“How could I have been stuck with YOU of all people?” I say, trudging through the thorn bushes.

“Yeah, it’s my fault that you walked off and I had to go after you.” Ricky says, following me, throwing the last of his handful of rocks at my back.

“Well no one asked you to follow me stupid.” I say, picking up three larger rocks and pelting them at him and he tries to block his face.

“Zach asked me to idiot!” He yells getting a handful of mud and getting me dirty.

“Then you should have remembered where the freaking trail was!” I try walking off faster then he’s walking but he catches up and grabs my arm. He twists me around and says,

“Listen you stupid girl, we’re lost but at least we’re not alone. Yeah sure I’d rather have a hot chick then some idiot blonde, but at least we have company. Now it took a few minutes for people to realize that you were gone, but I’m gone and I’ve already been away for around twenty minutes so everyone’s probably frantic.” He smiles looking off into the trees. “And Becky’s probably worried sick. Poor girl, she’ll need some comforting when I get rescued.”

“You are the biggest egotistic dumb-a** I’ve ever met.” I wrench my arm from his hand. “Perv.”

“At least girls like me. In fact, they can’t resist. You should hear what the guys say about you.”

“Do I look like I give a damn? Man if it wasn’t for Lucy then I wouldn’t have even come on this stupid hike with you guys.”

“Lucy, she’s pretty hot too.” Ricky looks off again into space. Then he shakes his head and looks at me. “You know, they all think you’re gay.”

“Well I’m not, but it’s not like you’ll tell the truth.” I start climbing up a slope, hoping that the trail is up on the top.

“Do I get no credit whatsoever for coming to get you?”

“You don’t deserve any! Why the hell did you even come? You could have asked Lucy to do it instead.” I peek over the edge and sigh when all I see are more thorn bushes and spider webs.

“Because Zach asked me, not her.” He pushes me out of the way and stands up on a small boulder.

“Oh yeah, I forget that you’re polite and respectful of everyone but me.” I reach the top and shove him off the rock.

“Maybe I would be nice to you to if you were nice to me!” he says standing up and shaking the leaves out of his hair.

“Your definition of ‘nice’ is falling all over you. And I. Do. Not. LIKE YOU!

“I didn’t say you have to like me like that for me to be nice to you, you freak!”

“Will you shut up! I don’t like-like you or even remotely like you to begin with. So you know what, it doesn’t matter.” I spin around and glare.

“Who’s the one who brought it up?!”

“I hate you!” This we both yell at each other.

After we glare for a few more seconds, I huff and turn back around. I keep walking and brush the spider webs out of the way.

Me and Ricky have never gotten along. We’ve hated each other from the moment Lucy introduced us. Every time we ran into each other at a friends house or Wednesday church, the entire area got tense and most of the time we would get into a fight. Why Lucy thought it was a good idea to have me come on this hike with her, him, Zach, Becky, Mike and Tyler is beyond me. It was a disaster to begin with.


“Oh please don’t tell me Blondie’s coming with us?” Ricky says, throwing his head back and sighing in exaggeration.

“Suck it up, she is coming.” Lucy says, laughing.

“Oh, well we wouldn’t want to ruin big guys time now would we.” I say, smiling sarcastically.

“Ok then, leave.” He shoves me on the shoulders.

“Whoa guys, tone it down. We don’t need to have Taylor go home.” Mike says.

“Oh so I would have to go home if there was a fight?” I ask, these guys really get on my nerves.

“Well Ricky wouldn’t have to go home.”

“Lucy I’m leaving.” I turn around and start walking. I don’t think anyone will care and I’m right, until surprisingly someone talks.

“Come on you baby, lets just go.” Ricky says.


“It’s you’re fault that we’re here.”

“Oh really please share.” I hear him breathing heavily behind me.

“If you hadn’t called me back we wouldn’t be here in the first place.” I find a hill in front of us and start to climb up it. He groans.

“What are you talking about?” He trips and lands on his knees in the mud. “Oh crap.”

“When I said I’d leave and you called me back. You guys then could have had a nice little hike without the gay freaky blonde.” I hold tears when I say that and with a shake of my head they’re gone. I’m used to them hating me, I literally have no friends except Lucy. I understand why, I don‘t exactly invite people to me. I’m in the back of every class, I make snide remarks when people talk to me, and people usually tend to avoid a girl with cuts all up her arms.

