Holding My Breath [Wattys 2016]

2 2 ~ R u s t y

Present Day ~ May 13, 2011

As far as I know, breaking and entering is illegal. Of course, I am knee deep in breaking the law, so I shouldn't be so freaked out about this, right?

Nope. No such luck.

The entire time we are getting into the Gin, my senses are on red alert. Every crack of a branch, every sudden change in the atmosphere, has me jumping out of my skin.

Nobody else seems that way. I don't know about them, but if the police catch me now, I'm done. There is too much resting on my shoulders for me to get picked up by the cops in a cotton gin factory of all places.

The truck ride there had been torturous. I regretted wearing jeans as soon as I had stepped outside, but in the truck bed, I was dying from the heat.

Not to mention the fact that Blue was sitting right beside me and I couldn't even let myself look at him.

I mean, how could I? His dad is a cop! I couldn't risk getting too close to him.

And lord, all Sawyer seemed to do the whole way was stare at me. Thank god we got to the Gin when we did because I was ready to slap that smirk right off his face.

"Whooooo!" Bailey cheers when we pull up to the building where Woodland road ends. Everyone else cheers too and jumps out of the truck, which Colton pulls around back.

The cotton gin is something I don't expect. I mean, I don't really know what to expect, but it's not this.

The factory is a skeleton. Unlike Wallen, this corner piece of the board isn't thriving with stories. It isn't watching or listening. It is rusted, asleep. I feel like it's waiting for someone to wake it up.

A warehouse-type building stands before me, gray and left behind. There are a couple of garage-type doors in the back that seemed to be some kind of loading docks for the cotton. Speaking of which, there is a rusty train track right outside of it, the carts and old train cars stuck in place on top of the rails.

But I can see what they meant when they said it was abandoned. The greenery around it is crawling up the walls and clawing at the windows. The entire place seems broken and done for, dark and forgotten.

But not by the bounding group of friends in front of me. They seem to like it.

We take the back entrance, through the loading docks, having to jump over the train rails. But when we head inside, I understand.

Inside, the place is way bigger than it looked from out in the sun. When you speak, it echoes all the way around the building and back. Sure, there are pipes, poles, chains, and scaffolding everywhere. But the dumpsters and dirt don't bother me when I looked around. It's like a huge, dangerous, dark playground.

There are stairs up to a second level that is made of metal grating and weak plywood. A couple of ladders scattered around, too. There are windows covering one side of a wall, letting some natural light filter in to keep things up. Just like the theater, though, they are clouded from water damage and a few are broken, the glass scattered on the ground.

And of course, there are the old cotton gins, old beer bottles and scraps of this and that here and there.

But really, I have to admit it. This place is pretty cool.

"Hey Ginny, what's up?" Colt asks the factory, patting the wall on the way in.

"Someone is going to jump today," Sawyer smirks at all of us. "I'll make sure it happens."