𝘁𝗲𝗻

                                    

                                          
╔═══*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*═══╗
                          
We pay in pig blood. 
                          
╚═══*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝
                          
The next day I'm sat in the Kitchens again with Chuck and Newt, who are both laughing about something so acutely bizarre that I don't have time to decipher what it means before they're laughing at something else. despite the airy and relaxed atmosphere in the Kitchens right now, a cloud hangs over me. I still hardly know anything about the Glade... why we're here and who the creators are. 
                          
What connects us? 
                          
And why am I the only girl? 
                          
Before I have any more time to think about this, Alby announces breakfast is over with a whistle. Plates clink and chairs screech against stone as each Glader rises to their feet, organised chaos lingering through the air as group by group, the Gladers leave the Kitchens, discarding their plates and bowls on the table while pushing each other to get to the exit. 
                          
"Might as well stay in here, Greenie," Newt says, waving his hand in front of my face with a bemused chuckle. I cock my brow. 
                          
"Yeah, Greenie! You're with me today," Frypan calls from the Kitchen area through the hole in the wall. Gally made it. He tells me that it's meant to be the equivalent of what he thinks a market stall would look like, though I argued he just ripped a hole in a perfectly good wall. He wasn't impressed. 
                          
"Maybe I can slip something into Billy's stew," I whisper excitedly to Chuck as I rise. 
                          
I reckon it's him just being a prick. Newt reckons if you're going to be a twat then the least you could be is good looking. I think I like Newt a lot more now that he called Billy ugly.  
                          
"Put some piss in Gally's drink!" Chuck says a little too loudly. 
                          
"I heard that, Chuck." 
                          
Gally scowls at him before leaving the Kitchen, bringing Billy along with him. The hilarious thing is that Gally always looks like he wants to punt Billy in the face whenever he opens his shuck mouth. 
                          
"Nevermind then."
                          
The prospect of cooking is something I never paid any mind to, and try to ignore at all costs. I don't want to think about what life would be like in this hellhole as a cook, with nothing to comfort me other than the musty salt and pepper shakers and the leaky pot Frypan won't shut up about. Not to be dramatic, but I think I'd rather let a Griever have me for dinner than cook for anyone. 
                          
As I watch the Sloppers leave last, throughly upset about their job, I take back what I thought about being a cook. Being a housewife seems ten times better than cleaning someone's klunk, even though the thought makes me cringe. 
                          
I'll shave off my hair before I become a housewife. And no one touches my hair. Ever. 
                          
"What're we making?" I huff as I fling the Kitchen doors open, revealing two other people, not including Frypan. One stares blankly at me, while the other just grins and chucks an apron at me. His brown eyes glint at me cheekily, prompting me to smile back at the tanned boy. 
                          
"The cure to heterosexuality," he says simply, evoking a laugh from me.
                          
"I was thinking more like the cure to misogyny but that works too."