The Enclave

12.Mae

It was boring as hell.

Theo was chatting with a girl behind the counter who was giggling maniacally, Xella was trying on a new shirt and Cisco was eating chips noisily in my ear.

"Stop that." I snapped and swatted him away.

"Stop what? . . . crunch . . . I don't know what you're talking about . . . crunch." I rolled my eyes and moved to another aisle.

            After jumping, I realized that the cold, white fluffy stuff which was called snow made a pretty, good soft landing. Penny had not been happy. She had hauled a series of colourful words at us. We had driven off but as there wasn't enough fuel, the car died on the road. So we had to push it to the gas station. And that was how we got to the mart we were in presently.

I dumped another packet of chips in the cart and moved up. I tossed in anything that looked nice and sweet in the cart. Xella came out and with one glance at her, I struggled not to laugh. She was dressed in a neon pink tee-shirt with palm tree prints. Okay so I was in no position to laugh because mine was like hers, a neon green tee with 'WORLD GREATEST MOM' stitched on the front but she looked so uncomfortable and so not Xella that I almost couldn't stop myself.

"Not a sound or a word from you." She hissed and collected the cart from me. After hours of picking and tossing items I hoped were better than the Enclave's food into the cart, I took it to the counter. A man had now replaced the girl. Theo's cart was almost filled up. Cisco was nowhere to be seen that is until I heard the familiar crunch of chips beside me. I groaned inwardly and shifted slightly. Theo offloaded both carts on the counter and the man scanned the items.

"That will be $90.49." Theo gave the man a crisp $100 note.

"I thought you said you didn't have money." I whispered.

"No, I said I didn't have the money to pay for the faucet to be fixed. If I had wasted this money on fixing the faucet, we would have been hungry and stranded because the car would've been useless dead." Theo replied.

"Oh."

"It seems like the cash register isn't working well. I'll go and fix it." The man said and took the register to the back. I looked around and my eyes fixed firmly on the box-like thing behind the counter and up on the wall. People were on the box thing, talking, laughing, singing and crying. People I'd never seen before. People without golden eyes just like the Grims, White Hats and guards but they weren't like the people in the Enclave. The scene changed and a woman holding up something smiled. It seemed like she was smiling at me so I smiled back and gave a little wave but she ignored me and turned to a child that was also in the box. I frowned.

How rude.

The child laughed and the scene ended with the woman carrying the child and they smiled. I waved again.

"What are you doing?" A voice asked beside me and I jumped. I turned around to see Theo giving me a strange look.

"I was waving at the nice people living in the box. Though how they all fit into the tiny box makes me wonder and . . ." Suddenly, he burst out laughing. I furrowed my brows. I hadn't said anything funny, had I? He continued laughing and after some minutes, he stopped.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Mae?"

"Yes."

"That was a TV."

Blank.

"That small box was a TV and the people don't live there. They are just actors and actresses."