Freak

14.

There was a heavy knock at the door "Mr. Morgan?! Are you still asleep?" it was Miss Grimshaw and she didn't sound all too happy.

"I was..." mumble Arthur and Blue wondered if he really thought Miss Grimshaw could hear him. Untangling herself from his embrace she slipped onto the floor and walked over to open the door.

"Good morning Miss Grimshaw" she said, putting all her effort into sounding as sweet as she possibly could. Blue knew well enough how the older woman hated when people were lazy, especially if they slept for too long. She'd seen her deliver well-aimed kicks at sleeping gang members more than once through Blue's time with them, so she hoped that being sweet could get her and Arthur out of any potential trouble.

"More like good afternoon... the sun is sitting high in the sky by now..." the woman said raising an eyebrow in a disapproving manner.

"Oh... Sorry?"

"Hm, well I don't have time to lecture anyone at the moment, we're moving camp and you both need to help, you can tell that lazy man that if he's not out of bed in five minutes I'll be up here with a bucket of water, understood?"

Blue wasn't even given the chance to answer before Miss Grimshaw was storming through the hallway and disappeared down the stairs. Slowly Blue turned to the bed where Arthur was now sitting up, hair sticking out in every direction and a disorientated look in his eyes.

"I think she wants you to get up..."

"Yeh I think so too..."

***

Everyone was running around taking down tents and loading things onto wagons. There was a sort of tense feeling in the air that Arthur knew well enough to be stress. With everything that had been going on with Bronte he'd known it wouldn't be long before they had to move to a better hiding spot, before they had to run... again...

Dutch claimed that it was different this time though, because this time they were moving before things got out of hand, that they were moving because it was the best thing for the gang. The leader had held a meeting where he in true Van der Linde-fashion had told them how everything would be alright, that they would all be fine as long as they stuck together and were loyal to each other.

After that Miss Grimshaw had barked out her orders and everyone was put to work, excluding Blue and Jack who had been ordered to sit in one of the wagons so that they wouldn't get in the way. Uncle had complained that he too should be allowed to sit with them sense he had a 'critical medical condition' but his wish had been shot down faster than he could even finish his sentence, causing giggles to erupt from the children in the wagon. Arthur let out a chuckle of his own before he patted Uncle on the shoulder and motioned for him to help with the big wooden box Pearson had stuffed with whatever provisions they had.

"But my back!.." Uncle whined one last time, putting every ounce of acting skills into use as he groaningly rubbed his 'critical medical condition'.

"Does it look like I care old man?"

"No..."

***

Blue wished she could have helped packing up camp but she was also happy to have some time alone with Jack. She had brought one of her books into the wagon so that they could read together since Hosea was in the process of teaching the younger boy how to read and still wanted Blue to practice regularly. The book was called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Blue loved it! She got it from Sean after the whole white-rabbit-incident, he said he'd found it somewhere and since it had a white rabbit on the cover he'd thought of her. Since then she had read it twice and now she wanted to share it with Jack, thinking he would enjoy it.