Page 25 of Vendetta

The faux uniform was set to arrive tomorrow, leaving us the rest of the day on Wednesday and Thursday to get this done. Everything was coming together slowly.

I hadn’t left the apartment since the games began, camping out with Olivia and Bexley in the two-bedroom apartment. Between Taken, TV, cooking, and studying, we weren't anywhere near running out of things to do.

Everything was going smoothly until I got a text from Debbie in the evening, asking if I could pick up her shift at the shelter tonight. I had purposefully asked off for the entire week because of the games, not wanting to risk the walk or the time spent outside of the apartment which would leave me vulnerable. But I hated saying no to Debbie, knowing that she was single-handedly running the shelter while also raising two kids as a single mother with a shortage of volunteers.

“Fuck.” I breathed out, throwing my head back against the couch.

“What’s wrong?” Bexley asked, her and Olivia both turning away from the television.

“Debbie asked if I could go feed tonight. Apparently, her son caught some sort of stomach bug overnight and she doesn’t want to drag him out of the house, and all of the other volunteers have already told her they couldn’t. They’re probably all playing Taken too.”

The room was met with silence, all of us thinking of how to handle the situation.

“I mean…” Olivia started, “We could totally go with you? I can drive us, that way we only have to worry about walking to and from the car and we can have power in numbers? Besides, we haven’t left the apartment in three days, I doubt they have anybody actually staking out our dorms or anything. We’ll just have to be super careful.”

I glanced over at Bexley, immediately spotting the hesitant look on her face. My gut reciprocated the feeling, Rory and Morgan’s words screaming across my mind. Maybe I could text Jared or Ken to see if one of them could follow us? They had offered, after all. I relayed the idea to the girls before sending a text to each of the guys.

My knee started shaking as I wracked my brain, trying to decide what to do. Was I seriously going to let Debbie drag her sick kid to the shelter? Or was I going to let the animals go to sleep hungry? Both thoughts made me nauseous, the guilt creeping through me. I checked my phone, seeing that an hour had passed without an answer.

“Hey guys,” I spoke, bringing their attention to me. “I think I’m going to go. I completely understand if you guys don’t feel comfortable, I’ll be totally, fine I promise.”

“Girl, are you crazy!” Olivia asked, “Of course we’re coming with you. Do you seriously think we would let you go by yourself?”

Bexley nodded her agreement, and my chest ached at the fact that these two girls were willing to go to these lengths for me. I used to have so many friends in high school, each more superficial than the next. And moments like these made me mentally slap myself for not having realized how deceitful each and every one of them had been. With the exception of Olivia, of course. She had been a breath of fresh air once I had finally stopped drowning in the sea of fake bitches.

“I’ll bring my taser and pepper spray!” I sing-songed.

“No weapons, remember? The last thing we need is to get disqualified after making it this far.” Bexley reminded me.

Damn.

“How fun, this is like an adventure!” Olivia squealed as we made our way out the door, not bothering to change out of our pajamas considering that nobody would be seeing us. Fingers crossed, of course.

The walk to the car felt like a low-budget version of mission impossible, all of us keeping our backs to each other as we made a dramatic show of assessing our surroundings, Olivia even going as far as holding up finger guns and humming the tune as we spun in circles.

We made it to the car, laughing our asses off as we got inside and locked the doors. The drive was less than ten minutes, the shelter parking lot empty as we pulled in. Neither Bexley nor Olivia had come here with me yet, but I let us all inside and showed them how everything worked as we divided and conquered to get done as quickly as possible. And yes, we did lock the doors behind us.

“So, what did you guys use as an excuse to your parents if you stop replying this week? I’m new to this whole ‘kidnapped’ thing but I’m going to take a wild guess that they wouldn’t let us keep our phones if they took us.”

Bexley asked.

Olivia and I chuckled, the three of us finishing up.

“I tell my parents everything, so they know all about the games. They know that anything goes this week and that I’ll be getting hammered at the after party on Friday regardless of the outcome, so unless I still haven’t called them by Monday, they’lljust be sitting at home cheering me on.” Olivia shrugged, dumping the mop bucket into the sink. “Why, what did you guys tell yours?” she asked.

“My parents would kill me if they ever found out about Taken, let alone that I was playing. My mom would have an aneurysm. I told them that I had been selected to attend a research trip on the coast and that we would have spotty cell signal for the entire week. They bought it though!” Bexley responded.

“Yesss girl!” Olivia exclaimed, turning to me

next. “Landry?”

I hesitated for a moment before answering. It was no secret that my mom had passed earlier this year, and that my dad and I didn’t necessarily see eye to eye. We had little to no communication at this point.

“I haven’t talked to my dad since April. He wouldn’t notice if I went missing for a week.” I finally spoke, the statement sounding more depressing than I had intended.

“Shit.” Olivia whispered, “I’m sorry babe. I wasn’t thinking.”

I forced a small smile. “It’s all good. Promise.”

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