A couple of hours later, I had made my way back to the Homestead in search of a chubby little boy. I had explored and talked to Newt, who introduced me to the boy in the blue hoodie. I almost pronounced his name wrong, but I'm glad I didn't, because it would have sounded like a zit instead of Zart.

He told me that I could wander around as long as I didn't get in anyone's way or went beyond the walls. I nodded, annoyed, but I obliged anyway.

For a while, I just sat in front of the doors, looking through the long corridor and wandering what it would be like to just sprint through it. I could feel dozens of eyes on me, watching just in case I decided to make a dash for it. Maybe I would have. But something held me back. I don't know if it was just my conscience or my common sense...but something told me that I couldn't just leave these boys behind while I made my way to safety. Or death. That little voice inside my head kept arguing with itself, making unjust reasons as to why I had to stay here. None of them were worthy enough, but the other voice kept holding me back.

I wondered about what the Dark Days were that Alby had briefly spoken about. I believed him for sure, there weren't strange names scraped off of the wall for nothing. I came across those as I wandered around the walls, dragging my hand against the concrete as if I was looking for a clue somewhere. But I found nothing. One thing I did come across though, was a strange type of graveyard. I studied the names of the boys that had mysteriously passed, but I almost jumped out of my skin when I came across bones in a glass box, covered with ivy. I looked at the bones inside, noticing how there were only half. Half of a boy was stuffed inside a glass box, basically on display. But I kept walking away from the disturbing scene, reminding myself to ask Chuck about it later.

Now, I pushed open the door to the Homestead with a sigh, hearing my stomach rumble, and my head swirl with a plethora of newfound questions from my exploration. Frypan looked up from his chopping and waved at me with a smile. When I didn't see Chuck anywhere, I made my way over to the cook, feeling hungry just looking at the food.

"Hey." I muttered while leaning on the small counter. "Whatcha makin'?"

Frypan chuckled and scooped a handful of chopped carrots from his cutting board and dumping them into a large pot. "Stew. For dinner."

"Fancy." I pursed my lips. "What do you usually make? Like how long does it take you?"

"A couple of hours." He muttered. "The day's almost over so they guys'll be starvin'."

I nodded in understanding. Hell, I didn't even do anything all day and I was starving. I stood upon the tips of my toes and tried to peer into the pot, seeing all that he had put in there. But the more I tried to see it, the more my toes ached from holding my body up.

"What's in there?" I asked him, motioning to the steel.

He raised his eyebrows and glanced up at me from the potatoes he was now peeling. "Carrots, celery, chicken...you know, the normal stuff."

Pursing my lips, I gave him an approving nod. "Nice. 'M excited to try it. Do you need any help? I think I've done all the exploring I can do in a lifetime. Even if there's not much to explore here.."

Frypan chuckled, but shook his head. "Nah. I'm almost done anyway. Do you need me to make you something?"

"Well duh." I finally gave up my polite act. "That's sorta the whole reason I came in here...That and to find Chuck."

"Haven't seen him." He told me, turning around and pulling open a refrigerator. "What do you want me to make ya?"

"Yes." I replied, too focused on getting a good look at the kitchen. I heard him chuckle again and pull out three ingredients. Everything here looked so familiar. I've seen a place like this before, but again, it was lacking the details. What was happening, who was there, everything to make up a memory. So I just shook my head at the thought and watched as he opened a jar and pulled out two long green things.

I furrowed my eyebrows and pointed to it. "What is that?" I asked him, scrunching my face up at the smell.

Frypan looked up at me through his eyelashes and smirked. He pulled one of the green things out of the jar and shook it to get rid of the juice that looked like gross murky water. It reminded me of my head. He handed it to me and motioned to me. "Try it."

"Why?" I slowly asked him. "I just asked what it was, not to try it."

"You're not big on trying new things, are you?" He observed.

Shrugging, I kept my eyes on the green thing. "Well after I came up out of a Box surrounded by fifty guys, I thought that was enough change for me."

"Just try it." He groaned. "It's good. At least I think it is.."

