Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When I walked into the room, I found Zander and Pepper sitting side by side near the farther side. I stepped over clustered bodies of people lying across the floor in all different positions, worried that I'd accidentally step on someone. But I made it to the other side of the room, thankfully without hurting anyone.

"Heyyy," Pepper said as I sat down cross legged next to the two of them.

"Hey," I sighed, still shocked by how I'd survived my inspection. I was suddenly extremely glad that I was actually able to see them again. For all that I'd known, right before my inspection could've been the last time I'd ever see them. But now they were here, and I still had time.

"You seem flustered," Zander pointed out, as he worked on coloring in a drawing of some kind. The pattern seemed complicated, but he was easily shading in perfectly within the lines. The way he was sitting reminded me of a third grader excitedly letting out his imagination in the coloring of a coloring book. He picked up a deep purple color from the ground next to him and expertly painted in the inside of a giant inked in triangle.

"Yea...I thought...," I started, not sure what to even say to describe what had happened.

But Pepper's interest was piqued with only my first couple words. "What?"

"It's just...I made a mistake...a bad one...and I thought they were..."

Pepper seemed to understand and declined to question me further on it. Zander's forehead creased in response, but he continued to stare down at the work of art beneath him and finished coloring in the purple.

A question that had been plaguing me for the last day came to mind as I stared at Zander's coloring, and I decided that now would be as good a time as any to ask it. I nearly had lost the chance completely to find out when I'd thought I was about to be taken away forever.

"What happened between you and Kain?" I asked Pepper, not sure how personal of a question it was.

She froze completely, every muscle in her body coming to a temporary stop. She repeated the same word she'd said before, but this time it was tenser. "What?"

Maybe it had been too personal. But there was no going back now, I'd already said it. I couldn't change what had already happened.

"What...happened between you and him? You both just seem so...different...around each other..."

She didn't answer for such a long time that began to doubt she was planning on answering at all.

And then she said quietly, "We just...used to be friends...good friends..."

Zander continued to color in his picture, but I could tell he was secretly listening in on what Pepper was saying.

"What changed?" I asked.

Pepper stared down at the ground, then looked back up at me. "It was just...I don't know, okay?"

I nodded, not daring to press her any further on it. It would've been better if I'd avoided asking at all, because now I could tell I'd brought back memories of some kind. She looked more troubled than she had been before.

And then, "Sorry...that was a bit harsh..."

I quickly shook my head in response, not wanting her to feel at all guilty about how she'd reacted. "No, it's fine."

Almost as if on cue, Kain walked into the room, bright eyes scanning the faces of everyone before stopping on us. He began to sneak his way around the people, just as I had not long before him.

Pepper noticed him belatedly, and I could see how her expression of sadness quickly closed off, leading instead to a blank face, one that nobody could read anything off of.

But Kain didn't seem keen on having a discussion with us, and rather than joining our unintentional circle, he sat off to the side and pulled out a pad of white paper and a black ballpoint pen. I watched as he began to scratch into the paper, but I was unable to actually see what he was doing because of the way the paper was angled.

"So," I said, trying to start some sort of conversation with Zander and Pepper to prevent prolonging the awkward silence that had fallen between us.

"I almost forgot," Pepper suddenly announced, looking at me and Zander, her face lit up like she'd just figured out the meaning of life. "Zander, we have a challenge to complete."

Zander looked up when Pepper mentioned his name. "Huh?" A strand of his golden hair fell down in front of his eyes and he blew it out of the way.

"CARDS!"