He doesn’t reply, but he’s breathing to hard to talk.

We walk on for about half in hour in silence. This was ok to begin with, it’s fun being on my own in a somewhat dangerous situation, but it’s a little scary now. I check my phone, still no texts. I roll my eyes, Lucy doesn’t even care. I look behind me and see Ricky sitting on a boulder about thirty feet away, texting. I walk over.

“Who are you texting?” I ask, hesitantly.

“Lucy, Becky, and Zach.” He says without even glancing at me.

“Did Lucy try texting me?” I ask.

“I don’t know did she?” He sighs and looks at me, clearly annoyed. I look down and bite my lip.

“No.” I walk off, leaving him. If he doesn’t bother to keep up I’ll go on my own.

“Hey wait up!” Ricky calls. He starts to run after me. When he reaches me, I don’t know what took me over, I guess pressure and the fact I’m stuck with someone who could care less about me, but I hit him in the gut. He’s a lot stronger then me so he doesn’t fall and then he hits me in the jaw. He didn’t hit as hard as he could, I can tell, but I fall to the ground.

“What the f*** you b****?!” He yells. I stand up, wipe the small drop of blood away, and walk away. I can tell he’s confused on what just happened but he follows me anyway.

Finally, about half an hour later he talks. “Your jaw ok?”

“No.” In fact it hurts like hell, it’s throbbing and I can still detect some blood.

“Oh.” We’re quiet again. His phone continues to ding every time he gets a text. I check mine again then turn in off. No point in wasting battery.

“Still no one texting you?” Ricky teases. I don’t answer but I speed up. He hurries after me and trips a few times. I’m used to walking in the woods, there’s a forest down the street from my house and I’m usually in it. “Dude.” Ricky pants. “Slow down.”

“No.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“No.”

“Ugh, slow down!”

“Make me.” I put my hand on a tree and am about to turn left at it when his hand covers mine.

“Do you even know where we’re going?” He asks harshly.

“No.”

He groans. “You have got to be so full of yourself all the time!”

I whip my head to face him. “Full of myself?! What’s there to like?! You said it yourself that I’m an annoying bratty b****! How am I full of myself?!” I yell. He’s taken aback, I’m usually so quiet. I breath through my clenched teeth and he looks almost freaked. I wrench my hand from under his, slightly cutting myself from the bark. I close my eyes. “Of course.” I walk off.

“Of course what?” He says, stumbling after me. He just doesn’t know when to be quiet.

“The freaks steps out of line and ends up hurt.”

“Out of line?”

“Yes, yelling at the king red head is against what I should do.”

“King.” He pauses, liking that. I’m quiet. “Anyway, how is that not something you should do?”

“Omg dude!” I turn around and put up my hands, frustrated. I motion between us with every word starting with me. “Freak, king, stupid, amazing, no friends, everybody loves you. Get the picture?”

“You have Lucy.” He tries.

“Yeah does it look like she cares? She’s probably flirting with you and she doesn’t even care about me. If we were to be separated, you found and me not, they wouldn’t even realize it, they’d forget the reason you were out here in the first place.” I turn around and stomp off again.

He sighs, giving up. Good, I’m tired of talking. Finally, after probably a hundred more dings and I think about forty minutes I sit down on a rock. He looks down at me and sits on a rock a few feet away. Then he just stares at me. After a few minutes it gets really annoying. “What?”

“Why are we sitting?”

“You tired?”

“Yes.”

I look at him like he’s stupid. He gets it and goes back to texting. I shiver at the wind and rub my arms. I only have on a white tank top and cargos. Ricky has a blue shirt on with a black jacket and jeans. His hair is perfect and mine is dirty and in a loose pony tail. His face is unmarked and mine has small cuts on it from the branches and a thin faded scar across my eye, without actually hurting my eye though. He looks at me while I’m looking at him.

“What?” He asks.

I roll my eyes and don’t answer. He looks down at his phone and sighs. He puts it in his pocket and sits there awkwardly. Then he stands up and sits next to me.

“So…”

“No.”

“What?”

“You can’t use my phone to text them.”

“How did you-”

I glare at him. “When have you ever willingly been this close to me?”

“Good point, good point.” He looks ahead of him and rubs his hands. Then he looks back at me. “So it’s a clear no?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Dude!”

