THE RUNNING - juiceofthemoon 🌘

Chapter Three

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   I rubbed my eyes and sat up, groaning. "There you go." A blond boy said placing a dusty red pillow in my hands, for some odd reason. All five teenagers were smiling down at me, each one of them looking very different. I looked around the room. It looked dusty, and old, but it was a bedroom. It had a hard oak floor, that creaked under our weight, and behind me was a bed, with four posts and a dusty red duvet. The curtains around me, hanging limply on the windows were ripped, and ashen. On the wall, there were hooks, and old pictures with people I didn't know in them. Next to the bed there was a dresser, and on the opposite side, a bookshelf with more dusty, and cobwebbed books.

   "Hello there." The small girl smiled down at me. "H-hi." I spat out. All the teenagers looked around the aged 17-18. They were tall and semi-skinny, all of them, except the blond boy, who was a little larger. Then there was one really small girl, who was maybe around 5"2. "Grayson let's bring her downstairs." A girl, with short messy hair said. "She looks like she needs some food. And she deserves and explanation." She smiled down at me reaching out her hand. I didn't really want to take it, seeing I had no idea who these people were, but it didn't really look like I had a choice.

   I took her hand and they all led me down a creepy hallway, then down a rickety winding staircase. The wood was splintered, and there were old banisters hanging over windows to block the sunlight from peaking in. Above me, the ceilings were filled with cobwebs and dust. There was no electricity anywhere in the house. At the end of the twisted staircase there was a large common room, with dusty couches and an old carpet in the middle, with a coffee table on top of it. Above it was a giant chandelier, with candles in it, resembling the only thing close to a light bulb in the house. The rest of the light peaked past the openings in the windows that the tapestries couldn't cover.

  I then sat down on a dusty arm chair, with a coffee table next to it and a tall handsome boy placed a cup of tea right next to me. They all sat around me on the couch, floor, and on other arm chairs. "Uhm." I started just staring down into my cup of tea, obviously semi-cold. "Oh yeah." The girl laughed smacking her head. "We need to introduce ourselves, I'm such a silly goose." She giggled. I nodded a small nod swirling the tea with my spoon. "I'm Cara." The girl said. She then gestured to the rest of the teenagers in the room. "That's, Grayson, Cameron, Aviv, and Preston." They all smile at me. "Uhm, I'm..Arwen?" I stuttered out, still dumbfounded and confused on how I ended up in the old mansion.

  I glanced around the room at the five teenagers looking at me. Cara was about average hight, and she had messy strawberry blonde hair tied back into two pig tails. She had freckles dotted all over her nose, and small bright blue eyes. What made it difficult to see her eyes, was the pair of wire-rimmed glasses she was wearing, the glass very foggy and scratched. Her skin was almost the color of almond milk, but a little lighter than that. She was wearing a short dress, that looked like it was supposed to be white lace, but from dirt and grime was tinted a light brown. She had on ripped tennis shoes, pairing with a ripped jean jacket, also stained from dirt, and was holding a teddy bear with one eye, and one leg missing.

   Aviv was the smallest of the group. She had short, frizzy hair that looked like it had been dyed every color of the rainbow. She too, wore glasses, that were small and purple, but didn't look quite as scratched and foggy as Cara's. She had big brown eyes like mine, and light freckles creeped on her nose. She had on a huge red cardigan, and a brown v-neck shirt, and some grey sweatpants, with large holes at the knees. Anytime I looked at her she would look away and pat down the frizzy bangs hiding her forehead. She had skin that was not too light, but still light enough, and her cheeks were super pink.

   Grayson was the tallest. He had dirty blond hair, and he would often aggressively pull it to the side, on account it always fell down to his eyebrows whenever he shook his head. He seemed to be the cleanest of the bunch, with a wrinkled, but not stained, plain red, long sleeve t-shirt, and some tattered jeans. He had large blue glasses, to fit the size of his head, and he would always push those up, because they seemed to slide down his nose a lot. He had piercing blue eyes, so bright and crystal-like they almost scared you and made you shiver. His skin was a light pale color, in a way like paper.

  Cameron was really handsome, with really short chocolate brown hair, and the softest brown eyes I had ever seen. He was tall and lanky, with a hint of muscle, and his soft hair was swooped over to the side of his face, and he would often run his hands through it. He wore a black T-shirt and grey sweatpants that were oddly very very clean and he was wearing bright red tennis shoes. His skin was a soft chocolate color and he all of his features seemed to be cut, and the perfect dark tone. Everything about him was very soft and made you feel safe.

   Preston's hair was bleached blond (very badly) and he was a little bit in the larger side, unlike the others. He had the same chocolate skin as Cameron, and had a big hoody, and long sweatpants, with tattered black tennis shoes. Whenever Preston smiled you could see his shiny braces, and his multicolored bands, that were obviously neon colored because they glowed in the light. His hair was split down the middle and he would always continuously make sure the part was still in tact.

  I looked down at my sparkly, ripped dress and my tangled mane of hair. Compared to them I was a bum. I looked so disgruntled and gross I didn't even want to look at myself. "You might be wondering how your got here?" Grayson spoke up, interrupting my daze. I rolled my eyes. "Yeah kinda."

   "Well." He started cracking his fingers by moving them around in a weird movement, that looked almost like he was breaking them. "We found you on the street, when going out to get groceries early this morning. We didn't want you to die out there but we brought you here." Grayson said. "Grayson wanted to leave you there." Aviv said narrowing her eyes at him. He rolled his eyes. "All I said was that we didn't need another mouth to feed. I'm not completely heartless though." He finished crossing his arms.

   "Well I appreciate it." I said looking back down into my almost empty cup. "I didn't have anywhere else to go. If you hadn't had found me I'd still be out there wandering."

  "Why were you out there so early in the morning?" Cameron said to me. I shrugged. "I blew up at my mom and she kicked me out. I assumed it was going to happen sooner than later. I had just a had really tough night." "That's an oof." Grayson said shrugging. "But that's in the past now."

   He then stood up and motioned to everyone else who stood up as well. "Get everything you can guys." He said and everyone except Preston scrambled to different sections of the house. "Wait what's going on?" I said in a panic. A wave of fear rushed to my head. Are they going to leave me here? What are they doing? Where are they going? Do they even have a car? What neighborhood am I even in? Preston smiled and pushed me out of my chair. "You're with us now." He laughed. "You're one of the runners."

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