55 Michelle

"So you made all up with David?" Gally grunts, his face contorted into a frown as he puts some of the extra wood away for storage for the night.

"I don't shucking report to you Gally," I spit, throwing the planks I'm holding between my hands back on the ground.

"You kind of do, I'm your Keeper." He retorts back, and I just roll my eyes.

He needs me more than I need him. Tomorrow we drywall, and then finally we should be done that room. Construction will be halted for two days for the room to sit, and hopefully not collapse, so he especially needs me on his side tomorrow morning if he wants to get Alby off his back.

"Doesn't matter," I tell him. "I'm not your shucking servant."

He takes the wood that I dropped on the ground, shoving it into the storage. Not caring about the mess he makes, he knocks things off of shelves which shatter against the hard ground. The sun has long since set, and he doesn't care about anything except finally eating dinner. Gally always leaves a disaster and expects other people to clean up the wreckage in his wake.

"How is it going with Dawn?"

"Mind your own business, and shuckin' wait," I snap back, crossing my arms over my chest. It isn't going particularly well with Dawn, mainly because I haven't tried. She won't say who hit her, and I'm not going to ask.

It doesn't particularly matter to me anyway. If she isn't going to rat, why would I?

"I take it not well," I can hear the smirk in his voice.

"Slim it."

He listens to me for once, shutting the door to Storage, leaning against it.

"She means trouble anyway," he stares at the dirt on his knuckles, as if I am less important.

Why do I always stand here and let him talk to me like this? We are partners; which doesn't mean he gets to shucking walk all over me. The word partners is they part of our arrangement.

"Since when do you give a shuck about what I do?"

"Since you've become such a slinthead." He tells me, finally looking up. "David talks about you all the time, you know. People are going to start thinking you both are breaking Alby's rule-"

"We aren't." Although he liked me, I didn't. I don't.

"That's why you hang out with him outside building," Gally mocks me, and it only makes my blood boil. "You don't even talk to me outside of building, and I'm your shucking Keeper."

"I could hit you so easily right now," I take a step closer to Gally until our chests are pressed up against each others, and we are both heaving. The collective energy of the Glade has risen from simmering to boiling over and over again. I am fire and flame, and if Gally thinks he can talk about Dave like he's going to hurt me then he has another thing coming. I'm not Dawn. I'm not going to get hit by a boy and be unable to take care of myself. Nor am I a stupid little girl who doesn't know any better. I know just fine that Dave isn't going to hurt me, and I'll be damned if I am forced to listen to Gally bossing me around like I'm some shucking slinthead.

"Then do it, huh?" He presses himself further against me, until my back meets the hard door to the storage unit. "If you want to hit me, then do it."

I shove him off of me, my hair falling into my face as I do so. All I see is red. Brushing the strands out of my face does not make the colour go away.

"I shucking will next time." I tell him, shoving my way past his body. My shoulder collides with him, and he is knocked to the side. "I'm busy. Meeting David."

He knows I am saying it just to piss him off but his face glows a hue of red unlike any he ever had before. The tomato-faced boy from before is back, and he's angry.

I'm angrier.

I find myself moving towards the forest. The Deadheads have made me feel sick since my near-banishment. I haven't been able to look at them without feeling a pit in my stomach open up and swallow the universe whole.

I step further into it, trying to breathe although I've forgotten what it feels like not to be angry. I am happy I don't have a weapon on me, otherwise I'd be carving my anger into a tree. After all, I am incredibly mad. Rage courses through me at Gally's audacity. He has put me in a position that is difficult to escape.

Currently, I need to help him put back together everything those shucking Builders destroy. The Glade has a way of destroying all that it touches, and our hands are no different.

At the same time, I'm supposed to be sucking up to Leo and Dawn, which is nearly impossible since they have so many weird things going on at the same time. Ella keeps collapsing, so Leo is rather preoccupied with trying to fix her in ways which are impossible. Meanwhile, Dawn is being beaten to a pulp and not telling anyone who did it nor why they did it.

At the same time again, I'm supposed to be lying low on Alby's radar. This is nearly impossible while I'm trying to be close to Dawn and Leo, since they are essentially magnets of trouble.

Even more at the same time, I'm supposed to be not getting into fights. The solution to this, is having David with me to police my behaviour. However, I'm not supposed to have David with me because he is dangerous, but he isn't. Because Gally has some weird jealous streak over me. I choose to pretend he doesn't like me.

This is literally impossible, and it takes everything I have not to break my hand by punching a tree with all the force I have.

"Of course it's you again," I spin to see Ben standing, leaning, against a tree. his head swings like it's loosely attached to my head as he pulls up closer to me. "You started it all."

