You and Me

Chapter 3

The room was nineteen by thirteen feet. It was nineteen feet from the wall her bed was on to where the closed door was and thirteen feet between the wall with a toilet and the wall with nothing.

Not metric feet, her own. She didn't have access to a ruler or to anything except her prison clothes, bolted in bed, toilet, and paper-thin sheets. She didn't even have a pillow. Clarke was free to move around her tight quarters and had free movement of her hands and feet.

It'd been nearly a week. There was three weeks till her seventeenth birthday and three hundred and eighty-six days till she would be old enough to float. And she wouldn't be pardoned. Clarke had a little over a year to live, which was only a year ahead of the ark that had maybe two. Probably less.

This was what kept her company, depressing thoughts. Thoughts about the Ark dying. Her dying. Her father dying. Wells betraying her trust. Her mom not fighting for her. The sound of the exterior door opening and the color of her father's face as he was floated.

There were no visitors for those in solitary confinement, not even the chancellor or her mother. The guards were under strict orders not to engage with her. She was a danger to herself and to others, a threat to the security of the Ark's society.

Clarke wondered what the Ark citizens thought of that. After years of being an upstanding citizen, their princess. They probably thought she got what she deserved.

She wasn't entirely without human contact. She had two guards entering her room daily to escort her the thirty steps to the showers and one that dropped off food through the slit in the door.

KNOCK-KNOCK.

Clarke sat up in bed. The guard had never knocked before. She couldn't do anything about a knock. Say come in? Open the door for them?

After a pause, the food opening creaked open and Clarke spotted the tray holding her breakfast. But it didn't get dropped and left while the guard walked away. Whoever was on the other side of the door continued to hold it, waiting.

"Clarke?"

"Bellamy?"

Clarke shot to her feet, rushing to the door and gabbing a hold of the tray. Bellamy was already holding the slit open. It wasn't wide enough to see anything, even when she put her eyes against it. There was a dip in it, so the guards had to slide her food down so she couldn't try to grab them.

"Jeez, Clarke. What the hell did you do?"

"What are they saying out there? Does anyone even know? And what about my mom? Have you seen her?"

"Slow down, Princess, you sound like O." Clarke pressed her forehead against the door and chuckled.

"Right, sorry. What are you doing here, Bellamy?"

"I'm assigned to work the Sky Box on weekends, part of a promotion. Shumway came by earlier in the week to gloat about you being arrested, he wanted to tell me before the news hit."

"What's the story they're telling?"

There was a pause on the other side of the door, and the tray they were both holding got heavier as Bellamy let it go. "I'll tell you when I'm back for lunch okay? I can't really linger."

"Yeah, right." Clarke took the tray and placed it at her feet, still listening. "Thanks, Bellamy."

"Yeah."