Adelyn

*15*

My face smacks into a solid wall and I stop in surprise. "What?" I run my hands down an invisible wall and start to follow it. This must be the east wall, but what am I suppose to do now? My stomach growls like one of the wolves and I chomp on a protein bar, not my favorite food but it would do. Once I quiet my stomachs grumbling, I continue to follow the wall for what feels like hours. The trees thin out and ahead of me I see a large open plain of snow and a group of guys mingling around. As I draw closer I see they are waiting for someone with a blue cube, so someone can steal it and make it through the wall behind them. There is about one hundred yards between them and the last tree, they would certainly see me coming. 

"Hey," I jump out of my skin at the whispered word and find Asher peering down at me from the pine tree. 

"You scared me, sheesh." I glare at him but join him at the base of his tree. 

"Had any thoughts about how to make it past them?" He inquires and brushes snow off his arm. 

"No, there's too many of them. The only thing I can think of is if there were an extra cube lying around and we could get them all to fight over it while we run for the border." I rub my chin in thought. 

"You mean like this?" Asher coyly holds out a blue cube. 

"You found two of them?" I breathe and snatch it from his hand. 

"Well, you never know if you need to make an ally." He grins and jabs my shoulder. 

"Maybe if we had some sort of thing that could shoot this cube over to the other side of the clearing? Then we could run for the spot they're guarding. That's got to be where you cross over." I point to where they are standing. Asher pulls his hood down and lets his hair fall across his head to one side. 

"Here," I hardly see what he's holding because I'm staring at him, I've never seen him with his hair down before. My mouth dries up and I have no words, he grabs my hand and sets the rubber band in it. "Um, so can we use that?" He shakes me out of my daze and I glance down at the rubber band in my hand. 

"Oh, yes. Do you see any sturdy sticks or one shaped like a Y? We could make a sling-shot." I start rummaging in the snow to hide my embarrassment. After a couple minutes Asher taps on my shoulder and holds out a large Y-shaped stick, perfect for a sling-shot. 

"Thank you," I take the stick and wrap his rubber band around the two ends until it's stretched tight. "I'll hold it if you want to launch the cube, that way you can get better pull back and accuracy." Asher nods in reply and takes the cube, pressing it softly against the rubber band. If this doesn't work we won't make it through the crowd of hooligans. Asher holds his breath as he pulls the band back and then closes his eyes as if praying, then the cube flies through the air. It lands about one hundred feet away and catches the guys attention, they stampede toward the cube and we take off toward the wall. Asher's breath puffs out in a cloud around him like steam from a tea kettle, I watch his lips as he draws breath and breathes out another cloud of steam. He catches me looking at him and smirks, his green eyes twinkling. My cheeks color pink, whether from running or his dazzling smile I do not know. I skid to a stop when we reach the wall and look back to see the hoodlums running toward us with hungry eyes. My fingers fumble for the zipper on my bag and I pull out my blue cube, I look back at them one last time as see a figure leading their pack. About ten feet ahead of the rest I see William, with cube in hand, booking toward us. Asher taps his cube against mine, drawing me back to the task at hand. 

"Cheers," Then we both press our cubes to the wall, at first nothing happens and the cube rests against the invisible wall, but then it starts to slide through. After a moment we too get sucked through the wall and blasted with a gust of hot air. I cover my eyes trying to ward off the brilliant gold light before me.