“Fine.” He goes back to his rock. “Then how are we supposed to contact them?”

“We don’t.”

“Uh, excuse me?”

I turn my head and glare at him. “You got yourself in this, and we can find our own way out.”

“You are just incapable of letting others help you aren’t you?”

“And your just incapable to doing things on your own aren’t YOU?”

He’s silent. I sigh and try to think. It’s probably about three right now. We’ve been away for around an hour to hour and a half. I try to listen but I can’t hear any cars or people talking. We haven’t even been marking our trail. I look at him again, he’s flopped onto his back looking asleep. A bandana is sticking out of his pocket. I stand up and walk over and grab it and walk back. He jerks up and reaches for it.

“Do you want to be lost?”

“How does this have to do-”

I rip it in half. “Tie it to the branches.”

“You are so lucky that wasn’t special.”

“You want to live or you want a special hanky?” I rip it in smaller pieces. His face looks like the realization of the situation just hit him.

“Wait, we could actually die out here?” He’s panicking.

“Do we have food? Do we have water? Do we have a trail?” I put nine of the ten pieces in my pocket and tie one to a branch.

“We have a phone stupid.”

“What will that do? Just cause we have a way of contacting them how will that help? Say, ‘oh, we’re by the trees that are near the other trees’?”

He glares, not saying anything.

“Didn’t think so. Now lets go.” I walk off, hearing him follow shortly after me. I drag my hand against trees, it helps me. I quit turning and rounding corners, I just walk straight now. The bandana isn’t just to help us in case we do get turned around, I just didn’t tell him the other reason. I could tell him that it’s also for in case the others see it but then he might want to just sit down and wait for them to catch up. Also that, but the thing I wont tell him is if they find us, but not in time.

I do this in my forest, in different colors. I use old clothes. They all lead somewhere too. Blue to a tree house, white to a pretty trail, yellow to a creek, green to a climbing tree, and if you see a red one anywhere then follow it and you’ll find your way out. It’s pretty cool.

About five minutes later Ricky begs me to put on a new one. “I don’t even put on different one till like twenty minutes.”

“When do you do this?”

“When I’m in that forest down the street from my house.”

“Wait, if you don’t even put on another one for twenty minutes, how long are you usually in-”

“Practically live there.”

“You need a life.”

“Yeah, you’re totally helping the situation by making me hate you more.”

“You hate me more? Didn’t think that was possible.” He mumbles.

“I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Fifteen minutes later I tie another strip to a branch. Five minutes later Ricky begs to sit down. I agree. I head towards the only rock near us but Ricky runs ahead and takes it. I look down and instead of making a big deal about it and I sit on the ground at the base of a tree. “Damn it.” I mumble, standing up trying to get the mud off. Ricky bursts out laughing and he falls off. I close my eyes and then open them, trying to keep under control. I walk off and he’s behind me quickly.

“Where are you going?”

I turn and knee him down, he lands in mud as well. “Ha.” I say. Then I walk off faster then before.

Five minutes later I realize what I’ve done. Ricky won’t be able to stand it out here, and I am the one with the emergency phone and bandana. I turn around and walk directly back. The slightest twist in a trail can lead you somewhere different. Good thing it’s muddy, it helps.

I finally find him farther away from where I had left him, back at the tree we last put on a ribbon leaning against a tree

“Why are you back here?” I ask.

He flinches then looks at me. “I heard you say once that when you got lost in a forest once you just went back to the last ribbon and that’s where they found you.”

“You were paying attention?” He shrugs. “Hm, I’ll give you some credit for that.”

He smiles. “Sweet, king’s still got it, I got the freak to say something nice.” He teases but I sneer.

“Hate you more.” I whip around but this time I make sure that he’s following.

“Sorry.” He says, “That was mean.”

“Damn right, wait what?” I turn back and look at him with a shocked confused face, mouth wide open. “Did you just say sorry?”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

My mouth opens bigger and I look down diagonally. “What is happening?” I shake my head and keep walking.

“What?”

“Just, shut up.” I rub my temples and sigh. By now I don’t care if I’m covered in mud, there’s already mud on my shoes, butt, hands and partly on my forearms. My hair is already dirty, I need a shower. I could use a small river, wow, I’ve been in my forest to often. Being with the popular king has made me realize how weird my life is.