Fragile Hearts [DANGEROUS FELLOWS]

⚠️TWENTY-SIX: OUR LITTLE SECRET⚠️

You couldn't sleep that night.

You lay silently, staring into the dark shadows of the classroom. The paper for the Safe Zone was never found, and part of you wanted to give up. You had been so excited to finally have hope.

But now it was gone.

You sighed, pushing up into a sitting position and looking out the window and into the night sky. Stars twinkled brightly, a half moon hanging in the sky.

"What's wrong, (Y/n)?" asked Lawrence in a tired voice, and you turned to see him putting on his glasses. "Do you see something?"

You shook your head. "I can't sleep," you told him.

"Thinking about something?" he asked next.

"The Safe Zone," you admit. "We'll never be able to go there now, huh?"

"Maybe it's for the better," Lawrence said.

"Maybe. I don't know, I was just really excited," you sighed. "Maybe we'd finally be safe. Maybe I'd even see some of my friends. Or my parents."

The thought of them made your vision blur up and you turned away from the window, wiping your eyes. You had tried not to think about your parents too much, because you missed them so bad it hurt. It would break your heart if anything had happened to them.

"It's okay," Lawrence comforted, going over to you to wrap an arm around you.

"I'm sorry," you choked. "But I'm scared. I don't want to get the virus. And I don't want you to get it, or the others. I'm just so scared."

You started to sob, and Lawrence took you in both of his arms, patting your back.

"It's okay to be scared," he whispered soothingly.

"I think about the virus everyday," you hiccuped. "My friend Madelyn, the infected girl at the gate. And that man at the smoke shop. I wish it would just all go away. At least at the Safe Zone, we'd never have to think about it again."

Lawrence didn't say anything for a few moments, the only sound the wind outside.

"Is that what you really want? To go to the Safe Zone?" he asked quietly.

The way he said it made you feel strange.

"I think so," you replied slowly.

He fell silent again. You pulled away from him to dry your face, and you saw him staring out at the sky, looking lost in his thoughts.

Wordlessly he reached into his pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper and holding it out to you. You knew what it was even before opening it, and reading the big letters at the top.

"Then for you, we'll go," Lawrence said.

"You... you had it?" you asked in shock, reading the Safe Zone flyer, your hands shaking.

"I'm sorry, (Y/n)," he apologized, guilt washing over his face. "I didn't know what to do. I thought, maybe if we stayed here, we could go on pretending everything was okay."

Lawrence wrapped his arms around himself, looking broken.

"I could never forgive myself if something happened to you out there," he went on. "So I took the paper, hoped everyone would just forget about it."

He shook his head, looking at the ground in shame.

"What kind of leader am I?" he scoffed.

"It's okay, Lawrence," you told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I forgive you."

"What?" he asked in disbelief, looking up at you with surprise in his eyes.

"I forgive you," you repeated. "You did it because you care about us."

"Oh, (Y/n)..." Lawrence sighed, turning away. "You're too kind to me."

He broke into a smile, and you couldn't help but smile back.

"This can be our little secret," he said, taking the paper gently.

"What do we tell the others, then?" you asked curiously.

Lawrence thought about it for a minute. "I'll figure out something," he assured you. "Don't worry about it, okay?"

You nodded, letting out a long yawn.

"On that note, you should go to sleep," Lawrence told you. "It's really late."

You agreed, feeling your eyelids get heavy. You lay back down in your blanket, curling up against the cold. It was chilly tonight, but the blanket kept you warm.

"(Y/n)?" Lawrence asked gently.

"Mhm," you replied, turning over to face him sleepily, your eyes still closed.

There was a strange clicking noise, and you opened your eyes to see what it was. All you saw was Lawrence smiling at you, and you decided you must have dreamed the sound.

"Nothing," he said. "Sleep well, okay? Sweet dreams."

"Thanks," you mumbled, getting comfortable.

You fell into a deep sleep, most of your dreams peaceful. One of them was a memory of the beach with your parents, and another was you sitting on the school roof with Eugene. There was a party with all of your old school friends, Harry and you on bright plastic scooters, raiding your teacher's desk after school with Jason, bursting out of a storage room and telling Zion to run from the zombies. Your memories played back like a photo reel, some of them from when you were a child, and others just a few days ago.

Your last dream, however, was the strangest. You were in a dark room, frozen in place, and you couldn't see a thing. There were sounds in the far distance, voices, but you couldn't understand them.

Then there was mechanical whirring, like a machine. "Hello?" you called out, beginning to feel fear crawl under your skin. Your voice echoed uselessly, bouncing around in the darkness before fading away.

You could make out little dots, like eyes. There were hundreds of them, surrounding you in every direction. But the closer you looked, the more you realized they weren't eyes at all.

There was only one click at first, and it hit you were surrounded by. They were cameras, all of their lens pointed at you. And almost as if they knew you figured them out, they all started snapping photos, the clicking of hundreds of cameras loud enough to make your ears hurt.

You tried to shout for help, but it was lost in the noise. Polaroids started raining down on top of you, burying you in thousands of pictures of yourself, their tiny square edges scratching at your skin.

"Stop!" you cried, covering your head at the photos came down faster, the massive pile growing around you, threatening to drown you completely. You could move now, and you tried swatting them away, but it was like you were in an ocean of them.

Then the noise stopped all at once, all of the cameras disappearing except for one. The person holding it stepped out of the dark, beaming at you.

"Say cheese," Lawrence told you, snapping the picture, and then you woke, not knowing whether to feel scared or confused.