Chapter 9: Unknown

“Ack! Ack!”

Chicken or human; I felt like a mixture or both as I pathetically screamed at the top of my lungs, only to be continuously dragged away on the floor by this unknown person, who also clamped a hand on my mouth.

“Ack!”

Who was he?

Was he going to rape me? Murder me?

I clawed on the hands of whoever it was, tried to get him off me. Yet the moment I caught a whiff of dark chocolate, I almost immediately submitted.

It was her. A series of contradictions.

“A-Audra?!” I stammered, realizing who it was.

“Yes,” she whispered, leaning down next to me. Audra’s face in the semi-darkness was all of concentration, while her eyes were focused on the door we’d exited.

I looked around to where we were in panic. In the convenience store in the other room, yet it was hard to convince my heart to stop its reckless pounding. It felt like we were still in danger even when I already knew that we were not.

She blew out a soft breath, which tickled my ear. “Great,” she said, her voice still low. “The boys are still asleep, even with all that noise.”

“But—“ I stopped when she looked at me, then cracked a small smile. My heart went into overdrive again. What was I just going to say?

“Were you scared?” she whispered.

“Y-yes.”

“Then I’m sorry for doing that.” She gave a small chuckle. Okay, forget why she would drag me away like this. I lived for that chuckle. I could feel myself getting into a good mood as well, so I smiled.

Audra took a sharp breath, then glanced away, her face setting into another one of those unreadable spells.

Told you she was a series of contradictions. Here, one moment, gone the next. Like dark chocolate, sweet and bitter all at the same time.

The thought quickly vanished when she pointed to a corner. “That’s the bathroom,” she informed. “It’s one of the reasons why I took you here, Pax.”

“I smell that bad?”

“No, of course not.” She still wouldn’t look at me. “But I know you’ve needed to use one. You’re just. . . too busy to ask.”

“Erm. . .”

But then she just had to continue with, “Let’s go then.”

“Go?”

She still wasn’t looking at me. “Let’s go. I mean, I need to enter with you. It will be easier to talk there. And besides, how will you. . . you know, position yourself?”

“Okay, okay!” I got the picture. It was getting awkward by the second. But still, did she have to freaking enter with me?

Convenience store bathrooms were not known to be big, just enough to accommodate one person who was squatting. A hot flush crept on my face when I suddenly imagined Audra there. “But you’ll hear me,” I squeaked.

“I’ll cover an ear.”

“Just an ear?”

“The other is for listening for enemies.”

Great. Just fine and dandy. Here was a girl who was the most beautiful person I’d known. Here was a girl who could make any person fall on his or her knees, and she wanted to be in the same freaking bathroom stall as I was, while I was freaking pissing myself off. Literally!

Audra tilted her head to the bathroom. “Come on, Pax.”

Okay, so how do we do this? I thought, as we had finally entered the cubicle— Audra was facing the door. There was barely any space to maneuver with her in here, much less push my butt higher and pull my jeans low. But I managed to do nevertheless without tumbling down on the bowl.

I squeaked when she shifted her head to me. “I’m not looking,” she assured. “It’s just. . .”

“Just what?”

Audra suddenly twisted and clapped a hand over my mouth before I could scream. Something— something big crawled onto my arm just now!

“Cockroach,” she whispered, eyes steadily fixed on mine. “I was about to say there was a cockroach.”

I gave her a fast nod and was wishing that she wouldn’t look down when she turned around again.

“Sorry,” she added quickly. “I didn’t see anything. For the most part.”

The most part?!

I wanted to die on the spot. She most definitely had seen something. Why else would she say that? This was not what I had in mind when I hoped that we would be close or something. Not like this.

But after a while, she placed each of her hand on each of her ear. “See?” she whispered. “I’m not listening for the enemies anymore. Go do your business. Pretend I’m not here.”

Right. I took a fast breath. I was sweating more than usual. Who would have thought that peeing could be so complicated like this?

After all was said and done, though, and I had flushed most of what I’d been straining to keep inside all day, what with knowing it might end up like this, Audra was allowed to turn around again. Her eyes lowering down to me.

