Everyone's faces fell at his words. Having been so consumed in their own fun, they hadn't even realized how quiet the boy had been up until now, and all of them— especially Charlie Jane— felt their hearts suddenly pierced by a pang of guilt.

"What's up?" Charlie Jane asked, her voice on the brink of shaking with concern as her eyebrows furrowed. While she didn't appear at all nervous on the outside, it was quite obvious to everyone that she was concerned for her friend.

Kingston opened his mouth to say something, probably what he had been dreading to say all along, but only a bit of a squeak came out, making Charlie Jane and the rest of the bunch frown.

He appeared to be trying to find just the right way to say this "important thing." On the outside, he seemed to be going a little blank, but on the inside, his mind was racing. His thoughts were being flung from one side of his head to another. His mouth couldn't form any words. His head kept on spazzing out. All he could do was let out an "uh," which earned him a few looks.

"Do you really want to tell us?" Reagan asked, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. His head perked up in order for him to get a good look at her, and after a brief pause, he slowly nodded.

"Yeah," he said, his eyebrows furrowing a little. "Besides... well, this is why I think I was drafted in the first place."

The joy that had been so vibrant seemed to evaporate from the room. The somber memory of the competition lingered over all of the children's heads. Yet again, the images of their dead confidants or the sounds of their horrified (and horrific) screams heinously flashed through their minds.

Kingston watched all of his friends' reactions, and his heart seemed to impossibly sink even more.

"So... um, my parents were pretty young when they had me," he said with a slight gulp. He felt as if each word that escaped his lips were a knife cutting through him.

Charlie Jane would regularly have a snarky remark waiting to escape her mouth, perhaps along the lines of "your parents look like an 80-year-old prune, they're not young," but she respectfully kept her lips sealed. She knew that a comment like that would be pushing it way too far, and she was already working on thinking about things before she said them... and besides. Not even the most heartless person in the world would want to break the hearts of the kids in hiding.

"And by young..." Kingston continued with a gulp. "I mean they were your guys' age. And by your guys' age, I mean only fourteen and fifteen."

The mental image blinked through the minds of the kids, and upon the gravity of how young his parents were, everyone cringed a little. Of course, they thought that it was pretty disgusting, but they were more concerned as to see what he was going on about.

"Gross, I know," the raven-haired boy said. He even made a disgusted face of his own, indicating that he thought it was just as gross as they thought that it was. "But the truth to be told, they didn't love me any less. They kept me all the way up until I was about two years old, and... Well, they ended up not..."

Yet again, his eyes searched for the words as if they would appear out of thin air, but he wasn't so lucky.

"They were both drafted..." he murmured, looking down and sniffling a little before he seemed to snap. "When I was only two years old, you guys! Two!"

"But why would anyone do that?" Charlie Jane asked, tilting her head before scoffing a little in disbelief. Not that she didn't believe what he was saying, but because she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around why someone would be so heartless as to do something like that. With each moment that she continued to think about it, she got more and more fired up, and she furrowed her eyebrows again at the thought of trying to kill of a teenage couple. They had enough problems as it was. "They were drafted because they had you when they were just... kids with kids? I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't have a baby right now, but that still doesn't give people the authority... what the actual fuck? That's messed up!"

As she spoke, Charlie Jane got more and more livid, looking almost as if she would end up punching a person. In fact, she absolutely would have worn someone's face as a bracelet if the only people nearby hadn't already pulled on her heartstrings. She had to suppress her anger until she caught sight of a person who had upset her.

"I know, right?" Kingston said, barely a murmur. Unlike Charlie Jane, Kingston seemed so vulnerable at the moment, feeling broken to pieces at the thought. "I obviously don't remember a lot about them, but it just isn't fair... I was sort of robbed from my mom and dad. They'll never be able to see me grow up, get a girlfriend, start driving, have kids of my own..."

Charlie Jane was pissed, Juniper was shocked, Finn was sympathetic, Reagan was saddened, Rhett was dumbfounded, and Kingston was broken.

"The worst part is what you guys already know..." the boy murmured, staring at the floor as if it would grant him comfort. His jaw clenched a little, in his attempt to both hold back tears and to keep himself from getting absolutely livid. "My adoptive dad is an asshole. Since he's the governor, he gets to choose who's on the drafting list, how they get to die, how old they are... He was the one who drafted my parents... and now, me, and all of you guys."

The world held its breath.

It was true.

"Do you guys want to see?" Kingston asked softly, looking at the floor before looking up at his bag. "My parents, that is."

Rhett wordlessly nodded, making sure to keep his foot on the blanket before grabbing the bag for the boy and passing it up to him. Kingston gingerly grabbed his things, his hands noticeably shaking a little as he did so, and he slowly placed the backpack onto his lap. His hands dug through the multiple weapons, leftover papers, and books before he reached over to the front pocket.

Slowly, his hands pulled out a tattered image, and gulped a little once his eyes caught sight of his mother's.

To say that she was beautiful was an understatement. She had been blessed with eyes as gorgeous as the ocean; pale, soft, and enticingly dangerous at the same time. However, it wasn't the color that was the most jaw-droppingly alluring trait; it was everything that was held inside of them.

Pure love.

Her obsidian hair, that she had liked to call "boy hair" while she was alive, was cut quite short while managing to frame her face perfectly. Her smile showed a set of slightly crooked teeth and a dimple in her left cheek. She was dressed in an opaque blue hospital robe, and in her arms she held a pinkish blob swaddled in a striped blanket. Its eyes weren't even open yet, and it already had an entire head full of dark hair.

