Outside the Gates, V. I, Chapters 4-9

CHAPTER 4
         At 4:15 Jetta and I finally started making our way to The Green.  I took my bag with me, that had my To Kill a Mockingbird in it.  I felt like reading there.  We headed out the glass doors of the dorm building and out to a pathway that headed for The Green.  We followed the dirt path around trees and beds of flowers, until we finally reached that open space that I called home in free time.  I headed for the stone bench where Keitha and Sherry were sitting and sat down next to Keitha, with Jetta sitting on the other side of me.  “Hey guys,” they said simultaneously. 
         “Hey,” Jetta said. 
         I pulled out my book, and began flipping through the pages. 
         Jetta grabbed the book from me.  “You should’ve read while I was doing homework.”
         “I did,” I said, taking the book from her hands.  “I couldn’t do anything else.”
         “I’m so happy its pizza night,” Sherry said, changing the subject. 
         What she caused was an awkward silence. 
         “Umm, yeah,” Keitha said.  “Pineapple pizza is amazing.”
         That started them in a whole entire conversation about pizza and what goes good on it.  I just rolled my eyes at Jetta. 
         I opened my book and started reading. 
         “Ok, now what am I supposed to do?” Jetta asked. 
         “Talk with them?” I motioned to Keitha and Sherry.
         “No offense, but pizza is not the most interesting topic.”
         I looked at them two of them, now talking about peanut butter on pizza.  Gross. 
         “Fine then, I won’t read.” I put the book away and out of sight. 
         “Hey,” Keitha said. “You guys heard about the new girl right?”
         “What new girl?” Jetta asked. 
         “She transferred or something from another Serko, kind of like how I transferred from another dorm.”
         “There are other Serkos?” Sherry asked. 
         “Yes!  Where have you been?”  Sherry just shrugged. 
         “What’s her name?” I asked, getting interested. 
         “I don’t know,” Keitha went on.  “But she arrives tomorrow.  I can’t wait!  Another friend for our little group.”
         I smiled at that idea.  It would be nice to have another friend.
         “You can read now if you want,” Jetta said, getting up to go sit by Sherry.  I thought it kind of insulting for her to just get up and leave me, but I did want to read.  So I pulled out my book and began on Chapter 3 where I had left off. 
         I read for quite a long time, once in a while getting pulled into the conversation next to me, such as what kind of pizza was better than others—they just couldn’t leave that topic alone—or to just say something that I felt like needing to say. 
         There was a bell hanging from a wooden post at the entrance to the Green.  It always rang whenever you had to go back to your rooms.  The bell was beginning to ring, meaning it was now 6:15.  It was time to go back to our dorms for pizza night.  I tucked my book into my bag and got up with the rest of the group, as we headed back to the dorm building.  Sherry and Keitha were still talking about pizza, they just couldn’t let it go, and Jetta fell back next to me to talk. 
         “How long do you think the new girl is going to stay?” she asked me.
         I shrugged.  “Depends, I didn’t even know that there were other Serkos.”
         “Well, yes, but that doesn’t matter. But besides that, maybe where she came from they do things differently.  Like they don’t have pizza night, game day, electives day, or Ms. Greucher.”
         I laughed.  “Well of course they won’t have Ms. Greucher.  Maybe every Serko has someone like her.”
         “Or worse.”
         We laughed at that for a while, then followed Keitha and Sherry into our room.  I, of course, went back to where I had left off; my bed.  I crawled up there, and then lay down, acting exhausted. 
         “Tired?” Sherry asked me.
         “Always,” I grumbled.
         “I’m so hungry,” Keitha said, sitting at her desk, her chair turned towards Sherry’s. 
         I sat up waiting, watching the minutes go by.  It was 6:25 now, and the pizza would be here any minute. 
