Children of the Dead

43| Go Fish

Quinn sleeps in my arms.
   
He was the only one who noticed my absence. The rest were still asleep in the white room. Tears fell down his cheeks and my heart clenched. This sweet boy never deserves any sort of pain or sadness.
           
I thought you were gone are the words he whispered once he calmed down enough to where he could speak; I thought you weren't coming back. I could do nothing more than promise I would never leave him. But I worry that might not be true. Maybe one day Jenkin's little stunts will pull through. Maybe it will be Amon that gets me. Maybe he'll kill me off for having too many interactions with his son, or maybe it will be his son that kills me-. Holloway might regret what happened earlier today and maybe he'll kill me out of frustration that I saw a side that he didn't want me to see.
           
No. Holloway wouldn't kill me, but would he stop the action that would get me killed? He has before, but that doesn't mean he'll do it again.
          
I play with the key card in my pocket, still pondering why he would give it to me. I debate whether I should tell the others. If I keep it secret and they find out it could shatter their trust, but if I tell them they could think I'm turning out like Jayla. Betraying them to save my own skin. I run my finger around the thin edge of the card and decide not to tell them about  it. I pull my hand from my pocket, releasing the card from my fingers. I swipe a few stray hairs from Hartley's sweet face. She looks so calm tucked into my arm, and I wish I could scoop her up and carry her away. Away from the hurt and the fear and the lies. Exhaustion blurs my thoughts as I fall in and out of drowsiness.

"Mornin' Princess." Omar says, the sleep still stuck in his voice. Hartley is gone from my arms; she's up and bouncing around with Quinn across the room.

    "Morning." I mumble, rubbing my eyes. My face feels stiff, like I've finally caught some deep sleep. I pull myself up from my lumpy mattress. My bones pop and crack as I stretch. "Hey Omar? Can we talk?" I want to address what happened last night, between me and him.

    "Sure, after I get my morning serving of mush à la mush." He smiles, hiding the exhaustion in his face. I nod, ignoring his joke and get in line for breakfast. Quinn and Hartley are giggling behind me, intermittently shushing each other.

    "What is going on back there?" I tease, barely looking over my shoulder. I slide a bowl of food towards me as they continue to giggle. "All right, out with it." I say, trying to sound mad, but the smirk on my lips ruins that.

    "Are you in love with Omar?" Quinn blurts out, a wide grin spread across his face.

    "What-no-never-no-" I stammer, my face getting hotter than the "oatmeal" in my bowl. Trinity giggles even more.

    "See? I told you, shes in love with Decklin." Trinity says, but Quinn ignores this and continues before I was able to interject.

    "Are you sure? You're around him a lot." I let out an awkward laugh and glance at Omar, who's chatting away with Cash across the room.

    "Well, I'm around you a lot too. There's not many places to go around here."

    "Yeah, but he calls you nice names, like 'Princess'." Quinn adds through Hartley's quiet laughter.

    "Oh he doesn't call me that to be nice; he does it to annoy me."

    "Oh." They both say in unison

I leave them to their antics to go sit by Omar. I place my bowl gently on the table and slide into my chair. Omar is yet again arguing how terrible Romeo and Juliet is with Trinity. Taylee sits beside her with an amused grin. Cash looks equally as annoyed as Trinity, his eyes darting between the two like he's watching an intense game of ping pong.