Only Girl. - TMR

Chapter Five.

The next morning I woke up with guilt nagging in my stomach. That or hunger, considering I had hardly eaten a thing since arriving here. 

I ran my fingers through my long - now slightly mattered - hair and walked outside into the fresh morning air. Feeling slightly ashamed as every pair of eyes turned towards me as I stepped onto the dewy grass. I took my meal and sat on the ground, alone.

For the first time in three day the meal actually looked appetising, or was it my extreme hunger?

Half way through guzzling down my meal, someone else sat down at the bench. I could already guess who it was. 

‘Lia?’ Newt said, ‘sorry about last night, you’ll just need a little while to settle in but…’ he trailed off, seeing his words were going nowhere and that I hadn’t look up from my meal. 

I nodded at him, my mouth full of food still. I didn’t want to be rude or unlikable, but I certainly didn’t need to gain anyones trust or make new friends, just do what I have to do to get by in this place until we found a way out. 

He saw that I acknowledged his words and unfortunately seemed to be encouraged.

‘So I arranged it and you’ll be working with the builders, today. Just easy stuff, I think…’ 

‘Thanks,’ I said, trying to hide my relief. 

After a few minutes of silence in which we both finished our meals, Newt spoke up again. 

‘So, uh, I guess I’ll take you to the Builders now…’ he said awkwardly, standing up. 

I followed him across the glade to the cluster of Builders standing in the dust. They were working on some kind of table and a couple of the others were repairing a nearby building. 

‘So, I’ll leave you with these guys then.’ Newt walked off and part of me wished he would stay with me. However much I didn’t want to admit it, I liked Newt, just platonically of course.

He was the only one who’d been kind to me in my days here and I enjoyed talking to him in the crops the other day. He was also the only one who’d actually taken time to talk to me or seemed to care about me. 

I caught a lot of the Gladers staring at me sometimes. I was probably the only girl they’d seen in a long time, or could remember at all for that matter. It didn’t really mean anything though, none of them talked to me and glanced down when I made eye contact with them.

The Builders set me up doing some pointless task that I assumed they just gave me to get me out of the way, and I wasn’t really doing anything productive, but I did it anyway. I wanted to distance myself, not cause trouble. 

At what I guessed was around one or two o’clock, Newt came over and sat down beside me. 

‘Whatcha up to?’ He asked, eyeing my work. 

‘I think I’m just hammering nails into wood, not sure what the purpose is though,’ I held up the piece of timber I was holding, which was studded with crooked nails I had badly hammered in. I was speaking coldly, but polite enough. 

Newt laughed and I almost did too. His laugh was contagious, but I tried to keep my face straight, even look a little annoyed. 

‘I’d say there is no purpose, they just want you out of the way,’ he said good-naturedly, between laughs. I smiled a little bit. ‘I thought so.’

There were a few moments of dead silence. ‘You know you don’t have to be so cold towards everyone?’ Newt said. I positioned a nail in the wood and brought down the hammer hard on the head of the nail. The nail wobbled a bit but went in. ‘I’m not looking to make friends here, Newt. I’m still not sure about this place.’

‘You can trust me, you know? All the Greenies go through this at first but they always come around. You’ll trust us and the Glade eventually, it’s normal.’ He said, sincerely sounding like he cared about me. For I moment I looked into his big, doe eyes and almost felt like I cared about him. Then I smacked the hammer down hard on the nail again, driving it further into the wood. 

‘I’m not sure.’

Heeeey, so I woke up this morning and I had 19 reads, (6 more than the previous night) and I cried tears of happiness... It's a big deal to me at least that 19 people looked at my fanfic. (* __ *)  Don't you just love that scene with Thomas and Newt from the film (the gif above) it's so sweet!!

ANYWAYS, the fkn homework is piling up and procrastination isn't as effective as it may seem. 0: 

So I'll try and post again in two nights time   ilyyyy xx Poppy