When Everything Changes

Two: "He's Going To Kill Us"

My hand aggressively covers his mouth, muffling his scream which still hasn't stopped. My breath has frozen in my lungs and my eyes are wide with disbelief and panic. How idiotic is this kid? 

“Stop it!” I harshly whisper at him. I look back and forth at either side of the alley we’re in, waiting for the howlers to come running.

“I'm not going to use it! I promise!” I try and calm him down but he just aggressively shakes his head under my hand. 

“You can't scream, you can't. If I lift my hand you can't scream” I repeat it to make sure he understands that we’re both in trouble if he attracts any more attention. 

He won’t stop freaking out so I decide to abandon the sweet and soft side. 

“I swear, if you don't stop freaking out I’m going to make a mural out of you against this wall” that may have been a little more gruesome than I intended but he needs to understand. “I need to leave, your scream created too much danger for me so I'm going. I’m going to let go of you, you either come or go but do not scream”

I slowly lift my hands from his mouth. He doesn't scream or even really move, just stands there staring at me wide-eyed, shaking like a leaf in the wind. I tilt my head towards the other end of the alley in an invite to come along as I turn and begin to rush away from him. After a moment I hear him coming in this direction with fast footsteps. 

After his screaming fiasco, I feel slightly worse about inviting him along knowing he may be more of a liability than helpful. I’m just holding onto the hope that he can be of any help. 

It's not that I'm going to trust him. No, I don't trust him. He almost just gave me away, and if I didn't already have a reason to be careful, he isn't helping. I can’t take unnecessary risks. 

Gabriella’s rules of being around people-

Trust yourselfThere is no one I can trust. Not with my secrets, and not with my safety. I will not turn my back to him or anyone else I meet. 

Olivia comes first. It doesn't matter if these people become even slightly helpful, if they pose any threat, no matter how remote, I will take the measures to make sure she’s safe. She’ll say she can take care of herself, and she can. But if she’s ever in the position, I don't care who can do what. 

Don’t get attached. In correlation with rules one and two, I may have to ditch the people I meet. I may even have to hurt them. And while I have yet to stab someone, I'm sure that day will come. And I'm not sure who’s going to be first. “Where are we going?” he asks seemingly over his fear. Or, he at least believes I won't kill him. 

“Where I'm staying” I answer quietly, aware of how the sun is disappearing under the horizon, meaning that curfew is just about over, us being out is now more of a risk for unwanted attention.

 “We’re supposed to be inside by now,” he comments wearily as if I don’t know.

“So we better hurry up” I quicken my steps and he follows, skipping every few steps. His steps are loud against the pavement and I cringe at the noise. Begrudgingly, I slow down slightly so he will stop stomping. 

I walk up to the back door of the tower and he looks around confused. I twist the handle and push finding resistance against it meaning Olivia is back. I quickly play out our pattern in a series of knocks and taps.

‘Knock, knock knock, tap, knock knock.’

I don't hear her as she makes it down and opens the door quietly. She looks at me and almost misses our guest as he looks at her curiously. Her eyes snap to him and they first widen in panic, then they narrow in suspicion. She doesn't look at me as her gaze is trained on him as if she’s ready to attack. I reach over and take his arm quickly pulling us inside. I can't have us standing out in the open, no matter how dark it is, it's still a risk. 

Olivia’s arms are crossed and she looks between both myself and our guest. He puts his hand out awkwardly, as if he’s trying to be polite but it pains him to do so. Maybe my little knife comment had some effect on him and his manners because this is certainly not the introduction we had. 

“Peter,” he mutters to her. 

Olivia doesn't take his hand or acknowledge that he said his name in the first place. She just looks at him for a moment more before settling her gaze on me. “Why is he here?” she questions sharply.

