Oops! My Croissant Started a Coup! | Complete (ONC 2021 Longlister)

9. Meeting the Crew

We were sitting on my bed again the next morning, putting my small pile of clothes into several smaller piles between us so we could have a cover story if a guard interrupted us. Apparently she had a plan to get me into the group of coupsters and somehow get a message out to their connections still on the outside. Probably something to do with the card guard, I thought to myself, but fortunately kept it from coming out of my mouth.

"So how am I supposed to be helpful with this?" I asked. "I mean, I know I mobilized the troops, but I didn't really have a plan beyond that." I didn't really have that plan, either, but that was proprietary knowledge at the moment.

"We're thinking we can keep sending out cryptic messages and maybe have you help us with them. Also, I think it will do them all good to meet you. Maybe you don't play a huge role going forward, but just knowing you could be really motivational to them, you know?"

No.

"Yeah, I guess so. I've just never thought of myself that way." Keep it as close to the truth as possible. That was the mantra I'd actually learned from Mr. Anderson or whatever his real name actually was.

"Well, sometimes we have to be uncomfortable for the change we need to see, yeah?" she slung her arm around my shoulder again and I smiled.

"I guess we're going to find out how much change is actually caused by my discomfort." I tried to force a smile but it was definitely more like the grimace you make when you're smiling for a picture you don't want to sit for.

We were in the middle of discussing our favourite foods when the door clicked and slid open. "Breakfast!" shouted a disembodied voice from the hallway.

"It's time," Winnifred whispered, bouncing excitedly into the hallway and turning around at the door to swing her hand encouraging me to come toward her.

My legs carried themselves to the door and followed her into the stream of other fish in the hallway. We swam through the white-walled hallways until we reached a large open space that looked like a Spanish courtyard.

"Pancakes? Waffles? Fruit?" Winnifred asked. "What are you in the mood for?"

"This is a prison?" I rubbed my eyes and blinked a few times, pinching the skin near my elbow to make sure it hurt. It did. "Are you sure?"

She just shook her head and walked toward the center of the room where there was a large rectangular table set up with food, buffet style.

I don't think I remember a single thing between that moment and when I finished breakfast. "We're going out back to tend the vegetables. Do you want to come?"

Where are the guards?

I must have said that one out loud because three of the girls I couldn't remember the names of laughed and one of them answered. "They're around somewhere. Probably watching a television program or eating the food we don't. Who knows?"

"What kind of prison is this?"

"The kind you can escape from," Winnifred said with a little smirk.

I am definitely not prepared for this.

* * *

6:30 PM marked the end of supper. 7:00 PM marked the beginning of our escape attempt. I say attempt because I was sure at the time that it would be completely unsuccessful. There's no way they will let us escape, I had thought to myself.

Yeah. No.

It was moderately more difficult than sneaking out of my parents house when I wanted to umm... do things they didn't approve of as a teenager. One by one, we had strolled through the back garden to a small area of dirt where a man stood holding a ladder on the other side of the fence, and a woman held one for us to use on this side.

There was no urgency, either. It was like a line of ants returning to the ant hill with their food. Why was I the only one who was worried about getting caught?

Perhaps they could sense my fear because they changed the plans to send me up third, probably so I wouldn't keep doing the jittery dance beside them as they all escaped.

And I do mean all. Every single person in that prison was apparently responsible for political crimes and every single one of them was just marching right out of a jail while the guards watched sports on television and angrily shouted when the wrong team succeeded.

There had to be at least a hundred of us just crawling up one ladder and getting into van after van, driving away to who knows where.

It was at that exact moment that I realized I myself did not know where we were going. And I didn't have my phone. And the guard who was supposed to be keeping me safe in prison was either at home relaxing or ignoring us all so entirely that all of us could just stroll out undetected.

How was I ever going to get out of this? How were my family, friends, or handler guys ever going to find me if I wandered away from this prison? But how was I ever going to find Winnifred again if I didn't? And what would life look like when I got home -- if I got home -- after letting them all escape and gaining nothing from it?

So that's what it was going to be. That was my only choice. I had to get in the passenger seat of the van Winnifred would drive and trust that she wouldn't kill me. Hopefully my usefulness to the cause outshines my nervousness as a person.

"Woohoo!" said a few of the girls crowded into the back as the van peeled out of the gravel roadway and took off on the open highway away from the mountains and back toward what seemed like town. At least there might be a way for me to contact Olivia.

"So, you coming with us or cutting and running?" Winnifred turned to me when we approached the first town.

"Why would I cut and run?" I asked, trying to give myself a moment to decide what to answer.

"Because you were jittering back there like you just drank a swimming pool full of coffee?" She said the phrase like a question.

"Oh, well, like I said I hadn't thought much past the spreading of the word. I wasn't expecting to break out of jail the same day I was brought into it."

"So where do you want us to drop you?"

She doesn't know I don't live here? I looked around into the faces of at least thirty women squished into the van behind me. "I can't leave you guys! I'm in this now. Let's do it!"

And there we were, fully on my own terms, completely cut off from the men in black who had arrested me the first time and smack in the middle of a guerilla group bent on overthrowing the government.

If you'd told me this would happen, I would have checked you into rehab. And yet there I was, cranking up the music on the van's stereo and dancing with a bunch of people I'd never met.

What could possibly go wrong?