         Our door opened at 6:26, and Jeff, our floor’s guard, came into our room and lay down the pizzas, plates, and napkins on our table, which was situated in the center of the room.  “Here are your pizzas, guys,” he said. He went back outside, and set four bottles of our own pop down on the table.  “Enjoy.”  He closed the door, and we made a dash for the pizzas.  Jetta opened the first one and cringed at the sight of the pineapple.  I, however, had gotten off my bunk bed awkwardly, and fell down off the ladder as a result.  The trio laughed at me in return. 
         “Ha, ha, ha,” I said sarcastically, getting up and making my way to the sausage pizza that lay on the table.  I grabbed a plate and the biggest slice of sausage pizza that I could find, and took a huge bite out of it, before ever even laying it on my plate.  I sat down at the table, and grabbed my pop.  The other three did the same. 
         We sat there silently, each one of us not wanting to disturb the other as we enjoyed our amazing Italian delight of sauce and cheese.  About 10 minutes in, still with us silently gorging ourselves, there was a knock on the door. Sherry got up to get it. 
         It was Lisa and she poked her head in.  She began looking at our table.  “Keitha,” she said.  “Can I speak to you for a minute?”  She motioned with her finger, and Keitha got up and Sherry sat back down, once again, simultaneously.  The door closed with Lisa and Keitha on the other side. 
         “What’s that about?” I asked, swallowing a mouthful of pizza.
         Jetta shrugged.
         “I don’t know,” Sherry said.  “But I’m going to eat her pizza if she doesn’t get back soon!”

CHAPTER 5
It was 15 minutes later when Keitha came back into the room.  Lisa walked in with her this time. 
         “Jetta, Tarika, Sherry,” Lisa said.  “There is someone that I want you all to meet.”
         At that moment a girl walked in.  She was short, had straight red hair, and gray eyes. 
         “This is Adrina,” Lisa said.  “She’s new here, and she’s going to be shadowing Keitha, meaning, they will have all classes together, and Keitha is going to show her around.  I know you are all Keitha’s friends, so, I also want you to be nice to her and help show Adrina around.  She’s only here for dinner and then she’s going to be spending the night in the empty dorm across the hall.  Sound good?”
         We all nodded. 
         Lisa pulled in a fifth chair and placed it at the end of the table. 
         Adrina sat down, and Lisa left.
         I held out a once-greasy hand to her.  “I’m Tarika,” I said. 
         “Nice to meet you,” Adrina said, smiling and shaking my hand.  She had one of those quiet shy innocent voices that you could sometimes hardly hear. 
         The other three did the same.
         “That sucks that you have to have a room all to yourself,” Jetta remarked. 
         Adrina opened her mouth to say something, but Sherry stole her turn. 
         “What?” Sherry almost yelled.  “If I were her I would go crazy in a room all to myself.  Just run around and no one would care.”
         Keitha rolled her eyes.  “Of course only you could say something like that.”
         “I wouldn’t really like it if I had a room to myself,” I said.  Then turned to Adrina.  “Not to depress you or anything, but I would probably get lonely, I mean, you wouldn’t get to talk to anyone during free time, unless you were at The Green.”
         “Don’t worry,” Jetta said.  “Jeff, the guard on this floor, is a friend of ours.  We can probably have him move your bunk bed in our room.”
         Sherry looked around the room, then back at Jetta.  “Yes,” she said.  “Because that would totally fit in here.”
         “Well excuse me for trying,” Jetta said, taking a bite of pizza.  I looked over to see Adrina eating a slice of sausage pizza.  Wise choice, I thought. 
         “So you just came from another Serko, right?” I asked Adrina.
         She nodded, still chewing her pizza.  “We had pizza night too, except it was on Saturdays.  And we didn’t have game day or sports day.  Just school every day of the week.”
         My eyes widened at the thought of school every single day.  “Wow,” I said.  “I don’t think I could survive school every day of the week.”
         Adrina shrugged.  “It’s what I’m used to.  By the way, you can all just call me Addy, it’s what everyone used to call me back where I come from.”
         “Okay, Addy,” Keitha said, taking a sip of her Coke. 