“Thanks,” I wanted to say. Thanks for noticing about the smallest things I was going through. Thanks for always rescuing me. For saving me. But then again, the words were stuck in my mouth, refusing in all ways to come out, just like that time after the school stage incident.

“You good?” she said, probably to have some kind of sound in the small, dingy bathroom.

“Yes.”

My eyebrows cocked up when she suddenly went on her knee, hand resting on my leg because there was barely any room to place it. “This will just take a second,” she said— I didn’t know whether about the hand placing, or our conversation— maybe both. “But I wanted to talk to you about something, Pax. About your parents.”

“My parents?”

She gave me a nod. “About going home. You wanted to go home, right? You deserve to go home. Your parents deserve to have you by their side. We can’t just take you off somewhere. No matter how safe we think it is.”

“So what? We just tell Neil that?”

“No,” she said. “Neil is way past any talks at this point. Once he’s had his mind set, he can be very unforgiving, even to me.”

Yet you’re still by his side, I wanted to say. He’s an asshole and you’re not. And how come he’s saying that you’re going to end up in prison one day? That didn’t make any sense to me.

Audra gave me a shake of her head, as if she knew what I was thinking, and didn’t want to answer me anyhow. “I will take you home, Pax,” she promised. “That’s all that matters for now.”

“Why?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. Why would she do that? Why risk getting Neil mad at her when it was so easy doing what he’d wanted?

“Because. . .” She shrugged. “Because I think that’s the right course of action.”

“Okay. But how?”

“I have something in mind,” she said. “You’ll know when it’s time. In the meantime, we can both pretend that we didn’t have this talk. If Neil sees us when we come back into the office, I can just say that you woke me up because you wanted to pee. Is that good enough?”

“You’re a pretty good liar.” I observed.

“The greatest,” she replied, turning her head away and standing up. “But it’s not like it’s anyone’s business.”

Audra was firm in that. Her tone had suddenly gone cold. She wanted to help me. But that was as far as it was ever going to be.

I didn’t know what else to think as she assisted me to get up, then a thought suddenly occurred to me. If she could get me home, then what? The three of them; her, Neil, and Hanz would be on their way, and that might be the last time I’d see her.

Somehow, I didn’t know if I could bear that.

Maybe it didn’t have to be that way, right? My head was beginning to throb as we began to make our way back into the office. I’d barely taken a look in the convenience store itself— nothing special. Most of the shelves were still packed with things. I was more concerned about what would happen if we did make it home as Audra had promised. What would happen then?

I mean, how long would it take until the smoke cleared as I remembered Hanz saying? Weeks? Months? And even then, I didn’t know if the three of them would permanently want to stay at wherever they ended up on.

No. I had to do something about this. Just the thought of not seeing Audra again was making my chest hurt.

As such, I was clutching on my side and was only barely able to keep my groans to myself when Neil’s face showed in its full splendor in front of us; the moment Audra opened the door back to the office.

“Where did you go?” Neil said, his suspicion barely contained on his face.

Audra, who was assisting me, continued her way inside, bringing me with her. “To the bathroom,” she said. “Pax needed to pee.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. Do you want me to give you all the gory details?”

Neil’s expression turned sourer. “No thanks. None of those vagina stuff. I’ve had more than enough of that with my father.” His annoyance was then transferred to Hanz, who was only about to wake up, rubbing his eyes and stretching on the floor.

“What did I miss?” the guy said with a yawn.

“Oh, nothing much.” Neil locked the door behind us and made his way back into the room. “Just the rest of your crew being murdered, and those people outside cutting your balls off and feeding it to the dogs.”

“God. . .” Hanz wrinkled his nose. “And I’m not even complaining about what you said, Neil. It really smells like blood in here.”

The three of them looked at me.

Alright, maybe I’d been too wrapped up surviving and seeing my parents, and Audra and the others for that matter, that I’d forgotten to have my bandages changed. But here and now while we were back at the subject? I glanced down too, saw that the leg Audra and I had been trying to keep the pressure off of was now stained with fresh red.

Fudge.

Hanz winced for me when Audra brought me down. “We really should fix that, Pax.”

“Sorry,” Audra supplied while rushing to the bandages. Those were all stored on the office table, as with the bags and the other food, but the flashlights and the weapons stayed with us. “I think I made a really bad job patching you up, Pax. I’m used to hurting people, not treating them.”

