Hush, Little Baby

Chapter 4-Violent Little Squirrels

Chapter 4-Violent Little Squirrels

Kale

"Dude! What happened? All I saw was you running away as if you had seen a ghost!" said Theo.

"What do you mean 'What happened'? It unfolded right in front of you guys," Garret mumbled frantically. His eyes darted back and forth between us and Nikki. It seemed as if he was afraid that she heard.

"I think you're delousional, Garret. She turned around and smiled at us for an awkward few seconds then you started mumbling gibberish and ran off. She went to see if you were okay. When you guys came back, she looked mad and gave us that whole speech. What'd you do, man?" I asked.

"Oh my g-" he began.

"No saying the Lord's name in vain while I'm around!" Nikki cut in without glancing back at us. All four of us jumped. She was a good 10 feet away from us and we had been whispering. How was she doing it?

Garret stared doing wild motions instead of talking. We all gave him a "Really?" look and turned away. We'd discuss this later. We continued on while dead leaves and twigs snapped and crunched under us.

Without warning, Nikki froze in front of us causing all four of us to crash into her. "What the..." Theo said. Nikki threw a hand on Theo's face without looking back.

"Don't make any noise," she hissed.

A rustle in the bush next to us made us all turn to stare at it. Curiousity at just what this thing was over-whelmed me and I took a step around Nikki and carefully stepped toward the bush. "Don't take a step closer, you'll just take a step closer to your death and then I'll have to save you," she warned in a whisper behind me. I rolled my eyes.

"Whatever." I whispered back, "That was a very major exaggeration. Don't worry you guys. It's probably just a squir-"

A small blur of silver shot out of the bush, aimed right for me. Suddenly, the object froze in front of me. A dagger. It was caught right in the air a few milimeters from my eye. The sharp point of it stared at me viciously. Nikki had suddenly appeared beside me and caught the dagger before it had hit me.

"I warned you didn't I? I never exaggerate," she said. "Now run all of you!"

We all started dashing down the path after Nikki. "I should have let it hit you, Kale!" she huffed to me as we started catching up to her. "They would've left the rest of us alone if you had died."

"What? WHY?" I yelled.

"Well, I think they think you are arrogant. They're probably right."

"They want to kill me because of that?!"

"Yep. There are out here because of arrogant people."

A blur circled around us forcing us to stop where we were. I abruptly stopped right behind Nikki. A girl was right in front of us. Wait, a girl? She's the one who's been giving us all this trouble?

"Wow. Sexist aren't we, Kale?" Nikki whispered to me still staring at the girl. I turned my gaze from the girl to Nikki. Did she just read my thoughts? I didn't say that out loud!

Nikki stepped forward from our group huddle towards the girl. The girl had long, wavy, brunette hair and brown eyes. She looked about our age, but she had some kind of ominous, mysterious feeling to her. Nikki turned her head to us.

"I'm going to talk to her, but don't do anything to offend her... you know what? Don't do anything at all. She won't show any emotion, but when you see she's angry, run."

She turned her head back towards the girl. "If she doesn't show emotion, how are we going to know when she's angry?" I called out to her.

She stopped and turned her whole body to our huddled group. "Trust me, you all will know," she told us solemnly. She quickly twirled around and darted to the girl. This wasn't going to end well.