Cadha (#wattys2016)

Hair Pin

"I got it into my head that if I fought the guy he would stop talking bad to my Pap. On the third day of working in the stone quarry he came up to us during our lunch break and started talking bad to my Pap again.  That's when I attacked him.  It wasn't much of a fight, but I remember he came out of it with a pretty badly broken nose and a busted lip.  The next day I was arrested of attempted murder.  Of course, I hadn't been trying to kill him, but the way he told the story I had a knife in my hand when I attacked him and it took all his strength to keep me from killing him.  I think that was the start of my bad luck; I didn't purposefully attack anyone from then on out, but I get accused a lot of doing things that I didn't do.  Maybe it's the red hair," he ended, grinning at me with that captivating smile as he fingered the ends of his curly hair.

Gosh! I had to stop thinking those sort of things! I didn't even know who he was!

"So, because of my many to visits to the prisons around this part of the kingdom I have learned a few tricks. One of those is the simple lock-picking trick. With the help of your hairpin we could easily get out of this horrible place and escape to wherever we want."

  He looked at me expectantly.  I sighed and pulled a hairpin from my long black hair and the majority of it spilled out of the loose braided doo I had fixed my hair in the previous day. I had slept on it the night before and it had all but fallen out now.  "Just let me fix my hair up in something different," I said to him as I pulled the rest of the hairpins out. With all my hair pins out I picked one out of the pile that had accumulated beside me on the stone floor and handed it through the bars to the boy.  He took it from my hand, but didn't move to do anything else.

I looked up from his hand and saw that he was staring at me with a look I couldn't quite place.  It gave me butterflies in my stomach, which confused me, because I wasn't nervous at all.  As our eyes met his gaze flitted away for a second, but quickly came back to mine.  His mouth opened slightly, and he took a breath as if we was going to talk, but he closed his mouth quickly again.  Then he opened his mouth and said, "Could I have a few more of those pins?"

"Yes," I said, wondering what he needed them for, but handed them over anyways.

"Could you turn around and scoot just a little closer to the bars?"  he said.

I did as he said wondering what he could be up to.  I only had to wait a few seconds to find out.  I felt his hands, soft and gentle, caress my hair before grabbing a few pieces of it and bringing them together in the back.  With the care of someone handling a baby, he pinned the few locks of hair to the back of my head.  "You can turn back around."

I did and he gazed at my face like he had never seen it before. "You look gorgeous," he said.  I wondered if I'd heard him right as he quickly corrected himself.  "I...I mean, that looks better... not...not that you didn't look good before. I mean... it looks nice. And you are pretty. I mean...not that I think you're pretty or anything," he said quickly and I just laughed at him. "Ugh," he said and then smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand.  He looked up slowly and smiled sheepishly. "Just ignore everything I said, okay?"

"I'll try."

"Um..." he said awkwardly, trying to restart our conversation, not that I had done much of the talking.  "Well, all we have to do now is wait for Anderass to move to another level of the prison." He said glancing behind me down the hallway filled with cells.  I followed his gaze and saw the guard who had brought us both down here approaching from around a curve in the hallway.

"You mean the guard?"

"Yes, I know him quite well," he said sarcastically.  He saw my face and continued, "Not as a friend, but from previous visits down here.  That's why he let me pick my cell, sort of.  He patrols all of the three levels of the prison.  Once he goes up to the second level we should be able to get out of here pretty easily. Now sit back and relax.  Literally, you should probably go to the back of your cell and stay there until Anderass has gone upstairs."

"How come?"

"Do I have to explain everything to you?" he said in a jokingly. "If he sees us sitting here chatting he will obviously figure out that we are hatching some plot to get out of here. But if you sit on the other side of your cell from me he will probably think that you're scared to even talk to me or something like that." He smiled at me and waved me towards the corner of my cell, but I saw my hairpin in his hand.

"You'll probably need to hide that," I said quietly to him.  He shoved it into a pocket in his trousers and then scooted back to the other edge of his cell.  I was about to hurry to the other side of my cell when I saw my other hairpins lying on the floor.  I scooped them into my apron and sat on the patch of straw near the back of my cell. I tried to make my face look as guiltless as possible, if you can do that, and hoped that he didn't suspect anything.

The guard didn't give me a second glance, but when he passed the boy's cell he stopped.  "I'm almost surprised that you haven't tried to escape yet," the guard said in a deep voice.

"No siree," said the boy.  "I've mended my ways. No more being an escape artist."

"Right.  Like I'm gonna believe your lying mouth.  I'll keep an eye on you," said Anderass, a scowl forming on his face.  Then he turned through the archway that held the stairs and went up.  I listened as his footsteps receded up the stairs and eventually disappeared into silence.  I looked over to the boy as he looked at me and he nodded at me then hurried to the lock on the cell door and started poking my hairpin into it.  He had only been fiddling with it for a few seconds before the lock clicked and his door swung open.

He hadn't been joking when he said it would be easy getting out here.  He quickly unlocked my door as well and opened it for me.  He walked across the small cell and looked down at me.  "Oh!" he said as if remembering something very important. "By the way, my name's Reid."  He reached out his hand and I took it.  He pulled me up, but when I was up on my feet he kept didn't let go; I was okay with that.  

We ducked into the shadowy space right inside the opening and he put his finger to his lips.  He started up the creaky metal stairs first and I followed right behind him.  We made it up the first flight of stairs without too many creaks from the stairs, but when we stepped onto the landing for the second story of the prison, the metal floor creaked loudly.  Reid froze in the middle of his step, which caused the floor to creak again and he slowly turned his head back to look at me.  He mouthed the word, "Oops," and we both jumped as we heard Anderass' voice call out from down the hallway on this level.

            "Drendan? Is that you?" the guard called out.  We stood as still as possible, but I didn't know what good that would do; I could hear the guard's footsteps coming quickly down the short corridor.

            "I thought you said you knew how to get out of here," I whispered in Reid's ear.

            "Well," he said quietly back to me, "I did, but I never said we wouldn't get caught. 

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AN: (cont.)

Sorry, this is a crappy chapter 😝

I'm also sorry about he cheesy romance. Hope can appreciate it anyways. What do guys think is gonna happen with them?

If you guys happened to actually like it please let me know by voting for this chapter. 👍

And, as always, if you have any suggestions or notice any grammatical errors please let me know.

(I might do a double update to make up for last week. Stay tuned )

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