Peter's hands are now in the pockets of his jeans and his gaze moves from staring at the ground to glaring at Olivia. “I can talk for myself” 

Olivia isn't deterred by his words, her eyes glance briefly at him before returning to me. “I didn't ask you” she answers simply

I sigh. I didn't realize them meeting would be such a hassle. “He’s here because I'm hoping he can be helpful” I interject before anyone can say anything more. 

Olivia raises an eyebrow at me in question. “How?”

“Helpful?” Peter questions looking at me quizzically 

I nod “I said I would help him find his brother who he lost-” 

“i***t,” Olivia mutters and I shoot her an exasperated look, pleading with her to behave. 

“-and when we do, I’m hoping someone will be helpful enough to get us to our next steps.” 

“If we find him” Olivia corrects my earlier statement. “There’s no guarantee that he’s still around” Peter's head whips up from his gaze on the ground, his previous bored look has turned panicked. 

“What do you mean? He’s alive,” Peter looks between us, looking for us to back him up and reassure him that it’s all okay. 

But the truth is, it may not be. There is no guarantee that anyone is safe. If his brother were to freak out looking for him, it would put him out of place and into the line of sight for the howlers. They would deal with him however they see fit. If they got word of a missing brother, they could easily think he was in an alliance with the rebels and ran away from the center to some remote location. 

It is possible to hide, there is no possible way the center can know every place there is. They also believe they have everything under control. That they have us all under a bubble which they keep watch on, but that's not true. 

The houses are all documented and the people living in them. The places they work, the places they shop, the things they eat, they know it all. But anomalies like me, we aren't so easy to keep track of. We can't live in houses like the others, we don't belong there, they would know.

It's part of the reason why we’ve taken up our place in our clock tower. No one comes here. There are no workers for it because we don't need the time from the tower. The time system is all different now, time is now counted in intervals. A loud chime goes off from speaker systems hidden all over the town when it is time to switch activities. You wake up to a chime, go to work after a chime, you go outside when it chimes, you go inside when it chimes. The tower is abandoned, and while before all this happened kids may have come here to explore or on a dare, but everything is now set in stone. The only people who would come here are the supposed rebels, and that could either be a good thing or a bad thing. 

If someone like his brother were to not follow the rules, there's a good chance we won't find him. I just have to hope he’s not like Peter. 

“Come on, I have some food” I begin to walk up the stairs to the top platform, hoping to ignore the conversation. They follow a second later, no words are spoken between us as we make it up and onto the wooden floor. We take a seat and I pull my bag from my shoulder to look inside at what I've gotten from the store I went to. 

I pull out the peanuts and hand them to Peter and take the canned pears to give to Olivia. I go over to our other bag of things we already have and I take out a cereal bar for myself. Coming back to sit in the circle we’ve created, Peter looks at the peanuts disdainfully. “Why do I have to have these?” he holds them in front of him and scowls at the packaging before dropping it onto the ground making a ‘thunk’ sound. 

“Oh my god,” Olivia groans. “He’s going to die?” she shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. “He’s going to kill us.” 

I smack her on the shoulder and push the can of pears she has yet to touch toward her. “Don't think like that” 

“He’ll eat it eventually,” I mumble under my breath as I take another bite of the bar. I have to agree with Olivia in some ways though, he isn't taking this well. He’s certainly not being helpful and the only thing that’s keeping me from throwing him out or keeping Olivia from killing him is the fact that I need to move forward in my life. 

That, and the fact that I don’t trust him to not point us out out of spite. I wouldn't put it past him to run to the nearest person and point fingers at our tower. 

That's what makes me so scared, the fact that now that I've changed something, everything is unpredictable. Before, I knew what to do and what to expect. Now, everything I do has to be thought through carefully. Each step, each word, each act, its guesswork to know if something will go wrong or put Olivia or I in danger. 

“Can you just eat them?” I hear Olivia ask bitterly towards Peter who’s continuously glaring at the peanuts on the ground. 

His eyes snap over to her and he scoffs rolling his eyes.

