I dusted my palms and sat down on the dirty ground with a sigh.
We had been digging around the poison ivy plant that had the number three as a letter for a couple of hours now. Doing that with a shovel wasn't easy work so you could imagine how it was as we dug our fingers into the soil like dogs looking for their buried bones.
We had probably dug up to like two feet and I was feeling a little hopeless about the whole thing until Peter shrieked.
“Found it!” He pulled a slightly muddy piece of note out of the soil and dusted the sand off of it.
“This is crazy!” he decided, unfolding it immediately. I sat there and the girls knelt down, waiting patiently for him to read the note.
“I carried the treasure on the waters
It was a misfortune, we left it to sink
With a last glance at the yellow red leaves
I marched off with so much to think”
“What do you think?” he asked to no one in particular.
“Something about the river or the lake probably, about something under it?” I said, picking grains of sand from my fingernails.
“Yeah but I think it's in another lake,” Michelle pointed out.
“Another lake?”
“According to the note, maybe, yeah,” she said with a shrug.
“What do you mean?”
“Well from what you read it's not the lake we usually go to. I know that because of the ‘yellow-red’ leaves part. There are no orange leaves at the lake you guys know.”
“There's another lake?" Peter asked.
“Uh huh. A few days before you guys got here, I went there. There are lots of orange bushes lining the edge of the water."
“How come we've never seen it before and you've never told us about it?”
“I don't know, it wasn't necessary I guess.”
Peter nodded slowly. After a moment of silence, he groaned and got up, sticking the note into his back pocket.
“Alright, but I need something to eat now.”
He turned and started to walk back, his gait slow like a slug’s. I followed him and walked beside him while the girls followed us behind.
They stopped before we got to the shed and when we asked, Michelle mummured something about wildflowers.
“Hmm,” Peter mumbled as we walked back to the shed.
“What?”
He leaned on the door.
“She's been cheerier today.”
I didn't reply.
“What happened between you two yesterday?”
“What happened…?”
He raised a brow at me. I stared back at him. We had a short staring contest.
“Fine. I…wanted to be alone last night so I walked off and she…cau–saw me. " I glanced briefly at my arm. The cut wasn't very noticeable, thankfully, and was already healing.
"I don't know why she was stalking me. She tried to talk to me but I wasn't listening. And then we heard the buzzing sound and–”
“Again?”
“Yeah…so we came back to the shed. Nothing really much happened,” I finished with a shrug.
He plucked something out of his eyelashes. “I just don't get you guys' story.”
YOU ARE READING
Fall in San Diego
AdventureHaunted by the death of his family that he caused, Larry cuts himself off from the world and relapses into depression, subconsciously craving anything that would make him happy. He finds himself lost in the woods after his swirling emotions forces h...
