Thanks for all the views, votes, and comments, everyone! It makes me really happy to know that some people are enjoying my book!
This chapter is dedicated to @Carolyn_MageCraft , who also helped remind me to finish this book!
I hope you enjoy the chapter!!

----------------------------------------

I stood there silently, gripped with fear. I knew if I moved she would kill me without a second thought. And I couldn't hit the gun up and out of reach of hitting any of us, either, for he had an arm wrapped around my waist and holding my arms against my stomach. I began to shake.

"What's that, girly?" she hissed. "You scared?" At the mention of the word scared, I realized she was probably just scared of us. The gun was not steady against my head and her eyes—or what I saw of them—were crazed and wide with what must have been fear. I wanted to ask her what she wanted, but I felt if I moved my jaw she would shoot me.

Thankfully, Crystal did that for me. She was about to take a step forward, but thought against it, and decided on saying, "What do you want from us?"

"I just want to make sure you won't do anything to me and I won't do anything to you, and maybe you could, I don't know, share some of your supplies. It looks like you've got a lotta big packs on your backs, you've got plenty."

"We won't hurt you," Cheng said. "Just leave Phoenix alone."

"Very well, then," she said. "Then give me some water, some food, anything. My supplies are dwindling over here."

"Maybe we could team up!" Crystal said, to which I wanted to yell no. "We could all walk up together and share supplies!"

She lowered her gun to the bottom of my nose, but then moved it back up, deciding it wasn't safe enough yet. "And why would you trust me?" she asked curiously.

"Because you're just frightened," Mom piped up, "you don't want to kill anyone. You just want to survive and we will share our supplies with you."

She finally lowered her gun away from me, but still kept it handy and out where she could use it and where we could see it. I ran back to our group and turned to he strange person and took her in.

Her hair was dyed dark blue and trimmed to her chin, which suited her well. She was skinny and slightly shorter than me with wide light blue eyes that looked like those of a frightened animal. She stood her ground as if she were ready to fight, but she was shaking a bit. Her round face was caked with dirt, as well as almost every square inch of her body. On the front of her left leg, there was a thin scar trailing down from right below her knee to about halfway between her knee and her ankle. I would say it was probably as long as my hand.

There was nobody else in sight, so she was alone. I wouldn't say she was any older than me.

"What's your name?" Crystal said.

"Bluejay," she said. After a pause, she continued with exasperation, saying "Yes, it's my real name. My parents—they liked birds." She had a pained look in her eyes that suggested her life wasn't all that bright.

"That's a funny coincidence," Crystal said. "You dyed your hair blue."

"It's no coincidence," Bluejay snapped, and turned away from us to walk uphill. She glanced back. "Are you coming with me or not?" Hesitantly, I followed her further up the mountain, and for one reason only.

I saw a hover board charger poking out one of her backpack's pockets.

-----------------------------------------------

I walked ahead of the group after a long period of silent hiking to catch up with Bluejay. "Bluejay?" I asked uncertainly. "I won't hurt you, but if you do anything to any of these people, we all will, okay?"

She kept her eyes trained on the climb ahead. "Done. Why would I? That would be stupid on my part—and you were right. I don't want to kill. I just need to make their sacrifice worth it."

I said nothing—this was uncharted territory and it was getting very personal. I didn't want to press her further, or push her off the edge. And it was most likely recent, for all that was going on had already taken two of our own family.

She continued anyway. "You seem like you've got the right morals, and I don't know why, but I feel like I can trust you not to bring this up with anyone else.

"When I was younger, I had two of the best parents I could've asked for. They taught me everything right and wrong and gave me the right amount of attention and love so I wouldn't become spoiled. I loved them and they loved me. But one month, there was a kidnapper in our city. A blue car was all that was described by the suspicious—it was always speeding away before anybody noticed it or had even seen what type of car it was.

"This freaked out my neighborhood, and most other people. My friends kept swearing they'd seen it or kept saying what precautions their family was taking and all of that stuff. My parents had told me to lock the door and to never answer to anyone but them, and all sorts of safety stuff. Seven-year-old me asked them if I was going to be okay, and they promised. They promised me I would be, as long as I stayed safe and listened to them.

"Well, I did just that. And one day, I was walking down the steps of my school bus at the end of my driveway. I was walking through it toward my front door when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A sparkling blue blotch. I couldn't tell if it was a car, but I didn't want to look to alert whoever was inside that I knew about their presence when I heard a car door open. I began sprinting through my yard to my house when I saw a woman racing toward me through our yard. I screamed through the open window for my parents, a move I'll forever regret.

"They came running out the front door, my dad with a pan and my mom with a TV remote as weapons—they had grabbed whatever they could. When the woman saw them, she pulled out a gun and aimed it at me. She grabbed me and held it to my temple and told them she would shoot me, and that's all she came to do and would be on her way. She said she wanted 'to know what it was like to kill somebody,' so at that point I knew she was mentally unstable and there was going to be no reasoning with her.

