Eden

Four

Anyway, finding out most of that happens later. Right then, the day I arrived, I just sit where I am for a while, in the dust, confused and a bit upset, and wondering what to do next.

I feel hungry, although not quite as emptily, achily hungry as I did when I first woke up. I feel a little dizzy, too, but that soon passes, and I start to think about getting up.

I'm still thinking, though, and haven't actually moved, when suddenly, without warning, the door beside me opens, and someone else is pushed out. Someone who is obviously upset about this, and who is shouting and swearing, and pushing back at the people inside, trying to stop herself being ejected.

She tries, but it doesn't work.

She is pushed outside, despite her struggles, and the door is very firmly closed in her face.

She kicks it. Then she says something under her breath which I'm pretty sure is a swear word. Then she sees me looking at her, and glares at me, and says, "What do you want?"

I shrug, and look away, and I might have said, "Nothing." I'm not quite sure now.

She takes a step towards me anyway, angrily, making fists, as if she's going to fight me. Quickly, I get up and move away.

I move quickly because I've always been kind of a loner, which means I've always had fewer friends than I'd have liked, and sometimes the friends I did have were a bit rough. Like her. And I move quickly, as well, because I've never been especially good at school, which means I've usually been around a particular kind of person when I'm there. Basically, girls like her.

I've been around girls like this before, tough girls who are willing to fight, and I've been around them so often that I know to back away, quickly, when someone like her is angry and starting to notice me.

Like is happening now.

I stand up, and try to move away, planning just to go.

I try, but this time it's too late.

She's angry and scared and I'm pretty sure she's going to hit me, just to make herself feel better about being angry and scared. Which is fine, that's how people are, but I don't want to be hit. So I walk backwards, as fast as I can. And she keeps coming towards me, still looking angry. In the end, I actually back all the way out of the courtyard we're standing in, out an open gateway, and onto a road.

And then I stop, staring, and once she is outside the gate with me, she stares too.

We stare, because now we can both see the city at the end of the road, which until now has been hidden behind the courtyard's walls. The city towering over us, looming over us, which is like nothing I've ever seen before.