could protect himself, he seemed skilled in all sorts of things, but I didn’t have any skills. I couldn’t even run fast.
“After we go to the checkpoint, we let them take over. We say as little as possible. You’ll need a fake name just in case.” He ran his hand through his hair and put his finger on his chin. He lightly tapped as if he was trying to think of the perfect name. “How about Melaney?” he said with a soft smile.
“Why Melaney?” I said trying to decide if I could pass for a Melaney.
“It was my sister’s name,” he said looking at me with the flame from the fire reflecting in his now slightly glassy eyes.
I didn’t know if I should feel honored or worried that he wanted my fake name to be the same as his dead sister. I decided to go with the former. The last thing I needed was to have more doubts and questions about Penn.
“OK, how about this, Mel… Jones? Yes? Yeah, that works. What about you?”
“They don’t know me,” he said with a smirk. “I don’t need a fake name.” He watched me as I sat back down and lightly rocked myself back and forth. My nerves or, maybe it was my fears, that wouldn’t let my body rest.
“All right. This is really going to happen,” I said feeling a rush of nervous excitement jolt through my veins. I was more than ready to see my friends again, but I was scared to death of going into HOME. And completely untrusting of those that worked there. I told myself over and over again that it would be OK. That this was the only way. I had to do it. They would do the same for me. I stood back up and started to pace again.
“Tomorrow,” Penn said clapping his hands together as if he were in charge of this mission. This had been what I’d been working towards since I found this little house and he just waltzes in and starts taking over the operation. I shot him a look, “If that works for you,” he said understanding the message I was trying to send with the look.
“Well I don’t know. I mean….” I stopped talking knowing how indecisive I sounded.
“You’re ready. Together, we can do this.” He was trying to sound motivational, not bossy.
Maybe he was right. If I sat around waiting for the perfect moment, it may never happen. I had to just bite the bullet and do it. No excuses. I wanted to find them more than anything in the world, and the only way to do that was to actually do it.
“OK, tomorrow.”
* * *
In the morning I walked downstairs to find Penn still asleep on the couch. I had spent the night alternating between packing, pacing and lying down trying to get some sleep. It was hard to focus on anything for very long. My thoughts would switch between the reunion with my friends to all of the things that could go wrong. But here he was sound asleep without a single worry. I guess I must have failed at making HOME sound as awful as I should have. And really I didn’t know how horrendous they actually were. I just had my suspicions and theories based on what had happened. And how they had taken Ryan away from me.
I knew Slade was awful when he banished me. But I knew something was off about the whole place the minute we pulled up to that checkpoint. They were awful, I just wasn’t exactly sure what it was that made them so deplorable. I was convinced they didn’t have any qualms about killing people, but I didn’t have any real evidence of that. Only the oddly timed gunshot I heard after they had taken Ryan and what I had felt in my gut.
I let him sleep and grabbed a random granola bar from a box in the cupboard. The flavor didn’t matter. I sat down at the kitchen table and nibbled at the stale bar as my stomach felt like it was on a roller coaster. I looked out the window at the sunlit ground and out of the corner of my eye I saw a few drops of water fall from an icicle. Perhaps it was a sign of spring and the snow would melt soon.
“Morning,” Penn said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat as he walked into
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