Alby and Newt came running to them and tried to pull away the guy. It took a while but they succeeded.
"Minho, what is this? What's your problem?" Alby asked angry.
"Well, Dave here, found it necessary to greet the newbie a little too friendly" he said emphasizing the 'too'.
I just stood there, saying nothing. It will be alright. Dave said sorry to me and even if it was under pressure, he still meant it. And then Alby, Minho and Newt took me too the deadheads so I wouldn't have to deal with the others. Jack followed of course and we ate under the trees.
"Thanks Minho" I said even if I could have handled it myself. I probably would have thrown my food in Dave's face.
"Nobody deserves to be treated like that, not even the klunkiest shuckface of the glade" he answered.
"Here is the stick you asked for" Newt said and to my great surprise he gave me a long and firm stick. "Don't use it, okay? It's only to scare the boys a little." I laughed at the thought of me swinging with the stick knocking out every boy.
"And remember, if you hurt someone you get punished" Alby reminded me "And that also counts for you, Minho. You earned yourself a night in the slammer, you shank"
"What's the slammer?" Jack asked
"Sort of prison, newbie. There" Minho pointed to a row of mini-prisons next to homestead. Just when I looked away from the slammer, I heard a grinding sound and when I looked to the place it came from, my jaw dropped.
"Calm down, shanks. It's just the doors that are closing. Daily thing, get used to it" Alby said
"How?" I asked gobsmacked
"Like we know. I don't know, maybe it are unicorns using their magical powers to close the doors? The day that I find out how the maze works, is the best day in my whole life" Minho answered.
"But what's up with the maze? Why have you still not found a way out? Why do the doors even close?" Jack just read my thoughts. The three boys looked at each other and Alby nodded.
Newt sighed and began talking: "We have been here a year. Every day the runners are in the maze and every day they make a map. The walls change every day and we need to keep track of that. Every month or so the patterns repeat each other. So let's say that after so many months we still don't have a solution. I will tell you tomorrow why the walls close, but Minho and I need to check the maps of today" he gave a pat on Minho's arm, stood up and walked away. Alby also stood up and went his own way.
"We are a lot with that, aren't we?" Jack said
"Don't complain, we know more than an hour ago."
"So? How do you know if we can trust them? I don't need to know anything about it. The only thing I want is my memory. I don't even know if I saw you before. What if you killed my family, but I don't know that anymore and now I'm talking with a murderer. Or what if we're all murderers? And that's why we were send here, as a punishment? No, that's not possible. You're here for your punishment. Then we should get a worse one. But what if we went here for a reason? And then someone took our memory? Could that be possible? That we're here because of our own fault? I rather die."
Jack began screaming but then he began to get more quiet the more he talked. At the end of his rant he was sobbing. I quickly sat down next to him and rubbed his back to calm him down.
"Calm down, Jack. Everything will be alright, okay? You can trust me, I promise. Don't give up, you've only been here for a day. We will get through it, good? The fantastic two against the rest, how does that sound? And by the way, I think that we can trust Alby, Newt and Minho. They look alright? I mean, Minho saved my beautiful ass from Dirty Dave"
Jack laughed. "Thanks" He pulled me up and we walked to our hammocks.