Evils ✓

Chapter XI

I looked deeply inside his eyes, closed shut with sorrow.

"They want you back in the borders. You can't be out here. You have to go back." He stood up so abruptly and fast while speaking, making his voice uneven.

"I can't go back. What would they do with me?" I started to climb my way upwards.

"Bring you home. Safe."

"My home is the dump. Why would they want ME back. I can just stay-"

"You can't stay here."

I started sweating, feeling the pressure surrounding crush me harder and harder.

"Why?"

He released the latch on the door, took a quick glance and listen to see if they were stil intruding, and patted the bed to have me sit next to him.

"Danover isn't for your people."

I jolted up, faced him, and spoke sternly.

"What do you mean, 'my people'?" I started to get frustrated. I felt the steam releasing through my ear.

"Calm down. I meant Salem in general. We're..." he glanced to his right, grimmacing in thought. "Troublemakers."

"What do you mean, troublemakers?" He started to gain my interest.

"Listen, I took you in last night because you could've- would've died. If Danover found out, I'd be in so much trouble. Those Evils, they keep order between the two. You can't come to Danover looking for a job or a new life... it's unnatural. You'd die off. If I was a true troublemaker, I would've either killed you last night or handed you over bare-handed. That's why I moved here, far away from them."

I was amazed at all these words spitting out of his mouth. Troublemakers... everyone was told stories and such, but we all thought it was a myth.

"I want to bring you home- I mean back to Salem."

"I made it very clear- I don't want to go back to Salem. My life consists of picking up scraps and brushing my teeth with sharp leaves, sewing together mismatched fabrics found along the sidewalk with 3-year-old toothpicks and bunches of ripped ribbon, and sitting on my make-shift bed for hours on end doing nothing but salvaging."

He grasped my hand tightly, locking his fingers between mine, and started through the door. I stumbled forwards and tried keeping pace. He darted out his back door which he left open and ran through the woods. Sticks were crackling under our feet, branches broke by our velocity, bushes were trampled and laid flat. I was embracing the air when I slid in the wet mud and knocked into Daniel, holding onto the bark of a tree to stay stable.

"I'm sorry."

He turned around and looked at me with a burst of glee.

"Don't worry."

"What are we doing here?"

He stepped out of my vision and a blur of buildings and cars appeared. They were vibrant, shining within the dawn lighting. The cars were zooming past humans in suits and dresses, dressed way fancier than the poverished in Salem. The store signs were dimmed but joyful in the suns rays. Everything was so fast paced. There wasn't a cloud in the light blue sky, cluttered in doves and pidgeons flapping their wings across the city.

"This is Danover."