Chapter 2: The Girl Next Door
"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce."
--Mark Twain
His eyelids fluttered open as the water hit his face and ran down the sides of his head. The light was too bright so he closed them again. His head was throbbing and the side of his face felt tight. He groaned and somebody shook his arm. He opened his eyes once more and waited for his pupils to adjust. When they finally did, he saw Matt holding his canteen upended over his face.
"You awake?" he asked him. His voice made his head hurt. He put a hand to his face and gingerly touched the swollen flesh there. He groaned again.
"What hit me?" he managed. Matt grinned and cocked a thumb over his shoulder.
"She did," he said. Aiden tried to focus his eyes to look beyond at an approaching figure. They focused as the girl leaned down to peer at him, a worried expression on her face. Shoulder length brown hair framed a fine-featured face with piercing green eyes. She would have been pretty if she wiped some of the dirt and grime from her face. She looked familiar but he couldn't place her, not with his head pounding like it was.
"What'd she hit me with? A bazooka?" he groaned. Matt hefted a rock at his side and the girl frowned at him. "Jesus. How long was I out?"
"Couple of hours. She hit you full force."
"I said I was sorry I hit him," she said quietly. She turned to look at him. "Are you all right?" She turned to Matt. "He looks bad."
"You smashed the side of his head in," he said flatly. "How is he supposed to look?"
"I said I was sorry." She blinked and looked as if she might cry.
"How bad is it?" Aiden asked. His voice sounded too slow and heavy.
"There's a cut on your temple, but no brains leaking out." He snorted. "If you had any." Jess appeared over his shoulder and shook three pills out of a bottle. He recognized the aspirin from his backpack. Matt got up to go refill the canteen. Cruz and Tom stared down at him. Jason stared at the girl. Where had he seen this girl before? She bit her lip as she stared at him and he realized it was making him uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry, Aiden," she mumbled. She knew his name?
"It was an accident, Annie," Jason said from behind her. Annie? The only Annie he knew was a girl who rode their bus who he had a slight crush on. He looked at her face and mentally erased the dirt.
"Guk," he said and swallowed.
"What?" she asked him.
"Nothing," he said. No one had seen her for a month. There were rumors of an abusive father and that she had run away from home. What was she doing here? Why had she attacked him? Where were Matt and that blasted canteen? He popped the aspirin in his mouth and dry swallowed them. "How long have you been here?" he asked her.
"A week," she replied. "I've been hiding in the woods. I came across a farmhouse down the road… and I… stole some food and a sword. I slept in the barn in the hayloft until the farmer found me. So I… I ran. I saw your fire last night and I was hoping I could steal some food. I thought everyone was asleep. You scared me and… and I just panicked." Jason put a comforting hand on her shoulder and she shook it off with a scowl.
"A week?" Cruz said. "You've been gone for a month."
"A month? No, it's only been five days since I… since I ran away." She looked at all of them. "Are you running away from home too?"
"No," Jess replied. "We just got lost." She nodded.
"I got lost, too. And I couldn't find my way back."
"Us either," said Tom. "We got here yesterday. Do you know where this road goes?"
"No. I came the other way."
"Home's not that way, then," Jess muttered. "I guess we keep going the way we're going."
"Can I come with you?" she asked meekly. "I know I don't know you guys that well, but… I'm just glad to see some familiar faces. I thought I was stuck here all alone." She shivered and looked around. "There are… things… in the woods."
"What kind of things?" Cruz asked her. She shook her head.
"I don't know. I ran from them. That's why I stole the sword. To protect myself."
"You can come with us," Aiden told her. "But there's no guarantee we get anywhere." She shrugged.
"I'll feel safer," was all she said.
She was apologetic all over again as they set off and Aiden weaved all over the road as if he were drunk. Aiden maintained that he was all right, though she walked close to him and pointed him in the right direction whenever he wandered astray. Unfortunately, Jason stayed as close as he could to her, vying for her attention. She was civil toward him, but only just, and she was friendly to all of them. She had never met Matt and Tom before and engaged them in occasional conversation, as well as Jess and Cruz. She asked about their wooden weapons and they told her, a little embarrassingly, about their game of medieval warfare. When Jason started in about how childish it was, she offered the sword to Aiden for the loss of his spear. He declined and suggested she give it to Jess or Matt until he could see straight.
