#samanthascenes

#saturdayscenes #samanthascenes Here's a bit from Thursday's Children, a little conflict between our boys Malcolm and Jason. Things are getting a little hairy in Alexandria. _________________________________ Malcolm stared at his own reflection in the window as the van carried him and Jason back to the Center. He should have felt elated. The Underground supported his plan. Sheila approved of Jason. Years of thinking, planning, and dreaming had finally led to a real moment of action. He won! Like his mother and his old friend Billy Tayac had promised him, his moment had come.

And he felt…let down, somehow.

He knew he wasn’t being fair to Jason. The boy must be feeling confused, but Malcolm couldn’t shake his bitter mood. Trying to recapture his excitement, he envisioned the success of his plan as he had so many times before.

_The mist parted on a beautiful morning, and he stepped out of the trees sighing with relief to have arrived at his destination. The sunrise glowed golden behind the camp, filling the sky with orange light. He took off his ball cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. Resolute, he re-shouldered his backpack and walked into the camp, where he knew he would find the girl._

_At his appearance, she jumped up, dropping the apple she’d been holding. It rolled in the dusty earth, landing at his feet. He picked it up and stood holding it in his hands.  Confusion and fear chased each other across her lovely  face, only to be replaced with joy, just before she ran into his arms, her long legs covering the distance in only two or three steps._

Malcolm jolted in his seat. He understood the salty taste in his mouth now. The mission would be served best if he stayed at the Center, acting as the man on the inside. There was work he could do there that no one else could. With instruction and training, anyone could make the cross country trek, but Malcolm had to stay behind to feed the Underground information. It had taken most of his life to work his way into the position he was in now. No one else could do it.

Jason would undertake the journey to Kye’luh and her cousins and bring them into the fold. And he’d do it well. He was smart and capable, trustworthy. Malcolm had no doubt that Jason would succeed, would get there and would hold to the rest of the plan, helping to free all of them, and take down the system.

But, that meant that Jason would be the one to escape, to get the Wade camp, and taste the free air with Kye’luh by his side. An acid lake burned in Malcolm’s stomach, imagining the same scene, but this time with Jason walking into Camp Wade and finding Kye’luh. Kye’luh’s face would go stoney at first, since Jason was a stranger, but when she understood what was happening, she would greet him warmly, her dark eyes sparkling with light and hope.

Of all the ridiculous, stupid things: he was jealous. Jason wouldn’t even know about the plan, let alone have a role in it, if not for Malcolm’s active recruitment, but now that the moment was upon them, he wished he were the one going. It stung that Malcolm would not be the one to taste the fruits of his own labor. It stung worse, imagining Jason spending time with Kye’luh. It couldn’t be him, Malcolm knew. But it should have been him.

And, whether he wanted to admit it or not, it was as much about Kye’luh as it was about the mission itself. Kye’luh, whom he had barely spoken to in years, despite her best efforts to befriend him again when he moved back to Alexandria, was nonetheless in his heart. When she had wrapped her arms around him in his imagination, he had felt like he was home. He could almost smell her skin if he closed his eyes. Until now, he hadn’t realized his own heart.

Billy should have warned him. He’d been so honest about everything else. Why hadn’t he said that when your moment finally comes there will be yet another price to pay? If he was to fulfill his dream of taking down the agency that robbed him of his childhood, of his mother, he had to send the best friend he’d had in years away to the girl he might actually love, putting them both at terrible risk. He shook his head in wonder at the ironies.

He turned in his seat, wanting to say something to Jason, to apologize for being ridiculous. Jason sat sideways, his legs curled into the seat beside him. He was drawing with his finger in the fog on the window, a long winding line that curled around itself. Malcolm reached over the seat and swatted at Jason’s knee.

Jason’s face was wary when he looked up, and Malcolm felt even more guilty about how he had treated his friend. “Want to kick the boys off the console when we get back? I’ll give you another lesson in Halo.”