"So when did you- you know- fall in love with her?" Thomas smirked, knowing he had him right where I wanted him, with his head in Fionaland.
"Woah," Newt defeated with his hands up, "What?"
"I may be slow to getting to know things around here, but...
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I woke up just in time to see Alby and Minho leave two days later. I knew the dangers of the maze. I didn't particularly want to put myself in that danger but being involuntarily told to stay here made me bitter. Frypan gave me large scoops at breakfast to make up for it. Gally pretended nothing was wrong. And Newt had resorted to completely ignoring me.
Clint finally cleared me to work but I imagine I started to annoy him more than anything. Gally found me seeking into the maproom for work a few times. He came to the point of threatening to tie me down if I tried anything again. It was a simpler solution for Clint to send me back to work and then I would stop being everyone's problem.
I could walk without that much pain now, it was a dull ache. I made sure to refrain from taking deep breaths. Thomas was put with me today, but before he walked through the door I knew he couldn't be a mapmaker. He was clumsy, jumpy, and constantly talked to fill silence. He was helpful if we wanted to pass ideas back and forth or look for loopholes but I knew the real reason he was there was to make sure nothing bad happened to me on my first day back.
I heard Thomas' stomach grumble and I realized we were probably in the middle of lunch. That was the biggest problem about working in the homestead, all hours of the day seemed the same, "I lost track of time, you can head up to lunch. My bad."
He rubbed his hands on his pants, "Do you want me to bring you anything?"
"If you could snag a grilled cheese that would be great." I answered, "And remind Minho and Alby to come down for assessments, they are the last ones of the day."
"Alright." He said the room in a bit of a hurry. After living with boys for three years, I know that their stomachs are bottomless pits.
I looked over Ben's runs for the past year and three months that he has been here. I kept all the boy's records for each run. I tracked their daily amount of miles and their run times while they were in the maze and then I gave them a basic health check that Clint had taught me. Statistically, Ben was second to only Minho. He was never late to check-ins, unlike most of the boys. The maze opened from 800 to 1800. His average time in the maze was seven hours and eleven minutes. Maze three was one of his shorter routes and was just shy of six hours. This means on the day he died he was supposed to get back around 1200. One of the best, and now he was nothing but a memory, another face on the left side of my wall.
I sat down putting my head between my hands. Losing one of the boys was never easy. I wasn't a stranger to craving names into gravepost. But in the back of my mind, I kept seeing Ben, the stung version of him. Not the boy that spoke softly and woke up early to get his favorite runner's vest and liked when he woke up to dew on the grass. He was a good kid. That was how I wanted to remember him. But my last memory of him was ruined. I caught myself staring at his greenie picture on the wall. He was a cryer. He came out of the box red-eyed and wailing. He was made fun of for it but he kept his head down, doing what needed to be done and respecting the rules until Alby made him a runner. He gained confidence after that, but never in a cocky way.
