" WHITE BLOOD " T. MAZE RUNNER¹

six.

[CHAPTER SIX]
dreams

~

That night, Eleanor dreamed. It was the first time she dreamt since she arrived in the Glade, and though the images inside her mind were faint and unfocused, she could just barely make out what was going on around her.

She stood in the corner of a Victorian-styled room, with dark brown wood flooring and white walls. It were as if she were a statue in the corner- or perhaps an apparition, invisible to the naked eye- because not one person in the room took notice of her.

She watched on as a Hispanic man who seemed to be in his early twenties entered the building through the large white doors, a bell jingling as he did so. He held his hands in the pockets of his dark brown trench coat as he crossed the room, stopping in front of a dark wooden desk. An old woman sat behind a computer, half-moon glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. As she noticed the man standing before her, she looked up from her work with an eyebrow raised.

"May I help you?"

The man spoke too low for Eleanor to hear what he was saying, but his voice was laced with a thick Spanish accent. Eleanor struggled to listen on, though no matter how hard she tried, it seemed as if they voices were deliberately running away from her. After a few moments of conversation, the old woman handed the man a clipboard with several pieces of paper attached to it. Eleanor watched as he took a seat in a suede chair near her and began scribbling on to the papers with messy handwriting.

A few minutes later, the old woman, whom Eleanor didn't even notice had gotten up from her seat behind the desk, reappeared back into the room. Behind her were two small children, who didn't seem to be any older than seven or eight. Their eyes were wide as they looked around them, almost as if they were nervous about what was going to happen.

The kids looked nothing alike, so Eleanor speculated that they weren't related to each other in any way. But the girl, smaller and more frail-looking, clutched on to the boy as if he were able to protect her from any threat. With long blonde hair that was pulled behind her back in a braid, her blue eyes darted around the room nervously. The boy beside her was a bit tanner, with dark brown hair and eyes so dark that they almost seemed black. He was taller than the girl, and he had his arm wrapped around her shoulder as he stared at the Hispanic man skeptically.

The old woman knelt before the two frightened kids, a soft expression of kindness that she hadn't worn on her face before then. "Noah, Beth, this kind man is going to adopt you."

It wasn't until then that Eleanor realized that this building was an orphanage. A few kids sat on the suede couch near the Hispanic man, and they looked up with surprised expressions at the word "adopt". As the old woman said this, the girl's- who Eleanor assumed was Beth- eyes lit up happily, and a large grin formed on her face. Noah, on the other hand, still looked uncertain about the whole idea.