by Frankie Rose
I’d never understood how consuming the depths of rage could be before now.
“What is she talking about, Daniel?” Agatha asked, as I trembled in a quivering wreck outside her bedroom door.
He scowled. “We had to do it. We knew he couldn’t hurt her.”
“How? How did you know he couldn’t?”
“Because they never have before!”
“That’s crazy!” she cried. “I know there’s a lot riding on this, but you can’t be so cavalier with Farley’s safety.”
At this point Daniel’s eyes bugged out. “Cavalier? Cavalier! You of all people should know I would never endanger her. Don’t freak out, Agatha. You won’t need to worry about me and my irresponsible attitude for much longer. Aldan will be fighting fit soon enough, and then it’ll all be out of my hands.”
Something in the look of horror on his face shook me. I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone so upset, let alone him. Unshakeable, unfathomable Daniel. I reached out for him, and he leapt back in surprise at the unexpected gesture. I was possibly more shocked by my own actions than he was. He looked horrified.
I turned to Agatha, equally appalled that I had tried to reach out to him and that he’d reacted so badly to it, but my wounded feelings were replaced by concern when I saw the tears trickling down the small woman’s cheeks. Agatha stared wide-eyed after Daniel in the darkness as his fading footsteps echoed angrily off the walls, with her hand covering her mouth. Was she fighting the urge to sob?
“Agatha? What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t know Aldan would be back up and running so soon.”
“Surely that’s a good thing?”
“Yeah.” The word sounded hollow. “It is.”
I couldn’t make any sense of Daniel and Agatha’s tense exchange, but sleep was definitely not in the cards. Agatha disappeared back into her room, promising to discuss what had happened with me in the morning, and I went back to my own room. After lying in bed for over three hours, wound up and tense, I eventually decided enough was enough. I grabbed a light hoodie and a book as well as the flashlight and then marched to the kitchen. I retrieved some chips and something to drink before making my way through the maze of dark corridors. Countless stubbed toes later, I eventually found my way back to the steel ladder that led up and into the outside world. The service hatch was heavy, and lifting it nearly resulted in me losing my footing and tumbling back into the abyss below. I resorted to gripping the flashlight between my teeth, using both hands to push upwards, causing the faintest of creaks before it swung reluctantly open.
It felt like I was escaping from prison as I climbed out into the early morning sunlight. I looked nervously back down into the hatch, expecting to see Daniel or Agatha racing up the ladder to drag me back to ‘safety.’ After last night, I doubted I was safe anywhere if those guys could just bust straight into my brain. No. Sleep was now out of the question. Period.
I found a tattered green and white striped canvas deck chair propped in between two rusting old oil barrels and dragged it off into the scrubby grassland, determined to enjoy a few hours of fresh air and soak up some vitamin D.
In the light of day there really wasn’t much to see out there. We truly were all alone. I couldn’t even figure out where the Charger had disappeared. Reading the book provided some distraction, and when I tired of that I found myself staring blankly up at the wispy clouds that skimmed across the sky, wondering what all the ordinary people were doing. Ordinary had never seemed so appealing as I sat there, wallowing in all the terror that extraordinary had delivered into my life.
It wasn’t worth thinking about. Instead, I decided I wouldn’t think about anything. I would ignore my father’s malicious intentions and how my best friend probably thought I’d gone insane or been kidnapped. And I would ignore the fact that the people trying to keep me safe were okay with putting me in danger occasionally. It hurt all the more that I was developing an uncomfortably strong attraction to the most belligerent guy in the world, a guy who really couldn’t care less if I got smoked in the cross fire of their never-ending feud. No. Definitely better not to think of anything at all.
A beautiful, sun-drenched, peaceful hour after I’d slipped out, the echo of the metal hatch clanging shut reached me. Bracing for an argument, I leaned back, closing my eyes so I could enjoy my last few moments of freedom.
Daniel came racing out of the silo only to skid to an immediate stop when he caught sight of me. He pretended to look around for who knows what and then disappeared back inside. A few moments later he appeared again, carrying a beaten-up metal pail, and stalked off about twenty feet from where I sat. He upended it and took a seat.
There was no point asking him what he thought he was doing. An argument would only ensue and I was too exhausted to deal with that. Instead, I did my best to block out his presence and accomplished it quite successfully. Occasionally, I caught him scuffing his toe in the burnt orange dirt or picking at the long grasses and twisting them in his hands as he looked off into the uninterrupted distance, seemingly unaffected by my choice of pastime.
At first it was a battle against my conflicting wills not to pay him any attention. But after a while, with the sun massaging my skin, it was my eyelids I was wrestling with. I didn’t want to sleep. He might be there, waiting. It was no good, though. It wasn’t long before I slipped under the deep black fold of nothingness that embraced me, welcoming me home.
