I expected to be out of the game with this. All they would have had to do was throw me out of the house and the next thing I would have known Mother would have bought me a house somewhere in the outside world. They weren’t that nice, they played a new sort of game. In this game losers stayed to have being a loser rubbed in their face, I don’t like it much. They had a cell for me, ready in the basement, where no one ever goes.
I guess that in the real world, outside of the game that is, this sort of thing is against the law. The law is nothing out here though, since we are so far from any cops. I guess outside of the game Mother would have stopped them from putting me in a cell in the basement, or made them let me go. That would have been true but Mother is in the game too and so it was allowed. Maybe she wasn’t happy with them, but I didn’t get to see, not from my cell.
I have always thought of myself as important in the game. When I was younger I thought I was important because I was me, when I was older I got important. This was the first time I have been not important. It was even worse because I didn’t have anything to do in my cell, so I could think about it a lot.
Mother wouldn’t have let them kill me, I knew that. What ever happened I wouldn’t die anyway, a small comfort. Luke brought me food, but he didn’t talk to me. I don’t think anyone was allowed to talk to me. He did bring me paper and ink, and couple of books. I was being the most well read I had been ever. Usually I was too busy thinking of ways to take care of Isabelle, Ben, and Dan. There didn’t seem a point anymore, this was more serious then Lose a Turn in some board game.
I have no idea how many days, weeks, months, years, passed between when they locked me up in the cell and that day that Luke spoke to me for the first time. I had tried to talk to him before, be he always just put down my food and left. I had given up, I had given up on everything, and then Luke up and talks to me. He looked around when he spoke, and he whispered, he knew he was breaking some rule of the game, but he talked anyway.
“Do you want anything?” he whispered to me. “You’ve been down here an awful long time.”
“Don’t I know that,” I whispered back. I complained before about how all he did was ask questions but this question filled me with a really warm feeling. “I could use some news, what’s been going on?”
“I shouldn’t tell you, I’m not supposed to talk to you at all but I feel bad. If I can get you anything,” he trailed off, looking back over his shoulder again. I think faster then Luke does, that’s why Luke followed me. I knew for sure that my cell had cameras and microphones in it and this would be the last talk we’d have.
I thought some, I had a lot of time for thinking being in the cell, and then I went over to the pad of paper Luke had give me and got out a sheet of writing paper. I wasn’t sure where the cameras were so I had to be careful. I had never had to be tricky like this before. I wrote a note, I folded it, I stuck it in my pocket, and then I went over to my dinner tray. It was the work of a moment, with my heart beating fast, to slip the note under my plate. I could hope that it had looked like I was just picking crumbs off my plate to the camera, I could hope that Luke would find the note, I could hope. If I failed I could see Isabelle coming down and slamming me into the wall a couple of times, it was worth it. Risk was good, risk made me feel alive again. I wasn't out of the game yet.
To be continued
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