anxious, Elsie wanted to do something with her hands for a distraction, so she busied herself dunking a potato into a pale of water and scrubbed furiously at the dirt-coated skin. "I'm sorry, just ignore me."

Frypan considered her for a moment and then shook his head. "Whatever, greenie."

And for a moment she thought they were past it. But then Frypan shook his shoulders as if to dispel a train of thought. "Actually, why did you say shucking like that?"

"It's the word," She said.

"What word?"

"The better word for peeling corn."

Frypan stared at her. For a long moment, they just looked at each other, Frypan looking bemused and Elsie looking like she wanted to drop the subject altogether. "What."

"Just forget it." Elsie waved her hand in dismissal. "It doesn't even matter."

"You're telling me, that you thinking shucking is a better word for peeling than… peeling?"

She sighed. "No," she patiently corrected. "The act of peeling husks from corn is literally called 'shucking corn'."

Silence. Frypan looked like he wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to laugh, but at that moment someone breezed through the still open doorway with a red, sweaty face. He was panting heavily, like he'd just run a marathon, and he trailed through the kitchen like he owned it.

Elsie's eyes widened at just how thick the dude's arms were. He looked fully capable of ripping the handle right off the fridge. Frypan skidded to a stop in front of the exhausted, dark-haired beast of a boy and held his hands out to keep him at bay. "Hey, hey, hey! No, Minho! We've been over this!"

Without replying, the guy in question—Minho—lifted a large sweaty palm and pushed Frypan out of the way. He then yanked the fridge open and rummaged through it.

Frypan buzzed around like an irritated hornet, the knife still in his hand like he was ready to sting the rude intruder who dared infiltrate his domain against all admonition, and Minho popped back up with a huge pitcher of what looked like lemonade.

"—ought to beat the klunk out of your shuck face! You don't own the Glade, ya know—I can't just let you storm in here and take whatever you shuck well please, then everyone would start doing it, and there's—"

"Dude," Minho rasped as he gulped in a deep breath. The scathing glare he aimed at Frypan was enough to wilt a flower. "We get it. You're in charge of the kitchen." He took another breath. "Relax."

A potato slipped out of her grasp and hit the ground with a thud. It bounced off the floor and rolled under the wooden island. Frypan turned, seething, to glare at her, and Minho looked at her like he was too tired to really care. Then he realized that Frypan was distracted and seized the opportunity to flee.

She scrambled to grab the potato and Frypan yelled at Minho's back. He chased after him—probably to drag him back into the kitchen before he made off with the pitcher—and Elsie plopped on the ground with a great sigh.

She wondered if Alex was having as much trouble as she was, but then, she really doubted it. He had a way of getting really good at pretty much anything in a really short amount of time. Elsie, however, was a girl with markedly few talents, and whatever wasn't in her skill set usually leaned closer on the scale to calamity than triumph.

Still, she was determined to get through washing a few potatoes without incident. With renewed resolve, she went back to the counter and pushed on.

Later that day, she sat against a tree and stared at the spot in the ground where the box delivered her and her brother. She had a plate of strawberries on her knee and she munched on them, alone. The rest of the boys were back at the Homestead, all gathered around to eat dinner together or cleaning themselves off from the workday.

Elsie didn't mind the boys but as the day went on and the stares and poorly concealed whispers about her relentlessly continued, she found she was in desperate need of a break. In need of time by herself, away from prying eyes, time to reflect and continue to come to terms with her new life. Her day with Frypan had been nothing short of a disaster.

Life around the Glade was… simple. They lived like farmers—hell, they were farmers. Stranded without modern day accommodations or adults to tell them exactly what to do, they'd had to adapt. But honestly, Elsie was still wondering how great of a job they were really doing. She knew they were doing the best they could, but they were just kids. Some of them looked to be no older than ten or eleven at most. Then again, boys tended to look younger than they were before puberty hit.

But thinking back to the Glade itself, there were fields where they grew vegetables and tended to the gardens. The structures they lived in were built by a bunch of teens who probably had to guess at how to fix a lot of stuff—by the way the Homestead was constructed, it appeared to Elsie that there was a fair amount of jerry-rigging involved—and to a certain extent, Elsie still couldn't shake the feeling of life in the Glade as the 'the blind leading the blind', so to speak. But she didn't think of it in a way that disparaged any of the leaders there. Alby seemed plenty capable, for one. If a little aloof.

By the same token, life in the Glade was complicated. If you look out from the center of the camp, away from the barn animals and the campfires, there were four-mile high stone walls constructed in a maze surrounding them. Their entire lives were wrapped in a shroud of mystery. Mazes were one of civilization's simplest puzzles, as old as time itself, and yet it was vast enough and intricate enough that they hadn't solved it yet. Despite going out every day, over and over, something kept them coming up short.

The boys didn't strike her as particularly slow, either. Athletically speaking or otherwise. As she sat eating her dinner of fruit and vegetables, her mind conjured the word Griever. Then she thought of last night—the sounds that kept her awake for so long.

"I knew I'd find you here."

She looked up to see Newt limping towards her with a plate of food. "And why were you looking for me?"

"What?" Newt lightly teased as he lowered himself to sit beside her with a grunt. "I thought we were friends."

