21 Leo

I can't breathe.

It's dark, and I am lying on the cold hard ground, and my lungs have been pressed into my chest so flat that I barely exist in the third dimension.

I am only fear. The terrified thought that pulse in the back of throat. If I wanted to speak, I couldn't. Not only am I exhausted, but I am alone. I'm in a place I don't know, surrounded by people I don't know. Even my own body is one I couldn't recognise in a mirror.

I couldn't tell you the colour of my own eyes. Nor could I discern if I have freckles or not.

"Hey, are you awake?"

I pull myself up to a sitting position, leaning on my hands in the dirt.

I have been awake for five days. Not straight, and maybe the word I am looking for isn't awake. It might be better to say I have been aware. The current situation I am in does not escape me. I am acutely aware of the Glade, and my lack of control, and my own inferiority. I am surrounded by chaos, and I can't create order to this mess, no matter how hard I try.

I can't speak, so I nod at Alby. He gestures for me to follow him, moving a few steps away.

Managing to drag myself off the ground, I follow him into the Glade. There are hammocks around and the Med-jacks offered me the bed in the Homestead, but I couldn't accept. Not while the other girls are sleeping on the ground.

Besides, the little girl is in that bed right now.

"I've been thinking." He begins as I trail along behind him. His figure is barely a silhouette in the dark of the night, only illuminated by the stars up above us. "You were right."

"About?" I mutter. Not trying to be rude, only attempting to clarify. I think I am right about everything I say to him. I was at the meeting after all; he heard my two cents on what we should do with Michelle, what I think she is actually guilty of, and who I think she is.

If I am honest, I pity her.

"About being a representative." He tells me. "You girls threw a whole new variable into the Glade. Shuck, you guys are the first Greenies since Nick died. We need the shucking rules, now more than ever with all the klunk going on. So I'm giving you a seat on the council."

What? "You're making me a Keeper?"

"Don't get ideas in your skull, slinthead." He tells me. "You ain't going to be given a vote. You'll just be a voice for the girls. You're too shucking new to get an actual say in anything, Greenbean. Though I'll let you be heard, from now on."

"You decided this yourself?" I have so many questions now.

"It was a decision we voted on when we decided what to do with Michelle, you know, after..." he trails off before looking back at me. "Whatever. It doesn't shucking matter now. What does is that we came to the consensus that you deserve a spot on the council, even if you ain't got a vote."

It makes me frustrated, though I am not about to complain. What really matters is having our voices heard. I don't know enough about this place, or the people in it to actually be able to decide the things they do. Banishments in particular, but even something as simple as curfew and who gets to move up to Runner status, and how long someone can work before they are entitled to a break. I am content simply to sit and listen, and speak.

"Why me?" I ask.

He scoffs. "Who else would it be?"

Definitely not Michelle. The other girl is barely lucid when she isn't having seizures. Dawn would not be a suitable choice either, but he doesn't know that. He didn't see what I saw. No one did.

She was kissing Minho. Lips locked, hand on hand, entangled and intertwined with each other. It looked like they couldn't stayed like that for a century, or a thousand years. At least for as long as I have known them.

My stomach dropped. Probably because if it had been Alby that had rounded that corner, she would be banished just as quickly as Michelle.

I shrug though, pretending the gears aren't rapidly whirling behind my ears. That my thoughts don't move like a cohesive, well-oiled machine, jumping from one thought to the next in a matter of seconds. He also doesn't need to know about what Dawn did. I could never tell him what she did.

Because then one of the only people I care about would be dead.

It occurs to me that I barely know her. In fact, I barely know any of them. My loyalties are to both Alby and the Gladers and the girls at the same time. I owe them as much anyway.

"So, I will represent them?" I ask one final time.

He nods, but half of me still doesn't believe him. Of course I am the only logical choice in terms of reporting to Alby, given everyone else's distinct lack of shucks to give about the rules.

As much as I don't talk, Alby talks less. I've seemed to figure out that even if I am given the opportunity to talk I won't. It's easiest for me to take in all the information around me, absorb it, and then react. Interacting with an external environment is not really one of my strong suits, so as far as I am concerned this is the best I have.

