Asia snuck out the house like she did every night since she turned thirteen. After dinner was devoured, dishes were washed, and her parents settled in their bedroom; she climbed out of her room, scaled the roof and jumped into the front yard. 

She wasn't trying to be defiant or a rebel. She just needed to be amongst the trees under the black sky. She yearned to feel the stillness of the air evading her smooth face. She longed to hear the hollowness of nothing. Her head didn't seek the softness of goose down feathers but sought the stiffness of grass-adorned ground.

        "Where do you think you'll be in the future?" Oliver inquired turning over, settling on his stomach.

        Asia's eyes stopped connecting with the assortment of stars to truly focus on the question her friend asked her. The future. A couple of days shy of her fifteenth birthday it should've been something swirling in her mind. The question stumped her. Her was mind was as unpopulated as the meadow they lied in.

        "I don't know." She settled for the truth. "Haven't given it much thought. Why?" She wanted to know his reason for bringing up the question in the first place.

       "Just wanted to know where your head is." Oliver ran the blade of grass between his fingers. "The end is near." He deepened his voice. "We've never been apart before. I got my SAT score back." He ripped the grass out the ground. "I'll be blessed if I get into community college."

Asia rolled over resting on her side. "You have time to take those over, Ollie." She propped her head on the palm of her hand. "It was a practice test."

      "I'm not smart like...ya'll." He glanced at Asia with forlorn eyes. "Ya'll just get things. I barely make C's."

       "We don't get things." Asia refuted. "Denver sucks at math. He still doesn't know his twelve times table." She chuckled.

         Oliver weakly smiled, "He had the third highest score. Eric the fourth. Ethan the second and you....number one." He tore the verdant piece of grass to shreds. "I was last, like always." He let the grass pieces sprinkle to the ground. "The Runt."

      "You're not the runt." She exhaled sitting up straight. She let her coils slide over her face as she combed his tresses out of his. He looked up at her with eyes that rivaled the stars above.  "You're intelligent, Ollie! It's just that they don't give tests on the things you know." He huffed at her proclamation dropping his vision back on the grass. Asia let her hand slide from his head to his lean back. "You remember that time Den, Eric, and Ethan got the flu?"

      "Yeah." His face scrunched. "It was a year ago."

     She toyed with the collar of his t-shirt, "Their parents were clueless and the doctors were stunned 'cause the medicine wasn't working on 'em. We thought they were going to die." She sniffed peering straight ahead at the barrier of trees in the distant. "But what did you do." She waved with her other hand. "You came out here and found what—" She remembered the herbs but wanted him to say it.

     Oliver stroked his hand over the ground, "Mullein, eucalyptus, and elderberry."

       "Yeah!" She slapped his back. "You had eucalyptus vapors pumping in the rooms, brewed up mullein and elderberry tea while you spoon fed them chicken noodle soup.  Ollie Black, you saved the day!" She let her hand fall from his back as he sat up.

        "Asia Knight." He tsked. "You are one of a kind."

         An ear-shattering scream jolts Asia from her dream. She peeled open her eyes seeing her bare feet hovering over the concrete floor. She lifted her head even though it felt like a bag of cement mix. Snatching her attention was that same sorrow laden holler. Asia didn't fight the urge she twisted her head toward the sound.

      "Keller." Her voice rasped out the boy's name. He didn't lift his head, though. It stayed firmly rooted in his chest as he heaved with voracity. The boy that she found in the tree without a shirt was clothed in a new substance, blood. 

Blood poured from quarter-sized holes speckled across his stomach. Her immediate reaction to move to his side was halted. Her drowsy eyes fluttered above her head. Handcuffs clasped around her wrist latched to a chain that was looped through a hook kept her locked in place, like carcasses of swine hanging in a meat locker. "Denver." She called remembering his face was the last one she saw.  

She waited but no answer came.

      "Denver!" She called once more as her heart banged. She slowly shifted, turning her head to her other side praying to see Denver but a cold hand stopped her movement. It pulled her face back in the directions it had traveled until her eyes landed on a face with skin as dark as night and eyes like the clear blue sky.

       "Welcome back, young lady." His nicotine and Altoids breath brushed across her face.

      "Where's...." She tried to wrench her face from his grasp but the drugs still floating in her body dimmed her strength. "Where's Denver?"

      The man with skin like coal didn't answer. He just raised his other hand up to his mouth, "She's awake."  He waited running his eyes over her face and then the booming of a voice sounded from the speaker hooked on his shirt pocket.

     Asia's ear perked at the mysterious voice unable to comprehend the strange words it spoke.

      He stepped back releasing her face. She flexed her jaw that felt crushed under his tight grasp.

     "Take her down." The man ordered walking away. "Get her ready."

      The clinging of metal echoed through the room as another man with eyes of slate yanked down the chain that hung Asia up. Her shoulders popped and her muscles sang Hallelujah as her arms lowered.

      "Where am I?" She whispered to the man that held the chain joining her hands.

      He fixed his black eyes on her. "Don't ask questions you won't remember the answers too." He pulled her chain. "Come." He sniffed as she rooted her feet into the ground. "Walk or be dragged." He yanked on the chain harder causing her to kneel over.