Holding My Breath [Wattys 2016]

3 9 ~ R u s t y

                 

Present Day ~ July 10, 2011

The music is up loud, and they're all talking at once.

Sawyer is in the corner, feet on the window sill. Bailey working on a canvas by the door. Colt leaning against the wall that used to have flowers. Everyone is in the same spots they were in on my first morning here... The only difference is that now, Blue sits on the other end of the bed, leaning against the wall with his hands behind his head.

I yawn and close my eyes. I don't know how long it's been since I actually slept... the nightmares of what's happened keep me up. Somehow Caesar isn't just everywhere I look. He's wormed his way into my dreams, too.

"You can't possibly be tired yet. It's only six." Colton says as Bailey shoves some big pages into his hands and he turns his attention to her,

"Tape these up on the wall about six inches apart. In this order, too." She doesn't threaten to kick him out, but he does it anyway.

"What are they?" I ask, watching as they are put up on the wall, but they just look like huge pieces of paper with random holes cut out.

Bailey grabs a can of gray spray paint and I watch as she walks up to the wall, spraying where the holes in the pages are. "They're templates I made." She does this to each of the pages before pulling off the templates and grabbing a different stack. "But I have a few more layers to do each time it dries before you can tell what it will be.

"It kind of looks like a spider," Sawyer says, tilting his head sideways at the pattern on the wall.

"Yeah, sort of..." Colton tilts his head too, frowning at the weird marks on the wall from the stencil.

"It's not done!" Bailey groans and scowls at them both. I laugh and she glares at me too.

"Can we go now? I'm bored and there might be traffic," Sawyer kicks the window sill. We all Burst into laughter when his chair falls back and he falls out of it. Serves him right for leaning it back like that.

"Might be traffic?" Blue asks, suppressing his laughter at Sawyer, who is collapsed on the floor and doesn't appear to be trying to get up. "Last year it took us an hour to get a parking space and get in. I'm sure there will be traffic."

"Yeah, see. We could leave now," Sawyer rolls off the floor and drags his feet to the door. I help Bailey put all of the caps on her paint quickly. We make sure everything is cleaned up before we head out too, followed by Blue and Colton laughing among themselves.

I wear my baseball cap to protect my face. There will be cops there, surely, to direct traffic. But they won't be looking for the girl who went on the run months and months ago.

I go through the backup plan in my mind once more. If I'm recognized, I'll find a way to blend in with the crowd so I can lose the cops. Then I can find some way out from there... Not my best plan. Actually, I'm not even sure that it qualifies as a plan...

I'm not just going for the fun. The ticket was a dead end, so the thing that Caesar wants, the person that he wants, could be anywhere. But I know what he looks like. And I know he's in the area. The fair will be crowded, so I can easily hide, and it's likely that this person will be there, too.

We split up between the two trucks because we are going on the highway and didn't want to risk our safety in the back bed of Colt's rusty death trap.

I climb into Blue's truck. Bailey hops in after me, so I'm squished in the middle seat, and it just makes me that more nervous. But instead of freaking out and running, like I usually would, I close my eyes for a second.

I'm not going for me. I'm going for these people. If I can find this man for Caesar, then he will leave us all alone. Whether or not I want to believe it, these people are probably on his list by now. They are close to me. They've helped me. The thing is that now, it's not just my life on the line.

If he comes after me, they might die in my wake.

It's happened before.