In which there is an apology and another Box Day
My morning trial starts before the sky is truly light.
Alby isn't around, but Minho, Newt, Dan and Jeff are all gathered outside the Medi Tent where I'm meant to start.
Dan and Jeff are clearly there for moral support. The pair of them stand against the twig-panel wall, giving me quiet cheers of encouragement.
I figure Newt is there in his role as acting leader, but I'm pleasantly surprised when he smiles at me and says a quiet, "Good luck."
I know he doesn't want this for me, so just the fact that he's here is more support than I'd expected.
Minho is ready for a day in the Maze already. He wears his usual clothing; most people just have one or two sets of clothes, a couple of spare shirts at most. His leather brace harness is strapped across his chest, lunch and aid pack tied on the back.
He's brief and straightforward as he lays out the trial.
Across the field, he says. And he puts it in other words, but he means it's a race anyway. Minho is fast – the fastest Runner – and if I can't at least keep within a safe distance, the likelihood of me being able to keep up outside of the Glade is slim.
The running comes easily.
Minho is fast, but as I keep pace, staying right on his tail, I start to register that I'm quite quick, too.
We sprint across the open field, around the cement platform of the Box, past the Gardens and up towards the Bloodhouse.
Minho pulls up by the animal pens on the edge of the woods and I stop next to him.
My heart thunders in my chest; there's a pulsing in my fingers as the blood rushes around. The morning air is sharp as it fills my lungs, but I feel like laughing.
"This way," is all Minho says, before he takes off again.
He sprints straight into the woods.
I follow after him without hesitating.
The twisted roots and leaning branches make this a more difficult run, which was the intention. I have to duck and leap over the uneven terrain.
Oddly, though, much like knowing how to climb a tree, there's something familiar in darting between them from the ground, and I find I like the mental challenge of navigating a path through here more than in the open.
We break out of the trees behind Homestead, running side by side.
We bypass the Slammer and the Keeper's hut, then the rest of the village as boys start to abandon their hammocks for the day.
Minho has pulled ahead again by the time we run up to the Medi Tent.
Newt looks up as we come flying towards them. His expression is more conflicted than Dan or Jeff's, who both cheer as we slow and stop.
I know that Newt half hoped I wouldn't have kept up. A part of me wonders if I'd hoped that, too.
Minho regains his breath quickly. My heart is still beating like it's a tiny bird, hysterical in a cage, but my jagged breathing doesn't take long to even out.
Whoever I was before, I apparently ran a lot.
"She's not bad," Minho says, all back to business, looking at Newt. "Good through the Deadheads. Maybe not yet, but I do think she'll do okay in the Maze."
The look that passes between them is a complicated one, full of things that neither of them has to say aloud to be understood, just like the night before. In it, I can recognise a bond of friendship spanning years.
"Thanks, Minho," Newt says. He casts me a quick look, and then turns his gaze to the other two. "Lets get to Homestead. Breakfast will be up soon."
We walk that way together, and I'm not sure what this means for my future as a Runner, but right now, I'm not sure I want to know.
…
Days pass.
I settle easily into life, in a way I wouldn't have thought possible when I first leapt from the Box.
I still hang out with Dan and the Slicers a fair bit. I'm assured that White-Foot – the rabbit from my first week – is still kicking and they keep me up to date on what happens when I'm with the Med-Jacks.
I spend a lot of time with Clint and Jeff, who are both fun to hang out with, considering the weight on their shoulders. We have a laugh in the Medi tent as we keep everything stocked and ready to use.
Zart and Frypan – though both say I'm a hazard to their workplaces – talk to me regularly, and invite me to sit with them in the evenings.
For our situation, everyone really makes the best of it, and there's still a lot of laughing and fun when we all get together.
Newt is perhaps the most curious of the friends I've made.
He seems to spend his days volleying between the different teams, lending a hand wherever he's needed. He's usually to be spotted with Alby, who follows a similar daily pattern, or with the Runners, when they return for the night.
And despite this, I notice at the beginning of what I think is my third week – time is very fluid here – that he seems to spend a great deal of time with me, too.
We don't always speak, but we may end up sat side by side for lunch or beside the fire after supper, or walking back to the hut together at turn in time.
Newt is friendly. He's a genuinely good guy with a level head and a sense of humour. He also has a bit of a sarcastic streak to match his British accent, but it's easy to see that the Glade has taken a toll on him. Its not just being stuck in it; its also his position as second in command, and knowing all the boys look up to him. I've seen him laugh and joke around, but I've never seen him truly happy in this world.
I don't think I'm truly happy – I don't know if any of the boys are – but I like his presence for what it is regardless.
I think it's through the somewhat unspoken friendship with Newt, that Minho starts to open up to me a bit. He leaves the Runners and joins Newt and I for supper a couple of times, and in the dark, he is less a Runner and more just a teenage boy. Minho cares a lot about everyone, and that weighs on him, doing the job he does, but he wants to enjoy the friends and time he has anyway.
I like him more than I first expected to.
The only person I still make a bit of an effort to avoid is Gally.
