Twenty Fifty-Six

+18+

"But look at the other options!" I insist.

"Then you go!" She says.  "You have a way better chance than me."

"Are you sure?" I ask uncertainly.

"Go." she urges.

Slowly, I stand up and head to the front, at the same time as Tess.

I stop abruptly. "No," I say. "Not against Tess."

"Amber you have to. You're the only good one."

Quinn nods, and I think I even see Tristan nod, just a little bit.

I breathe out. "Okay."

I head up to the front and join Zoe, Daniel, Duckface, Nerdboy and Dave.

"Anyone else?"  Lee asks. 

No one responds.

"I'll take that as a no," one of the two guys, either Corey or Dominic, says.   "Let's start with the guys.  Introduce yourselves please."

"I guess I'll start," says Nerdboy in his nasal voice. He pushes up his glasses. "I'm Zach."

"I'm Daniel. Vote for me!" He shouts, and does jazz hands.

"Dave."

"We're not having ballots or anything, so raise your hand if you're 15 and wanna vote for Zach," says Lee.

They count Zach's votes.

"Okay, now votes for Dave."

I raise my hand. He's a good leader.

"And last, Daniel." Then hands go up.

I am really anxious to know who it is. If it's Daniel then I'm sitting back down.

"Alright," Brianne says. "We have Dave, with eleven votes, Daniel with seven and Zach with three votes. Dave, you can stay up here, and Daniel and Zach, you can go and sit down. Now for the girls. Introduce yourselves please."

"I'm Zoe, and I'm going to win."

"I'm Erica."

"The name's Tess," she says exuberantly, and strikes a pose.

"And I'm Amber."

We go through the same voting process as we did with the guys. In the end, I have five votes, Duckface has three, Zoe has five and Tess has seven. I head back to Aria and the guys.

"You were close, Amber." Then she leans in close and whispers, "Tristan voted for you."

In the other age groups no one else wants to help lead this, so Lee, and one of the guys that was with her, Dominic, is his name, are representing the 17 year olds, and Brianne and Corey representing the 19 year olds.  This whole election seems kind of pointless to me, why didn't the four of them just take charge?

They leader people all gather together and soon enough they're handing out granola bars, apples, oranges, bananas and water.

Everyone is happy to have food, and it immediately boosts the morale.

Aria and I play all sorts of random games, but eventually she wants some time with Quinn.

The chatter starts to die down, and we are all getting sleepy.  Tristan is the first of our corner to fall asleep.  Aria and Quinn drift off leaning on each other shortly afterward.  But I am left with my thoughts, not able to fall asleep.

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This really is all my fault, isn't it?  I wanted to come here so badly, and now I've screwed everything up.  I hurt Tristan.  If only I hadn't gone with Daniel.  Then maybe Tristan and I would look the way Aria and Quinn do right now.  But no.  I had to screw it all up.  I'm a failure. I ruined it all.

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"Amber? Are you okay?"

I open my eyes and see Tristan. Why is my face all wet? Wait, was I crying?

"Amber?" He asks again, cautiously.

"Sorry, what?"

"Are you okay? You were crying."

"Yeah-I. I-uh," I stutter. "Can we talk?"

He replies softly, "Yes."

"Tristan, I-I'm really really sorry.  You didn't deserve any of this.  I'll apologize for everything.  But you have to believe that I didn't kiss him back, nor did I want to kiss him.  I swear.  If you don't believe me, I can just exit your life.  But please, please believe me.  I really like you Tristan.  I never meant to hurt you.  I only went to talk to Daniel because I thought if I talked to him one last time I could make him stay away.  And he is going to stay away, he just wanted to ruin everything first." I stop, out of breath.

"I believe you Amber.  I promise I wasn't ignoring you, there was just a voice in my head that kept repeating.  What if she did kiss him?  What if she likes him?  And I was worried that that voice would be right.  I just needed to regain my sanity before I talked to you.  But I trust you Amber, I really do."  He pauses.  "And I hate seeing you sad or scared, waking up from a nightmare like that."

I think I have tears in my eyes.  What did I do to deserve this?

"Tristan," I say.  "I don't know what I did to deserve such an amazing person like you, but I promise, I never want to hurt you again."

"Amber, I really like you. And like I said, I trust you. But let's go back to sleep now, okay?"

We head back to the corner and sit down by Aria and Quinn. He puts his arm around me and pulls me close to him.

I quickly fall into a deep, nightmare free sleep.

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YAY! CHAPTER 18!!!! Sorry you guys had to wait so long, thanks for being patient.

Thank you so much to everyone who faithfully reads, comments and votes. It means so much to me. Love you guys!

Anyway, hope you like the chapter. I'm gonna be pretty busy the next few weeks with choir, but I'll try and do another update in the near future.

Jen