         “Where’d y’all get the soda?” Addy asked.  I barely understood what she said. 
         “Umm, you mean the pop?”  Sherry asked.           
         “Umm, yeah sure,” Adrina didn’t sound too sure of what she said. 
         “We had to order it,” Sherry answered. 
         “Maybe I can see if Jeff has any left over,” Jetta said. “What kind do you want?”
“Umm, I’ll just have what you’re having,” Adrina said shyly, and Jetta got up and left the room.
She was gone in less than a minute, and returned with a Diet Coke bottle in hand. 
She set it down for Adrina to drink, and Jetta sat back down. 
“I told you, Sherry,” she said, “I have connections with Jeff.”
“He once let us sneak out to the Green at night,” I added in. 
Adrina just nodded.  I didn’t know if she would fit in with us or not, but I felt determined to make an effort, even though I didn’t have her in any of my classes. 
Adrina looked at the clock, causing the rest of us to look after her. 
“Well,” she said, setting down the Coke, “I think I’m going to go to sleep.  Bye guys.”  She got up, and taking the Coke with her, she headed for the door. 
“Bye,” we called after her.  She left. 
It was 7:20 now, and I felt guilty for not doing any homework yet, so I finished the last of my pizza and headed off to my desk to do some homework, taking my Sprite with me. 
“Oh, that reminds me!” Keitha said setting down her pizza.  “I need to do my homework!” She got up, leaving her pizza for Sherry to finish it, and ran to her desk.  She sat down and began pulling out books from her bag. 
Sherry did the same as us and started on her homework.  Jetta, however, sat at the table with the pizza, and read To Kill a Mockingbird. 
“I have so much homework!” I said, holding my head in my hands.  I really did.  I had to read 3 more chapters in my book, finish the section questions in math, answer the chapter review questions for two sections in history, and do chemistry questions.  I was really behind.
“You should’ve done it when you got out of school,” Jetta said looking up from her book with a smirk. 
I shot her a look and turned back to my work.  “And I have to get this all done by 10!”  I put my head on my desk, and lifted it up to see Keitha looking at me as if I had a nasty zit on my face.  “What?”
“Umm, tomorrow’s Saturday,” she said. 
I thought about it for a moment, then laughed out loud to myself.  “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just freaked out for nothing.”
“Wow,” she said. 
It took me a while to realize that she had insulted me.  She had never liked me from day one, even though I had tried to like her.  I decided to ignore it, and turned back around to my homework. 

CHAPTER 6
         I woke up Saturday morning at 10:30, and I sluggishly crawled down off my bed, and got ready for the day.  I pulled on my day clothes; a blue shirt and gray sweatpants that rolled up to the knee.  We all had the exact same day clothes, and no one had any different.  I headed down to the cafeteria and grabbed a plate of waffles, sausage, and scrambled eggs.  I took the ketchup bottle and squirted it over my eggs.  I loved my ketchup, and my eggs.  I couldn’t eat them any other way.  I sat down at an empty table, after searching for my friends. 
         I spotted them sitting at another table after I had sat down, then got up and joined them.  It’s funny how that happens when you sit down and eat all alone for a while, and then you spot your friends half-way through lunch or breakfast or dinner or whatever.  Thankfully that didn’t happen this time. 
         “Someone woke up late this morning,” Jetta said, taking a small bite of waffle.  She always ate in small bites. 
         “It’s the only day that we’re allowed to sleep in, why not?” I said. 
         “Early bird gets the worm,” she said. 
         I took a bite of my sausage, and then spotted Sherry’s sausage sitting uneaten on her plate.  “Can I have it?” I asked her.
         “Please, take it,” she said shoving it towards me.  I gladly took it. 
         “Mine too,” Keitha said, handing me hers. “So guys, guess who’s not here yet?”
         Adrina.  “Where is she?” Sherry asked. 
