ONE OF THE 100

2. "Unforeseen Priority"

WARNING ⚠️:
Skrt skrt
Toxic friendship alert
Skrt skrt
Tread lightly
Enjoy! 😁

I sit across from Ally, laughing at her jokes and hitting her when she makes a comment about me and ginger.

"Stop it," I say to her, giggling. "I don't even like him."

And just when I say that there's a rustling of my tent flap and I look back to see who it is. Ginger stands there, mouth agape and looking like he's seen a ghost.

"Oh sorry, am I interrupting something?" I look at Ally, and then back to ginger. I can tell he hadn't heard what I said. He just stands there awkwardly for a moment, and I'm shaking my head to say no.

"No, we were just talking."

He curtly nods his head before taking a seat across from us. "Do you guys want to come to see Deidre?"

I stop clenching my jaw, which I was not aware I was doing in the first place, and widen my eyes, turning to Ally excitedly.

"Yeah, we should definitely go see her," I say excitedly, addressing both of them.

Ally's resting bitch face has not changed and she looks uninterested in what I'm talking about. "Who's dandruff?" She asks.

I hold my lip before answering her question, mildly taken aback by her misnomer. "Deidre," I correct, confused why neither of them is able to remember her name. "She was my cellmate, back in the skybox."

I see the wonder on Ally's face as she cocks her head. But she asks as if she isn't questioning what I've said when she says something. "Um, what do you mean 'go see her'? Why doesn't she just come to us? We're all here anyway," she motions to the medium-sized tent the three of us are sitting in.

"Because she's in the infirmary tent," ginger answers. His lips purse after that, and I can already tell how defensive he is about my friend. I question that at first, but then back to Ally when she speaks again.

"Um, no thanks. Sick people, quite frankly, make me sick-"

"She's not sick," ginger retorts. I raise an eyebrow at that, glancing at him from the corner of my eye.

"Okay," I said, taking in the intensity of the tent. "Ally, I'll stay with you. We have some catching up to do anyway," I half-smile. I hear ginger sigh from beside me, making my mind wander. But in a second he's stood up at the entrance of the tent.

"Come along whenever you'd like," he says with annoyance lacing his words.

I scrunch up my face, wondering why he was being like this. He should know that Ally is my best friend, and if he's just mad about me not going with him he should realize that I've only known him for half a day. He's out of the tent before I can roll my eyes at his remark and I exasperatedly sigh looking back to Ally.

"Where were we?" I ask smiling, although I'm a little unsettled by ginger's absence.

"We're definitely not talking about him anymore," she rolls her eyes, keeping them somewhere else for a moment before looking right back to me. "So how'd you get here?"

I jokingly scoff, scrunching my face again. "By the dropship. Didn't you, or is there a skydiving adventure I should've known about?" I joke.

"You know that's not what I'm talking about," she grins. "I mean, how'd you get locked up? Like me," there's a lot of seriousness in her voice, something she's lacked since we reconnected.

"Same way. Almost half a year after I let you get caught," I say, thinking back on the time and letting the guilt overtake over me. I'll never forget the day that I couldn't save my best friend from being taken up by the Guard, placed in cuffs, only to endure a long trial that was useless in the first place, since everyone who gets tried for a crime gets convicted in the end nowadays. "Trying to get something for you," I finish.