He walks up the stairs into the Homestead, and I stop following him. Inside the house there are candles lit, despite the fact that the lights went out more than hours ago.

"Why are you awake?" It never occurred to me that he is up at just as late of an hour as I am. No one else has seen even the sliver of light that bleeds out the cracks behind the blinds.

He pauses as he grips the silver door handle. In the moonlight, you would imagine it to glint like silver, but it is dull and matted. Much like the peeling paint on the building and the creaking windows that block out light instead of letting it in, nothing here is like I imagine it ought to be.

Nothing is beautiful.

He sighs. "It's been a long two years."

I am about to leave him to his business, when he nods at me to follow him inside. It's something I barely manage to do, given his ominous behaviour, and the way that doubt floats in the air and settles on my skin. Colder than the night, it makes me wish my shirt was somehow thicker, and everything somewhat warmer.

"What is it you need?" I ask the boy.

"It's that pipsqueak of a Greenie," he answers. "Whatever her name is."

My feet follow his up the stairs, and I can't think of a word to speak. Sure, there are probably hundreds and thousands to describe the nerves that are compiling in my stomach, but none that I can find. I imagine I have forgotten them.

I stand on the edge of the doorframe, holding on to the light brown wood. He enters the room, and stares at me when I don't follow him. It's not her comatose state I am afraid of, it is the responsibility that comes along with it.

Normally I feel powerless. It is a circumstance I not only comprehend, but accept. In almost everything that has happened to me in my short time here has been completely out of my control. If I go and there and she is dying, there is nothing anyway can do to save her. We are all just slaves to time, and the Maze that surrounds us. Powerless sheep to be herded along.

"What's wrong with her?" I ask him, waiting for an answer.

He shrugs, and when he does I move in to get a better look at her. She lies stiff and still under the covers. Her breathing is soft yet audible, and I can't help but feel like a voyeur staring at her. People aren't supposed to stare at each other without the other knowing. Especially when someone is suffering. We are born to help.

I am not very helpful.

"She's still out," he answers questions I haven't begun to form. "We're beginning to think she isn't going to wake up."

That's absurd. She can't just stop. People don't just simply stop existing in the bat of one eye. Alby is not a doctor; there's no way he knows what he is talking about.

"She's probably just sleeping it off," my breath puffs out my mouth as I lie. "She is breathing after all."

I know that is not entirely a truth. I mean, honestly honesty is subjective. In my lifetime, I will never know the truth. People in power constantly hide it from the masses. It's how they have power over them. I know I will never know the truth, so what is the big deal if I don't speak it to others, especially if it is to their own benefit.

"You're lying."

Alby is very familiar with power. After all, he is in charge of the Glade. He must be familiar with lying to the Gladers to keep them safe. Which means I can't hide from him. Especially not if I want to win a vote someday. For now, I have no power, but Alby is the tool to getting it.

"I know." I tell him.

"We'll keep her as long as she's alive. We ain't putting her down like a dog." Alby looks at me over his shoulder. "We're Gladers, the only thing we have is order."

"Good that." He's right. The second we lose power is the second we lose any sense of humanity. This is all we have, so we had better maintain it for as long as we can.

He smiles at me. "You know, you make be a shucking Greenie girl, but you get it. A lot of shanks here still don't give a shuck about the rules."

I don't know that a give a shuck about the rules, but I know how to play his game. Doesn't mean I am on his side, or agree with anything he has to say, but as long as he thinks I do I am in the clear.

"So when she wakes up, and Michelle gets out, they're my responsibility?" I look to him to confirm the statement.

When he nods I sigh.

Alby laughs, and when I give him a look he answers. "It's funny, because anybody who wants power shouldn't have it, anybody who doesn't want it is ready to have it. Never really thought about it until I became first-in-command. Most of those shucking Keepers are entitled, with a few exceptions here and there. Didn't think you'd be one entitled shank either."

"I'm not ready." I say, but I hope he is right.

~~~~
So my phone and computer both crapped out, so this was a bitch to post. And also it's my birthday. And also, I love the way Leo describe looking at Alby in front of the Homestead.

Be responsible until Wednesday.