Ashi

Chapter 3

"-ake up, already."

I scrunch my eyes, groan and turning away from the sound.

"Donnie," the voice moans.

I sit up straight and slowly let the light in my eyes. Rolling my shoulders back, twisting my back one way and another, I let a tired grin wake me up. "Morning, Oli."

"Good morning, Donnie," he laughs when I miss leaning against the tree and fall over.

"You have pockets, right?" I ask, changing the subject completely.

"Yeah, why?"

"Let's take some of the bark to go, plenty of it."

He nods and crawls out of the tree cautiously, looking to either side of him. Seeming satisfied, he gets out and starts peeling bark from the tree. I follow him and do the same.

"Hey Oli, can you do me a favor before we start walking again?" I ask.

"Sure. What do you need?"

"Can you flatten my hair?"

He hums while I sit down and he goes down on his knees, combing his hands through me hair. It feels great. It always does; like when my mom used to do it years ago and my sis every now and then.

I hum with him, resting against his chest, reminiscing about home. Oliver and I would run through the fields in the summer, playing hide-n-seek or Marco Polo. The corn would be pretty high by that time, or least high enough, that we could do this for hours, playing only a few games because it was so hard to find the other. I was the best at it though. Oliver tried hard to beat me, but I only got better. Sometimes we would play with my sis, but she's older than us by six years. We're both sixteen now, so she rarely plays with us now, besides the fact that she lives in Kansas now.

And when the day turns to evening, we lounge on the porch, half of the time eating popcicles and watching the sun go down. After, we watch the stars, pointing at the constellations we can identify. At the same time, Oliver would comb my hair down, since running around made it extremely wild.

"I'm done," he says and turns to face me, looking from above , smiling sweetly.

I break from the memories and grin back. "Thanks. Now let's go!"

The short grass seems to continue on forever, the rubber palm trees becoming scarcer. Nearing evening, we come upon another forest, but this time there aren't any palm trees. They look like really tall bonsai trees. I mean, they should only be a max of what, a foot tall? But no, these seem like fifty feet tall. I also spot a few willow trees here and there. Some hang down green, some pink, some that start green then turn yellow. My favorite though, are the cherry blossom and plum blossom trees, even if they are a bit thicker than I've seen before. Oliver and I have always wanted to go to Japan in the spring to see them, and now we get to!

"Oli," I tug at his sleeve as I lead toward two particular trees, a plum and cherry blossom right next to each other. "I've got to show you something. I have a feeling you will really like it."

He lets me drag him, stumbling on a root halfway there. Then he sees them himself. He runs full speed ahead, turning around widely with his arms spread out and a precious smile lighting him up brighter than the trees.

"They're just like what we saw in the book about Japan!" he yells and laughs while I catch up to him. "They're even better than I thought. They're so beautiful, Donnie, I can't believe it."

"Yeah," I agree, breathing in awe as I string an arm behind him and grab him by the shoulder, pulling him closer.

He turns to me, lifting an eyebrow. "What are you doing, Donnie?"