"What about the other forty-nine people that live here?" I questioned him once again, not believing a word he was saying. But when the cook groaned and rolled his eyes, I whined and took it from him, taking a big bite. I heard the food snap, and as soon as it touched my tongue, I stopped chewing.

Frypan raised his eyebrows and twitched the corners of his mouth up. "Good? It's called a pickle."

I just stared back at him, frozen in my spot from the sour-tasting pickle. My mouth started to tingle, begging me to spit out the disgusting article. I started to vigorously shake my head and groan, waving my arms at him to get me something to spit in. Frypan furrowed his eyebrows and took a step back, his eyes frantically moving from my eyes to my mouth like I was going to barf, which I'm pretty sure I was going to do if I didn't spit this out soon.

My eyes darted at everything in the kitchen, looking for some kind of trashcan. But when I saw nothing, I groaned once again. How could they not have a trashcan? Where did they put everything?

"Here." Fry finally spoke, handing me one of the cloths I had given Newt today at breakfast. I snatched it from his hand and wasted no time opening my mouth and spitting out the foul-tasting pickle. I wiped my mouth and stuck my tongue out as if the taste was going to blow away in the air. When I finally cleaned myself up, I looked back at the cook with a disappointed expression, while he looked at me like he had seen a ghost.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. It didn't work. "What the hell was that? Are you trying to poison me or something?"

"It was a pickle!" Frypan defended himself, throwing his hands into the air.

"Yeah, well that stupid pickle almost killed me! Why would you give that to me?"

"I thought you would like it! Apparently not!" He justified, looking back at the cloth in my hand.

I made a weird face. "Well thanks, captain obvious. Maybe you should give that to Gally, put him in his place..."

"It was just a pickle." He mumbled. "Pickles are good."

I looked back at him with a deadpanned expression, wondering if what he just said was real. "Do you enjoy seeing me suffer?"

Frypan pursed his lips, trying to hold back a laugh, but not being very successful. "Um...no?"

"Was that a question?"

He cleared his throat and stood up straight, puffing out his chest. "No."

Nodding my head, I placed the pickle cloth back down on the counter and glared up at him. "If I see any one of those things in my dinner, I will throw potatoes at you in your sleep. You got me?"

"Good that." He mumbled, still trying to keep a straight face. I hummed in disapproval and turned my back on the kitchen, wanting to get as far away from it as possible now that I have lost my appetite until further notice.

Outside, the sun was beating down on the Glade, making the smell of sweat and dirt pass though the air as if it was blown in by a fan. I wondered if they had a shower here...

I kept looking for Chuck, who was absolutely nowhere to be found. I don't know how Newt retrieved him so quickly yesterday, but then again, maybe he just knew all of his hiding spots. I felt a little sorry for the kid. It must be hard to live with a ton of boys who were older than you. From what he told me, he was the youngest, being only twelve. I can't imagine how he felt coming up from the Box. Of course, everyone probably thought that it should be the scariest thing for me since I was the only girl, and I had a breathing condition. But the truth was that I wasn't as scared as people thought I was. I did cry last night, but that was when I was asking myself about what I had done. Now, I think I was on the road to accepting the fact that people were trying to get us out of here, and that I wasn't placed on a field with a bunch of bums. That's when I would have run out through the doors.

When I gave up on trying to find the little boy, I made my way over to the gardens where Newt and Zart were still working. Newt was on his hands and knees with his white shirt still tied around his waist. He looked like he was planting something, but I couldn't tell what it was. I walked up to him with a smirk, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks with every step I took.

"Hey." I spoke soft enough to not scare him. He looked up from the dirt and smiled. Only then did I get to see how the sun cascaded down his body, making him look like some sort of...painting.

"Hi." he groaned as he stood up. "How's your second day going?"

I shrugged and looked away from his eyes, trying to calm the blush on my cheeks. "It's going alright. Frypan tried to poison me though..."

"How?" Newt chuckled, bending back down to continue his digging. I knelt down with him, grabbing a small shovel and copying the same action he was doing without even thinking.

