New Home, New Adventures

Chapter III

At first I wondered how we were going to climb up Erin's roof to what was on the other side of the incline, but I just followed his lead. He walked around the side of the window's outcropping and climbed up the side of it, up on top of the window, calmly walked across it to the center of his roof, I noticed as he walked over more to the other side of his house along the peak that the peak actually was actually flat, about half a foot wide. When he was quite a ways away, he finally turned to me.

"Hey, c'mon!" He called "It's not too hard, just do what I did!" And so there I was, in a totally dangerous situation where I didn't dare look down. I walked around the side of the window, and place my hands up on top, hoisting myself up and onto the window where there was another flat peak. After a quick moment, I began to crawl across to the center of the roof.

I finally caught up to Erin who was just sitting casually, dangling his legs over the side of the house towards the road. I sat down beside him and was amazed at what I saw "Wow! You can see everything from up here!" The sky was a nice blue cloudless sky, and the sun was nearing the horizon but not causing the skies to blaze yet.

"Yeah, you see that school over there? That's where we'll be going for highschool." He said, pointing about four blocks away. "Over there is the grocery store.." He pointed to our right, more closer to the downtown area. "Yeah, I've explored all over these suburbs. Some pretty cool things I've seen, too. I could show you some time."

I was starting to think this was the beginning of something, I could feel the potential for the shenanigans in this town. I couldn't wait.

Erin got up and walked a little farther, then sat on his butt and slid down the other side of the roof. I followed and I finally saw our mission objective.

It was a haphazardly built little platform made of wood planks, but there were also some bricks laying around, with some making a broken apart wall at the front of the balcony. On the platform was a table made out of a cardboard box, a foldable lawn chair, and a portable miniature telescope that sat propped up. It pointed towards the forest that laid beyond the meadow behind Erin's house. Why was it pointed at the forest?

The forest was all trees that were light brown and held little to no leaves, and what were there seemed to boast autumn colors. "This platform is made on top of an old chimney that was here. We tore down the top part of it a couple years ago, and a bit more than a year ago I made this. I've always liked being up here. The wind around me and open air, it makes me feel free." He breathed in and sighed. "My parents used to worry themselves sick of me being up here, but after so long they calmed down."

"Life here seems pretty interesting. Back in my old city, it was really boring and nothing really happened." It was mostly where businessmen had office jobs, and no life. Like I said, grey town. "Why are the trees already autumn colored?" In place of the lack of leaves on branches, there were thousands on the ground, like a sea of flames.

"No one really knows, it's just a really rare type of tree that grows everywhere here. They're called alderlies, don't get it mixed with alders." He says. Huh, strange yet..

"Cool! I'm guessing that's why the town is named Alderly?"

"You got it. So anyways, there has been weird glowing coming from the desert out past the forest and I want to figure out what's happening. I assume I'm the only one who knows this since you can't see the desert from ground level or a second floor." He explains.

"I noticed it one night when I was looking through my telescope at the stars. There was a weird greenish-blue glow out there, I've told some friends but they don't believe me. I guess it has to do with when I tell them other crazy stories, but that's just for fun." He continues "I've been meaning to go out there one night and find out what's going on, but I haven't had the chance."

"Maybe we could go together and find out what's going on."