Chapter Three
Tessa woke up and shook her head to get the snow out of her hair, powdery and white. The wind had stopped and the snow was coming only in a beautiful drizzle. Tessa blinked, trying to get the powdery white snow out of her eyelashes and clenched her fist, getting her stiff muscles to work again. Tessa stood up and looked around, her nose just barely poking over the top of the snow drift. She shook out her jacket and took her bow in her hands before climbing out of the drift.
The whole world was beautiful and white. She was in a place she’d been many times in her life, a field next to Libby’s home. She ran toward the sound of coyotes over the hill on the left of Libby’s home. Through the white she easily ran, clutching the half heart necklace under her shirt…one she never took off. She ran through the next door yard and slid down a hill that led straight into Libby’s front lawn, white with snow. She turned her head in sorrow, not looking at the house and pressed on until she was standing on the hill next to their horse pasture. She looked around and pulled her scarf down, taking in a deep breath of the cold and blew it out, white smoke forming in a cloud in front of her.
*~*~*~*
Tessa snatched her bag off of the fancy chair and stuffed her warm socks in her boot in a hurry to leave. She threw her scarf over her shoulder and snatched a thick, amazing book and a half-filled sketchpad off of the beautifully stained coffee table. Forgetting her bow she walked out the front door and into the cold air.
White puffs of smoke formed in front of her face whenever she would breathe, even if her breaths were light and barely there. She walked out into the black, smoke still hanging in the sky from the holiday explosions they had set off and made her way over the rocks of the driveway, making her way around the severely beat up maroon car and opened her door, ducking to get in because of its height.
Libby sat on the other side of the dark, rickety old car, a smoking firework sticking out of the side of her mouth like a cigar. Even if it was just a pump it let a stream of smoke into the air, giving her face a red glow in the cold. Her brother and his best friend sat in the front, waiting for Tessa. Tessa threw her stuff on the floorboard, which was only a few mere inches from the pavement, believe it or not, and shut the door, comfortable in the old car with the sagging roof, broken windshield and severely chipping paint.
As the car started it vibrated beneath them and the engine sounded like it would collapse any minute. Even if it was a rather cozy car it was quite terrifying, as if the whole thing would just come down on top of them. As they drove down the street in the complete blackness of the night Libby stayed quiet, smoking her firework. She looked at Tessa and took the firework from her mouth, trying to blow some smoke in her face.
“That, my friend, is underage smoking,” her brother’s friend said as he kept an eye on the road. Libby flicked the firework at Tessa who raised an eyebrow and tried not to laugh.
“Okay Sherlock, go on and smoke your firework why don’t you,” she said sarcastically, referring to another Robert Downey Jr. movie that her cousin loved. Libby held the firework between two fingers as the end glowed a faint red, then brighter, then faint red again.
“No, Sherlock smokes a pipe, my dear Watson,” she said, using they’re rather fitting character names. Libby, much like Sherlock, with dark eyes and a rather crazy since of needing useless things like complete darkness, was always observing things and using insane and rather… humorous theories and/or antics. Tessa, on the other hand, had blue eyes and a knack for informing or questioning Libby when she was being absolutely ridiculous. Not only that, but Libby seemed to have a strange interest/hate in Tessa’s dog, which always left him about half dead when she was around, much like the two very English characters.
Tessa rolled her eyes and smiled, looking out the window at the trees lining the road. Zack, Libby’s brother, suddenly opened his car door, while they were moving and a bunch of papers threatened to fly out of the door. Zack’s friend swerved and looked at him.
“No dude don’t do that, there’s stuff in the door.” Zack laughed his rather rambunctious laugh and closed the door.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Papers. Important papers.” Libby and Tessa sat in the back, trying to hold in laughter. Libby suddenly got a mischievous glint in her eyes and laughed.
“Dude, dude, what if we just stopped right now and shot a firework in the middle of the street?”
Zack seemed to think that idea was brilliant and egged her on.
“Just roll down the window and shoot one right now, I dare you,” he said, laughing at the thought. The car came to a stop at a red light where the road met main street and Zack’s friend looked out the passenger window and then out his own. A police car sat in the carport of a gas station on the right.
“Man we can’t, were in town now, we could get arrested,” he said casually as if this was a normal family topic.
Zack laughed as the car turned on main street, the town more lit than the back roads. He looked at the police car and smiled.
“People don’t care, this is Liberty! You can drink a bottle of whiskey and people don’t care how old you are,” he said, although none of them even drank caffeinated soda, let alone jager and moonshine. Libby pointed her fake ‘cigar’ at the window, as if she was breaking the law with a police car being so close just to make a point.
The car turned off of main street and down an unusually regularly empty road and swerved into the driveway of a brick house, literally pulling up right to the door.
Tessa grabbed her stuff and opened the door, kicking it lightly to open it wider and stepped out.
“Got your bow?” Libby called, leaning across the seat. Tessa shook her head and mentally facepalmed.
“Shoot, it’s on the kitchen counter.” She sighed. “Oh well, I’ll get it later.” She waved Libby and the boys goodbye and stepped up to her front door, talking to her mean little black dog that she loved so much. She waited for her family to unlock the door and stepped inside the warm house, the last white puff of smoke dissolving as she entered.
*~*~*~*
Tessa shook her head to clear her thoughts, looking at the rocky driveway where that old maroon car had been parked many times before it finally gave in. She let out a sigh, missing Libby, missing the fun they had and turned away from the house, looking up the hill to the right, toward a green line of trees…
A sparkle of light reflected from a random spot half way up the line of trees, as if a glittering branch. Tessa squinted and furrowed her brow, trying to identify the shine. She looked back at the house one last time before making her way across an empty cow pasture to a road on the other side…
Tessa stood in the middle of the road, stunned. She slowly made her way over to the tree directly in front of her, as if the sparkling light would disappear if she wasn’t careful. She saw the shining figure, a necklace, dangling from a random branch halfway up the short little pine. She carefully reached out and took the necklace in her hand, almost brimming over with hopefulness. She opened her hand and a silver wing, about two in a half inches in length shimmered in the palm of her hand, cold and beautiful. The chain hung off of the side of her hand, silver, homemade beads falling off her hand and dangling off the chain as she held it. She just stood there, palm open. An angel truly was watching over them both. She closed her eyes and smiled, clutching the familiar necklace in her hand.
She was one step closer to finding Libby.
