Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Twenty

Two figures were underneath the white light, matching the two voices that had been talking. One was a small girl, with a thin body and face, looking even thinner with her wide eyes and shocked mouth, as she continued begging. Her brown eyes were surrounded in red, and tears continued streaming down over her bony cheeks as the figure standing above her glared down. The man was much taller than her with a buzz cut of blonde hair and a pair of metal handcuffs clutched in one fist. The most shocking part of it all, though, was the fact that the man was wearing the black outfit only associated with inspectors.

He was an inspector.

And he was glaring down at the small blonde haired girl at his feet mercilessly.

Then he was kneeling down and ripping her arms out from in front of her. He turned her around and began handcuffing her wrists together, being extra rough and not caring about the pain he was obviously causing her.

I wanted to step in and do something, but I knew I was no match for the tall guard who was now forcing the small girl to her feet. She dug her heels into the ground, in a last attempt at fighting back, but the man was too strong, and he easily made her stumble when he tried pulling her.

When I realized he was trying to force her to go down the hallway adjacent to the one I stood in, I slammed my back against the lockers, making a soft thudding sound. I winced and kept both eyes closed, waiting to feel the muscular hands of the same guy forcing me into handcuffs, but nothing happened. When I reopened my eyes, the guard was pulling the girl along by her handcuffs, forcing her to go down the hallway perpendicular to mine while she stumbled along, tears flowing freely from her eyes.

I watched as the girl was pulled down the hallway and then out of sight.

I didn't move for a couple minutes even after I was certain the girl and her guard were gone. My mind was having trouble processing what has happening. Not only what I'd just witnessed with the girl being taken away in handcuffs, but what I'd learned maybe ten minutes later with the warning categories and names on the list.

But then I was running. Running back towards my room.

I couldn't think. I refused to think. I didn't want to do the math and realize just how bad of a position I was in.

My feet stumbled along the tiled floor and I had to press my hand against a cold locker to stabilize myself. Then I was sprinting again, looking up and down the hallway and seeing the sign for A598. I forced my body to slow down, then stopped outside the door and waited for my breathing to return to normal. Although I was trying to run from what I'd seen, walking in breathless and looking like a maniac would only throw me back into the nightmare.

Because this felt too much like a nightmare to be real. I wished it was. I could feel it throughout my body, the raw wanting that all of this wasn't real. That even my secret wasn't real and had never happened. But the past was the past, and I could never change it. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I wished, it would never disappear and my mistakes would never change. My regrets could never be erased, and not even forgetting what had happened could get rid of them.

My hand was shaking as I cracked open the room's door and slid inside. Nobody else had woken up. The black haired guard was still sleeping in her own sleeping bag near the front of the room.

I tiptoed around the sleeping bag, seeing mine with its ruffled blankets and left behind sneakers.

I knelt down slowly, only then remembering Pepper. I wondered where she was, and if she had escaped, too. She must have. The guards had to have left the room leaving her with an easy opening. Or maybe I was just thinking that to make myself feel better. Maybe that was my own coping mechanism to deal with the guilt that was suddenly eating me that I'd abandoned her.

I would know for certain whether or not to feel guilty tomorrow at breakfast.

As I turned over in my sleeping bag which I hugged tight around my chest, I noticed Kain's eyes twitch closed. He was awake and I knew it. But I didn't care. He could tell the guards all he wanted, and I still wouldn't care. I was so tired, so done with the entire problem, everything that had happened.

And, I realized, would they even trust him if he did report me?

After all, he had been on the warning category.

I forced myself to stop thinking about him, and to focus on sleep. I forced my mind to pretend nothing was wrong, and nothing had just happened.

It wasn't long before my eyelids flitted shut and I fell headfirst into a dreamless sleep.