Aiden was clearly pleased at the attention she gave him, but Jess could see he was a little put off as well. It might have just been his head injury or maybe she was making him a little uncomfortable. The others had to admit a little jealousy. After she washed her face and combed the stray bits of straw from her hair, she was quite pretty. Jess and Cruz would admit to a slight crush on her and now that Matt and Tom had met the girl they all occasionally talked about, they could appreciate her as well. But Jason's constant fawning over her annoyed them all. He explained their idea to follow the road until they found something as his own idea even though they all remembered his opinion on it yesterday.
The thing that really rankled Jason was her using Aiden's spare shirt he had carried in his backpack. Her own clothes were filthy, ragged, and torn and she accepted it gratefully. When Jason asked him why he hadn't given the shirt to Tom, who was still shirtless, Tom calmly explained he didn't wear dresses, as the shirt would have been huge on him. And when she said she hadn't eaten anything in two days, Aiden produced a slightly smashed peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she devoured in three wolfish bites. He wondered what other interesting things Aiden's backpack held.
After a few hours on the road, they came across a small cottage with a garden out front. Before they could stop him, Jason strolled up to the front door and knocked loudly. When no answer came, he knocked again and waited. Jess and Cruz looked in the garden, stomachs growling. They picked a few strawberries and a few of the orange fruits Aiden said were kumquats. They were sweet and tasted like oranges. They passed some to Matt and Tom under Jason's baleful glare.
"That's stealing," Jason growled.
"Desperate times," Jess said chewing another mouthful. "There's nobody home." Matt walked around the back of the house to find a smaller building near the forest's edge. Curious, he stuck his head inside and found the place full of shelves stuffed with various items. He pulled a large, roundish block from one shelf and tore at its waxy covering. The yellowish substance underneath crumbled and he tasted it hesitantly.
"Cheese!" he shouted and ran back around to the front of the cottage. Jess hefted the sword and they proceeded to carve off chunks of the pungent cheese, passing it around to be devoured. Cruz and Jess went with him back to the little building to see what else they could find. The others waited around front while Jason knocked again.
Jess, Cruz, and Matt returned a few minutes later, hands full of food. Jess had a string of sausages around his neck, a cheese in his right hand, and a jar of apples in his left. Cruz toted an armful of jams and jellies. Matt was carrying more cheese and a large stoppered jug.
"Let's get out of here before they come back," he said.
"What's in the jug?" asked Tom.
"Apple brandy." He passed the cheese to Aiden to stuff into his backpack along with the various jars. Un-stoppering the jug, he took a swallow of the amber liquid inside. His eyes bulged as he swallowed and he passed the jug on to Aiden. "Woof," he said. "That'll put hair on your chest."
Aiden shrugged and took a swallow. He thumped his chest and passed it to Jess. "That'll put pep in your step," he said in a raspy voice. Grinning, Jess took a swallow and coughed. He was going to pass it on to Cruz, but Annie stepped up and tilted the jug to her mouth. She coughed and wiped her lips, passing it on to Cruz.
"God, that tastes like apple cider and paint thinner," she said. Cruz ignored her and took a hefty swallow.
"Foo," he said passing it to Tom, but Matt grabbed it out of his hands.
"You're too young," he said.
"Am not," Tom cried, snatching the jug. Matt shrugged and let him take a drink. He coughed a few times and handed it back to Matt. Matt grinned and put the stopper back in. Aiden's backpack bulged with the food and Jess made sure the sausages were secure around his neck. Jason scowled at them all even harder.
"You going to stand there looking stupid or are you leaving?" Matt asked him.
"That's stealing," he said again.
"Borrowing," Aiden corrected him. "On a permanent basis."
They took to the road once more, Jason following reluctantly.
