The Mars Experience

Chapter 3: Hugo

Donna and Athena go into their rooms, Brianna lagging behind. Slamming shut behind them, she remains frozen at the door. Pretty much anyone can feel the air thicken.

Bree grimaces, feeling the door handle. We have different rooms so we don't usually sleep together but, quickly, I invite her to spend the night with me, Conner, and Jedrek. Way too much has happened for it to not be discussed anyway. Not to mention, leaving anyone alone with a combination of angry Donna and insufferable Athena has to be some sort of medieval torture.

We tiptoe in to find Conner asleep on his back, snuffling. Meanwhile, Jedrek's up, sitting near a single dim light, moving a rock in between his hands.

He puts the rock down. "Hey, where have you been?" Jedrek directs his speech towards both of us, but his gaze stays focused on me. I'm not able to distinguish whether he's concerned or angry.

I wouldn't say Jedrek intimidates me, but he's a big guy. A stocky one who's usually awake with a large rock when I'm in a deep sleep. Just in case he's angry, I hold my breath and hope Brianna speaks before I break into a stutter.

"Dude, you won't believe what happened," she says enthusiastically, completely blanking the fact we arrived late. I shoot her a glance of appreciation and she sends me back a quick wink, clarifying it was strategic. She proceeds to whisper the entire story as we know it and, about halfway through, Conner is disturbed in his sleep.

"Huh?" He asks, startled, rubbing his eyes vigorously.

"Bree?" He questions, blinking rapidly with his eyes bulging out in between. "Hey, are you okay?" he questions once again, jumping off the top bunk to kneel down beside Brianna, examining her closely. She shakes him off.

I flip both our light switches up, revealing two bright LED ceiling lights, along with Jedrek's incandescent lamp burning a soft yellow. Simultaneous groans occur as they all dramatically shield their eyes from the light.

"Hey, remember when I could see?" Brianna mocks. "Good times."

"Turn that off," Jedrek groans.

"Fine," I mutter, flipping them back down.

"Hey, hey, come on, guys," Conner reasons, since that's all he ever does. It seems as if, as soon as he starts talking, the room goes silent just to listen in on what he has to say. "Let Hugo turn the light on. He's our friend. It's just light. We're all up anyway."

He doesn't even wait for an answer before turning a striking one of the two switches on. "Ok," he sighs, sitting on Jedrek's mattress, the bottom one, across from Brianna.

He pulls up his checkered, blue pajama pants to reveal his ankles while he sits, and scrunches up the sleeves of his gray, long-sleeved shirt. "Why are you in our dorm? Did something happen to you?"

"Conner. I'm fine, just..." then she continues to rant on the full story from the beginning, getting gradually drowsy at certain points of the tale. Our eyes drooped heavy and eye bags got to even deeper shades of purple with every long pause she took, trying to recall the details.

It's already six in the morning when she's finished telling the story twice and we've talked about everything; like what we should and shouldn't do. There was a lot to go over.

At one point, we basically got into hushed screaming arguments about whether to help the girl or not, and while we were sleep-drowsy we managed to break into a conversation about ethics and the concept of death. I'm sure the conversation we had while my head spun from exhaustion is how ingesting a mild poison would feel. Since breakfast is served from seven to ten, we collectively decide it would be best to wake everyone up and get ready.