“What? Are peanuts beneath you, your highness?” Olivia mocks sarcastically.

“You're beneath me,” Peter mutters. 

“Don't you dare,” Olivia seethes “We let you into our home, give you food, keep you from most likely being killed on the streets, and here you are acting like a child. I have no doubt in my mind you’re some high ranking green seeing the comparisons between you and the howlers. And you know what, greens either comply or die. But I'll have you know, running back to the center will only get you killed.” 

Peter goes to speak but she cuts in before he can get anything out. “Especially since it’s been long enough to log your disappearances, they’ll wonder where you've been, what you’ve been doing, who you're related to, and since you’ll be painted as a red or a rebel, so will your brother. If it weren't for my sister I would have changed locations and thrown you to the howlers.”

Olivia takes her pears and stands up, walking over to the staircase and walks down a few steps. She won't go all the way down knowing it’s not particularly safe, so she’ll sit a few steps down, just enough for privacy but high enough so she can get back up quickly in an emergency. 

It's quiet for a few moments, just Peter and I sitting on the floor. I catch him occasionally glancing towards the stairs, likely wondering when she’ll come back or what she’s doing. 

“What are howlers?” Peter asks.

“They’re what we call the officers who keep the order around here,” I lazily draw out a loose outline of the wolf shape on their uniforms in the air. “Because of the symbol on their uniforms” 

We then fall into another few minutes of silence before he asks, “why are we here?” 

I look at him quizzically before it registers in my mind that he’s wondering about the tower. My ‘home.’ 

I've been here so long that it’s become a home to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve slept in a bed or had a cooked meal, but with what's been happening lately, I'm not sure I would rather live elsewhere. 

“This is a clock tower. It's my home,” I answer him. 

His face is twisted in confusion as he thinks about what I've told him. I have to remind myself to not let him know too much. Not while he’s such a liability. 

I know he wants to ask more questions, I can almost see them on the tip of his tongue, but I shuffle around and stand up, wiping off the dust from my pants. “If you’re not going to eat them,” I point at the peanuts still laying on the ground. “Put them in the bag” I then point to the black backpack in the corner. “Then try and get some sleep.” 

He looks around and turns to me like I’m stupid. “A bed would be nice” he says sarcastically 

I roll my eyes and start taking off my shoes. “Yeah, it would.” 

His eyes widen in alarm and I sigh, knowing exactly what he’s going to say next. “You really don't have a bed?”

My irritation levels spike and I sit against the wall while taking out my most recent book I managed to get from a convenience store a while back and set it on my lap with the pages open. I don’t give Peter a response to his question which I can tell is upsetting him but I keep my eyes on the page, trying to read whatever I can while ignoring Peter's eyes which are looking at me like I will smile and call out bazinga! and then pull a bed out of my bag like Mary Poppins. 

“Stop staring at her and go to bed.” 

I look up at Olivia who has come up from the stairs and is taking her respective spot against the far side of the wall. We try to not sleep near the window, in case a scenario we don't want to come true, does.

Peter's head whips around to her and his eyes settle in a glare. “On the ground?”

“Yes” Olivia says in a tone nothing short of irritation. 

She then lays down and turns to face the wall, effectively ending whatever Peter's brilliant response was. 

The little light that was coming through the window is now gone and I know it's time to sleep. I can only hope Peter gets over the whole bed thing and sleeps. I don't need him whining and snarking the whole day. 

Tomorrow I plan to learn as much as I can from Peter. His home, his family, his background, and I especially need to know all their ranks. I will need to create plans based on how much I feel I can trust them. If their loyalties lie with the center, I will have a harder time making allies considering my situation. 

I don't want Olivia to get caught in the crossfire, I was hoping to keep her away from any of this seeing how risky it is, but that would mean leaving her behind and I can't do that. I need to have her back even when she doesn't want it. Even when she says she can take care of herself, I know she can, I need her to be by my side. It’s me and her, against the world.