Freak

5

5.

Days passed and though Blue tried her best to settle in she found it hard to adapt to her new environment. Most of the people in the camp were nice enough but she didn't trust them fully, except for maybe Arthur. He'd told her countless times that she was safe and that he, and the rest of the gang, would make sure of it. It wasn't that she didn't believe him it was just that she hadn't felt safe in a long time and it was as if she had forgotten how to.

She barely slept out of fear that someone would sneak up on her like the other kids did so often. Putting bugs on her face, placing sharp or hard objects around her in the hope that she would role over and get hurt, pouring water (or worse) over her sleeping form so that she shivered more than usual.

And then of course there was the nightmares, she never remembered them for more than a few seconds after she woke up but it was enough for her to not want to go back to sleep.

Her nights had been like this through all her years at the orphanage and she had always hoped that when she left it would go away, but it didn't.

Then there was the matter of food, usually she got what was left after the other children, meaning she didn't eat all that much nor did she do it every day. And here she was basically required to eat at least two big meals a day. Her stomach hurt and sometimes it caused her to throw up, she didn't dare tell anyone about it though... what if they got mad that she wasted their food?

One thing that she did enjoy however was her chores, first of all she wasn't forced to do them, Dutch said she was too young to have to do chores. She liked doing them though so he let her help, and that was the thing, she got to help! She didn't have to do them alone, she wasn't responsible for doing all of the chores. Everyone helped out, they did it together.

Blue found it hard to actually interact with the others as they worked but she liked having them there, she liked when they ASKED if she WANTED to help, they didn't tell her to do it, didn't yell at her or threaten her, they just asked nicely. And when she was done they would thank her, no one had thanked Blue for anything since her mother died and it felt nice, though her cheeks always burned furiously when they did it.

There were other things she liked too, she liked how people smiled at her, she liked how Hosea would pat the seat net to him and ask her about her day, she liked Sean's jokes and Charles stories, the way Dutch would put his hand on her shoulder to encourage her when she shied away from something, how the women of the gang would brush and braid her hair, how Arthur was always there for her (even when he was far away.)

These things made the bad things seem small, or smaller at least. There was, however, one thing that was causing her pain that didn't seem small because of the good things. She wasn't aloud to leave camp as she wished and never alone, she hadn't known that, however, and that was the reason she was now lying under her bed crying silently.

She'd woken up just before sunrise that morning and she felt the need to wander around the woods like she so often did. No one cared where she was or what she did, as long as she did her chores, when she lived with Mrs. Green and the other children, so her 7-year-old brain didn't see anything wrong with leaving without telling. She'd been gone for quite a while when she all of a sudden came face to face with Sean, at first she was happy since she liked him but he wasn't the normal happy Sean. In fact he wasn't happy at all. He told her she'd caused a lot of trouble because everyone thought she'd gotten kidnapped or gotten hurt. He put her on his horse and rode back to camp without a word.

Once in camp she was met first by a worried Hosea who asked if she was okay and then she was pushed towards very angry Dutch. He yelled at her, saying she'd gotten them all worried sick and that she was never aloud to leave like that again. Blue didn't look at him or anyone else as he kept on going, she couldn't. Shame coursed through her body, she felt like it was all going back to the way it used to be, people yelling at her. Now she just waited for him to hit her, but he didn't, he just told her to go to her tent.