Season One, Episode Thirteen: A Love Confession

The next month, Frypan was sent up. Much to the Gladers' delight, he took a fancy to cooking and became the Glade's first Cook. The jokes around this change revolved heavily on Elizabeth's old desire for a chef to be sent up. It appeared the the person or people who sent them here had a sense of humor after-all. Perhaps they had chosen Frypan because he had a passion for cooking. The idea, though ridiculous, eased a lot of the previous tension.

Minho was temporarily out of a job-Nick had ordered him to stay put instead of going into the Maze until his shoulder was healed. Instead of protesting, Minho spent two weeks trying to patch his relationship with Dave, who remained in the Slammer despite a heartfelt confession and apology. No matter how many times they pressed him, he kept silent about why he felt such murderous hatred towards Minho. For this reason, they all agreed that it was best to keep him under lock-and-key. He had successfully killed one of their own, after-all.

Frypan proved to be an excellent cook, earning him much praise from the grateful Elizabeth. She took an immediate liking to him and was glad that one of her prayers had been answered. She no longer had to ingest what she liked to call "poison." Things seemed to calm down once Dave had been caught. Although the death of Ric remained in the backs of their minds, it no longer hung in the air as a dark cloud. The Glade returned to normal, and life resumed.

Elizabeth wiped the sweat from her brow and started digging. Today she had the arduous task of planting the starter trees that had been sent up in the box. She'd already put it off too long, and Zart finally got on her tail about it.

"The hell you think you're doing with those?" he demanded, pointing at the trees in the recently-created tool shed. Elizabeth had shrugged and her nonchalant response really set Zart off. He started cussing her out and lecturing her about the rules of the Glade: everybody does their part-no slackers.

Elizabeth didn't blame him for yelling at her, she had been the one to offer planting them in the first place. Now she berated herself for not getting the job done sooner. She loved being a Track-Hoe, but sometimes she wished they could all have a day off. Shaking her head, she got to work and didn't notice the boy behind her.

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Elizabeth jumped at the voice, dropping the shovel in her hands. She turned around to see Ben looking at her with an apologetic look on his face.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he said. She let out the breath she was holding.

"It's okay. Did you need something?" she asked. Ben bit his lip and averted his gaze, which brought a rising anxiousness in Elizabeth's stomach. After several long seconds he stepped forward.

"I just wanted to catch you while you were alone," Ben suddenly looked up and around, making sure that no-one was paying attention to them.

"What is wrong?"

Ben took another step forward, and suddenly they were so close Elizabeth could feel the fabric of his shirt on her nose. Her face felt like it was on fire. What is he doing?

"You didn't push me away," Ben breathed, his voice no louder than a whisper. Elizabeth's heart pounded loudly in her chest and her face exploded into flames. She froze when he took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.

"You're beautiful," he said. She could feel the timbre of his words in his chest. His lips found her ear and the shock of it woke Elizabeth from her petrification; she shoved away from him, her head hitting his chin. They both stumbled back from the sudden movement, and Elizabeth bent down to grab the shovel.

"Sorry," Ben's face was as red as hers felt, but he was still sort of smiling. She gripped the handle of the shovel in her hands and tried to steady her breathing.

"Sorry," Ben said again, "I just really like you, and I thought you liked me too?" his tone was more hopeful than apologetic, and it took Elizabeth some time to answer him. The silence was deafening. How long had he had these feeling for her? She racked her brain trying to find something that would help-had she led him on in some way?-but she couldn't remember anything. Ben was...Ben.

"No," she said, finding her voice at last, "I don't see you that way."

It was almost heartbreaking to see Ben's face fall. His whole body seemed to sag, and his countenance changed from one of confidence, to one of shame.

"Oh," was all he said. Then he turned around and walked away without looking back.

"What? That's jacked!" Newt exclaimed. He was sitting with Elizabeth in their usual spot, their backs pressed up against the wall. He had asked her if she'd had any more memories, and she had just finished telling him that she was worried about her original intentions of entering the Maze. The poor shank had been walking around thinking that instead of coming to help them, she'd come to hurt them? While the thought might have been possible at one point, he refused to believe that she had risked coming just to throw them off. Elizabeth wasn't that sort of person.

"I just have a bad feeling is all," she said. She bit her lip and turned her head until all he could see was the back of her head. She'd tied her hair up with a piece of string, but it wasn't holding very well. Most of it was coming loose and the whole of it was very tangled.

"Didn't we already go over this?" he asked. "Who you were before the Maze doesn't matter, because you're a different person here. Even if you had the wrong intentions, you still brought an antidote and told us that there is a way out. The way I see it, you were trying to help us."

