A Week Away

Chapter 2

Lizzie's P.O.V.

Once again the poles gave way and my tent collapsed to the ground in a heap of tarp and metal. Frustrated, I plopped myself onto the ground with a groan. The temperature was lowering every minute, the wind picking up and making everything billow around. The night sky slower got darker and darker, and I would be the one who ended up with no tent to sleep in that night.

"You need help?" I looked up to find some random guy walking up to me, a shy smile on his plump lips and his hands in his pocket. I didn't know his name, but then again, there were only four people here who I bothered to learn the names of.

"Yeah, you offering?" He nodded. "Thanks." He walked over to the materials in front of me and began picking them up and laying them out in a fashion that told me he'd probably done this four other times tonight for other hopeless damsels in distress like me.

"I'm Lizzie, by the way." I handed my hand out to shake his but he shrugged it off and indicated towards the tent, letting me know his hands were full.

"I know your name," he flashed a grin at me and proceed to wrap the tarp material around one of the poles. "I'm Cameron. Do you mind passing me that pole right there?" I picked up the pole he was pointing at and handed it to him. Somehow he had already built half of the tent and gotten much further than I had imagined I could have.

"You're here willingly, aren't you?" He nodded. He didn't seem to talk much. Then again, he was putting my tent together for me.

We were in silence for a few more minutes as he finished putting up my tent. When he was done he clapped his hands against his thighs to get the dust off them, then he shoved one out towards me. I took it and shook it.

"So what brought you here. You don't look like the kind of girl who would come out here willingly." I bit my lip before I said something snarky in response. In all honesty, I usually would have taken something like that offensively, but he seemed so shy and calm about saying it that it came out quite non-threatening.

"I may have skipped a few classes. A bit of an intense punishment, if you asked me." I chuckled. He looked away a moment, a small blush on his dark cheeks.

"Well, I'm glad you skipped those classes. I mean, otherwise you wouldn't be here." I raised my eyebrows at him and he bit his lip, avoiding my gaze. "I'm trying to hit on you, if you didn't notice."

"I noticed." There was silence for a moment before he nodded and turned around, beginning to head off. "Would you come back round in a few hours? We could roast some s'mores together... or whatever you do while camping."

He looked back with a laugh on his lips and nodded, bidding me goodbye and waving as he walked off. I watched after him, different thoughts flying through my mind, but the main one being: he's different.

Later on that night we had a few fires going. Cameron came round to my tent and we roasted some precooked sausages together and talked a bit. I didn't catch much of what he said because of how intelligent he sounded, but the one thing I did catch was him complaining about how inefficient more than one campfire was. It was quite a discussion, and one that ended with him kissing me on the cheek as he headed off to bed, promising to visit me in the middle of the night.

So I waited. And waited. It was around midnight when I heard the footsteps coming to my tent. I had been up waiting for him, deciding to read a book in the meantime. The Catcher in the Rye... I was only a few chapters in and thought it would do for a goodbye bedtime story as it certainly nearly put me to sleep. The only reason I was reading it was because Cameron gave me his copy he had brought with him and told me it was quite thought provoking. Thought provoking or not, it was boring, but I was going to power my way through so that I was one step closer to being as intelligent as he was.

And so I heard the footsteps. They were quite heaving, and rapidly approaching. I smiled to myself, a little giddy at the thought of seeing him like this, in the middle of the night, in my tent. It was all quite risque in my mind, although he probably wanted to do nothing more than talk. I had discovered that was his thing.

The zipper was tugged open from the outside, and slowly but surely I could make out the faint figure of a teenage boy through the thin tarp material. The material dropped and in he stepped, but it wasn't Cameron.

"Joseph?" He turned to face me, a horrified look on his bloody face. The source of the blood seemed to be coming from a small but deep cut up by his hairline. "What are you doing? What happen-" His hand covered my mouth, getting blood over my lips and chin.

"Shhh," his eyes were wide with fear and he kept darting his gaze to the open tent flap. "There's something out there."