I haven't seen this shank in a while. My first night here, he attacked me. Tried to get me to sleep with him; I remember that. Recently he twisted his ankle, or some other stupid klunk, and now he is off running for a while. I don't know how long, but long enough Gally might have to take him back to being a Builder. I heard that's what he was before this.

"You are shucked," I gesture to the now empty glass in Ben's hand. He must've broken into who knows where to get that. Alby's been cracking down on people drinking when there is no bonfire; if I were to tell anybody about Ben's behaviour he'd for sure get thrown in the Slammer at least for the night.

"You girls showed up," he drops the glass, moving forward. His eyes are black with heavy bags beneath them and he has a large purple bruise around his nose in a circle. "Nothing is right now, you know?"

From what I've heard from Dave, nothing much has changed at a fundamental level. Sure, Builders get injured more frequently when working with me, but that's user error. People tend to get shucked more, hanging around the bonfire with Dawn. Alby's gone shucking off the bend now, but I expected that. He's jacked now, from what I can tell he wasn't before.

Though nothing is different. Grievers show up about as much, fights are just as frequent, and supplies come up the same.

He stumbles closer to me, placing a hand on my wrist.

I'm quick to flip up his wrist in a way that actually makes him call out in pain. He backs off of me, pouting with his lips. "You're just like Dawn. Such teases you are."

He reaches forward to touch my hair, and I grip his wrist tightly, pulling his hand behind his back until he cries out in pain. His wrist is pinned between his shoulder blades.

"You like to touch me more than she did though," I can hear his grin even if I can't see it. "She had her mouth all over me though. Sweeter than Gally's drink. I wonder if you burn the way the liquid does when I swallow it."

Ben is ripped from my grasp and thrown onto the ground before me. He lifts his face out of the dirt and the groan he makes echoes through the Deadheads when the figure before me bashes it off the ground.

"What did you do to Dawn?" I recognise that voice, though not well enough that I can identify it.

Ben doesn't answer. The figure rolls him over so that his bloody face is on display for all of us to see. I don't realise I am moving in closer until I can see the blood, so dark it looks black, painting his teeth.

Ben freezes at the face, staring it down. The boy before me reaches down, and punches Ben square in the jaw. Ben coughs, blood spraying out his mouth and painting the boy. I shove the boy off of Ben, looking at the definitely unconscious boy with a broken nose.

"I didn't need your help," I turn to see Minho, the Keeper of the Runners. His shirt is stained with the splatter of blood, as is his face. He looks from his hands to me and I roll my eyes. "Oh quit looking so guilty."

"I was trying to help you," Minho says, out of breath, "I was trying to stop him."

"I didn't need your shucking help." I spit out the words angry at him, although for a second I pause. "Not that he didn't deserve it."

Minho stands up off the ground, wiping the sweat off his forehead. In doing so, he smears blood around his skin. Thankfully it is dark and it just looks like dirt.

I take out the handkerchief from my pocket that Dave used a few days ago to help me clean off the blood. "It won't come out of your shirt until you wash it, but for now just get it off your face. Quit acting like a slinthead."

"I'm not," he rips the fabric from my hand, wiping it across my face. "You aren't the only one who can be violent you know."

I scrunch my nose together, holding my hand out and clenching the handkerchief tightly when he passes it back to me. This seems to be his firs rodeo, with this kind of aggression. The kid doesn't seem clean, the shucking Runner boy. Bet he's the kind of boy that gets in a fight with his best friend over something silly, and the two make up the next day. Doesn't seem like the kind to have fought someone, and meant it. "Sure, that explains why you were sitting next to him like some Greenbean."

"I didn't know it was Ben, that's all." Minho corrects me, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Please," I roll my eyes at his naivete. "He tried to sleep with me weeks ago. Locked me up for hitting him."

"Don't shucking think I'm Alby," he mutters. "I don't have to agree with the shank because I'm a Keeper, Greenie."

"I can see that," I gesture to where Ben lies on the ground. Doesn't seem he gives much of a dman about the fighting rules. I bet he's sleeping with Dawn, and that's why he's upset. Or at the very least, he has a massive hard on for her and doesn't know how to hide it.

Minho's eyes flicker there before flickering back to me. "You aren't telling Alby about this, right?"

I almost laugh at the idea. Who exactly does Minho think I am? "Not this shucking time. Ben won't say klunk. No story, no proof."

"You know, you aren't half as bad as you let people think." Minho looks at me carefully one last time, as if he is trying to find out who exactly I am. It's funny he can't figure out the answer; I haven't tried to hide it.

I scoff at the notion. "Not half as bad? Twice as worse."

~~~~~~~

Really talk, Minho and Michelle are such a brotp. Like, doesn't anyone else see it? They could be like a total crime fighting duo. That's my next story, I swear to it.

I hope you know how much I appreciate every single one of you. Every person who has ever commented. You're amazing.

I'll see you soon, in Ella and a Boy she once knew.