"He gave me a pickle. Figured out I don't like them very much..." I murmured while pushing the dirt to the side, still not really knowing what I was doing, but just going on instinct. "Tasted disgusting."

He set down his shovel and sat up on his knees, looking down on me as I continued to make a small hole. "Really? I always liked them."

I set the shovel down and grabbed two of the small seeds that he had in a woven basket. "How? They taste like death."

He went silent as I continued to set the seeds in the hole that I made. I placed them about an inch apart from each other and sighed as I moved the dirt I had dug up back over the starting of a new plant. I grabbed the small water jug that Newt had placed in between the two of us, and I poured a little onto the rounded patch. When I sat back up and looked at my mound, I smirked to myself and moved down the row, already starting on the next one. But when I realized that Newt hadn't responded yet, I turned my head to him and saw how he was staring at me with his mouth slightly parted.

"What?" I asked him in a monotone voice.

Pointing to the seeds I had just finished planting, he opened his mouth to speak. "H-How did you know how to do that?"

I shrugged, honestly not knowing myself. "Dunno. Just kinda started doing what you were doing."

He nodded as though that was the most obvious answer in the world. "Uh, right."

"Do you know where Chuck is?" I murmured as I plunged the shovel into the hard dirt once more, immediately pulling it up and making the same sized hole as I had before.

That was quick, I thought, surprised at my knack for planting seeds. I looked back at Newt and saw him gawking at my work. He handed me the basket of seeds, all without tearing his eyes away.

He shook his head. "Nope, haven't seen the bugger all day except this mornin'. How did you do that so quickly?"

Ignoring his question, I grab two seeds like I had done before and placed them an inch apart again. "When are the Runners supposed to come back? I saw them leave this morning, do they just spend the whole day out there? What do they do?"

"Why are you worrying about that, Greenie?" He asked me with a breathy laugh. "You should be worrying about helpin' me with these bloody seeds...I've been trying to get this row done all day and here you are, finishing two in a second."

I shrugged and brought the bucket of water over to the mound. "I'm worried about it 'cause I'm curious. Am I not allowed to ask questions?"

"Depends on how many you have." Newt cocked his eyebrow, moving back to the small dirt patch that he had yet to put seeds in.

"Many." I muttered, moving to the other side of the row so that I was now working across from him. "How do you know when the doors open and close?"

"Been here for two years, Greenie," He told me, plunging his shovel into the dirt with a grunt. "Happens at the same time every day. Doors open a few minutes before sunrise, close at six."

"Okay, but how do they know when to come back?" I watered a new mound and moved to another one. Newt was being incredibly vague about the things I was asking him. At least Alby gave details. Maybe he was just too focused on beating me to the end of the row of dirt.

He sighed and lifted his head to watch me dig another hole in the dirt. I could feel the sun beating down on my back as a bead of sweat rolled down my forehead. I quickly set down my shovel and gathered my hair to the top of my head and wrapped it around a hair-tie I had put on my wrist this morning. I let out a breath and I lifted my orange coverup over my shoulders and tied it around my waist, just like Newt had done. I wiped the sweat off of my forehead with my wrist and looked back down at the earth when suddenly a new question popped into my mind.

"Newt?" I called his name, liking how the sound of it rolled off my tongue. When I looked up at him, his eyes were fixed on my face, and his mouth was slightly parted. I stared into his eyes, confused. "Hello? British boy?"

"Huh? What'd you say?" He snapped himself out of his thoughts. I smirked and furrowed my eyebrows at how flustered he looked in the moment.

"I said your name. Also, I have another question."

He nodded and returned his eyes to the dirt, "What is it?" His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, making his face flush ten times more than it already was. I chuckled and shook my head at his adorable awkwardness.