         “Over there,” Keitha said, pointing at shy little Adrina sitting at a table full of people she doesn’t know.  “She hasn’t noticed us yet.”
         “Then why don’t you go get her?” I asked. 
         She shrugged.  “You can go get her.”  She made a face at me.
         I had come to a conclusion.  Keitha was mean.  Well, to me at least. 
         I set down my fork and napkin, and got up to walk over to where Adrina was. 
         I tapped her shoulder and waved when she turned around.  “We’re sitting over there if you want to join us.”
         “Oh,” she said quietly.  “Ok.”
         She picked up her plate and napkin and walked with me over to our table. 
         She set down her food next to Jetta and sat down. 
         “What’s up?” Keitha asked her. 
         “Nothing,” Adrina answered.  Great answer, I thought sarcastically. 
         Keitha looked away from the rest of us, out into the window past the Green.  Don’t you ever wish you could just jump inside of people’s heads and hear what they’re thinking?  Fortunately, Keitha always speaks her thoughts. 
         “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said, still looking out the window, “if we could just know what’s out there?”
         We gave her odd looks. 
         “Wouldn’t it be nice to you know just like, escape?”
         We still all just sat there, some of us in mid-chew. 
         “What?” Jetta asked, making a confused look. 
         “I’m all for it!” Sherry said. 
         “You’d be caught,” I said, setting down my fork.  This was going to be a good conversation, I could tell.  “Besides, someone would notice you were missing, and they would send people out to search for you.  And, you don’t know what’s out there.  There could be like monsters or fire pits or something weird like that out there.”
         “Weirdo,” Jetta said laughing.  “I like it.”
         “What?” I said.  I couldn’t believe what she was saying, either that or she was joking. 
         “Yeah,” she said, “I mean, its not all that bad, besides, what is out there anyway?”
         Our table stayed silent for about a minute. 
         “What do you think Adrina?” Keitha said. 
         She looked lost and bit her bottom lip.  “Umm,” she said.  “I don’t really think that it’s a good idea.”
         For some odd reason there was an instinct in my head, and it was telling me that what Keitha was saying was right.  Why were we here? And how come nobody’s ever told us what is out there?  These thoughts ran through my mind. 
         The bell rang, making me jump.  I got up and threw my food away, following my dorm mates back to our dorm.  What had happened this morning?

CHAPTER 7
         “So, you don’t like Keitha?” Jetta asked me, running alongside me on the track. 
         “No,” I told her, my ponytail occasionally hitting my ear.  “She’s so mean to me, I mean, what did I ever do to her?”
         “Keitha’s just like that, she can kinda be mean to everyone.”
         “Has she ever been mean to you?”
         “Well, no.”
         “That’s what I thought.”
         “Tarika,” she said sighing and pulled me over to the side of the track.  “Listen, Sherry, Keitha and I are all getting out.  You want in?  Or do you want to stay here with Adrina?”
         “You are all going?” I asked, and she nodded.  “And Adrina isn’t going?” 
         She shook her head.  “Besides, Adrina has been hanging out with another group.”
         “Really?” I asked.  “Oh well, she’s not very interesting anyways.”
         “I know she’s really boring.”  She grabbed my arm back onto the track and we began to run again.  “But she’s been hanging out with Keitha’s old group.”
         “Really?  She doesn’t seem like that kind of person.”
         “Yeah, but watch, she’s probably going to start acting like them soon enough.”
         “It would be too soon.”
         “Are you in?”
         “What?”
         “Remember Sherry, Keitha, and I are—“
         I stopped her short.  “Oh, I don’t think so.”  I knew that if I didn’t go, Jetta wouldn’t go either. 
         “Then I’m going to have to drag you along.”
         “I’ll kick and scream the whole way, and then we’ll see who escapes.”
         “You’re in denial.  You know you want to go.”
         “No I’m not, and no I don’t.”
         “Please.” 
         We had finished our laps for the day, and we headed off the track and down towards the workout video room.  I peaked inside the window of the room, to see that a group was already doing a video. 
