“The Necklace”

The sun hung high and merciless over the Glade, casting long shadows across the dusty clearing. The air was thick with heat and the low hum of midday chores — boys calling out to one another, tools clanging, footsteps crunching over dry earth. But none of it registered to you.

You were crouched at the edge of the Gardens, knees in the dirt, hands buried wrist-deep in the soil, smoothing rows of crops, though your mind was elsewhere — stuck in the same loop it had been spinning in for two months.

The same number of months since you and Newt had ended things.

It hadn’t been a loud breakup. There were no shouting matches, no public scenes. Just late-night words spoken too softly by the fire, tears swallowed instead of shed, two hearts that still beat for each other — just not in sync anymore. And yet, despite it all, you’d kept wearing the necklace.

It wasn’t much — just a rough, handmade loop of woven vine and copper wire, scavenged from scraps around the Homestead. The knot was tight and purposeful, just like the hands that had tied it. Newt’s hands. You remembered how he fumbled through making it, trying to seem casual while sneaking glances at your reactions. He’d said it was nothing — “Just something to pass the time” — but you both knew it was more than that.

And still, every day since, it had hung around your neck.

You were the only girl in the Glade — a fact no one ever let you forget. Not when they stared, not when they whispered, not when they held you to impossible standards of strength and silence. You had to be composed. Untouchable. Someone the boys respected, not just looked at.

But with Newt, you hadn’t needed walls.

Until they went back up.

Over the last few weeks, the Gladers — especially the ones who’d grown close to you — had started gently pushing. Some less gently than others.

“It’s not healthy,” Alby had said one evening as the fire crackled between you.

“He doesn’t wear anything from you, does he?” Thomas had asked a few days later, his eyes soft with quiet sympathy. “I just think… maybe you’re hurting yourself more by holding on.”

“He’s not your whole life,” Gally had muttered gruffly while sharpening his machete, metal scraping stone. “You’re tougher than that. Act like it.”

Each word had chipped away at you until, finally, this morning — alone in the quiet of the Homestead, before the sun had fully risen — you stood in front of the small mirror nailed crooked to the wall.

With trembling fingers, you untied the knot.

You expected it to be a relief. But as the necklace fell into your palm and you tucked it into the back of your trunk, the weight that left your chest was replaced by something colder. Heavier. The skin where it once rested felt bare, vulnerable — like a wound exposed to the air.

You left the Homestead without looking back.

⸻

Later that day — near the Map Room

The sun had started its slow descent, casting a golden haze over the western wall. Newt had just returned from the Maze with Minho, both slick with sweat and grime, their breathing heavy from another brutal run. As Minho peeled off toward the showers, Newt lingered, dragging the back of his hand across his forehead.

He paused near the crates, half-distracted by a splinter in his palm, when you walked by a few yards ahead — hair pulled back, a bundle of cloth and rope cradled in your arms.

And then he froze.

His breath caught before he even knew why.

His eyes locked on your collarbone, scanning instinctively — and what wasn’t there hit him harder than any Griever ever could.

It was gone.

The necklace. Your necklace. His necklace.

The same one he’d made on a rainy afternoon, his fingers fumbling with the wire while he sat on the steps of the Homestead pretending it was just another idle task. The same one you’d worn every day since — through heat, through storm, through heartbreak.

He hadn’t expected you to still wear it.

But he hadn’t expected this either.

“What happened to your necklace?” His voice rang out sharper than he meant, slicing through the quiet between you.