The Wings Of A Caged Bird | First Draft

chapter 15 : when you're brave

2nd August; Sunday

"Wow, this is . . . higher than I thought," July says, looking over the edge.

I barely hear him over the sound of my deep breaths. I feel like I've climbed the Mount Everest twice instead of a small hill. My thighs are throbbing with pain, and my palms are all red from grabbing the rocks while climbing.

I say in between breaths, "Rock climbing . . . is not . . . for me. I'm more of a . . . chair guy."

With a laugh, he replies, "I know!" He walks over to me and sits down beside. "But this was a new experience, wasn't it? Thrilling too."

"Would be more thrilling if I fell down." I roll my eyes.

He lightly slaps my arm. "Don't say that. And even if it did happen, I would just catch you in my arms like a princess."

I only shake my head. Now that he's back to making jokes like this, I can tell that he is back to his normal mood. He has been pretty cheerful and active since morning. I ask, "So, did you look around?"

"Ah, right, no. Wait." He stands up. Hands on his waist, he looks ahead with his eyes squinted. He looks to his left, and to his right. Then he looks down at me and gives a sheepish smile. "I totally forgot this but . . . I don't have the best vision."

I let out a sigh and hold out my hand. He takes it and pulls me up to a standing position. With my almost perfect eyesight that I inherited from dad, I examine the forest that stretches ahead. All I can see for as far as my eyes allow are trees and trees. I turn left, right, and even back, which is the direction we came from. But no luck. We really are in the middle of a huge forest.

My heart drops, the little hope accompanied by the idea of climbing a hill to see if there's any direction we can find ahead disappearing. With another sigh, I say, "No luck."

"Shit."

"We're high, but not high enough. There are still a lot of trees obstructing my view. Never realized before how tall palm trees are."

"Yeah, they're hella tall. We're only like, 20 to 25 feet off the ground. Palm trees are way taller."

"Hmm . . . what are we gonna do th-" I detect something through my peripheral vision. When I turn that way, my eyes widen as I see something flying above the mass of trees. "Oh my God, July, is that-?"

"A bird?" he guesses, eyes squinted like an old man.

"No, a kite!" My mouth breaks into a wide smile. Indeed, the small blue-and-red object flying as high as the palm trees in a distance is a kite. It reminds me of Khaled Hosseni's The Kite Runner, one of my most favorite books. Now is not the time, though. If there is a kite, then that means there is someone flying it.

"Woah, really? Then that means-"

"That's right. It's not too far either. We just need to keep walking that way and we'll find them. Come on, July, let's go!" I begin to walk towards the way we climbed up, but July grabs my hand to stop me.

"Wait. We're leaving right now?"

"Of course?"

He gives me a look as he lets go of my hand. "We just climbed a long ass hill while screaming for 30 minutes, and we're not even gonna spend some time to chill here?"

I scratch the back of my head, then glance at the kite. "But what if the person leaves?"

"I mean, I don't think so. I hardly think anyone would choose a random place of a huge forest to fly a kite. Either they live there, or they're camping there. Besides, the kite is still flying high. It's gonna take a while to bring it down and all that. So I think we can relax at least five minutes."