Hey guys, I think it might be going too fast. Please review
-thanks- Claire
Chapter 5.
I wake up from another nightmare of reliving Johanna's horrible life to see her huddled in the corner rocking back in forth, and Zeb is next to her, helping her in any way he thinks he can. And that's when I realize something. He loves her. But she's built up a wall, so thick, not even someone from 7 could penetrate it. She made so thick that you can't even puncture it. I walk over to him and offer him some stale bread. He takes it. She begins to shriek and thrash again and I wince.
"Just leave her." He nods and follows me back to the other side of the room. We sit a long time in silence and I listen to the sounds of Johanna and the hurried footsteps of the godforsaken people above us.
"I want a story." I try to think.
"When I was trained, there was a girl. She was climbing a tree and she was just starting out. Because she was so tiny, they made her go to the very top, but she made an amateur climber's mistake, don't climb the branches without leaves. They're dead. She stepped on one; she must've been 10 meters up. She fell and broke both her legs. For two years, her family tried to heal them back because climber and jacks get paid more than average factory workers. She stayed in a wheelchair though and they wheeled her to the factory when she was 9 and continued to work there." I sit there and nibble on more bread. Because of my stories (which sometimes I make up) Zeb has increased our food supply so I'm almost eating normally. He just smirks and drifts to sleep with his full belly.
My days are filled with talking. I talk with Jo about 7 in moderation, just little tidbits to remind her life were like. I talk with Zeb about 7. But, I never bring up Mylar or any of them. I can still see Pillar's face engraved in my brain. I think about what Johanna's life must be like here. How much time she had to herself before I was here? What did she do?
"I want something else." Zeb says. "A real story, not one on how to make a meal off bark. No training stories. 7 couldn't have been daisies and roses. I'm not dumb. Tell me something real."
"Quid pro quo." It's the only thing I know to say.
"I already give you this for that. I brought your sister back alive, I bring you food, I don't need to tell you stories because they aren't keeping my alive."
"Why do you call them stories? They're not fake."
"Bullshit they're not!" He screams. Johanna wakes. I am shocked by his rashness. "I want something real, nothing about training or whatever or how to make bark a meal. I want something meaningful and deep." I bit my lip to hold back the tears. "That's why I haven't brought you the comb. You want me to fix your sister's legs? Well I want something real about what life really was like in 7." I listen to Johanna's ragged breathe. Think Lizza, I think, think up something great about your 'family' and tell something about someone else's family remember, think! Before I can control it, I blurt out,
"The truth is my life was horrible in 7. Johanna was mean, my mother was crazy. My father was a drug addict and my little sister died young." I shut up. He soaks it in, "That's my life in 7, too many daisies and roses for you?" I scowl and turn my back to him. I can hear his heavy, fuming breathes and suddenly he jumps up and strides into Jo's corner. She begins to scream like an animal, unlike any scream before.
"Why do you hate your sister? What has she done?" Jo looks at me. Hatred.
"I hated her to protect her." She looks straight at me. "She didn't deserve my love, she wasn't…" she looks off. Broken. I think, I didn't need to be fixed. She slumps in her corner, relieved. I can already guess Zeb's life.
"Life in two wasn't easy was it?" I can see his neck tense up and he instantly turns around towards me. "Stuck in a sweaty mountain, learning to kill, not only people, but emotions. Learning to be as cold as the stone you're in. I'm guessing a father sent far off to a District to 'keep the peace'. Mother old, and broken from losing contact with her husband, distant, nothing but a shadow in the wind." I creep closer to him. "Left to grow up fast no siblings. You try to find your father, to keep your mother in reality. No love, never loved, never…will." I am slammed up against a wall. He's breathing heavily. The sudden jostle has caused Johanna to clutch her broken mirror. He turns to Johanna and goes in her corner, right in her face but looks straight at me.
"I," he pauses, crying softly, "am done helping you." He turns coldly and turns right when he gets to the door. He throws down 3 bread rations and some water bottles. He opens the door and throws two more things in the room, just right so it lands in Johanna's corner. A comb and a bottle of medicine.