Life In The Glade//TMR Newt Fanfic

Chapter 8-Josh

The next day I woke up to a knocking on my door. I opened it to see Newt standing there.
"Hey Emmy, how'd you sleep?" I smiled.
"Pretty good, How bout you?" I rubbed my eyes and he smiled.
"I slept pretty good too. Are you ready for your new job trial today?" He asked. I nodded.
"Yeah, what am I trying today?" I asked. Medjack? Slopper? Maybe i'll help frypan in the kitchen. Newt brushes his hair off his forehead and says,
"Alby wants you to try helping in the kitchen today." I nod, and step out of my room, closing the door behind me. We head over across the glade towards the kitchen, and we wave to the gladers that we meet. Gally waves at us, surprising Newt a bit. I look over and see Minho and another boy entering the maze. i want to go running again, but my legs are telling me that they're happy for the break.
We reach the kitchen and frypan is inside. When he sees me coming a small smile spread across his face. He waves me over and Newt pats me on the shoulder and heads the other way, away from frypan and I. When i get over to the counter Frypan has a big bowl and a basket of eggs next to him.
"Okay greenie. You're gonna help me make some breakfast, sound good?" I nod enthusiastically and stand next to him.
"Here, crack this egg into the bowl, I wanna see how much you know about basic cooking." he hands me an egg and slides the bowl over in front of me.
"Okay," I say, carefully taking the egg. I crack it over the side of the bowl and split it in half, letting the insides fall into the bowl. Frypan nods.
"Alright, looks like you know what youre doing so far. Most of the slintheads around here crushed the egg and got shells in the bowl." I smile.
"Are they really that bad?" I asked, trying not to laugh.
"Oh no, they're worse. So I always test the greenies with this test first. The only other people that have passed were Clint and Ben, but they were naturals at their other jobs and chose that instead." I nodded. "yeah, I don't really need help, but I'd gladly accept it if a greenie was good enough." He winked at me and I laughed, cracking another egg in the bowl.
"Here," he says, handing me a salt shaker, a thing of milk, and a fork. "Make some scrambled eggs for the boys." He smiles and crosses his arms over his chest. I continue cracking the eggs into the bowl until they're all gone. Then i take the milk and splash a bit into the bowl. I sprinkle in some salt and take the fork, whisking the eggs and the milk together. I keep mixing, and I look up at frypan, who looks interested.
"You got any pepper?" I ask. He raises an eyebrow.
"Pepper?" He asks. I nod. He shrugs,
"Um, well. I think I might have some somewhere, why?" I shrug.
"I just remember making scrambled eggs before and you add black pepper flakes, whatever that is. I'm not sure what it is exactly but let's see how it works." He shakes his head and walks over to the cabinet, reaching up to grab a small container. He hands it to me. "Here," he says, intrigue written across his face.
"Why are you making that face?" I ask. "Haven't you ever used pepper in your food?" He shakes his head no again. I laugh, and start to sprinkle it into the bowl. I whisk the eggs again, and when I'm satisfied with it I turn back to frypan.
"Kay, now how do I cook these?" He nods his head towards the stove, which is already on. I dump the eggs onto the stovetop and take a spatula, starting to scramble them. They slowly start to cook and Frypan seems content with how I'm doing. When the eggs are done cooking I take them off the stove and scoop them onto a big plate so they don't get over cooked. I turn to Frypan, a big grin on my face. He walks over, inspecting the eggs, a slight grin on his face. He picks up a fork and takes a bite.
"Hm. What did you add, pepper?" I nod. "Thats it?" I nod again. He smiles and takes another spoonful of the eggs.
"Greenie, this is really good. Like, really, good." I grin again. He nods towards the door.
"Lets see what everyone else thinks, huh? They'll be coming soon." I nod and he walks over to the stove, greasing it and quickly throwing some bacon onto it, which starts cooking immediately. I smile and start to plate up the eggs, which took a while. There are so many boys here that it took forever. Soon after all the boys piled into the room, and Frypan quickly scooped the bacon onto the plates with the eggs. We started handing them out to everyone, and my scrambled eggs got many shouts of approval. One boy asked if I could make them everyday. I smiled, knowing that people enjoyed what i had done, even though it was a small thing. I grabbed a plate myself, and sat down with Newt, Alby, Frypan and Gally. They all smiled and Alby turned to me.
"Well greenie, you're just full of surprises, ain't ya. You've done a decent job doing everything so far, meaning you'll get to pick what you want to do. Tomorrow you'll work on being a medjack, but based on everyone's reactions here, you proved you can be a cook. So for the rest of the day you'll be a slicer." He takes another bite of his breakfast and I nod. I dont exactly want to be a slicer. The idea of killing animals makes my stomach turn a bit, but I have to try anyways. Alby motions over my shoulder towards Frypan who's calling me over. I quickly scoop up my plate and wave goodbye to the group of boys who are stuffing their faces with bacon. I head over to frypan and set my plate down.
"What's up Fry?" I ask. He tosses a bucket to me and the water inside sloshes around, sending a few drops up into my face. I look down into the bucket to see a dirty looking rag and some cloudy water.
"One of the things about cooking is cleaning up afterwards. You can start by scrubbing the counters." I roll my eyes and walk over to the counter, while he takes his plate and goes to eat with the rest of the gladers. I sighed and started to wipe down the counters. The water is gross and I scrunch up my face as I pull the rag out of the bucket. I wiped off the counters in almost no time at all, and I don't know what to do next so I set the bucket down and look around the kitchen. I start to pick up all the bowls and the plates that had been left on tables as the boys finished their breakfast and left. A few of the boys seemed happy to see me acting like a fellow glader. I received a bunch of smiles from the table where Minho, Newt, Alby and now Frypan were sitting. I brought the plates over to the makeshift sink and started to fill it up with water. I dumped the plates into the sink and went back out to pick up more of them. Three trips later and all of the plates were in the sink. I turned the water off to let them soak for a bit so they were easier to clean, and went to wipe off the stovetop. I grabbed the spatula to scrape off the bacon grease left on it. I dropped the spatula onto the stove and went to pick it up, but my hand brushed the metal and red hot pain shot up my hand.
"Agh! The shucking stove was still on...." I mutter to myself, quickly turning it off and holding my hand to my chest.
"Oh, klunk. I forgot to tell you that the stove was still hot, didnt I?" Frypan said behind me. I turned around, my face flushing pink, and I nodded. He frowned.
"Shuck, sorry. Um...come here," he said, waving me over to the corner of the kitchen to a weird looking plant in a small pot. he broke off a piece and held it out to me.
"Put it on the burn, it'll help." I looked at it. It was a green, spiky looking leaf with a clear gel inside. I carefully took it and placed the gel on the burn. The pain immediately felt better, and Frypan smiled.
"Where did you get an aloe plant?" I asked him. He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
"I dont know. It came up in the box one day when I burned my arm pretty bad. Ive kept it here ever since since it helps a lot but i didnt know what it was called." I nodded and looked down at the leaf.
"Cool." I said, tucking it into my pocket in case my hand hurts later. After everyone finishes their breakfast I head over to the slicers.