"I was going to ask you about—"

Suddenly, my eyes caught something. I stood to my feet but kept hold of the small shovel in my hand. The boy with spiky hair made his way across the glade, waving at the people who greeted him. Sweat rolled down his forehead and his cheeks as he wiped it away. Around his back was a small holster with a large machete tied to it. He had another boy right on his heels. The boy was almost in the same outfit as the spiky-haired one, except he was in a white shirt and brown pants, rather than a blue shirt and black pants. They both had the same type of boots I had on, and their fingerless gloves were tied around their hands as they jogged to a concrete room near where Newt and I worked.

I followed them with my eyes, not even backing down when the spiky-haired one looked right at me. I watched as he turned his head to his friend, muttering something so that he now looked matched his gaze. They didn't stop jogging towards the small building, but instead just kept their gaze on me as they opened the wooden door and disappeared through it.

"Those are the Runners?" I spoke aloud, just wanting to confirm my thoughts.

Newt nodded, not even looking at me. I turned my head towards him and knelt back down. "So then when are the doors going to close?"

"Any minute now." He mumbled, sighing and sitting back again. "How the bloody hell did you do this so quickly, Greenie? The dirt is like a rock..."

I shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just strong... Which is exactly why I should be able to try out for—"

"No." He interrupted me before I finished. "Enough of that. We can't have you runnin' around the Maze with the lousy lungs you have. No offense."

"Offence taken." I placed my hands on my hips. "I have my inhaler thing now, and I know how to use it. With that, I should be fine. Couldn't you guys use some more help?"

"No." He told me again. "The Runners are Runners for a reason. We only choose the best of the best, okay? Now quit your complaining and help me with this before—"

Suddenly a loud bell rang out from the Homestead. Boys immediately dropped their tools and started to walk towards the building, their smiles returned, and they began jumping on each other and messing around. They were being teenage boys again. I smiled and turned back to Newt, who was lying flat on the ground, staring up at the sky.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, curious.

His eyes moved to my figure as I walked towards his body. He smirked and pointed towards the sky. "That cloud looks like a pickle."

I rolled my eyes and gently kicked his side, listening to him let out a belly laugh. "Shut up. Don't make fun of me and my hatred for pickles. Those things taste like...what do you call it? Klunk!"

"Don't say that." He chuckled again, and I watched as his chest rose and fell with each laugh. "What did I tell you about using our slang?"

"Not to use it for a few weeks." I rolled my eyes and lowered myself to lay next to him. I looked up at the sky and noticed how truly calming this was. There was nobody to bother us, at least not right now when they were busy getting dinner. The clouds rolled to the side, each one looking like a different shape while the sun tanned our the skin and kept us from freezing.

"That one looks like a running shoe." I lied, pointing to a cloud that looks like nothing more than a blob. "Maybe it's a sign."

Newt let out a long sigh and turned his head towards me. "You're relentless, aren't you?"

"I like to think of it as sophisticated and stubborn, but whatever floats your boat..."

He laughed and turned back to look at the sky. We both just sat there for a moment, staring up at the big blue sky. I wondered if it ever rained. Maybe that was something the Gladers would all like. Something to wash away the stench of the farm mixed with body odor and replace it with the pleasant earthly smell. Somehow, I remembered the rain. What it felt like. What it sounded like. I remembered what caused it...but again, the lack of details ate at the hole in my brain.

"You have to become chosen to be a Runner." His British voice brought me out of my thoughts. I turned my head to him, surprised that he was telling me about the job I was so curious about. "Nobody wants to be a Runner. Trust me, running the same patterns every day, not knowing what you're looking for is maddening."

"How do you know?" I whispered, not wanting to startle him with my loud voice.

He turned his head towards me, and only then did I realize how close our faces truly are. His nose was about a couple of inches from mine, and his brown eyes burned holes in mine. At that moment, I became lost. His small bangs hand over his forehead, and when he blinked, they brushed across his eyelashes. His eyes held back a thousand words, but the sparkle in them told me all that I wanted to know. They told me that there was a reason he was informing me about the Maze and the dangers that lurked behind the walls. I watched as he swallowed and briefly glanced down to my lips, studying my face as though he were to be quizzed on it tomorrow.