Expired

Chapter 11

"I will." He says with a smile. I start to blush and I smile back. I close his door and walk back inside. I can't stop smiling! I run up the stairs where Danielle stands under the trap door. "Can you please open it?" She asks pointing to the door. I just nod and I still can't help it but I'm smiling like an idiot. "What happened to you?" She asks and chuckles a little. "It's Ben." I say and smile even more. "Oh boy." She says. I pull the little string to pull open the door and release the ladder.

We climb up and start looking in the boxes. "So you kissed him huh?" She asked. "What!" My voice squeaks. "How did you know?" I ask. "The windows open honey." She says. "Oh." I say feeling stupid as ever. I still can't help smiling! We keep searching for the right box and after ten minutes we found it. "I found it!" Danielle called. "Nice job!" I say giving her a thumbs up and walk over to her. We open it and after a little searching a find a big with a brown leather cover and a keyhole. "Found it!" I call.

She puts her hand at the bottom of the box and pulls out a key. She puts it in the keyhole and turns it. It flys open and a bunch of papers fall out. She flips through the pages while I look at the papers. I open the first one and it is a map. "What's this?" I ask. "Oh that was a camp we lived in." She says. "Wait what was it you were going to tell us earlier?" I ask. "Well......honey Ben is "Expired" too. She says with a slight smile.

"Ben.......is "Expired"?" I ask again. Somehow it's kind of hard to take it and it's not even that shocking. "H..how can you tell?" I ask. "I knew his parents.....both of them were at the camp." Danielle says frowning. "What happened?" I ask. "They were such good people..." She trails off with a tear streaming down her face. "Then they attacked us....and his father didn't last." She says starting to cry a little. "What about the mother?" "As you probably saw it coming, his mother was pregnant with him and we fled the camp. We left as soon as we can but someone shot his father with an arrow straight in the back and he didn't last."

"We had a wagon and we drove as fast as we could away and we had Lilly sit in the back seat where it was like a little room around us. She got too stressed with her sweetheart dead and she burst into labor. Luckily one of them was a child of a nurse just like you. After a bit of medical things and whatnot she gave birth. She couldn't handle it I guess because as soon as he was put in her arms she passed away." She said. "Wow......that story had a lot of tension." I said. She nodded her head. "She didn't even survive to give him a name." "So who named him?" "I did." She said. "Whoa! What made you name him Ben?" I asked.

"It was his fathers name." "And he looked just like his father, named Ben." She said. I smile at her. She wiped away her tear and somehow have me a smile. Just then I heard the door close. "Ben?" I asked and walked downstairs. No one answered and I started to look around. "Ben?" I called again. Hands wrapped around my waist. "Ahhhhhhhh!" I screamed and flipped myself around so fast it almost gave my neck whiplash.

"Whoa whoa calm down its just me." Ben said with comfort in his voice. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh you scared me!" I say and wrap my arms around his back pulling him into a hug. After I released my arms around him he leaned me into another kiss. "Get a room you two!" Danielle yelled from the ladder. We both pulled away and started laughing. I grab his hand and drag him up to the attic. We get upstairs and see Danielle looking through the journal. "I found it!" She yelled with excitement. Me and Ben sit on the floor and scoot toward her reading the page with her.

December 16, 1978
Today we gained two new members here at camp. They're both very young, Lilly and Ben. They're only eighteen and they're married! And Lilly said she's expecting any day now! That's so crazy to me! I remember when me and Bridger tried to have more children....but I lost them all. Oh my! I just heard a gunshot! I pray for m

That's all we could read because the rest of the page was ripped. "Was that the night it all happened?" I asked. Danielle doesn't say anything she just nods. "What night that it all happened?" Ben asked. "There's something she needs to tell you." I say putting my hand on his shoulder. "Tell me what?" He's asked. That's when Danielle told him the whole story the gunshots, his father, the arrow,his mother, his birth. Everything that happened that night.

"I lost my mother because of me?" He asked. "No that's not what happened at all!" "She was too young she couldn't handle it." Me and Danielle convinced him. I still could see tears forming in his eyes. The thought of never meeting his parents makes him emotional. I pull him into a hug. "I know how you feel." I say with my arms around him. "What's it's like....to lose people you love." I say trying not to think to much of my parents.

He nods his head. "Was she alive to talk to me or hold me?" He asked Danielle. "She only lived long enough to hold you. She didn't name you or anything." She said. "Wait who named me then and raised me?" "Who were those people?" He asked. "It was me Ben I named you, as for who raised you it was my sister. "What happened to her?" He asked. "She died of old age after you left to explore." She said. "Oh." He said with tears forming his eyes agin. "You didn't tell him all of it." I say smiling a little. "You mean there's more?" He asked.

"Ben you're "Expired" too."