Her voice was very… dull. Almost like she wasn’t interested in my question. Even though I had
only heard her say one word, it wasn’t hard to tell the sound of her voice. Some people’s voices just
stick in your head. I couldn’t help but notice her skin, too. Her skin was pale, like she’d hadn’t been out
in the sun very often. Her hair was thin. It covered a large portion of her face, but I could still see her
expression.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever noticed her at school before today, or… ever. But, even so, I still asked
her if she wanted to come in with us.
“Yes. That would be nice. Thank you.” She returned my relieved smile, with a smile of her own.
It didn’t seem like a genuine smile - it seemed like a prepared one. Like, she could tell everything I was
going to say or do. Neither Elae or Jenna noticed, so I thought it was just my superstitious side acting
up. It didn’t seem like paranoia, but I pushed the thoughts in my head aside, and squealed at Jenna
and Elae.
They squealed back at me, equally as joyful as I was.
“Okay, we’re good to go!” exclaimed Jenna.
I turned to the girl, whose name I did not know, but kind of wanted to know. “Oh, um, what’s
your name?” I waited for her to answer.
“Mary,” she said, in a dull kind of tone. She always looked me straight in the eye whenever she
spoke. I tried to overlook her kind of… oddness. She was simple in everything she said and did - but it
was that ‘simple’ factor that puzzled me. That had me a little on edge.
It was now our turn to enter the maze.
Mr. Peterson gave us a thumbs-up - which we returned - as the four of us slowly walked through
the passageway, that held a million things inside.
Elae and Jenna occasionally whispered “I’m scared” and “oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh”, to which I
always answered with an “it’s okay, calm down.”
After about two minutes, Elae, Jenna and I huddled together in a circle, with Mary in front of us.
For a while, I forgot about Mary. Elae, Jenna and I were caught up in the maze. We laughed
whenever one of us screamed, got scared, or thought something was going to burst out at us and it
actually didn’t. Mary walked ahead of us, in a straight line. It seemed as if she knew where each path
led to, and where to go at all times. I was almost starting to… regret coming in with her.
Elae and Jenna were beginning to sneak suspicious glances at Mary. The three of us looked at
each other with terrified expressions, all wondering if Mary wasn’t just a student, and what was really
going on.
We were nearing the exit of the maze, immensely hoping that this was all just a big bundle of
paranoia sweeping our minds. Hoping that, perhaps, Halloween was just causing us to feel
excessively scared. Hoping that everything would be fine tomorrow, and that Mary would be gone.
Permanently. All that hope that was inside us, vanished, when Mary suddenly turned to face us.
And we faced her.
We faced everything that we knew she wouldn’t let us escape from.