Exiled

Part Two

"Were the-?"

I roll my eyes. Great. Callea stomps toward me with anger written all over her.

She starts yelling but Amir cuts her off saying, "Little ears." and points to the children sitting in their sand pit watching us with wide eyes.

That's another thing. We don't really care about language here. There's no one to tell us what we can say and what we can't. Amir, though, is determined to never let someone swear in front of the children.

Callea looks over at Amir walking next to me and her eyes harden even more with anger. Amir looks away from her and raises a hand to me then heads for his bunk to get ready for his work.

Really helpful. Thanks, dude.

Her eyes shift from Amir back to me. I stand still with my arms crossed. She is not going to put me in The Joint again. It's not even close to curfew. The sky is still beautiful right now. It's not dark, yet.

She looks me up and down and looks me straight in the eye. "I thought you wanted to set a good example." Her voice is stern so it's probably not a good idea to roll my eyes at her again, but I do. She narrows her eyes at me and I stand my ground.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I respond. She blows a piece of hair out of her face and closes her eyes. She's clearly trying not to look bad in front of so many people watching from their bunks.

"Coming back late? Wearing too small clothes? Coming back with messy hair with a boy trailing behind you? You don't think that you're being a bad example?" She says all this in one breath and then stops, breathing heavily.

That's what she was mad about? Me coming back with messy hair with Amir behind me? She can't be serious. Nothing happened!

I open my mouth to say something to defend myself. But then I close it. Might as well make her more mad. There's nothing she can do.

I walk past her and head for my bunk to change for work.

I hear a muffled scream like she was trying to keep herself from screaming out loud but failed.

I duck under the roof edge and then stand up in my bunk.

Our bunks are made out of concrete and are pretty much an entire closed tower. The roof is flat and the whole thing is as tall as the trees. There are no doors or windows. There are four posts that are concrete and the walls run all the way down except when they hit about 5 feet down. There is a gap that runs all the way around the tower that's about a foot tall and then it continues down as concrete for another 3 feet.

We had many wild animals destroy our area when we first settled. So we created everything in concrete and made only a small gap where we could get into our buildings so animals wouldn't be able to.

It sounds like a difficult way to get in but after a while you get the hang of it and you can easily get in with no trouble. All of our buildings are like that, The Joint, Mess, Cookhouse, and the Hall.

I walk to the back of our bunk and make my way to the ladder. We keep everything off the ground so that in case animals do get in they can't mess anything up.

Everyone sleeps in hammocks on different levels. Mine is two levels down from being all the way to the top. The older kids get the ones at the top so that the littles don't have to climb so much.

I climb up the first ladder and then move to the concrete level and navigate around peoples things to then get to the next ladder.

Once I get to my level I see that someone's already in my bunk.