Jealousy // Gally x reader

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Stuck

It takes me an abnormally long time to wake up, not wanting to release myself from the hazy ignorance of sleep. When I finally open my eyes, the rest of the Gladers are all scattered around, continuing work with their jobs.

Fry either forgot to wake me for work, or he realises that the events of last night have really messed with my head. Still, I have to go to the kitchen to grab some food or my stomach will begin eating itself inside-out. 

"Hey n/n, how're you feeling?" Fry asks, a sympathetic smile lacing his lips, a similar one lodged in his tone. I try to smile back, but I can't. "Not great to be honest." I reply truthfully, not grasping eye contact with any of them as I snatch an old granola bar from a flimsy basket laying on the top shelf. I feel a warming hand pat my back, and I'm guessing it belongs to Jack, but I don't turn around. Instead, I send a small smile to the floor, and hoping they saw it, speed walk back out into the fresh air.

There's not many places you can go for secrecy in the Glade, apart from my spot in the deadheads, but even that was becoming better known as I visit it more frequently. I can't think of anywhere to hide that wouldn't leave me completely distanced from anyone else.  Although, that might be the worst possible thing as it would leave me alone with my abysmal thoughts.

I lift my head, scanning my surroundings for somewhere to sit, and then I find it. 

The wall. 

The one that has all the boys' names on it, and my own, etched carefully into the rough concrete.

Oh no, please, no.

As much as I don't want to, an unexplainable force pulls me towards it. I try to close my eyes, but they stay wide open, awaiting the devastating reality. And there it was.

Ben's name, with a straight line crossing neatly through it. How could they? Minho and Alby had only just left to find him, but they'd already declared him as dead. My hand skims across it, savouring the last memories I hold of the sweet boy. It soon finds my name nestled comfortably above Ben's.

What if they had crossed me off when I was banished, they would've had to redo it. I'm sure that none of them believed I would come out alive, but here I am, and it's painful not to see them display this same flicker of hope for Ben. But then I remember how he was choking painfully on the abundance of black bile that rose from his throat. If the maze didn't kill him, the changing would.

I sit beside the wall, pulling small tufts of grass from the ground in unconcern. I prayed no one would come talk to me, and thankfully, no one did. I just sat there the whole day, my eyes never leaving the foundation of which we walk on, occasionally flicking my jewellery around my trembling body.

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My ever-growing boredom becomes too much to bare, even in mourning. I push myself off the ground with a rough huff, wiping the remaining sprouts of greenery from my shabby jeans, trenching across the Glade to find Chuck, Thomas, Zart and Newt.

The two trackhoes seem to be hacking away at a large tree stump on the edge of the deadheads, Thomas is most likely supposed to be helping, but he's sitting beside Chuck on a large log. When my eyes glide towards the young boy, he's eroding the small piece of wood away again, deeply engaged in focus.

They're mid-way through a conversation as I pull myself onto the fallen log, alongside Thomas, and they all keep talking, not even acknowledging the fact that I just joined them. It doesn't bother me too much though, I'm still not in the mood for conversation, so I just listen attentively.

"All right, but why would Alby go into the maze?" Thomas queries. It was a fair question, Alby was our leader so it would be stupid to send him to his potential death, but he always accompanies those who go searching for what's left of the banished. "I mean, he's not a- he's not a runner." He continues, watching as the other boys exhaust themselves with work that he's supposed to be doing.