"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter Twenty-One: Arguments
(The Flea And The Acrobat, Pt. 5)
***
They spent the rest of the afternoon practicing shooting the cans off the logs, alternating between them; though, it soon became clear that Nancy was, surprisingly, the best of them all, with Rowan being a close second. After that, and seeing how little light was left, they decided to pack up and go home, to hunt the monster another day—none of them wanted to risk hunting it at night.
As they traipsed through the woods, heading toward where Jonathan parked his car—he'd offered to drop them off at their homes—Rowan eyed said woods, keeping a hand near her gun. Once, she'd liked the woods, especially during the fall, where it felt like the forest was on fire, unbroken stretches of red and orange, the ground so thick with leaves that it crunched underneath your foot as the bare branches scratched at the sky, the air crisper and cleaner the further you walked in, swallowing you whole, making you feel like the only person alive in the world.
But now, Rowan looked at the woods with a newfound wariness, finding that silence, that deepness, unnerving now that she knew a monster liked to lurk in here and take people. Of how when you were truly alone, no one would notice if you were gone until much later, when it was too late. When no one could hear you scream.
Eventually, Nancy broke the silence that had fallen over them.
"You never said what I was saying."
Jonathan turned, giving the girl a puzzled look while Rowan hung back, giving them privacy if they were gonna awkwardly flirt again.
"What?"
"Yesterday," Nancy clarified, tramping closer to Jonathan, leaves crunching underneath. Rowan tried to ignore how it felt like those leaves crunching under their feet sounded like the only noise in the woods. "You said I was saying something, and that's why you took my picture."
"Oh, uh..." Jonathan stammered, obviously taken aback by what Nancy was saying. "I don't know. My guess is... I saw this girl, you know, trying to be someone else. But for that moment... it was like you were alone, or you thought you were. And, you know, you could just be yourself."
Rowan's mouth twisted as she now walked ahead, ignoring how that sounded almost like her, pretending to be a normal, not-so-average girl, and failing. But the girl did notice when Nancy stopped, that her face was contorted in an expression of anger.
"That is such bullshit," she spat, surprising both Rowan and Jonathan, having them halt and look at her.
"What?" Jonathan questioned, looking very confused. Rowan didn't say anything, deciding not to get involved with the argument that was sure to come.