She shrugged her shoulders, and more hair fell out of its hold. Newt groaned inwardly he went to tug the string out, but instead of easily falling out, it caught on her hair. Elizabeth let out a squeal and grabbed her head.

"Are you trying to scalp me?"

"Just hold still," Newt said, twisting his body more so he could work with both hands. "And anyway, why would someone with evil intent come to the Maze in the first place? You obviously knew that you'd be trapped here. If it were me, I wouldn't have wanted to come all this way knowing that I wouldn't be able to get back. I mean, in all reality you didn't actually help us that much."

"Hold on-I brought the antidote!" Elizabeth lifted her head when he pulled on the string some more. Bloody thing was all knotted around a couple of strands.

"Yeah, okay, but that was pretty much it. You told us a bunch of gibberish about finding a way out and whatnot, but why waste your time on bringing us the antidote and giving us warnings if you were evil? That's pretty stupid."

"It is not stupid! Wouldn't you want your victim to trust you?"

"Elizabeth. You lost your memory and essentially became a different person. We would have had to trust you either way. If you were really evil, I don't think you would risk coming all this way just to get us to like you and then forget everything. That accomplishes nothing."

Elizabeth sighed and let out another small sound of pain when he took hold of the string and tried breaking it free again. She brought a hand behind her head and tried it herself, forcing him to drop his hands.

"Bloody hell Elizabeth, don't you ever brush your hair?" he asked, suddenly conscious of what he'd been doing. He watched her hands work on de-stringing her muddled hair-so small and slender compared to his. When she pulled away, the back of her hand brushed against his nose. He drew away, realizing how close he was. A strange stinging sensation filled his stomach, and he scooted farther away from her. Elizabeth didn't seem to notice. She frowned down at the strands of hair that had been pulled off along with the string and then threw it on the ground and turned back around to lean her head back on the wall.

"Would you rather I brush it, or just cut it all off?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "I have one lousy comb and that's it, plus I work in the sun all day. What do you expect?"

"Well, I'd rather you don't cut it," Newt said, "you'd look more like a guy that way."

"Maybe that'd be better..." Elizabeth mumbled. She shifted her hips and for some reason the movement made Newt uncomfortable. Shuck, what was wrong with him, today?

"Don't cut it." Newt said. "You wouldn't be you that way."

"Oh? And what makes you think I prefer long hair? Maybe I want to be bald, you don't know." Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at him and Newt chuckled.

"True, but if that were true, it would have been shaved a long time ago," he said. Elizabeth cocked her head in thought, her lips pursed together.

"You're right, of course," she laughed. The sound of her laughter was always so pleasant. It was no wonder that everyone was always trying to make her laugh. The air went quiet and a gentle breeze brought the sound of crickets starting to come alive. It was getting dark; Frypan would be calling for dinner, soon.

"Can I tell you something?" Elizabeth's voice was strangely soft. Newt uncrossed his legs and leaned closer to hear what she was saying.

"Sure," he said. She smiled at him and placed her hand over his as it rested on his knee. Her skin was surprisingly cool. As if on a reflex, he flipped his palm over and held her hand. It felt natural-her fingers fitting in the spaces between his with their palms melding together. Her smile widened, creating little creases around her eyes, and Newt smiled back. There was a strange, almost suffocating feeling in his chest and his cheeks felt hot.

"You are my best friend." Elizabeth squeezed his hand. Right. Yes. Newt shook her hand and then let go, suddenly feeling awkward and embarrassed, though he wasn't entirely sure why.

"You're my best friend, too," he said, and it was the truth. Before Elizabeth, he'd always thought of Alby or maybe Minho as being his best friend. Klunk, they were the best friends a guy could have, but he had never been as real with them as he had been with Elizabeth. There was a connection between them that was almost unexplainable. He trusted Minho and Alby and all the rest of them-except maybe Gally and Chris-but Elizabeth was the one who knew him better than any of them. In a way, he trusted her the most.

"That makes me really happy!" Elizabeth said, and then she slugged him in the shoulder. "Let's go eat, I'm starved."

"Yeah, me too," Newt said.

They walked to dinner together in silence, Elizabeth probably thinking about food and Newt thinking about the way her skin felt against his. About the way her eyes crinkled up with sheer joy, the grey-blue of her irises a bit lighter than usual. About the way the color of her hair caught on the first rays of moonlight, falling across her shoulders. About the way she listened and talked as if it was important for him to know as much as he could about what she was thinking, and about the comfortable way they could always go a bit deeper with their conversations. Everybody else was better at small talk, and it was harder to know them that way. With Elizabeth, he felt that he could open up in a way he couldn't with any of the others.

He thought about the way he had felt when she told him that he was her best friend. He'd agreed with her, so why was it so weird? What had he thought she was going to say? Shuck it all, what had he wanted her to say?