Its not that he scares me, or that I don't like him. I don't even think he dislikes me – much. But there's a lingering stiffness there whenever we cross paths.
Which is why, one evening as we eat around the fire – jobs having finished late, as they sometimes do – I leave Jeff and Clint and tentatively sit down on the end of the Log that Gally and some of the other Builders occupy.
Eric smiles at me.
"Eva," he greets.
Gally looks up. He stills for a second before he nods and says, "Greenie."
I'm still a Greenie until the Box comes up again.
"I'm sorry about the sack," I say.
He doesn't say anything, just looks back.
"I'm just…sorry," I continue, wondering if words will help at all. "I figure you don't really like me because I shouldn't be here and I just…you know I didn't have a choice. And you don't have to like me, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry. That's it."
Before I can stand and leave, though, he speaks, turning away from me as he does.
"You're right. I don't think you should be here; but since when has that been our choice? And forget about the sack; everyone's crazy on their first day."
He doesn't say any more. Eric's smile is sympathetic as I finally stand.
But I think I get it.
Gally is a figurehead here; boys look up to him. But he's scared, just like the rest are; only less able to show it.
I don't think he'll ever fully accept me, and that's okay, I realise. It's not about me. It's not even about him.
Its fear at the situation, and that's not something I can fix for him.
I return to my seat by Jeff, and despite living in this prison, something that feels a bit like peace settles in my stomach.
…
Before I know it, I've been here a month.
I'm shutting the goats back in their pen and picking up the three bottles of milk I've collected when the alarm sounds, the noise reaching all the way across the Glade.
"The Box!" Frankie yells from the Butchery.
I quickly tie off the gate and run up to the hut, setting down the milk bottles in the shade behind it. They took one of the geese from the pens earlier, so I know better than to go inside.
As soon as they're set down, I turn and run, pulling ahead of Frankie and aiming for the Box.
Boys pour from all over the Glade and by the time the red doors are lifting out to the sides, there's a circle of us leaning around the opening.
My mind short circuits and I'm taken back to those doors opening above me.
The blinding light.
The too-loud swarm of voices.
The way the space where I used to be hollowed me out from the inside.
White feathers and the green glint on a tiny knife.
Fingers brush against my back and it feels like a kick-start.
I only realise I stopped breathing when I drag in a long gasp of air.
Newt steps up beside me, brow furrowed in concern.
"You alright?" He mouths.
He might have said it aloud, but with everyone talking and the siren going, I can't hear him.
I nod.
He doesn't look convinced, but turns away.
Frypan appears on my other side, smiling brilliantly. "Lets hope it's not a goose this time, eh, Evie?"
I gape at him in surprise for a beat, and then a laugh tears out of me.
Frypan chuckles.
The alarm dies, and Gally reaches down to pull open the grill door.
The usual supplies are stacked in the cage and one of the crates wobbles as something live moves around inside.
There's a boy, lying slightly awkwardly against a barrel, like the abrupt stop threw him there. He looks around sixteen; his skin olive toned and hair cropped short at the sides. His shoulders are still broadening but he's fairly thin. His expression is a mix of utter blankness and fear, an arm held above his eyes to try to block the sun.
"Day one, Greenie," Gally says, seizing the front of his damp, dark red shirt.
The boy is hauled up, onto the grass where he's surrounded by the others.
I stand back, remembering all too clearly how the press of bodies and faces made me feel.
He staggers to his feet, eyes flitting wildly all over and panic setting into his face.
"Where am I? What is this place?" He rattles off. "Why can't I remember anything?"
Looking at the faces of the boys who have become my friends, I can start to see the other side of this. They get asked exactly the same questions every month. They watch everyone find pieces of themselves with each passing day. A Greenie's first day must seem amusing to them after seeing so many.
Thinking of it this way, even my own first day seems a little funny to me. How could I have been so afraid of people like Fry, Zart and Newt?
Better to look back and see the humour than to look back and see the sadness, I guess.
No one should have to forget who they are.
But we have, and we have to cope.
The new Greenie is led to the Slammer at the back of Homestead and shut in. Jackson sticks around to watch him while the rest of us unload the supplies from the Box.
The live animal turns out to be a cockerel, so Dan decides it's more important to keep it alive. With just a handful of chickens left, being able to hatch some more would help just as much as collecting eggs.
Looks like the Box Feast will be a Hog roast instead.
…
His name is Winston.
He's let out of the Pit by noon and Alby walks him around the Glade, just as he did with me, and everyone before me.
He's coping a lot better than I did.
But then, he's not exactly in a minority when it comes to gender.
By the evening, he's already choking down Gally's special Brew and getting accepted into the group as everyone introduces themselves. He's been chanted into the Ring to wrestle against some of the boys and Tim's handed him a welcome pack – hammock, food dish, spoon and other essentials.
The next morning he stubs his foot on a spade and remembers his name.
I wonder, absently, if blunt force trauma is the best way to jar a name from an empty past.
…
Winston settles very quickly in with the Slicers.
He's a natural with a knife and while he can't catch the goats at all and he almost let the chickens loose in his first week, the Butchery seems to be familiar ground.
