Beyond the Border | ✔

37 | rule 13

RULE 13: NEVER DEPEND ON WHAT YOU LEARNED ON THE OUTSIDE. IT WILL LEAD YOU ASTRAY.

✷ C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - S E V E N ✷

As we all looked at each other, clueless, Theo took charge and walked back up to Harold. Theo sucked a breath in, his hand resting on the edge of the stall, his fingers tapping on the rotting wood.

"What is the right path?" Theo asked the obvious question we all had in our minds.

I knew Harold would most certainly not give us a straight answer, but it was worth asking, nonetheless. If what the others said was correct, then Harold was also under the spell of Vanessa. I gulped, hoping I would not end up like Harold, my skin gray, eyes purple.

    "I am not at liberty to say," Harold cooley smirked while he reorganized the pamphlets in front of him. The wind blew a few off the counter, but all Harold did was shrug his shoulders, giving a small wave to the pamphlets that were now tumbling down to the parking lot.

    "Can you smell which one is the right path?" I interrupted, knowing everyone who was with me had supernatural abilities that could be leveraged. I didn't want to have come all this way just to be stumped by which path to choose.

    "No," Theo turned his head and sniffed the air. "There must be a block."

    "You would be correct," Harold cheered up, with a larger smile expanding his face.

    "What paths are there to choose?" Theo snapped back, becoming irritated.

    "Right or left," Harold piped out with a chuckle. "Simple, isn't it?"

    Theo let out a sigh, and it seemed like we all came to the same conclusion: we could not use Harold – who had a tour guide pin strung to his shirt – for any information. He was clearly here to provide no clarity on the decision of which path to choose.

    "They always say go right to get out of a maze," Heath offered as he stroked his chin in thought. I had never heard that saying, but then again, I had never encountered a maze. The Borderlands was too small for frivolous affairs such as a maze.

    "This is not a maze, Heath," Mina perked her eyebrows while she sighed. I twisted my lip up in thought, not knowing how we would be able to figure out what path to choose.

    "Do you have any better ideas?" Heath narrowed his eyes at Mina.

Theo turned around. "Have any of you noticed anything off? Any signs at all?"

    "Everything is off here," I responded, my foot kicking the ground beneath me.

    Even back in the Borderlands, I was never the smartest person to walk the Earth. I did well enough in school to keep Pa from hounding me on my marks, but I never excelled in any one subject unless it was in art class. Not that I would have needed to, anyway. Many people in the Borderlands took up trade professions, only a handful of jobs – like Ma's – required further studying outside of the Borderland's Common Curriculum. My lack of education made me want to shrink into a ball and roll away. I wanted to be able to contribute to figuring things out in a meaningful way, but I felt so helpless.

    "Follow the light," Harold said quietly as he was now flipping through a magazine, looking disinterested in what was going on around him.

    "That's what they say to people when they die," Heath barked out, looking puzzled. I was comforted by the fact it did not seem I was the only one who was grasping at straws here. "We're all going to die."