Ruin - By N.M. Martinez Page 0,4

me and seeing my weakness and my fear.

The younger man's voice cuts through the awkward quiet in the car sharply. "Well that went all to hell." He scoots back in his seat and stretches so that the back of the chair bends towards me. "What're we going to do with her? A Neutral girl has no place in the Wildlands."

The older man gives a sigh. He rubs at his face with one hand as the other sticks to the steering wheel to guide us safely past the large holes in the pavement.

The younger one gives a sigh of his own, slightly harsher. Under his breath, I think he says, "I'd know what to do with her."

My duffel sits on my lap, thankfully obscuring my view of the younger one directly in front of me. The glare from the older one that I catch from the corner of my eye is enough to make my stomach curl into a ball that painfully pulls at whatever is connecting it to my heart and the rest of my body.

The older one doesn't say anything. His look is meant to be more than enough of a warning, and, for a moment, it almost seems as if it will work. The younger one is quiet, looking out the window. Then he adds, "You always were a little bit soft."

My hands against the fabric of the bag become sweaty, and it's an effort to hold them together. I sit up a little bit more, drawing my knees closer to my seat. The older man seems to completely ignore the dig at him and a thinly veiled threat to me like it was nothing.

"They knew we were coming." The older man carries on with the conversation, his voice deep in the small space of the car.

The younger one rests his arm on the open window. I can see it around my duffel bag. There is a side mirror that reflects back to me his eyes squinting as he looks off into the distance.

"They got to someone," he says. "Or they had someone planted."

Air flows back to me from his open window, shoving my hair around. I'm thankful for the fresh air. It dries my eyes and gives me something else to focus on other than their voices quietly conspiring. Out the window I can see nothing but hills in the distance. From everything I learned about The Wildlands in school, this isn't what I had expected.

A tingle along the nape of my neck draws my attention back to the car. Things are quiet again, but in the side mirror there are a pair of clear gray eyes watching me that don't turn away when I notice them. He looks slightly annoyed, brows drawn and eyes hardened as if he's expecting that this won't go well.

"So are you going to tell us your name?" He says without turning back.

"Paula." It's been hours since I last spoke. My throat is dry, and so the word comes out as little more than a constricted croak.

"What?" He says, this time turning towards the open window so that his ear faces me.

"Paula."

"Ah." He turns to the other man and repeats it to him for me in a quiet voice. They don't say anything after that though. They don't even offer me their names in trade, and I find I can't ask them.

Gray Eyes looks at me again in the side mirror. When I catch his eyes, he says, "You might as well sleep. We've got a while before we get there."

I don't really think I can, but I nod and lay my head on the bag as best I can and close my eyes so I at least look like I'm trying. But it doesn't take long before my eyes open again of their own accord. I don't even realize it at first. I just sit there watching the hills in the distance as we drive, the three of us quiet in the car.

Two

In school they said that the Wildlands were nothing but dead grass and broken buildings, yet leisurely rolling beside us are the green hills with large wild trees growing thickly. We drive on a crumbling road with tall grass and wild plants growing out of the sides. Some of the plants even grow on the road in places.

The rough canvas of the duffel rubs at my cheek every time we hit a bump in the road. Other than plants growing in abundance, I don't see any other sign of