well up on the skin of her knee. Feeling sick, she looked up at the dark sky to not see the blood.
“Who’s there?” the voice of a man came from a distance, reminding her she had to hurry back home. She wasn’t supposed to be out on the grounds after dark, especially not on these parts of the compound.
Standing up, her injured knee wobbly, Amara hurried over to the building where she lived with her mother. As she went downhill towards her home, feeling the throb in her leg, Amara hated the Maroni grounds. Why did it have to be so big, and on a mountain? Hills were hard to climb and get down on.
“Sneaking out again, ‘Mara?” a boy’s voice from behind her startled her.
Almost falling on her behind again, Amara barely balanced and stopped in her tracks to greet Vin. He was her best friend, her only friend actually. And for some reason, he could never say her name right. She had always been ‘Mara to him.
“Vinnie! What are you doing sneaking around?” she demanded. Vin was just one year older than her – a fact he never forgot to remind her of – and he was wandering even though he wasn’t supposed to either.
Vin came beside her, an inch shorter than she was. She liked to tease him about that until he reminded her he was going to grow tall in a few years and she’d stay the same. Ugh, he annoyed her.
“I was training,” he said quietly, starting the walk downhill, taking her arm to help her. Okay, he was less annoying when he was being nice.
“What do you do in training?” she asked for the hundredth time, genuinely curious. He had begun ‘training’ – whatever that was – a week ago, the day after his eleventh birthday. She knew it had something to do with the big guns she saw the guards carrying, but nothing more. And Vin didn’t tell her what he did, no matter how many times she asked him.
He shrugged, glancing at the dark training building to the right, where he’d come from. Amara saw the building in the distance, seeing another boy limping down the hill but in the opposite direction, towards the lake. The new boy. Even though he’d been staying there for as long as she could remember, everyone still called him the ‘new boy’. She’d never met him, but from the way everyone talked about him, she knew he was dangerous.
“Have you talked to the new boy?” she couldn’t contain herself from asking.
“He’s been here five years, ‘Mara,” Vin reminded her. “He’s not new anymore.”
“I know,” she stepped over a stone. They were almost home now. “That’s just what everyone calls him.”
The light from the building showed Vin’s dark, floppy hair and dark eyes, his front tooth slightly crooked as he spoke. “He doesn’t talk to anyone. The kids don’t train with him.”
“He’s a kid too,” climbing the steps, Amara pointed out.
Vin shook his head, the hair on his forehead swaying. “He’s not like any of us. Stay away from him, okay?”
Amara looked at the lake in the distance. She’d never been to that part of the compound. Thinking of the angry boy who lived there, she didn’t even want to go. On the landing of the huge building where she and Vin lived – she on the ground floor and Vin on the third – she stopped him, excited to share her little finding from the day.
“I found a little shed in the woods today,” she told him, trying to keep her voice low so nobody would hear.
Vin, who had been looking up at the stars, looked at her with wide eyes. “You went to the woods alone? Are you crazy?”
“Shh,” she looked around, scared someone older would hear him. If the news got to her ma, she’d be grounded. She hated being grounded. After a second, when no one came, she relaxed slightly.
“The woods are dangerous,” Vin reminded her softly. That’s something every single adult around them had told every kid. Don’t go into the woods.
Amara rolled her eyes. “I didn’t go in deep.”
“But-”
“Oof,” Amara exclaimed in annoyance, punching his arm to shut him up. “I wasn’t the only one there. Mr. Maroni’s son was there too. With a girl,” she whispered, remembering the thrill of going into the woods, only to stumble upon the two teenagers.
Vin blinked, his eyes widening in excitement. “With a girl? An outsider?”
Amara nodded, grinning. Vin whistled. Or tried to. He