"My parents stood still for a moment, but when she looked to me, my mom threw the TV remote at her gun and knocked it out of her hands. Dad went over and hit her in the head with the frying pan. It was still hot from food my dad was making, so she screamed in agony, stunning backwards. She snatched her gun off the ground and aimed it at me again. Dad shoved me down to the ground and told Mom to call 911. She ran inside with me and did so while the woman was processing what just happened.

"My mom was crying and I didn't understand why. I knew she was scared but I was thinking that we're all still alive and it was okay, for now. I heard the woman shoot through the glass as my mom gave the authorities our address and run-through of the situation. I was too preoccupied and scared to process my mom telling the police that my dad was shot." At this point, Bluejay had tears streaming down her face and it was all I could do to look at her with pity and despair, but I knew that's not what she wanted. She wanted her father's sacrifice to be worth it.

"The woman ran over to us with wild eyes and saw my mom on the phone. I can remember all the details sharply, as they run through my head every night, but none as sharply as this—

"'Hang up, or I'll shoot your precious daughter,' the woman had said, now raising her gun to my head from across the room. 'Please. I was merely curious, you can forgive me now. If you don't, you're both dead.' My mother then looked down at me, in the eyes, and said sadly, 'My little Bluejay, never forget to fly.'

"Little me was confused, and asked uncertainly, 'Mom?' to no response but a smile. 'You're my beautiful child. Stay the way you are, sweetie, keep being good.' She looked up to the confused and fearful woman. 'It's too late,' Mom had said. 'They know where we are.'

"'No!' the woman screeched. She loaded her gun as I heard police sirens and their cars pulling to a stop. She froze for a moment, her eyes widened, then she turned back to us.

"'Hands up!' an officer had yelled. I heard footsteps in the house, trying to find us. The woman had screeched no, as if in denial that she had been caught, then proceeded to aim her gun at me and pull the trigger. Mom had shoved me behind her in the relatively skinny hallway...and...and..."

Bluejay paused and collected herself, then continued her story. I was almost in tears at this point. She lost her parents so young because some lunatic had wanted to know 'what it felt like to kill someone.' I felt so horrible for her to lose her parents so young and in a situation so terrifying. That could really harden a person, have them put walls up to try and never feel again for fear of loss and death. I wondered how Bluejay made herself cope with their deaths.

"She shot my mom. By this point, my dad had bled out and I was oblivious to that. My mom fell onto me, which saved my life and kept me from being shot before the police aimed all of their guns at the woman. She dropped her gun and held her hands in the air, then let them handcuff her and take her away in their cars.

"The police wouldn't have found me immediately if it weren't for my scream for my mom. They lifted my dying mother to find a crying child underneath. My mom smiled faintly at me because I had survived. I ran over to the stretcher that doctors—who had come rushing in the house—had moved her onto. She tried and failed to lift her head, then settled at saying, 'You must try to fly, Bluejay. Keep flying until your wings are broken and others keep flying for you and everyone else. Okay? Can you promise me this?'

"The doctors began running the stretcher to their ambulance. 'Yes,' I said to my mom. 'I will do my best to fly. For you. Your wings are broken. But you'll be okay, right? Broken wings heal?' I was scared, but hopeful because of it. I was sure she would survive. She had to. I kept thinking all of this while she was being put into the ambulance.

"She looked at me sadly while she was being hooked up to devices in HE ambulance. 'No, I'm afraid, I'm plummeting from the sky. My time is up. Keep flying with the memory of us and toward the future. Do something great, like I know you will.' She began coughing up blood and her limbs spazzed. Eventually, the heart monitor she had been hooked up to became one solid beep. I screamed and thrashed and tried to run away from everybody. But a police man got hold of me.

"'It's okay,' he soothed. He began petting my hair and arms and gave me a hug. 'You're safe. We've got you.' They then drive me to the nearest orphanage after trying to make me feel better—but it didn't work.

"And my life after that was living with an abusive single man who lost his previous wife to pneumonia. That's where I got my scars—I have many. One day I finally broke free, and well, I guess one could say flown away. I hopped on a plane's cargo in a suitcase—I was very used to sneaking—and reached Washington. I lived out my own life there until now."

I had no way to respond. I offered my arms out in a weak hug to see if she would accept, and she did. "It feels so good to say it all," Bluejay said. "I don't know why I trusted you, but I did. I haven't opened to anybody like this—you're just so–easy to talk to. But I miss them. And I feel like I've dishonored them—after my mourning I tried to forget. Then I hardened, tried to keep myself alive over everyone else to make the sacrifice worth it. Sometimes I still do it. It's a hard habit to break. But I know I have to help another bird fly even if it means I'm going down. I want to do that now. That's what they would both want."

"It definitely sounds that way. They really loved you, you know. They just want you to do good and to stay a good person, like the one you were. And their sacrifice is already worth it. I think I saw a hover board charger in your bag, which is exactly what we need."

Bluejay perked up a little. "Really?" she asked. "I just grabbed it because I found it lying around and I though I might be able to trade it or something of the like."

"Yes, really." I smiled. "Come on, let's try and lighten the mood and show the others."