One of Nine

CHAPTER 5

"Why do you care?" she asked, almost yelling. She was in distress now. Her mild mannered attitude slowly disappearing as she glared at me.

"Because I care about Junius!" I replied, my voice also rising.

She stopped walking again, and looked at me, rubbing her forehead like she was thinking.

"Fine. Fine, I'll tell you, but," she pointed a finger at me. "Only if you promise to come and talk to me about what's going on with you. Just once is all I'm asking. If I was wrong... so be it I suppose."

I opened my mouth to argue but she cut me off.

"I'm not saying you have to talk to me today, or tomorrow. But just once."

"Fine." I said, knowing that by the time I'd be ready to talk to her, we'd have gotten out of this hell and I'd never see her again... hopefully.

We resumed walking.

"The reason Junius and I haven't seen each other is because I had no clue where he was. After my parents threw him out, he cut all ties. Even with me. Happy?"

"Your parents threw him out?" I ask, wondering why Junius didn't mention this last night. "Why?"

"Extenuating circumstances," Juniper replied coolly.

I nodded, done trying to get her to tell me things she didn't want to. It was selfish of me to have forced her to share when it was clear she didn't want to.

"I'm sorry," I apologize. "I shouldn't have pushed you. I'm sure it wasn't easy feeling like you lost a brother."

"It wasn't no. Thank you for your apology. Do you mind if we rest for a bit?"

"Yeah sure," I said, stopping so that Juniper could rest on a large boulder sitting on the forest floor. "All of the notes that you guys gave me yesterday were really nice. Thank you."

She nods as if it were nothing. "It was Eli's idea."

"Really?" I ask, surprised. It was Eli's idea?

She opened up her backpack and pulled out her water flask. "You should take a drink, we've been walking for a while."

"I'm okay, thank you," I say, crossing my arms over my chest and looking into the deep woods that surrounded us, my eyes straining to see anything that might help us figure out where we were. Nothing.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes savoring the sunlight that was shining down on us in between the branches. It was still bitterly cold and I couldn't feel my toes anymore, but all that I was thinking about was how nice the sun felt.

"How's your leg?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "Well it's not there, so it's not doing too great I would say."

A day or two after we had arrived at the house Juniper had fallen down the stairs. When a few of us had rushed to her aid we discovered that her left leg ended just below the knee and she wore a prosthetic. She had dismissed us and told us not to worry about her, because she "falls all the time." No one asked her what happened, and she hadn't told us.

"I've discovered that the leg doesn't do well on forest floors," she explained as she stood up and we continued our trek into the unknown."So..." Juniper continued, obviously not wanting to fall back into a long silence. "What's Emerisle like?" 

"Hot," I responded.

"Must be quite a change," she smiles, gesturing to the snow.

"Yes it is. It's also smelly, dirty, with crime rates through the roof, and it seems like everyone is piled on top of each other in small ass apartments."