“Who had you hurt?” Hanz asked, turning to Audra.

“None of your Goddamn business, Peterson.” Neil piped in, going to the swivel chair and folding his arms. “Anyway, we need to take care of that wound, Leighton. This is going to be a long journey, and I don’t want you messing this up more than you’re already doing.”

It’s okay, I thought as Audra brought back the bandages and the small scissors; the tapes they’d stolen in the convenience store by my side. It’s okay. None of what Neil says to me from here on out should affect me in any way. I was going home. Audra had promised.

I reached out for a bandage, started unwrapping it from the plastic. “Don’t worry about me,” I murmured. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You will?” Hanz looked worried as he crawled closer to me on the floor. “How will you? Do you have any experience with treating people?”

“Not a lot,” I revealed. “But my parents are Doctors. Many times I’d seen them patch someone up. Neighbors, friends. . .” I was talking more and more because treating another person was one thing. But doing it on myself? With a bullet hole? I took a sharp breath.

Audra, who had been silent for a few seconds, went back to me, started uncapping the alcohol. “Neil,” she said, “can you give us a hand?”

“No thanks, female, you know how I am with blood.”

Hanz shrank back into the shadows when Audra turned to him. “N-no, I’m good,” he said, gave a loud swallow. “I’m tough, okay? It’s just that I hate the sight of blood. My moms took care not to expose me to that.”

“Okay then,” Audra murmured under her breath as she glanced at me again, took a hold of my shoe. “Guess we’ll do it by ourselves, huh, Pax? Whenever you’re ready.”

Thirty minutes later, and the groans I’d been doing for the last few seconds had lowered to nothing but whimpers. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, the bullet had come out of the other side of my calf. Meaning, I didn’t have to go through the agony of removing it without any powerful medicines.

But who was I kidding? It was still a nightmare to clean it. Like someone had poured scalding water on top of my skin, or at least rubbed acid on the canker sore inside my mouth. The soreness took a while to subside.

Neil, of course, acted arrogant as always. “At least you’re good for something, Leighton. You can’t fight those people, but you’re going to be our medic from now on. That’s the only thing you can help with.”

Hanz, who was only beginning to get out of his corner, looked pale and a little blue at us. “Is it over?” he said. “Is there no open wound in sight anymore?”

Audra continued to study the blueprint we’d found, just as she was doing for the last fifteen minutes. “It’s okay,” she answered. “And guys, can you come over here for a while? I want to discuss our exit one more time before we actually do this later.” Her head turned to Neil. “Are you sure you’re up for it tonight?”

“There’s no better time.” Neil sat down by Audra’s side. “Whoever’s searching for us had began to lower their guards in this part of the alley. We won’t get any other shot at this. And besides, have you taken a good look at us yet?”

“Why? What about us?” Audra said.

But I knew what Neil meant, and for once, I kind of agreed with him. Aside from my wound and whatnot, none of us looked the same. The four of us were extremely disheveled. What used to be a bright color for a school jacket, was now dirty and battered in the case of Hanz, whose face was also smudged with dirt.

Neil himself had never looked worse for wear. His usually curly but glorious hair was puffed up in all places, as if he’d been electrocuted, add to that the deep lines under his eyes.

I never looked great myself. But I think I wasn’t far off with the other two. In fact. . . I stared at Audra. I take back what I said. Apart from the blood stains on her brown jacket, courtesy of me, it was impossible to tell that she’d been on the run for days. Plus she looked calm and collected. It was like she was made for this instance.

Hanz leaned forward to the map he’d walked to, his forehead wrinkling at the sight. “You think this plan would work?” he asked. “We could die trying to escape from here. Those. . . Those men in black. Those tracers, are willing to do anything to get us.” His eyes flickered to my leg, then he shrugged. “I’m just saying that this will be difficult. Are you all in? Yes or no.”

“I’m in.” Neil was the first one to answer.

“Yes,” I quickly followed. Yes, to going home.

Audra met my eyes for a second, then looked away. “Yes,” she said, grabbed onto her weapon. “Yes, we’ll do this no matter what happens.”