Stars ➳ TMR, Thomas [1] ✓

Chapter {2}

Night already fell when Bonfire started. And it was not as dark as I thought it will be, as the stars provided light in patterns, their brightness similar to raging fire whose orange flames danced like fireflies and disappeared in the night sky. The idylness forced away any thought of those massive walls in my surrounding, almost as if my mind urged me to forget them just for the night. However I tried to do so, I just couldn't let my mind be at ease, at peace with those threatening sounds unlike anything natural, unlike the happy chirping of the birds that drowned by the night, stayed dead completely.

I stood at the side with Chuck, watching intently the fighting circle through the huddled heads. I barely saw anything, not even standing on my fingers helped as I managed to catch only glimpses of fast movement and quite often insults. However, when the boy fighting Gally ended with a painful thud near his feet, I concluded I couldn't take it anymore. And that was when I left.

Receiving a few smiles and quick pats on the shoulder, which I ignored, I found a place near the fire whose heat warmed my back as it reached the harder surface of a horizontal log. Pursing my lips tightly and with an uneasy expression marring my face as I stared at the dull, gray wall.

"What's wrong?" Newt asked as he sat down next to me with a plate in his right and a mason jar in his left hand.

"All this. It's... I feel so lost." I said, drawing my arms over myself as a way to shoo away the cold goosebump that rose.

"Don't worry, Greenie. We all did." Newt gently placed a hand on my shoulder, barely, his lips twitched into something of a painful smile.

"There's no way out, that's why I'll have to accept this better sooner than later, right?" I directed a searching gaze his way, finding him fidgeting with a piece of bread on the plate. When he looked up, a smile was over his features.

"You have a positive attitude, and that matters. As soon as you accept it, the easier will it be to live here. No matter how bad and hopeless it truly is." Newt shook away that smile, stared at the closed wall as if searching for a lost piece of something.

His words caught me off guard as they slowly sunk in. I wondered what he really meant by saying that. To me he looked like one of the most positive people around here and not to mention the caring one too. I narrowed my eyes, as my smile faded away and turned into a frown.

"Here so you wipe that frown of your face." Newt seemed to notice my expression as he handed me a jar full of weird looking liquid, he earlier brought here. Brown and yellow mixed together, illuminating the fire behind our backs and creating that horrid drink Gladers tend enjoy too much. I stared at mason jar, half full of the drink debating whether to drink it or spill it. I decided to drink it, which was an awfully teribble decision. The liquid burned my troath as it spilled down it, leaving a sour aftertaste in my mouth after I spilled the rest of the drink on green grass next to my feet.

"What is that?" I said between coughs. Newt laughed, while eating Fry's famous bread. "I don't know actually. Nobody does. It's Gally's secret recipe." I turned around to look for a boy who created the drink. He was gazing at the fighting circle with anamused face and rised eyebrows like he was really trying not to laugh at the poor fighting skills of other boys while next to him another boy laughed, his piercing blue eyes eyeing everything but the circle.

"Newt, why does that boy next to him hate me so much?" I asked fully averting my attention to Newt and completely ignoring our previous topic.

"Chris. No, he does't hate you as a person, he hates you because your arrival changed things." Newt explained.

"Am I the only one?" I asked to which I received a confused look from Newt. "I mean, that others said that changed things?"

"Gally...and Ben both said Thomas changed something. And now Chris, along with Gally is sure of that. You could also call him Gally's pet, because he listens to everything that comes out of Gally's mouth." Newt made a pause. "Unfortunately speaking of Ben, we had to get rid of him, he was too dangerous." Rid of him how? I thought to myself, while a list of possibilities was made in the back of my head of how to get rid of somebody in a prison maze like this one.