The Girl

Chapter Thirty Six

  I wake up to the sound of someone coming in the tent. My eyes shoot open and my hand flies to the knife at my thigh, pulling it out to defend myself.

"That's a nice greeting," Newt smirks with his hands up. I exhale and lower my arm.

"I'm a small girl in the middle of a place with teenage guys and someone pretty much tried to kill me yesterday. What are you doing here? Isn't it the middle of the night?" I ask him.

"I didn't want you to be here alone and I knew you wouldn't leave," He tells me, walking over to me.

"You don't have to stay here," I frown. I don't want him to be stuck here.

"Neither do you, yet here we are," He says. A small smile forms on my face. I'm grateful he'd stay with me. He holds his hand out to me. I open my mouth to say something, but he gets his words out first. "We're not leaving, I just thought you might wanna go outside the tent for a while." I hesitate before taking his hand. I mean, Drew can shout if he needs me, right?

Newt leads me to just outside the tent and lies down on the ground, waiting for me to do the same. I smile and lie down next to him. He turns to face me.

"I expected to be in the deadheads, but this is good too."

"Oops, I'm sorry. Gosh, I forgot," I bury my face in my hands. I try to stay true to my word, but I forget sometimes. Newt pulls at my wrist and takes my hand.

"It's alright. You're what matters," He says. I smile and look at him as he kisses me sweetly. "Today was pretty fantastic. I will say I wish there was a part of the Glade where we could be more alone. I like when you take charge."

I bite my lip as I pull myself on top of him, pulling him closer to kiss him. I pull back and laugh while he smiles.

"It's not the deadheads, but everyone should be asleep. Maybe it's enough," I tell him. He grabs my waist and pulls me in to kiss me.

"It's more than enough," He kisses me again. He trails kisses down my jaw and onto my neck as I bite my lip.

I open my mouth to say something when a horrid screeching sound arises from beyond the walls of the maze. I can feel Newt's grip tighten on my waist as he pulls back to look at me. We share the same look of concern and I turn to stare at the maze walls behind me, where the sound came from. I hear rustling and shift my gaze to see the boys getting up out of their hammocks.

I push myself up off of Newt and we both stand up to join the rest of the boys.

"Everyone calm down," Newt tells them. "They're outside the walls."

"We've never heard them do that," One of the boys speaks up. I see Alby coming up behind some of the boys with a torch.

"Is everyone okay?" He asks, the rest of the Gladers rising from their hammocks at the sound of his voice. Most of their attention is on the maze walls.

"What the hell was that?" One of them asks. A discussion breaks out among them, each one talker over the other.

"Slim it! We're inside the maze walls, and it was outside of them," Newt tells them in attempt to calm them down.

"Guys, it's probably best to just try and go back to sleep. We can't-"

"Why should we listen to you?" One of the boys calls out. I feel Newt step up to defend me, but he closes his mouth when I place a hand on his chest.

"Because it's logical. What else would we do? Try and pry open the maze walls? Stay up waiting for a griever to crawl over and say hi?" I ask him sarcastically.

"Why are you being such a bitch?" One of the boys calls.

"Because bitches get things done."

"Beth is right. There's no point in trying to do anything when we don't know what that is and can't figure it out now. The runners'll tell us if they see anything tomorrow but until then we should all just get back to sleep so we're up at the wake up." With that, all the Gladers follow Newt's orders and trail back to their hammocks. I grab his arm and pull him back into the medtent. Drew is still fast asleep. I take a deep breath and sit down on the floor in front of the wooden chair to lean my back up against it. I look up at Newt and flash him a tired smile. He looks down and laughs, taking a seat next to me and pulling my hand into his lap.

"You know, I'm starting to think maybe you should have some authority," He tells me. I can't help but laugh.

"Like they'd listen to me," I shake my head and look down.

"Most of them do, but some of them aren't able to handle the fact that a girl is better than them at stuff like that," Newt tells me. I smirk and reach up to kiss his cheek. "It's too bad that we were distracted though."

"Well, we can't really go anywhere now. That'd be good, if we were able to," I tell him. "But at least we're here together. That's something," I try to nudge his shoulder with my own. He smiles and pulls me into his lap so my head rests on his shoulder.

"It's definitely something."