Children's Draft

Chapter 8 (Part Two)

(Aaron's PoV)

Sgt. Blake didn't follow through with his threat of putting low scorers on the front-line, simply because we all were on the front-line. Granted, our platoon's job was just to guard a small and seemingly unimportant base, but it was still a little unnerving. There was a barricade of metal boxes and empty steel barrels, but we all were wondering if those would be enough.

No one was talking. It was so quiet it was bothering me. There was no conversation to distract me from my thoughts. Guilt was churning inside of me. I looked over to Matteo, who seemed fine now, but I felt awful about the thunderstorm incident. I felt compelled to apologize, but my jaw was locked in place.

We had purposely scared him. Well, Connor went out of his way to scare him, but I just let it happen. I thought about myself in Matteo's unfortunate position and the knot in my stomach grew even tighter.

"Connor," I blurted out. He was caught off guard and nearly dropped his weapon.

"Yeah?" He replied, snapping back to his senses.

I shifted awkwardly. "Do you think...what we did to Matteo...was wrong?"

He scrunched his face together. "No," he said quickly. After a moment, he sighed. "I don't know...do you?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. Kind of. I know he's annoying, but I just feel like we took it too far."

Connor pursed his lips. I certainly couldn't be mad at him. Not since I knew where he was coming from. He was so desperate not to be the victim anymore. So desperate, he would put someone else in his old place.

Still, it didn't make it right.

"I think you're right," he finally said. "I'm not sure how I feel about it. I've been trying to avoid thinking about it."

"By trying to find anything else to talk about," I suggested the same thing I had been doing.

"For God's sake, we were talking about peanut butter this morning," he said.

I laughed, relieved to have that off my chest. It didn't fix anything, but I could at least be open with Connor again.

"Keep me in check, will you?" he asked. "I don't wanna be like Jordan."

I was taken a little by surprise. Connor rarely talked about Jordan, much less was the one to bring him up.

"Yeah," I told him, trying to cover a stutter. "I've got your back."

Before he could respond, a loud gunshot went off next to us. We turned around and to our shock, it came from Sean. His mouth was hanging half open and his blue eyes were bigger than ever.

"What's wrong?" Connor asked.

He seemed to be having trouble speaking. "I-I heard...something...c-coming...and, and, and I panicked."

"It's okay," I tried to comfort him. "It's all right, you didn't get hurt."

"What if I hit somebody?" he exclaimed.

It took a moment for me to let that sink in. Connor and I exchanged worried glances, unsure of what to do next. Sean was more concerned with someone else's, a stranger's--an enemy's--life more than his own.

"Just stay with us," Connor advised.

Sean immediately hugged onto me. "It's gonna be okay," I told him, hoping I wasn't lying. I felt his head buried against my chest. How could anyone send him here?

(Clayton's PoV)

Logan folded his arms. "I don't like this."

"No kidding," Trevor said flatly.