Mission 'Don't get killed'

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Dinner was a pain. My father ordered me to sit next to him, just like it was before I left, and everyone was trying to discreetly stare at me. Which only made it less discrete. After dinner, I help Jenn with the dishes and she tries to fill me in on everything that has happened in the five years of my absence. Jenn is not only an excelent cook, but also the queen of gossip.

'We lost Roger last year.' She says with sadness in her voice. Roger was one of the scouters. 'He was taken by the night guard and later some of our insiders reported that he had been killed in prison.' She looks at me. 'You were so lucky.' She says. I just nod, I don't know what to say and I feel bad about lying to Jenn, who I still see as my second mother.

'You might have noticed it but we have taken in a lot of people the last few years.' She continues. 'More than before you disappeared, that's for sure.'

She's right, I have noticed this, there's a lot more activity and when I was helping Jenn earlier, it already surprised me how much food we had to prepare.

'Most of them are nice.' Jenn says. 'So don't worry too much about that.' She looks at me and I quickly look away.

'You look tired, honey. Come here, let me finish this.' She snatches the tea towel from my hands. 'You should go to bed.'

While I'm walking back to my room – without a guard – I bump into another acquaintance, Tegan. Tegan is the daughter of one of my father's most valued manipulators, one of the only people he would trust with his life. Tegan is one of the nicest people I know and the closest thing I had to a friend here. She's a manipulator, just like her father, and since we are the same age, we were in the same training groups and Jenn taught the both of us how to read and write.

'Hey.' She says. Her straight, white blonde hair is up in a bun and I notice she's wearing lip gloss. I have no idea how she got that, since shopping is not really a thing here. 'I heard you got back.'

'Yes.' I say.

'I can't really talk right now, but we should meet sometime. You know, to catch up.'

'That would be great.' I reply and I muster a smile.

'I really got to go now.' She returns my smile with an apologetic one and we both quickly move on from our extremely awkward conversation.

The next morning I wake up early, something I hadn't expected due to the events from yesterday. I try to sleep again but I can't so I decide to get up and explore, hoping that the early hour works in my advantage and that I won't bump into many people.

It felt weird to be back in my old room again. It looked exactly how I had left it, as if my father couldn't get rid of my belongings. Not that I had many, just some old stuff I'd collected over the years, things the scouters brought me when they had gone shopping or stuff my mother gave me, but I don't know how she got her hands on it. Back then, these things were my treasures and I was convinced that I would never be able to leave it behind, I would never part with it. Then my mom disappeared and I suddenly couldn't bear to look at it again, I had gotten most of it from her. I packed all of it into boxes that I stuffed under my bed, and they haven't been moved from under there ever since. My room is not very big, but it's one of the biggest ones in the building, and I don't even have to share. I never really gave it much thought but as I got older I started to see how much I actually differed from the rest of the community. I had a privileged position, even though it didn't feel that way at all and everyone thought I was living the good life. Little did they know that their lives were a tenfold better than mine.