SOJOURNER (III): tmr gally

02: I should be solid

Dawn 2

I can hear Ella panting inside the room. Leo is preoccupied with her, as are Sonya and Harriet. Those two girls seem to circle in like hawks, watching and waiting.

I don't know if I'd rather be in there or out here. Ella's screeching is pretty damn awful, not just for my ears either. I feel really bad for her. I let her be a distraction for the Griever, and it got her. Look where that got us. Maybe we are alive, but she might not be in a few days. It's easier to avoid thinking about her just outside the room.

It isn't any better out here though. The girls from the other glade keep staring at me. Their eyes are constantly lingering on me, and the whole thing sends shivers up my spine. Besides, I'm sitting between Teresa and Michelle, and I can't tell if they hate each other, me or they are just as standoffish as usual.

This whole situation is taking a lot of getting used to. Normally I'm fairly chatty, but none of these girls are particularly kind, nor pleasant. It doesn't help that I know no one and feel an imposter in my own skin.

Quite literally actually. The jean jacket the Creators left for me is comfortable. It fits well, and it's something new. There weren't any jean jackets in the Glade. Just plaid shirts, but those days are long behind me now. The Creators took all the plaid away, and all the clothes that made me blend in with the Gladers. Now, I feel unique in this crowd, without anyone wearing the same clothes as me. I'm starting to not feel like a prisoner. It's kind of nice, but also kind of lonely.

"How do we get back to them?" Michelle asks. She's talking about the boys, I think, which is odd. She doesn't like them very much, from what I can tell. All her friends died.

It still hasn't settled in me that we are gone. That Minho is gone. I still haven't told him that I'm pregnant. It feels as though the ground has slipped beneath my feet, my head hit the ground, and I am still too dizzy to recuperate. He can't be gone. He can't be far away.

"You want to go back to those boys?" Teresa asks. "Haven't they tried to kill you, multiple times? Isn't that enough?"

"They've also saved our lives," I retort, glancing up at them.

Teresa shrugs, but Michelle stays still. She neither agrees nor disagrees, which I guess means she is taking Teresa's side. Normally, Michelle is full of snarky comebacks. She picked now to be silent?

"Don't you want to get back to Thomas?" I whisper, glancing over at Teresa.

Ella's screams erupt, and a girl pulls herself to her feet. She stares over at me from across the room.

"Shut her up," It's the same girl who picked the lock to greet us. Her dark curly hair swings when she talks. "Her screaming is going to drive us crazy."

"Sure, we'll just waltz right in and ask her politely," I roll my eyes.

"Don't act like this has nothing to do with you," another girl snorts from across the room. She carefully tosses her black hair over her shoulder. "You chose to put her through the Process."

I stand up, looking between the two of them. "What the shuck are you going off about?"

"She got stung, right?" The second girl asks. "It's the Process."

She's talking about the Changing, I guess.

"What do you mean, 'put her through'?" Teresa leans in, her hand on her waist. She eyes the girl suspiciously. "She just got stung."

The girl freezes. She looks at two girls behind her on the ground, before back at us. Her mouth is slightly agape. "They don't make you do it?"

I am done talking to this girl if she is going to speak in so many weird words, so I turn to one of the only girls I know the name of. Marie, they called her at the meeting. She kept trying to get at Ella early, and she carries penicillin, so I assume that she is their Med-jack. Regardless, she seems to like to offer up information all the time. "What are they talking about?"