         I continued to think about the things that were happening now, all because Keitha had to suggest a stupid idea at breakfast.  I looked up at the clock.  It was 1:42, and I was getting tired already. 
         “Hey guys!”  I heard a perky high voice coming from behind me.  Guess who?  Keitha. 
         Her and Sherry walked over to me and Jetta.  “You guys want to run track with us?” Keitha suggested. 
         “We’ve already finished track,” I told her, kneeling down to fix my shoelace. 
         “Oh, ok then.”
         They walked past us and into the doors of the track.  I stood up to see Jetta glaring at me.  “You’re really going to win her over by doing that.”
         “She can get a little taste of her own medicine.”
         The workout room doors opened and everyone began to flock out, and Jetta and I walked in. 
         
         The day passed to 3, and Jetta and I headed back to our dorms to find Keitha and Sherry already there. 
         “What are you guys doing here so early?” Jetta asked. 
         “We skipped,” Keitha said.  “I never do the whole thing, it’s a waste of time.”
         Well, that explains a lot.  I sat down at my desk and lay my head down. 
         “Tarika doesn’t want to go with us.” Jetta said.
         “What?” Sherry said.  I lifted my head up.  “How can you not want to go?”
         “I just think its better for us all if we just stay here.” I said.  “I mean, a future here isn’t that bad, is it?”
         “I honestly don’t want to know the answer to that question.”  Keitha said.  “You have to come with us.”  She may not like me, but she sure acted like she did. 
         “You’re in denial,” Sherry said.  Keitha nodded.
         “That’s what I said!” Jetta exclaimed. 
         “Are you guys really serious about this?  Do you even know how you’re going to escape, what we’re going to eat, what we’re gonna take, and where we’re going to go?  Do you?”
         My questions woke them up.  They looked around at me and each other. 
         “You said ‘we’,” Jetta said.  “You want to go.”
         “So what?” I asked.  I hated giving in. 
         “I have all of that covered.” I turned my head to see Sherry pulling out papers from her desk drawer.  “I did it just a while ago.  It’s a complete list of everything we will do, eat, and how we will escape.” 
         She gave the papers to Keitha who began to read them aloud. 
         “1:00 AM Monday morning:  we take our clothes, our pillows and blankets, and we sneak out of the dorm one by one.  We head towards the Green.  If caught we say we wanted to sleep outside.”
         “That’s a little lame but okay,” Jetta added. 
         “Then, well we just move as far away as possible from here, and no one will find us again.  To eat we will find whatever food necessary, there are books in the library about food and berries out in nature.  If anything ever gets tough we can always come back.” Keitha finished, handing back the paper. 
         “I find the ‘no one will find us again’ part a little hard to believe, but it sounds good,” I said.  I was getting into this. 
         “I know,” Sherry said, stuffing it back into her bag. “But it’s good enough.”
         “It’s great,” Jetta said. 
         “Tomorrow night,” Sherry said, “we get ready.”


CHAPTER 8
         I was almost finished with the pencil part of my drawing.  The only part that I couldn’t get straight was the nose.  It was either too big, or too small, or just horribly disfigured.  There was always something wrong with my drawings. 
         There wasn’t just the problem with the nose on my drawing, it was the impending fear of what could go wrong tonight, which included getting caught, escaping then getting caught, or sleeping past 1 AM and not even going outside.  I hate impending fears, they always just took over my day.  I could never get anything done.  I looked up at the clock to see that it was 3:25, and for some odd reason I just hated when it was 3, the day felt like it was just going nowhere. 
         I had finally finished my nose, and got up to get a set of oil pastels. 
         “Hey old dorm-mate!” I turned around to see Fina, Jetta and my old dorm-mate.  I waved to her.  This was the last time I would ever see her again.   
         “I’m totally destroying my drawing,” she said grabbing a pencil and eraser. 
         “Don’t worry, me too,” I said grabbing my oil pastels. 