We agree to disagree on that.
…
With an extra person in the Bloodhouse, I find I have more time to run.
I spend my mornings with Clint and Jeff. I've learned by heart most of their tools and techniques now, and the three of us get along well, even if I sometimes miss the more energetic atmosphere of the Butchery.
The afternoons I help with the animals and work on dead sprints. I'm able to take strides and time off of my first mapped numbers when I race across the field, and through the trees. I find my heart doesn't beat as hard or as fast, and I recover quicker.
With the amount of running I do, I've mapped out almost all the Glade quite quickly. I know the woods lie in a triangular arrangement across one diagonal side of the glade. The Council Hall sits at one corner near the tree-line and the Bloodhouse at the other. Homestead is tucked into the edge not far from the Hall.
And I've run around the walls again, partly to satisfy my curiosity. The Doors that everyone talks about stand on the wall that crosses the open field. But I still recognise three more sets, these ones shut solid and clearly never used, if the amount of creepers, ivy and grass knotted around them are anything to go by.
I'm persistent; mostly for myself. It gives me a kind of freedom that I don't find even in the animal pens, or sitting by the fire at night. But a part of me persists because I can only imagine how difficult it is to really take on this job.
And I can see Newt is concerned, the few times I fly past and he looks up as I go.
The question of why he stopped running; what exactly happened to him, weighs on me sometimes, but I don't want to ask. I remember that fractured look in his eyes from the first time, and I don't want to put it back there.
Despite that, we wind up walking back to the hut alone, almost two weeks into Winston's first month.
The fire has been splashed out, the boys have turned in, and we're on our way to do the same.
"Do you think I can't do it?" I ask. I know he still would rather I didn't, but I've never been sure if he thinks I can.
He glances sideways at me. The torch he's holding casts a small pool of amber light around us.
"No," he says. "I think you could, but…I told you its bloody hard, and you'll never really know how much until you actually go out there. But I've seen you; I remember you talking to Gally one night, ages ago. He'd given you no reason to even try – everyone knows he can be bloody stubborn – but you did anyway."
"So?" I ask, unsure where he's going with it.
Newt sighs. We reach the hut, but he sits on the log by the entrance and stakes the torch into the earth. I drop down beside him.
"So," he says, slowly. "The Maze changes a person. Even if you don't actually get stung. Minho doesn't laugh as much as he used to. The boys here, they keep upbeat because this is the only life they know and its not all bad, but the Runners, they've seen what's beyond it. I think…it would be a waste if you lost who you are by going in the Maze."
His words resound in my head; even make me feel a touch of fear. But something inside me steels against it. "I don't think that's totally it," I say.
Newt and I are doing our thing, where we both look ahead while we talk to each other. Sometimes it makes things easier to say.
"Minho didn't lose who he was; he's still that person underneath, but I think that some things make you grow up faster. I think he laughs less because of the responsibility he took on when he became a Runner – it's not because he lost a part of himself to the Maze.
"When we were put here, they took everything – our memories, our pasts, the people we became. But you can't really erase a soul, and I think that some things leave imprints. I know how to climb trees; Winston can already skin a rabbit quicker than Dan. Zart has a green thumb. Our memories are gone, but they couldn't take who we are, so how can the Maze?"
Newt is silent, and when I shoot him a look, his expression is blank.
"Then maybe I was broken before the Maze," he says, very quietly.
I hold my breath, and let it out in a rush.
"What do you mean?"
Abruptly, he shakes his head.
"Nothing. We've got to turn in. Night, Eva."
And, so quickly that I can barely process it, He's stood up and disappeared inside.
By the time I snuff the torch and follow, he's already in his own hammock, pretending to sleep.
I slip behind the partition to my own and curl up.
Something in my chest burns, long after I fall asleep.
…
"We don't talk about it," is all Jeff says, when I ask about Newt's injury.
His expression is closed off, eyes heavy and sad.
Clint doesn't look straight at me and I know there's more to the story.
I let it go. I want Newt to tell me anyway.
But Newt has taken to avoiding me.
I didn't fully realise how much time we'd started spending together until he was no longer there.
He doesn't join us for lunch, and I sit with Frypan and Stan instead. I don't see him anywhere on route to the Gardens when I go to patch up Jack, who almost lopped off his own thumb with a pair of shears. I spot him with Alby mid afternoon, but as soon as he sees me, he's gone.
I spend supper with Dan, Winston and Lee, and join them around the fire as night falls, though it feels a bit empty without Newt or Minho there.
The week continues on, and more than once, someone asks if we had a fight.
I can only reply that I didn't think we did. I'm just not sure what we did have.
...Oops. Sorry for that ending. But on the plus side, it won't be too long until the next bit!
Chapter 5 - Teaser
"Bloody Shank's only gone and stabbed himself," Newt says, not unkindly.
"He lost his grip on the rabbit," Dan clarifies, as they set him on the table. "It scrabbled around and knocked the cleaver-"
"If you want me to fix this, shut up about rabbits," I tell him in no uncertain terms.
-To be posted during the week-