Zipped

6: The Criminal

Molly looked up within a few seconds of when I entered and looked at me. “Thomas. I thought you were sleeping,” she said softly.

“I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep so I thought I should come and look around. Plus I wanted to see Elsie, but apparently she’s asleep,” I said, looking at my little sister with a small smile. She was so innocent and sweet, especially when she was asleep.

“Ah, okay,” Molly replied in a small voice. She glanced back at her sister as she let go of Mitchell, sitting down normally again.

Mitchell turned to look at me and gave me a small smile. “Good to see you, man,” he said softly, in a way that I could tell was sincere. We hadn’t had a real conversation in a long while, so this was different.

“Good to see you too, Mitchell. Glad you’re alive,” I said in a joking manner, to which he laughed.

“You really haven’t changed much, have you Thomas?” he teased me right back, and I laughed a bit myself. Then he stood up, and looked around at everyone. “So, I’m going to get a snack from the mess hall. Want me to bring anything back for you guys?” He offered to everyone.

“No, we’re all good, but thanks,” Neil said, to which Molly and Shailene nodded.

“I bet Elsie will want something when she wakes up. Here, I’ll come to help you pick something out for her,” I supplied. Maybe this would be a good opportunity to ask him about what he had gone down here for. I was just so curious, and so was Molly. This would be a good time to ask him about it, wouldn’t it? I stepped aside to let him exit the room.

“That would be great. Thanks, man,” he said and walked out the door. I followed behind him quickly and caught up to walk beside him down the, now completely lit, hall.

We walked in silence for a minute. I wasn’t entirely sure what to say to him at this point. How exactly do you start a conversation about why a person was convicted of a crime and sentenced to “death” that didn’t actually kill him?

Mitchell looked over at me as we walked. “So, what did you want to talk about? I know you wouldn’t have volunteered to help. That would have been Shailene, or someone else. So what is it?” He asked. I remembered how intellectual he was, and how well he could figure things out, so this didn’t surprise me.

I chewed my lip and looked at him. Here goes nothing. “So, before we jumped, we were also trying to figure out why you got sent down here in the first place. Molly and I couldn’t remember you being a bad person in any way, so we went to check out your records,” I began. “But when we got there, the description of your crime was so plain, and we couldn’t get more details than the few words on the paper. I wanted to find out what happened from you,” I said.

Mitchell sighed and looked up towards the cave ceiling. “I should have seen this one coming, shouldn’t I have?” he mumbled, walking beside me. Then he spoke up, a bit louder so I could hear it. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, I’ve got time,” I said, shrugging a bit. We turned a corner into another lit hallway, and continued to walk together.