         “I’ll see you later,” Fina said, and headed back to her seat.
         “Yeah,” I told her, but I knew that was a lie. 
         I sat back down and looked at the people around me.  This was the last time that I would see them.  Ever.  And now part of me felt sad to go.  So I turned my concentration back to my artwork, and began to color. 
         
         It was 5:30 now and I was still working on my drawing, putting in the final touches.  I looked up again to see 2 more people leave, over half the class was gone.  I looked at my drawing for the final time and put it up on the wall in the hallway outside the room.  I just felt so sad, like this life was ending, and I wasn’t sure if the life that lay ahead of me was just as good or worse.  I signed out of the drawing room and headed out towards the library, hoping that Sherry or Jetta were there. 
         As I walked, I looked at all the faces that passed me by, not saying a word to any of them.  I just kept thinking about how I would never see any of them again.  Then something hit me, was this just a joke?  Had Keitha plotted this with Sherry and Jetta, just to get some laughs out of me, and to make me think that it was actually real, and then tell me that none of it was real? 
         Then something else hit me; it was the door of one of the math rooms, and it smacked me right in the face, almost knocking me down. 
         “Oh no!” I heard a voice say, and I held my nose up to my face.  “Are you okay?”
         I looked up to see one of Keitha’s old friends, Beth. They were the ones who had ended up all hating each other. 
         “I’m fine,” I said, pushing my way past her and towards the library. 
         “Are you sure?” she called out behind me.
         “Sure,” I said, now turning into the bathroom just to see what had happened to my poor face. 
         Thankfully my nose wasn’t bleeding, the door hadn’t hit me too hard, my nose was red that was all.  I turned back out of the bathroom and continued heading for the library. 
         I opened up the metal doors to the library, signed in, and then headed to our group’s usual table.  They weren’t there, but I instead started walking around the library to find them.  I spotted Sherry and Jetta giggling at one of the cubicles.  It was all a joke. 
         “Hahaha,” I told them, speaking low enough so that the librarian wouldn’t hear me.
         “What?” Sherry asked. 
         “I know about your cruel little joke, its over,” I told them sitting down on the ground next to Jetta. 
         “Seriously what are you talking about?” Jetta whispered to me. 
         “This whole escape thing is just a joke, so you can drop it now,” I told them. 
         Sherry and Jetta looked at each other as if I was crazy. 
         “There is nothing going on, we are really getting out of here,” she said, still giving me that ‘you’re crazy’ look. 
         “Whatever, we’ll just see what happens tonight,” I said. 
         “Shh!” I turned to see a girl leaning out of her cubicle looking at us. 
         “Sorry,” I said. 
         We sat there, just looking at each for a while. 
         “Anyways,” Jetta said, “I’m hungry, how about you guys?”
         I nodded then leaned my head over on Jetta’s shoulder.  “And tired,” I added. 
         Jetta pushed my head off.  “You better not be tired tonight,” she put in. 
         “What time is it?” Sherry asked. 
         “I’ll go look,” I said, getting up to find the nearest clock.  I spotted the sun-dial outside of the window.  It fascinated me, and I don’t know why exactly but was just interesting why we needed machines to keep time for us when we could just use sun-dials.  I examined the time on it.  It was about 6:00. 
         “6:00,” I said sitting down next to Jetta again. 
         “Almost time for dinner,” Jetta said.
         “Thank goodness,” Sherry said. 
         “Shhhhh!” it was that girl again. 
         “Sorry,” I said.  “Why don’t you move, because we’re going to be talking the whole time.”
         She leaned back out to see us again and gave us a look.  She got her things together and got up.  She looked back at us as she walked away, causing her to collide into another girl walking towards a bookshelf.  That’s what she gets. 
         The three of us laughed. 
         “My day just got better,” I said.  My day had been pretty depressing until now. 
         “Let’s get out of here and find Keitha,” Sherry said standing up to stretch.  Jetta and I got up and we left the library after signing out. 
