chap7

A few hours later, we arrived back at the house. Inside, we were locked in a room. Taylor listened through the door. The rest of us just stood back and waited. A while later, he turned around. "We're going to be separated," he said. "Meaning?" Fabian asked. "We're going to be separated into pairs and taken away by someone," Taylor explained. "Who?" Zac asked. "Four different people," Taylor replied. "Four times two is eight, there's only five of us," Fabian said. "Well, there's Jacky and Rachel I reminded him. "Who?" Taylor asked. "A couple of my friends from school were caught too," I explained. "That's seven," Zac kept count, "we need one more." Taylor sighed. "Isaac," he said. We all looked at each other. "We made it through the maze, so he's going to be brought here," I said.

The next morning, I was the second one awake. Fabian had been awake for a while. Soon after, Taylor managed to open his eyes. Soon after Taylor had woken up, we heard Zac yawn. Amy was asleep for another couple of minutes... that is, until Zac creeped up on her and frightened her out of her wits! The rest of us laughed. "That wasn't funny," she said, I could tell her heart was pounding. A while later, we heard the door unlock. Zac and Amy stood up. He'd been trying to calm her down. The door opened, and Jacky and Rachel were thrown in. Rachel came straight over to me and Fabian. "What's going on?" she demanded. Jacky was busy circling Taylor like a vulture in another life. "Well..." Fabian began. I left him to it, and went over to Jacky. "Are you gonna help me or not?" Fabian called. "Are you...?" Jacky began. "Taylor Hanson?" I finished for her. "Yeah..." he replied. Then Jacky spotted Zac. She went over to him. "Then you're Zac, right?" she asked. "Yeah..." he replied. Rachel soon noticed what Jacky was doing. Her eyes widened. "You're Taylor Hanson?" she asked, walking over to him. She looked at Zac, then him. "Uh huh," I replied. "So that's why you liked Hanson so much, you knew them!" Jacky said to me. "Not exactly," I explained, "I liked them long before I met them. I only met them about six months ago." Rachel was looking at Taylor in a strange way. "You've known them for six months and you didn't tell us?!" Jacky shouted. "She didn't either," I said, pointing to Amy. "You too then," Jacky said to her. Amy shrugged. "It wasn't exactly the situation you'd like to tell anyone about," Taylor said for us.

Then we heard the door unlock. Mike stepped in. "You two," he said, "come here." He was pointing at Zac and Amy. They looked at each other, then stood up and followed him out the door. "One guess who we're going with," Taylor was looking at me. Then the door unlocked again. It was Greg. "Come on," he said to us. We followed him out the door. When we were out of the room, some men tied our wrists together. Then Greg took us out the front to a cream Commodore Sedan. He shoved us in the back seat, then got in the front to drive. Soon, we were driving down the road. "You realize that if we weren't in so much trouble we wouldn't be here," Taylor said to me. "True, we'd probably be in a grave somewhere," I said. "Meaning?" he asked. "All the trouble we've been getting into was trying to get out of where we were," I replied. "What, with you arguing with him?" Taylor began to shout. "You argue with him more than I do," I began to shout. "Well who called him a self-centred b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" Taylor said. I didn't have anything to say to that, so I looked out the window instead. Before I did, I noticed Greg trying not to laugh. He was enjoying our argument.

A few minutes later, we arrived at a house. Greg got out, opened our doors, and got us out. We were then taken inside, and shoved down on some couches. Then Greg went into another room. "I guess this is his house," Taylor said, looking around. There were some photos of Greg and someone else on the mantle piece, so I thought so too. I tried to move my hands around to get the rope off them, but I couldn't. Taylor tried too. Then Greg came back into the room, and we quickly stopped. But he rushed down the hallway. We looked at each other. Then we heard him and a woman yelling at each other. Greg reappeared at the doorway with a woman, still arguing with her. Greg saying they had company, and the woman saying that she was busy cleaning the bedroom windows, and how dirty they were. When she saw us, she stopped. Taylor looked at me. "Hello," the woman said. Taylor's eyes went back to her. "hi," he replied. I looked at him. The woman pulled Greg back. "Why are their wrists tied together, Gregory?" she demanded. Taylor and I tried not to laugh at Greg being called 'Gregory'. "You don't know how much trouble these kids have given me," Greg replied. "Kids? Teenagers," the woman corrected. "Trust me, they're both trouble makers," Greg said. "Then why did you bring them here?" she asked. "I'll explain it all later," Greg said, then looked over at Taylor and me. "Cheryl, give me a second. I'll put them in the spare room, and explain it all," he said. "You'd better," Cheryl said, looked at us, and went into the kitchen. Greg came over to us, yanked us up off the couches, and took us down the hallway.

We came to a door. Greg opened it, threw us inside, and locked it. "Ow," Taylor said. He'd knocked his head on the end of a double bed. It was the only thing in the room, and he just happened to hit it. He tried to rub his head with his hand. Somehow, he managed to. I sat on the bed. "Now what?" I asked. "Come here," Taylor said. I got off the bed and went over to him. I crouched down next to him, as he began to untie my wrists. Once they were untied, I untied his. We rubbed our wrists. "I wonder what Cheryl's like," I said. "I already prefer her to him," Taylor replied. We were in that room for most of the day. I was laying on the bed, and Taylor was sitting on the end when Greg opened the door. "It's dinner time," he said. We looked at each other. "Cheryl wants you to eat with us, she wants to find out as much about you as she can," he explained. We got up to go out the door with him. "I don't think I like the idea of eating with him," I whispered to Taylor on the way out. Before we reached the dinigroom, Greg stopped us. "Watch what you say," he said to us. Then we kept going.

Cheryl was sitting at the table, waiting. We sat down, then we began to eat. "I thought you'd like to know, we got a boy out of jail today," Greg told Cheryl. Taylor and I looked up, and realized that Greg was looking at us. He knew that we knew who it was. "So, tell me about yourselves," Cheryl said to us, ignoring what Greg had just said. I looked at Taylor, meaning for him to go first. He was careful of what he said. "Do you like animals?" Cheryl asked. "Yeah, I'm an animal lover," I said. "Even for the lion," Taylor mumbled. "What lion?" Cheryl asked. "The one in the..." Taylor began, but he stopped when he saw Greg looking at him in a certain way. After dinner, we were taken back to the room we were in before. We looked at the double bed. I looked at Taylor with my eyebrows raised. "I'll... sleep on the floor," he said. I sighed. "If you hadn't of said that just then, I would have committed suicide," I said, as he walked around the bed. He laughed. I got on the bed and threw a pillow at him. It hit him, then he caught it. "What was that for?" he laughed. "Well, if you don't want to sleep on it..." I began. "I'm fine," he said quickly. I closed the window, then layed down on the bed. Taylor settled down on the floor. It was already ten o'clock.