The Corruption

Chapter 26 - Camping

"Well I don't like him and the way he's treating you," Derek said, looking out the window, Kaleigh looking over at him frowning. "What do you mean? Nate's hurt, least you-" "I know that. But he's up to something. And when he gets cured, he might do something that sets me.. I don't know, aflame? Something that crosses the line. I just don't want that to happen." Kaleigh looked down at the floor of the firetruck and scratched her arm, feeling something so unknown that it could not be put into words. Derek started to realize something and he turned around, grabbing her hand. "But life's too short to worry about other people who don't deserve you," Kaleigh looked up at Derek, smiling a bit. Derek hugged her tight but her smile faded. She was waiting for Nate to wake up so she could see exactly what Derek meant. The moment drastically changed though, when Liam knocked on the door behind Derek. "Can you help me carry some of these logs?"

The CPG, excluding Nate who was recuperating in the firetruck, was creating a campfire that lit the oranged painted grass to a fiery yellow, under the moonlight of the night sky. Derek was wishing he had his guitar with him for some peculiar reason. Kaleigh, was lost in her thoughts, carrying logs and placing them onto the ground where the crew marked their fireplace to be built, and she started dozing off to her train of thoughts, thinking of the cello which she used to play every day as a young teenager. Liam was building at a faster pace than the other two who were obviously experiencing the moment where your mindset is so disfigured that you're unable to explain how you feel, but you get the sense that something so significant is going to happen that it's either going to make you feel happy again or even more depressed. Derek constantly reminded himself that everything was going to be okay in the end despite the lack of proof he had to ensure that. Kaleigh was pretending it was all a dream and that none of this ever happened, except for the playground and ice cream truck incident, so she set her thoughts to that instead.

Soon enough, the fire was lit and the crew pulled large logs and placed them around the fire to use as benches, sitting on them, but not Kaleigh. Derek quickly beckoned Kaleigh to come sit with him on his log and Liam sat on his own. Liam was roasting some marshmellows he found in the fire department and he passed them on to the other two. Liam took a deep breath and started to create some conversation, "How about a story?" Derek and Kaleigh looked up at Liam and at each other, until everyone was looking at Derek, unlike Nate who was out cold on the chair, snoring. Derek widened his eyes and a confused look overcame his face, "Well um, I-I mean I don't exactly.." "Come on Derek, I want to hear a story, pleeaase," Kaleigh said with a slight smile, Derek sighing and looking deep into the fire. He tried to imagine something that made him think hard, something that he normally wouldn't talk about. "Alright, I think I got it."

"There were eh.. three little pigs. The first little pig wanted the second, but uh.. the second wanted the third. And.. they always wanted what didn't want them back, sort of like life. The pigs were unable to control themselves and so.. they went to the only creature that they knew could help, the big bad wolf, who surprisingly wasn't so bad at all. The big bad wolf told the three pigs to take a seat and he tried to make them laugh by telling them a joke. The pigs laughed like crazy, the wolf's happy-magic already uhm.. ahem, curing them. But for some reason, the wolf told the joke again. The pigs laughed again, as expected.. but.. the wolf kept telling this joke over and over, and the pigs were starting to look at each other, confused as hell." Kaleigh and Liam were looking at each other and then at the fire, deeply interested in the story. "So.. the wolf told the joke one final time, and the pigs just stared at him as if he was an idiot. The wolf smiled to all three little pigs and said, 'You can't laugh at the same joke forever, so why cry over the same pig forever?"  Kaleigh and Liam stared at Derek in complete awe and started clapping, Derek himself surprised that he had it in him, but he wasn't yet finished. "The pigs just looked at each other in .. astonishment, and didn't know what to say. The first pig however, um.. said, Crying and laughing are opposites.. and.. one is healthy for you and one .. isn't? The wolf laughed and replied, It's not about health, bud. It's about eh.. why you started to feel that way in the first place." Nate on the other hand, was listening the entire time, and he understood the message. Shit.