To Survive without the Guardians

Chapter 11: The Threat

Matt was silently working on math homework at Grandpa Sloan's house a couple of days later when Garvit burst through the door without warning, his curly red hair all messy from the wind.

"Angelia..." he began, trying to catch his breath. "The Fearlings told her that if we don't disband, they'll kill her tonight." Matt halted his pencil above his paper and looked over at Garvit's freckled face.

"What?"

"Today. She texted me. You need to get Haven over here. You said you wanted us to defend ourselves- well, now's your chance to make that happen."

Matt's eyes grew wide, and he set his pencil down and stood up.

"Now?" He wasn't ready now!

"Yes, now! Can you text her?"

"Technically." Matt did still have her number. "But her parents might find out and keep her from coming. They don't want her hanging around me."

"So you want to disband, then?" Aggressive.

"No," Matt said, a hint of venom in his voice.

"Well look, Angelia and Duran want you to. I don't. I find everything that's going on incredibly interesting, and I don't want to leave it behind." Wow. Shallow, much? "You want to be your own Guardian? Then do it right now."

"What does the Indicator say?" Matt asked. Garvit never had given it back after leaving last Wednesday.

The short boy pulled it out of his jeans pocket and held it out toward Matt. The white needle was almost at the boundary between the blue and orange sections.

"It says," Garvit began, "that either you guys or some other people are gonna die or exist. Or maybe disappear, based on the collection of Beth Howard incidents."

*/*/*/*

"So, I've finally gotten a job!" Allison told everyone, her brown eyes shining with joy.

Johnsie grinned. "Congrats."

"Where is it?" Lauryn asked.

"At the Dairy Queen over there," Allison replied, gesturing loosely in its direction. Currently, she and the rest of Haven's friends, plus Haven herself, were at Johnsie's house eating cookies off of a plate in the middle of the table.

Haven frowned. "So this means you'll probably not be able to hang out with us as much anymore?"

"Yeah, but I need to save up for medical school. I want to get as small of a loan as possible."

Haven nodded. "That makes sense." But her brown-haired friend bringing up her future made Haven think about her own. Should she invest time in finding a good she could craft well and uniquely, or was it likely that either the Lunar Eclipse Resistance could get rid of the Fearlings entirely, or that the Guardians came and locked the attacked away under watch for the rest of their lives, unable to fix the Fearling issue until after their deaths? What was Matt planning for his future, anyway? Angelia could ignore the shadows, but he couldn't and was much too stubborn to probably give up on having a "normal" job no matter how hard they attacked.

Suddenly, her phone buzzed in her pocket, distracting her from guessing Matt's dream career. She took it out and read the text:

"This is Matt. Garvit said the Fearlings told Angelia that if we don't disband, they'll kill her tonight. We're all meeting at my Grandpa Sloan's house. Hurry."

Haven's heart stopped. Kill her? There was no way the Fearlings were joking, given their nature. She didn't want to stop seeing Matt and the others, but how else could they save Angelia's life?