She snorted. They'd barely known each other a day. Friends? But for a second Newt looked genuinely disappointed—just for a second, before it was quickly buried under an undeterred smile. He leaned against the tree. "I was told to keep an eye on you, if you must know."

"Oh, great," she groaned, rubbing her face. "What did Frypan say?"

"Ohhh." Newt shook his head. "You don't really want to know what Frypan had to say about you."

Elsie found herself laughing, because it was the only thing she could do. She needed to have humor about her own shortcomings in order to convince herself they weren't really that bad. "Honestly I'm surprised I scraped out of there with my life."

Newt was grinning too. "Good that… so… shucking corn, huh?"

She covered her face and fell against the tree beside him. "It's a thing, I swear!"

He laughed at her and knocked his shoulder against hers. "Whatever you say, greenie."

Elsie felt heat rising to her cheeks and quickly looked for a way to change the subject. "What's with that Minho guy?"

"Minho?" Newt frowned. "When did you see him?"

"After lunch he came into the kitchen and stole some lemonade from Frypan," She said with a crooked grin. "I thought the shank was going to burst a blood-vessel."

Newt threw his head back and laughed loudly. "Ahhh, yeah, I reckon he chased him out with a broom. Frypan's a bit of a grumpy geezer when it comes to people raiding his fridge, isn't he?" He asked, the accented word coming out more like itn't he?

"Well, to be fair, Minho was pretty…" She tried to think of an apt description. "Presumptuous."

Newt barked a short laugh. "That's putting it mildly. You can say what you really mean, you know. I'm not gonna run off and tattle."

She tried her best to smile at him, but it might have looked somewhat forced. "I just don't want to rub the wrong person the wrong way, you know what I mean? This is all still new to me."

"Don't worry about that. There isn't really anyone you've gotta watch for. Except maybe Alby, but I don't think I need to tell you that one."

"Who asked you to watch me?" She frowned.

Newt was taken aback by her forwardness. He was careful not to look away, though she noticed that it was his gut-reaction by the way he twitched and then focused intently on keeping his eyes focused on her face and an easy-going smile on his lips. "Sorry. Shouldn't have said it like that."

Now she was really curious. She leaned forward. "Newt."

"It's not as serious as all that," He waved off. "It's just that you and your brother are… I mean, it hasn't happened before. Siblings coming to the Glade. It's just different, and we like to keep an eye out for different. Good that?"

"Okay," she slowly said. "I thought we went over all this yesterday?" What more could there be to say about the matter? Were they really keeping tabs on her? Were they doing the same to Alex? Could this be Gally's influence? Or… was it because she was a girl? She was already so tired of having to question how much influence her gender had over the way the others viewed her or treated her—and yet, she felt that she could never completely rule it out.

"And it's not just that, if I'm really honest with you. We always try to stick close with the greenies—especially in the first couple days." His voice dropped, almost like he was confiding in her. "It was hard for all of us, but we've all been there before, ya know? You've gotta just push through it."

"It?"

He nudged her shoulder again. "Come on. Don't play the tough guy, that's your brother. You're allowed to be overwhelmed."

Elsie nodded in understanding. She felt a little better when he put like that. She hoped they were just keeping an eye on how she adjusted, but some part of her knew they were suspicious. Newt had all but come right out and stated it. "Um… I do have some questions, actually."

"There's a surprise," he grunted. Sighing, he leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. "Go on, then."

"Last night," She started. "It… it sounded like there were explosions—and don't get me started on those screams. I mean, what the shuck was all that?" And why did everyone treat it so normally?

"No one has told you yet?" Newt frowned, eyeing her. At her blank stare, he sat forward and glanced at the now closed stone walls. He scooted closer and lowered his voice, and she could smell whatever soap he used to wash the dirt off from the day. "Every night, the maze moves."

"Wait—it—moves?" She said, breathless from disbelief.

"Rearranges. The walls shift into new positions to create a new pattern, and it completely ruins whatever we've managed to piece together that day."

She felt her stomach drop. If that was the case, how would they ever be able to solve the damn thing? There could be hundreds of walls out there—at least enough of them that it made the number of possible combinations close enough to infinite that, theoretically, they'd never see a pattern repeat in any of their lifetimes.

"And the…" screams fell drastically short of explaining what she'd heard last night. "Other noises? The shrieks?"

Newt met her gaze and her face must have betrayed more than she intended, because it softened slightly in sympathy. "Yeah. Those'd be the Grievers."

Elsie put her head in her hands and tried to will away the prickling in her eyes. Don't start crying, that's pathetic. Don't cry. She felt a crushing sense of defeat wash over her. What was the point? If they—whoever they were—wanted them to solve the maze so bad… why change it at all? Why erase any progress they made? That would be like… like… she was too exhausted to compare it to anything. She just wanted to lie down.

Newt didn't offer her any reassurances—no 'this too shall pass' or any variance thereof. For the first time, he didn't bother to point out a painfully optimistic or reassuring platitude. He just stayed beside her and offered her a shoulder to lean on. He was someone who could obviously relate to the complicated emotions she was trying to work though—and honestly, for all the klunk she gave the boys in the Glade, she suddenly realized they had all been where she was right then. They'd felt the same things she felt. She wanted that to make it better.

It didn't. At least, not yet.

Sorry, this one was a bit filler-ish.

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