if by chance | ✓

13 | the idiot

[ 13 ]

C O R A

✦

"Sydenham Hill Wood is a ten hectare wood on the northern slopes of the Norwood Ridge in the London borough of Southwark..." Mrs. Thurman continues her job as guide as we trudge along the dirt road ─ laden with twigs, dry leaves and moss.

Pausing to sip water from my purple HydraFlask, I look around. There was a humongous boulder just two feet away, which tempted me to sit and rest for a while. It was weird how I was so devoid of energy. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, I thought.

Unlike the other trips I've been to before, this one was particularly tiring. The dry post-summer air seemed to suck the life out of me.

In the distance, I could see my team members trudging along. Noah turns around briefly to frown at me and I gesture him to keep walking.

"So you gonna keep sitting here or what?" Rhys asks me, standing about six feet apart.

"Uh yeah, I can find my way." I say nonchalantly.

"You know you're overconfident right?" He snickers, pinching his eyebrows as the rays of the setting sun fell directly on his eyes.

"That's none of your business. Why did you halt?" I groan, pulling my sweat drenched hair up in a bun.

"As responsible as I am, I can't leave you alone like the rest of the group." He snorts.

"Really? That's so considerate of you!" I roll my eyes, getting up on my feet.

When I look down the dirt trail again, there was no one around except for one human being who's ready to get on my nerves any moment.

"They haven't gone too far, have they?" I mutter under my breath as I hastily start walking.

"Hey, wait for me!" He pants as he follows.

A five minute walk with no luck, I pause again to catch my breath. Clearly, we had lost them. And what irritated me the most was that it wouldn't have happened if the idiot hadn't started small talk with me.

"You're so dead." I scowl at him but it didn't seem to affect him much.

"If you hadn't stopped ─" He begins but doesn't get the audacity to continue when I cut him off with another heated glare.

"Holy crap, the sun's going down in twenty minutes." I sigh, checking my wristwatch.

Last night when we found Acacia behind the bushes, it really did give us a scare. Because even though there weren't technically any wild animals, the snake that had her terrified and on the verge of a panic attack, was indeed poisonous.

Acacia Everhart had a hard time believing that she was alive and unscathed. She had gone to pee behind the wild bushes, provided you can't expect a bathroom in the woods.

"You could have been dead by now! How many times did I warn y'all to never go alone?" Dr. Harvey reprimanded. He was obviously shaken and despite Mrs. Thurman trying to calm him down, he was convinced we were way too rookie for camping.

"Even middle school kids are more cautious." He had vented before going to bed last night.

And now as I walk along aimlessly down the path which is supposed to take us back to the tents, my hope dies down with the sunlight.

In about ten minutes, it was pitch black.

"We are pretty close I suppose." Rhys comments, his voice startling me in the silence of the night. It was getting colder too.

"You suppose? Dude, you can be book smart but you ain't life smart. Its high time you realize it." I roll my eyes even though he couldn't possibly see me.

"Well you didn't help find a way either." He snorts and I didn't have the energy in me to argue back his statement. True, I was tired and unfocused.

"You think this is funny, Crawford? It's dark and cold and we don't know the way back. Worse, we don't have food or extra warm clothes." I nearly scream, the exhaustion in me wanted to rip his head off.

"Why did you agree when I told you to take right? Now it's obvious we should have gone left." He states, completely ignoring the fact that I was yelling.

I remember my mom saying not to be out in the woods alone. I remember her worrying about me being still a kid. But now it all began to make sense.

Going on solo trips with guides and strangers in a group was one thing. But being lost with an idiot in a forest at night was obviously something else.

"You hungry?" He asks, unwrapping a burrito which probably had been resting in his rucksack for a while.

The rest of our team would have had dinner by now, I thought.

"Yep, you have another?"

Munching on the cold burritos, we sit down on a rock that was at a safe distance from the trees and shrubs. We couldn't risk falling prey to serpents.

"I had some potato chips but Nathan and Riley ate them all at lunch." I say in a small voice.

"Never mind. Uh, you look pretty scared." Rhys comments.

The full moon was our only source of sight now but it was beginning to snow, the microscopic white flakes covering up our jackets and denims and hair.

"I am scared." I sigh, flicking off a snowflake that had landed on my nose tip.

"We'd freeze to death if we don't get a shelter." He says, his teeth chattering.

"Um, there's a broken bench and there's kind of a shade and I don't know why it exists here ─" I explain but he stops me from speaking by pulling me up to my feet in an abrupt manner, which in my opinion is clumsy.

"Are you kidding me? Why didn't you say that before? I think we are in that part of the woods which belong to the Sydenham Nature Preserve." He asserts as we walk over.

There really was a rusty logo on the park bench indicating Rhys was right.

"But how did we end up here? I mean this part is quite far away from where we have camped." I wonder.

"We could somehow survive the night I guess." Rhys answers.

It was way too cold for us to sit apart. The snow was falling heavier now, the silence was engulfing and even though we weren't particularly fond of each other, the weather and our fears compelled us to stay close. His arms were wrapped around me when I was close to dozing off.

"How long is too long for them to apprehend that we are completely and irrevocably lost?" He asks before closing his weary eyes for the night.

✦

a/n : so have y'all ever been lost?
p.s. : don't forget to vote and comment.
i love it when y'all comment lol.