Trust Falls

A Story Of Betrayal

I walked into the park and stifled a yawn. Kendra had invited me to play some kind of game with everyone after rehearsals at the community center. I'd gone straight home to change into fresh clothes before coming to the park. Yousuf had bumped into me during break and spilled ice cream down my shirt. I'd wiped away what I could and dealt with the sticky dried ice cream on my chest, waiting to go home. I smiled, now feeling comfortable in my fresh black T-shirt and jeans.

Kendra waved me over to a big plastic tub near her. A lot of the theater kids were already gathered and Damian stood against the fence, talking on the phone.

I walked up to Kendra. "Hey. What's this?"

She handed the box off to another kid and held out a belt and plastic sword towards me. "We're playing A Story of Betrayal."

I raised an eyebrow, gingerly picking up the black belt and sword from her hands and studying them. "What's that? How do you play?"

She handed me a red strip of cloth. "One sec."

Turning towards the others, she clapped her hands. "Hey, hey!"

The kids slowly turned to look at her. Someone tapped my shoulder and I glanced up to see Luke, who winked at me. "Hey."
"You're here too?" I smiled at him.

"Of course." He watched Damian start walking towards us. "Zeenath and Madison will be here soon."

"Who's Madison?"

"A friend." His cheeks tinged pink and I let the topic drop. A friend. Sure.

"Okay. Listen up, those of you who are new to this. It'll be a nice refresher for everyone else too, so y'all hush. Everyone is going to be randomly divided into two teams: Red or Blue. Which team you're on depends on which color your ribbon is."
Guess that makes me Team Red. I glanced down at the ribbon in my hands. Red's cool.

"Both teams have a leader, a traitor, and other members. I'll come around with a hat for each team and you'll pick your role in the game that way." Kendra shielded her eyes from the sun and scanned the group of people around her.

"Whoever gets leader must let their entire team know immediately. Everyone's job is to protect the leader. King or Queen, take your pic. Call it whatever. It's the leader. Whatever happens, you can't let the leader die. He or she only has one badge."

She turned to look at me, motioning towards three different badges on her body.

"These are your three chances at life. One badge stays on your chest or shoulder. One on either leg and one on an arm. Again, the leader only gets one. Then, there's one other role. The traitor."

She paused. "The traitor can't tell anyone their role. It's up to them if they actually want to betray their own team. They don't have to but they can do so whenever they want to." She grinned. "It's more fun when there's traitors on both sides."

"Traitor, huh?" Luke chuckled behind me. I pursed my lips.

"To "kill" a person, you have to use your sword to hit a badge. When someone hits one of your badges, you give it up to them and they can pin it on their belt. When all three of your badges are gone, you're out. Dead."

She got quiet. "I think that's it. Does everyone understand?"

I groaned. I didn't think I'd come here to...do things. But..a fighting game, huh? I studied the plastic sword in my hands. I've handled a real one before. This'll be easy.

Zeenath and a red-headed girl ran up just as the small crowd of people dispersed to slip on their belts. I scanned the crowd. There were maybe twenty people, so ten on each team. Roughly. I noticed a group of little kids were putting on belts too.

"What's up with the little kids?"

Kendra grinned, handing me my three badges and adjusting her sword. "Don't underestimate them. They're little, but they're dangerous little twerps. You'll see."

I waited with Zeenath and company--the redhead was Madison. Go figure-- as everyone settled into their teams. Me, Madison, Zeenath and Luke were on one team, along with Tommy and some other people whose names I didn't quite catch. There was one six-year old on our team though and I made a mental note to keep an eye on him.

Kendra and a not-so-enthusiastic Damian were on the Blue Team. I caught Yousuf's dark red hair in my peripheral vision and whirled around to see him jump back, hands in the air.

"Aye, aye. Don't kill me yet. The game hasn't started."
My eyes dropped down to his waist where he'd tied his blue ribbon to his belt loop.

He followed my eyes and grinned. "Well, looks like we're enemies."

I smiled. "No surprise."

"Go easy on me, Iqra."

"Mm. Yeah...no."

Kendra came around with the hat and we pulled out our roles. Zeenath went pale for a second before looking up worriedly. She turned to us as Kendra moved on with the hat.

"I'm the leader."

I grinned as Luke shouted it to everyone. "Aye, we'll protect you Zeenath!"

She glanced around and caught Damian's eye, and he smiled at her. She shook her head. "I'm gonna die so quickly..."

"Psh." Madison put her hands on her hips, letting her plastic sword rest against her leg. "You run every other day. If you can't defend yourself, just run away."

Zeenath plastered a bewildered smile on her face. "Yeah. Meugh. Sure."

I winked at her. "Don't worry, you buttercup. We'll protect ya!"

She frowned. "I'm older than you."

"So? I'm cooler."

Luke guffawed behind me. "You got spunk, kid."

Kendra came up to me and I stuck my hand in the hat and brought it out as soon as I got a slip of paper.

TRAITOR.

Oh great. Of course it's my pick. So much for protecting Zeenath. I sent her a tiny apology in my mind and scanned the field, my eyes locking with Yousuf's.

Or maybe....I bit my lip, feeling the cogs in my brain creak into motion.

Who will I fight for? 

Who will I protect? 

Who will I use?

I bit back a smile and folded up the note, sticking it in my pocket and turning back to the others. Luke raised an eyebrow at me. "Like what you got?"

I shrugged. "It'll be as fun as we make it."

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A/N: I'm back! I know I said I'd try my hardest to update on every Friday from now on, and yes, it's Wednesday and I've missed two Fridays already. It's about time I tell you all what's up. 

See...back in February/March, I went on a writing spree and wrote out the majority of the back story in one go. So I had at least 5-6 chapters done ahead of time. And when it came time to release each one, I tried to write about what happened in the present along with it, but school killed any free time I had. So I released the pre-written chapters. And then when I looked back at it, I was worried I'd screwed up the story telling for you all so I took time off to think about it. 

And I came to this conclusion:

This is my first draft. It's not going to be my best. And while it makes me kind of disappointed in myself for not giving you all the very best I could, it will have to do. I'll go back and edit this draft. That's the beauty of writing: You don't have to get it right the first time. 

I'll be trying my best (please note, I have maybe an hour or two free every day. So it's slow going.) to update whenever I get a chapter done, so you won't have to wait for long. And the updates will be irregular, and I'm sorry. There's not a whole lot more left to go, and I want to get it all out. It won't be amazingly put together this time, but I hope you'll stick around! I'm trying my best not to disappoint you! >_< 

~October.