Welcome to the Games

“Great,” Miley said sarcastically. “We’re in another room… that smells!”

It was true, we had ended up in another room that did indeed smell. Most were covering their noses- as was I- including Miley, making her voice sound a little more nasally than usual. But we didn’t have to search the room for the source of the smell.

A small body was in a corner- not quite decomposed yet. Once we saw it, we all gasped. Miley clung to Liam’s arm, Taylor and Selena shied away from it while everyone else just averted our eyes. Joe looked like he was about to be sick, and all colour was drained from Nick’s face.

I swallowed hard and took a few more steps into the room, looking around it. It was smaller than our previous one- and looked not unlike a school room from the fact that there was a speaker on one wall that, if it were a classroom, would be for announcements. There were also five chairs, a carpet (which the little girl was lying on), a couple of guitars and a small chest.

I furrowed my brow- something was off about the chest. Why was it here, right in plain sight?
“Okay, guys,” I said, “great job. We made it out. Now… maybe we can just relax a little before trying more stuff, is that alright with you?”

I heard everyone’s agreement and they all went off towards the chairs and guitars. Good, I thought, now I have time to think. But the problem was- what was I going to do? Investigate the chest- or record the events? They both seemed important, but on different levels.

I decided to write- not in total detail, of course, that would take too long and the others may get suspicious. No, I wrote direct bullet points. I had just finished the last one and was putting my journal in my back pocket again when Swifty called out to me.

“Hey, Zoe!” she said. “Wanna come chill with us?”

They were sitting in a circle, she was holding a guitar and Nick was holding the other. Liam was sitting on a chair with Miley on his lap and I was going to have to sit on the floor. But I went over anyways.

“What were you doing?” asked Demi.

“Nothing,” I said nonchalantly. They all accepted my answer as Nick began to strum on his guitar. “I didn’t know you could play guitar.”

“Neither did I,” he said with a small smile.

“Hey Swifty,” Kevin said, “Can you pass that one over?”

She nodded and handed him the acoustic guitar. He began strumming the same tune as Nick. Selena raised her eyebrows. “You too?”

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t know, it just kind of comes-”

“Naturally?” asked Nick as his brother nodded. They both began to play a tune that I vaguely knew, it was right there in the back of my mind.

Nick, Joe and Kevin must have been musicians before now, I guessed. And probably Swifty, as she had been holding the guitar correctly and everything before Kevin took it. I wasn’t sure about the others, though.

“I know this song!” Demi said happily as the guys looked at her.

“Me too,” Joe said, nodding.

Nick and Kevin kept playing as Joe and Demi nodded their heads with the beat. All of a sudden Demi began to sing, “This is real, this is me… I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now, gonna let the light, shine on me…”

“You’re the voice I hear inside my head, the reason that I’m singing, I need to find you… I gotta find you,” Joe sang. Everyone stared.

“How’d you guys know that?” asked Liam as all four singers shrugged. Kevin handed his guitar to Swifty as I made a mental note to remember Demi was also a musician.

Swifty began to strum again and started to sing herself, “Take a deep breath as you walk through the doors it’s the morning of your very first day…”

To my surprise, Miley joined in as they both sang, “Say hi to your friends you ain’t seen in a while, try and stay out of everybody’s way…”

Miley must be a musician as well- who would’ve guessed?

But something else seemed to catch my attention. “Hey Swifty,” I said as everyone looked at me, obviously expecting some kind of musical act, “can you pass me the guitar?”

“Sure,” she said, “you play?”

“No.” I shook the guitar a bit and confirmed what I thought. “But there’s something in it.” I looked through the hole in the middle as I shook the thing up and down. “And we won’t be able to get it out. Unless…”

I looked up at the musicians, who looked at me like I was a murderer. Except Joe, who enthusiastically said, “I’ll help smash it!” And so we did, and I found another small, silver key in it with the number ‘3’ on it.

“Look at this,” I whispered to Nick as everyone else started chatting again. I showed him the key.

“But where’s number two?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully, as he took off the necklace and let me slip on the new key. “But it has to be somewhere in here.”

Our eyes wandered towards the children’s body. I started walking towards it. It was a little girl; pigtails still up on a body that was half skeleton-ized, half decomposing. I felt tears in my eyes when I saw a knife through the throat and her eyes wide open- just staring. I knelt down and used two of my fingers to gently close them.

“May you rest in peace,” I whispered quietly.

I looked her up and down and there, on her bloodstained children’s jeans- right on the belt loop- was a ring of keys. They were tied there with a string, so I tried untying the knot. No success.

“Taylor?” I called, “Can you come over here please?”

He did so and knelt down next to me, his tan biceps bulging. “Yeah?” I gestured to the knot and he got what I was trying to say and broke the string swiftly. I smiled and thanked him, examining the keys. Everyone else was standing a few feet away, looking at what we were
doing.

One of the keys was, as I had predicted, the second in the small key sequence and the other was bigger, and slightly rusty. Taylor took the number two key out of my hand and gestured at my necklace. I lifted my hair just I had done for Nick as he took it off, put on the new key and clasped it back on.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said with a smile as we got back up.

I held the rusty key in my hand firmly as I made my way over to the mysterious chest. This key had to fit- and it did. Though the lock was equally rusty and it took a lot of power to unlock the chest, it did, indeed, open.

And the things inside were both shocking and relieving.