How I "Died"

Chapter 5

A little while later

We walked through the woods and John led me to a stream. I knew exactly where we were, I just acted like I didn’t cause’ I didn’t want to let him down. I knew that from exactly where we were standing, 562 paces to the right would have us right in front of the tree house. I couldn’t wait to see the tree house. It held so many of my childhood memories. I miss that life. I’d take it back for anything.

Finally we arrived at the tree house. It looked exactly as I’d remembered it. The tire swing that Cody helped me put up was still hanging from the tree. I walked over to the tree and brushed it with my fingers. “H.M + A.L” was still visible in the tree. This was Hope’s crush’s name, Austin Lanon. 

“It brings back so many memories.” I whispered.

“Memories?” John asked.

“Yeah… to tell you the truth, I used to come to this tree house a lot when I was younger. My dad and my grandfather built it. He showed it to us when we were younger and we renovated it to the way we liked it. In fact, my brother hung that tire swing.”

“I would’ve never known. I’m surprised I didn’t run into you here when I was younger, I used to come here a lot.”

“Really? Maybe I’ve met you before.” Suddenly I had a flashback. I knew John. He was my best friend in pre-school. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him… and he didn’t recognize me. I climbed up old, wooden ladder and climbed into the tree house. Everything looked the same. There was still Monopoly, Life and Trouble in one of the shelves we made from bark. In the corner there was on of Cody’s old Converse.  John walked up behind me and pointed to a spot on the old, rotted roof.

“Haha, I was such an odd kid.” He said. Where he pointed to read “John the mighty super hero was here. July 8th, 2004.” It was exactly 7 years ago today.

“Well that makes two of us.” I said while pointing to the unicorns with capes I carved into the walls. He laughed. I liked the grown-up John, he was realistic and surprisingly like me. I just couldn’t quite remember why’d we stopped being friends when we were younger.

For the rest of the day, we spent time playing 20 questions, truth and would you rather. I found out a lot about John. I learned that he was a soccer player, like me, but his passion is really singing. I learned that he’s stayed back a grade because of his home tragedies. Also, that he’s a year older than me. I guess this was going to be a good friendship, I could already tell.

2 months later

John and I had still been hiding in the tree house in the woods of the park. We’ve been surviving pretty well. Every couple days we would walk to John’s uncle’s house and we’d shower and get cleaned up. His uncle swore to keep the sightings of us a secret, we didn’t know where we were staying, all he knew was that we were okay, and smelly from the wilderness. His uncle also helped us get masks to cover our identity when we needed to shop. Also, he let us watch the news from his house. It helped to see what my family was up too. Apparently the police are still looking for me because my parents are convinced I’m still alive, which I am. I feel bad, my parents are devastated, my siblings are too. I wish I could contact my best friend, but she’d tell my parents. I felt okay, nothing got too bad yet. Maybe things would all be okay.