They made camp on the shore of a lake adjacent to the road. The day's travel had yielded still no clues as to where they were or how they were getting back. They worried about what their parents might think; especially when Aiden suggested that time might flow differently there. Annie insisted that only five days had passed since she had run away, although they knew she had been gone the better part of a month. For all they knew, the day and a half they had been gone may have added up to a little less than a week back home. They were all unanimous, save for Jason, that they had somehow been transported to another world. The idea did not particularly worry them—they were good at adapting and the rigors of camping were not foreign to them. They stuck to their plan of following the road until they came to something—anything—to get their bearings and see about getting home.
Cruz and Jess waded out into the lake to see if they could catch a fish while the others gathered wood for a fire. Jason sat sullenly on a rock, glaring at them. Matt passed around the jug and they drank heartily, enjoying the warmth it put in their bellies. Once they had a fire going, they roasted sausages on sharpened sticks and commented on the spectacular sunset. Jess and Cruz had not been able to catch a fish, but no one held it against them. The food they had found earlier in the day would last a couple of days and they supposed they could find more in that time. At least they would not starve.
While like most teenaged boys, their experience with the opposite sex was usually limited to nervous glances and giggling, they responded to Annie's presence rather well. That's not to say they were not occasionally tongue-tied or embarrassed by the things she said or did. She was extremely appreciative of the things they did, whether it was starting the fire or passing the jug, and her thank-yous made them all blush profusely. Still feeling responsible for Aiden's throbbing headache, she sat close to him and he turned crimson every time she touched him, which, in his opinion was too often. Worse than the closeness of the girl were the absolutely murderous glances Jason gave him from across the fire. He did not partake of the jug and glared at everyone else, but it seemed his burning hatred was for Aiden alone. Cruz and Tom, sitting on either side of Jason, tried to get him to drink whenever the jug came around, but after a while they just ignored him as if he weren't there.
By the time the moon was high, all but Jason were well and thoroughly drunk. They laughed and joked and fed the fire, pleased despite the situation. They were far from home with no idea how to get back, but in the here and now they were at least contented. At Tom's suggestion they sung a drunken version of REM's "Losing My Religion" and lapsed into silence once it was over.
"What if we can't get home?" Cruz asked finally.
"Don't talk like that," Tom whined. "We'll find a way."
"Yeah. But if we don't," he persisted. "There's stuff I'll miss."
"Oreo cookies," Jess sighed. "Coca-cola."
"The Smurfs was a really awesome cartoon," Aiden slurred.
"Toilet paper," Annie added. They all nodded.
"There's stuff I won't miss," Matt said solemnly.
"School," Tom said immediately. "Homework." They all nodded again.
"What about basketball?" Matt gasped. "The effing NBA. What am I going to do?"
"Nintendo," Cruz moaned.
"Football cards!"
"Comic books!"
"Rap music!"
"Candy!"
"Video games!"
"TV!"
"Tennis shoes!"
"Cartoons!"
"You guys are cute," Annie said leaning sleepily against Aiden's shoulder. He looked suddenly terrified and Matt laughed at him. Jason jumped up, glaring at him, and walked off into the darkness.
"Help?" Aiden said, but Annie was already snoring quietly. He tried to shift out from beneath her but she murmured and patted his arm gently. "What do I do?" he asked worriedly.
"Enjoy it," Matt grinned.
"Enjoy it? I can't move." He tried leaning back and she moved gently with him. "Help!" he hissed through clenched teeth.
"You wish," Matt said sprawling nearby.
"Might as well get some sleep," Jess yawned.
"I'll take your first watch," Cruz grinned. "All you do is get beat up anyway." Jess passed him the sword and lay down alongside the fire. The others yawned and stretched out where they sat. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.
Above them, the moon pushed onward in its journey across the sky, bathing the land in its pale glow.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Standingtree
Standingtree The girl next door was a real girl with a troubled past. She didn't run away, but she was rather melancholy and she rode the same school bus as we did. I shared these tales with her in high school and she enjoyed them, always asking what happened next. What weirded me out was the fact that she didn't say anything about the romantic feelings between her character and my character. I never asked her about it and we drifted apart after high school. She knows how the story ends, and always thought us boys were "cute" with our intense games of "Medieval Warfare"...
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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