The Reason

Distraction

She got to work as soon as the meeting was over since they had to make preparations for her to sleep safely that very night. She followed Gally quietly, realizing that her very existence was annoying to him and that was enough. She knew she'd picked a mean one and she'd have to deal with that in exchange for the benefits he provided, but she could minimize his opportunities to be mean to her if she was quiet and did everything he said as perfectly as possible. It wasn't ideal but she just had to get through it.

Sure enough, the other boys were ill behaved and distracted by her, but luckily, she'd assumed correctly about Gally. He constantly ran them off or yelled at them to get back to work. Sure, they still used enough euphemisms and double entendres to make her want to scream and always gave her tasks that required her to bend over, but no one laid a hand on her under Gally's care.

Newt came to check on her occasionally and he would scold the boys for their bad manners when he overheard them. They prepared a room for her in a dilapidated looking house with several rooms patched on to it to make it bigger. They gave her a room with a raggedy looking bed in it, and swapped out her interior door for the front door of this house because it was the only one with a strong enough lock. Of course, they had to modify the door frame so the lock would work with it. Newt brought her a small cabinet of drawers as a house warming gift, complete with some clothes that might fit her tucked inside.

"We're having a bonfire tonight," He informed her. "We have one every time a greenie comes up in the box, so you'll be a guest of honor. Fair warning though: Gally makes this absolutely disgusting concoction of a drink that I suggest you avoid. I'll try to work with Frypan to make sure the boys don't have too much of it, we don't want them doing anything too stupid. Oh, and keep away from the circle, you might catch a flying elbow or get knocked down by whatever poor shank Gally beats the shuck out of tonight."

She tried to keep up with everything he was saying to her and, while feeling a little lost between the strange words and his accent, seemed to get the gist of it. Everything else she'd figure out later. She felt a bit wary of the boys after coming so close to being mauled by them, she didn't really want to talk to any of them yet, preferring to just observe and learn instead.

With their work done for the day, she followed Gally and the rest of the builders to the middle of the glade. A huge pile of sticks and branches stood tall in a large patch of dirt near another sandier circle of grassless earth. That must be what Newt was talking about when he said circle. She finally noticed the animal skull propped up on a pole in the middle of their pyre, and gave it a look of concern. Had she been thrown into some kind of cult?

Gally had ditched her as soon as he could, content with letting Newt babysit her for the rest of the evening. He was thoroughly annoyed that all his fears had come true. This girl was a menacing distraction even when she didn't mean to be, every single boy there just couldn't help themselves. He hoped to pass her off and make her someone else's problem as soon as possible, but for tonight he'd have to settle for taking his frustrations out in the circle.

She stayed on the fringes of the group of boys as they went about lighting their bonfire, too afraid of getting trapped in the middle of them. They seemed to settle in certain cliques around the fire. Some played handmade instruments, drums mostly, and some danced with great flips thrown in. Over all though they were loud, rowdy, and dirty.

She was distracted from her observations by a strange noise and turned to find the source. She had already noticed the extremely high walls that fenced them all in, but now she saw the door as it slowly and heavily shut for the night.

"That's the door to the maze," Newt explained when he saw her looking. All the other boys were used to it and ignored it completely. "Don't go in there at all."

She glanced at him, hearing the serious edge in his voice. It wasn't a suggestion; it was a command. She just nodded, not bothering to ask why yet. It's not that she wasn't curious or didn't have questions, she just didn't know how to ask these wild boys. All she knew was that she was in a dangerous world now and she wanted to tread lightly.

Newt didn't mind lingering around the edges near her, making sure she got some food and water, kept the rowdy boys away, sometimes talked with her and sometimes gave her some space to herself. He seemed nice enough and she was inclined to want to trust him, but she also knew it was too soon to let her guard down with anyone yet.

She watched them all carefully studying their behaviors and figuring out who she wanted to avoid. Her attention regularly drifted over to the circle where Gally was, his head towering over the other boys as they crowded around the circle to watch the fights. She assumed Gally kept winning as he was always in the ring, the fire light dancing on his sweaty face as he calmly brought down opponent after opponent. She wondered how he had the strength for it after the work he did in the day. She had to confess he'd grabbed her attention as soon as she she'd seen him, and he only got more interesting the more she observed.

"Can I ask.." Newt chimed in, drawing her attention away from the circle as he carefully sat beside her on a log. "Why did you pick the builders?"

She bit her lip and looked down. "Are you going to tell?" She asked him, afraid of her real reason getting back around to Gally.

"No, cross my heart," Newt promised, dragging his finger across his chest in an X.

"He can't stand me so I thought I'd be safest with him versus the other guys. He was worried about me distracting the other boys so I figured he'd stay on top of them and make them leave me alone," She admitted.

Newt pulled a face and nodded slowly, catching the eye of the builder over the other boy's heads for a split second. "That's pretty clever," he said. "So, you're just using him for protection."

"Yikes, when you put it like that it doesn't make me sound very nice," she chuckled, the sound bringing a smile to Newt's face.

"It's ok, I understand," he assured her. "I think you can count on him, and you can definitely count on me to help you out with anything."

She smiled appreciatively before a yawn overtook her. He noticed and offered to walk her to her room if she was ready to turn in, sparing her from having to ask him. As they left the bonfire behind them, they missed Gally losing his first round in the circle. Turns out he was not immune from distraction.