Winston meets me out by the front of the slicers hut. He leads me inside, but the second I see the animal carcass another slicer is chopping up my stomach turns and I gag. The blood dripping off of the dead pig, and the exposed bones made my heart stop. The smell doesnt help and i bend over, hands on my knees, trying not to puke. At that moment the other slicer chops off the poor animals head, and I squeeze my eyes shut, groaning as my stomach lurches violently. Winston sighs.
"Yeah, i figured this would happen. Happens with most greenies. Ill let Alby know its not for you. Here, you can wait outside." He patted me on the shoulder and opens the door. I rush outside, breathing the fresh air and squeezing my eyes shut, once again leaning over and putting my hands on my knees. I suck in a big breath of air, clearing the vision from my head. When i can finally stand up I brush my hair out of my face and put my hands on my waist. Alby comes jogging over with Minho on his tail.
"Wasn't your thing greenie?" I shake my head no quickly and they laugh. "Alright, well, I guess you can be a slopper for the rest of the day. It's pretty basic stuff, you just clean an-" He was cut off by a bunch of shouting. We all turned to see all the gladers running over to the builders, and crowding around a boy.
"What the shuck.." Alby said before running off to see what happened. I ran after him, and when we got close enough to see what was happening, the boys moved aside for Alby to get through and I walked up behind him. there was a boy, I think his name was josh, who was laying on the ground, holding his leg and whimpering in pain. There was a deep gash on his thigh and blood was seeping through his jeans. His face was twisted in pain and I put a hand up to cover my mouth. Alby took a step closer.
"Where are the medjacks?" He shouted. There was another yell from outside of the crowd of boys.
"Over here Alby!" They called. The boys separated so the medjacks could get through to Josh, and they came walking through with a makeshift stretcher between them. Newt and Alby walked over to help the medjacks. Clint nodded at Alby and Newt, glad for the help. The 4 boys kneeled down next to Josh and set him on the stretcher. The injured boy let out another whimper. He turned and looked at me, and my heart melted. He couldn't be any older than 14, and he looked like he was in so much pain...
"Jeff, pick him up on 3....1.....2.....3!" He grunted as they stood up, picking up Josh with them. When Alby and Newt were sure the medjacks could carry him back by themselves they carefully stepped away so the medjacks could bring the boy to their hut. As soon as the boys were carrying him away, Alby turned to Newt.
"What the shuck happened?" He asked, concerned. Newt rubbed the back of his neck.
"I dont bloody know Alby, I was in the homestead getting some string to tie up the tomato plants. I came back out when I heard the yelling." Alby nodded and turned back towards the crowd.
"Alright. One of you slintheads explain what just happened." He shouted. there was silence for a moment, until Gally shouted out.
"He was cutting down a tree, since I asked him to. He was carrying back the wood with his axe in his belt. He tripped, cut open his leg. If I had known the slinthead would get hurt I would have done it myself, It's my shucking fault. " He looked down at the ground.
"Thank you, Gally." Alby said. He sighed, and rubbed his jawline.
"Well, everyone back to work I guess." He sighed. The crowd slowly started to clear away. Alby turned to Newt.
"Hey, do me a favor. Make sure everyone is alright? Try to get things back to normal." Newt nodded and walked off to talk to the gladers. Alby sighed and turned to me.
"Greenie, why don't you go help calm everyone down. Everyone seems to like you," The image of the way josh had looked at me was burned into my brain. There was no way I could go back and do any work right now. I shook my head.
"No, I want to help the medjacks with josh. Please Alby." He looks down at me.
"What...why?" He raised an eyebrow. I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at the ground. I rubbed the toe of my boot in the dirt. He didn't say anything for a moment, but he eventually sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah, sure. You seem to know what you're doing with everything else so maybe you can help. Go on slinthead." I smiled, turned and ran after the medjacks.