Kingston's eyes traveled from him and to his father. He already knew where he got his brown eyes from, as his father's were strikingly so. They were dark like the soil that covered the entire town of Ahern, and yet, they held a happiness to them that made Kingston's heart jump each time he looked at them. His eyes were like chocolate, as if they would melt at the slightest warmth of joy and love. His dad's brown hair was combed back sloppily, almost as if he had put himself together last-minute, although he somehow managed to pull off the look. Whenever Kingston tried that, he appeared as if he had rolled out of bed in the morning and gotten a comb stuck in his hair.

Kingston's lips parted as he stared at the picture, and he barely realized that it began to blur in his vision. However, once he did, his hand immediately shot up to rub his eyes, and he cursed to himself before handing the picture to his right.

As each of the kids had his or her turn to look at the image, they couldn't help but feel absolutely heartbroken for the boy.

"I'm so sorry," Reagan whispered softly. She was the first to look at the picture, and her eyebrows furrowed as she glanced up from the picture to get a look at the boy. Kingston nodded wordlessly. Out of her entire sixteen years of human experience, she had never seen a boy his age suddenly break and become so emotional, and she became a little unsure of what to do.

She eventually passed the photo to her right, and for what seemed to be the first time in her life, opened her arms to the boy to engulf him into a hug. Regularly, someone else would have to be the one to initiate the embrace, but her heart was so broken that she couldn't think of anything else to do.

Kingston no longer cared about whether or not he looked like an idiot. He quickly flung his arms back around the girl, feeling free to let out a sob while he hugged onto her tightly. Reagan was a little surprised that he was eager to hug her, but a bit of a maternal instinct kicked in. She hesitantly patted his back, probably looking unnaturally awkward as she did so, murmuring a "there, there."

Charlie Jane was the next to scoot over and hug the two of them, and before anyone had realized it, they were all engulfed into one, enormous group hug. While almost anyone would nearly cringe with how cliche the moment was, the children entirely thought otherwise.

They kept their arms safely around one another, prepared to protect their friends in case anything happened... which, in fact it would.

They stayed in that position until the next break of thunder, in which Rhett and Juniper were the ones to flinch away. Everyone soon found themselves parting from a broken boy, who rapidly wiped the tears from his eyes so that no one would see him crying. He seemed to be the most fragile out of the guys, and yet, he wouldn't want to let everybody know that.

"Sorry," he said, sniffling a bit before letting out a bit of a forced chuckle. "That was extremely dramatic... but if you guys still want a childhood story..."

He grinned a bit, the sadness seeming to disappear from his puffy eyes as he handed his bag to Rhett, who placed it back on top of the quilt. Everyone was a little taken back by his sudden change in demeanor, but of course, they weren't going to bring back the dreadful thoughts for him.

He proceeded to tell a story about a time last year, when he accidentally tripped his at-the-time crush down a flight of stairs. Then he got punched in the face when he asked if he could sign the cast on her arm.

"Ouch," Juniper said, stifling a laugh as her blue eyes squinted a little with happiness. "That honestly sounds like something I would do. I always get so awkward when I talk to a cute guy... hell, I'm pretty sure that I've ruined all of my chances by now."

Finn rolled his eyes and nudged her playfully, a toothy smile playing on his lips.

"Oh, shut up," he said with a bit of a snicker, rolling his eyes as he pushed up his glasses yet again. "If anyone could get a boyfriend, it would most definitely be you. Out of all of the girls I know, that is— it would be a little awkward for me to get a boyfriend... but anyway, it's quite obvious that you're 'girlfriend material,' if you ask me."

Juniper laughed a little more and shook her head, and soon enough, they all ended up getting into a friendly argument about who would get a boyfriend or girlfriend first.

"Oh, please!" Charlie Jane snickered. "I've already had a boyfriend, so I was technically the very first person in a relationship," she said with a bit of a laugh. She wasn't even dating the boy as of now, but she would have loved an excuse to make herself seem so much better than the rest of the bunch.

"I had a girlfriend and almost fiancé when I was younger," Finn retorted cooly, smiling a bit. "So that mostly means that I was the very first of us in a relationship."

"Am I the only one here who hasn't dated anyone? Ever?" Reagan asked, making all eyes turn to her.

While everyone else exchanged confused glances, Juniper just laughed, shaking her head quickly as she covered her mouth with her hand.

"Oh, believe me, you're not the only person who hasn't been on a date," she said with a bit of a smile, chuckling softly as she pointed to herself. It was almost something that she was proud of. "I haven't even gotten close."

It was a bit of an awkward topic for all of the kids to suddenly get caught up on, but they didn't mind. Upon sharing their ultimately embarrassing stories, they knew that they would have many deep conversations at some point in the near future, so why not scrape the tip of the iceberg and start now?

They eventually transitioned from having a childhood/teenhood admirer into many other random topics, such as the sort of lives they grew up and some secret talents that they had. Charlie Jane was especially clueless as to how Rhett's tongue could fold into a clover shape. She had attempted to try to pull the stunt herself, but ended up discovering that she could fold her tongue in half. Perhaps it wasn't as entertaining, but she assumed that it counted as some sort of talent.

They found themselves spending the next three hours simply being themselves.

Being kids.

That's all that they were. A handful of kids who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.