When Lightning Strikes

Chapter 4

Here's chapter 4! Enjoy!

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Chapter 4- The First Attack

I carefully tucked the necklace inside my shirt; even If Garrett did like me back I wasn't ready to tell my friends yet. When I got back to my own campsite I could see that Brianna and Sarah were up and about.

"Hey Lightning, what did the red headed guy want?" Brianna called to me from the edge of the grassy clearing where she had been breaking off long slender branches and stacking them neatly in a pile.

"His name is Garrett, and he just wanted to check and re-bandage my arm," I replied a little bit annoyed. "Now what are you doing?" I asked Brianna like we were exchanging questions.

"I'm gathering supplies to make a more adequate shelter," she informed me with a hopeful grin on her face that suggested she wasn't quite sure how to make adequate shelter herself.

"Sounds great, can I help?" I inquire as I look down on the ground for any already fallen branches.

"I think it would be to stressful on your arm Lightning, breaking off the branches is hard work even for Brianna," Sarah warns me as she shakes out the two blankets her and I had previously slept on.

I am so thankful to have my friends who care about me, even if no one else does. To think they gave up their lives just to be with me was enough to construct a bond that would last a lifetime. Along time ago, just after the three of us had met, I remember something I'd never forget.

My father had recently hit me in the head with a glass bowl for accidentally leaving it in the sink; the bowl had left an ugly red gash across my forehead. At school there was a boy who had been harassing me for a few weeks. His name was Andrew and he was in my grade, but only because he had been held back, twice.

The three of us were still in elementary at the time, so we still had recess. That particular recess had been awful for me. Andrew grabbed me by the neck of my shirt and pushed me up against the back of the slide and started to taunt me.

"Why'd you be so clumsy all the time?" he sneered, "did you run into a pole, its okay I understand how stupid you can be sometimes."

Sarah had been watching from behind the nearby climbing wall, but she was usually to timid and powerless to stand up against Andrew, but that day it didn't stop her from standing up for a friend.

"Leave her alone!" Sarah screeched suddenly. "You have no right to hurt her more than she has already has," Sarah said bodily as I looked on in fear that he would hurt her as well.

Andrew whirled around in surprise, "Oh yeah. Who's stopin' me?" he lamely objected.

Sarah's eyes gleamed with the light of a new idea "I will, and if you ask me I think you ran into a pole when you were a toddler yourself," she had to stifled a little laugh, "that would explain a lot."

I finally understood what Sarah was doing, Andrew had never been given a taste of his own medicine, and he had never been stood up by from a small, quiet, shy girl before. This apparently surprised him beyond all odds.

"Fine then you little runt, I'll let you have your stupid friend back, but never cross my path again, you understand," Andrew hissed menacingly as I slowly step forward from where I had been pushed up against the slide.

With that, the playground bully was gone, and he never came back, all thanks to my best friend.

"Lightning, you could go look for some food in the woods, there has to be some leaves or berries we could eat," Brianna's voice snapped me back to reality.