SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

For those we lost to the Cranks

Leo Short

The man leads us down the corridor in silence. All four of us are identical, with dark black jogging pants and oversized taupe shirts. I wonder if they can see my sweat through the itchy fabric. If anyone does, no one says anything.

Actually, none of us speak at all. I feel, for a second, that I know everything and nothing about the people around me. We've been together for at least two months now, but so much of that time was spent on opposite sides of a desert, and in dark rooms alone.

I don't know what Michelle and Dawn have seen while I was gone. The more I interact with the boys, the less I feel like I understand them too. I want to know more about the people around me than possible. Things are different now.

The guard gets to a door, which he swipes open. He stands in the doorway, letting us pass by him. We can only move in single file, so I fall closer to the back. From here, I can't see what is happening in front of me, due to Sheil's massive height.

However, Dawn takes off running inside.

Once I finally squeezed my way inside, past the clot the boys have created in the doorway, I see them. The remaining Gladers are in here. Newt stands near Dawn and Minho, who are locked in an embrace. When he looks up at me, I watch his jaw fall.

The second of pause that I get when I see him is all that I need. After all, he is alive, just as I left him, and not any worse for wear. At this point, we've been apart longer than we've been together. This pause lets me collect myself, since his soft eyes are enough to make me melt into a puddle.

I cross the room, ignoring the wandering eyes of the girls around us. Fry's voice fills the air, as he laughs with Dawn and Minho. Unfortunately, the sound echoes off the walls and is blurred into one buzz.

"Hey," Newt smiles, but his cheeks barely move. "We were wondering what happened to you."

"They just finished with us now," I squint, turning my head back to the door. My ears are still ringing from the torture we faced only minutes ago. "How long have they been done with you?"

"About two weeks," he offers, shrugging. There is a yellow bruise his cheek that is beginning to heal, and his lip is split. I want to reach out and touch him, and heal him, but I know I can't.

I don't ask what he went through, and maybe it's because my skin is still tingling or because I don't want to know, or because I doubt that he wants to recount his pain to me.

"I take it Thomas and Teresa weren't with you?" Newt asks, looking over my shoulder at the boys gathered in the doorway.

I shake my head. "They haven't been with you?"

Newt shakes his head. "Ella neither. We thought maybe you were all together, since you're some weird special people."

"We aren't special," I correct, because as far as I know, we aren't. Not anymore than the rest of them. I still don't really know what's going on.

Someone taps my shoulder. My shoulders tense, my throat tightens.

"Sorry," Sonya walks around to face the front of me. Her hands trail off my shoulder. "I didn't mean to startle you. I was just wondering if you've seen Ella."

Her eyes are wide beneath her scrunched brow. The way she looks hardened yet nearly crumpling reminds me of Newt. I look back and forth between the two for a few seconds, before shaking the feeling away.