         
         Dinner was amazing, and I savored it even more after realizing that it was my last meal here.  I looked around me to see Adrina sitting with us, and wondered why she was sitting with us when she should be out making new friends, because well, we were leaving. 
         “You can still come with us,” Keitha said, taking a bite of her biscuit. 
         She shook her head, avoiding having to speak with her mouth full. 
         I looked down with the realization that my plate was empty.  I picked up my drink to find it also completely empty.  I looked at the clock to see that it was only 6:50.  Had I really just eaten and drank all my food in 20 minutes?  Apparently.  I looked to see that Jetta’s plate was also close to empty.  Why were we eating so fast? 
         “Who else can’t wait?” I asked the table, setting my elbows next to my plate, and resting my head on my hands. 
         “Me!” Jetta said. 
         “I am so excited!” Sherry said. 
         “I couldn’t be happier,” Keitha said. 
         I kept waiting for them to spring out on me that it was a joke, but it just never happened.    I got up and threw away my plate, the hour of our escape coming closer and closer.  My friends followed, including Adrina. 
         “Let’s go back to our dorm,” Sherry said, leading us off to the dorm without waiting for an answer, but of course we would have all answered yes. 

CHAPTER 9
         It was 12:35.  I hadn’t slept at all, but instead just stared around the room.  I caught Jetta’s eyes peering at me from under the covers.  I crawled down from my bunk bed and went out to the hall into the bathing rooms.  I had taken a shower at 9; actually we all had, since it would be maybe our last.  I turned on the faucet and began to throw the water on my face ‘til it was soaked.  I looked at myself in the mirror, and turned off the water, and walked back to my dorm room and crawled back up to my bed, and pretended to sleep. 
         12:45 rolled past, and we began our preparations in the dark.  I grabbed all the pillows and Keitha grabbed all the blankets.  Jetta gathered up all of our clothes into her bag, and Sherry packed her bag with everything that we thought that we could use.  We crept out of our dorm room carefully, and slid out the front door.  All of this was done quietly and wordlessly. 
         We followed the path toward The Green, placing our steps carefully as to make as little noise as possible.  It was Sherry who led us, since she had coordinated the plan, then me, then Jetta, and Keitha was the last.  I heard a crack behind me and turned around to see that Jetta had stepped on a twig. 
         “Sorry!” she whispered looking down at the twig.  We heard a clamor behind us and saw a bright light shine out from behind one of the buildings.  We saw a man coming towards us. 
         “Hey!” he yelled at us.  We just stood there. 
         “Run!” Keitha yelled.  We bolted. 
         The man was close behind us; we had so much weighing us down and all he was carrying was a small little flashlight.  We continued to run.  I foolishly looked behind me, seeing the man who was chasing us.  It was Jeff.  He would let us go!
         “It’s Jeff!” I yelled it out to no one in particular. 
         I heard the running stop behind me.  I turned around to see Keitha and Jetta stopped, running towards Jeff.  What are they doing?
         “Keep running!” Sherry was yelling at them now. 
         Jetta looked back at us, and then hesitantly began to run.  Keitha, however, stood still, Jeff approaching her quickly. 
         “Run Keitha!” I yelled at her.  I didn’t want any of us caught.
         “Just go!” she yelled back at us. 
         I listened to what she said, careful not to turn back.  Jetta had caught up to me now, and we both ran like the wind towards the end of the Green.  We had to make it, this couldn’t all be for nothing.  We reached the end, somehow.  We followed Sherry into the trees, and heard Keitha scream behind us.  Jetta and I turned to see Keitha knock Jeff down to the grass, and run after us.  She had made it, but we had still gotten caught.  But we ran; we ran until we couldn’t anymore.  I don’t know how long it was until Sherry dropped to the ground tired with us following her. 
         Our first night we had spent in freedom we had spent asleep in the leaves.  I never wanted us to see the Serkos again.