Hometown Heroes; National Nobodies (An All Time Low fanfic)

Chapter 14: Creek

The doorbell rang ten minutes later and I invited Jack and Alex into my house. They've only been in here 2, maybe 3 times for five minutes or something.

"Hey, what's planned?" Jack asked, excitedly.

"Well, we're going to the creek in the woods and were going to wade and catch frogs and stuff." I saw Alex's expression change, I couldn't tell if it was good or bad though, "I mean, if you want..."

"No, I'd love to." Alex said smiling and looking at all the things in my house. "How long have you lived here, this place has been here for a while."

"Ever since I was born. My mom had it since she was in college but..." I trailed off, hoping he wouldn't notice. He looked at me as if he already knew.

"Cool, so lets see this creek."

I walked them through my crackerbox house, and out the backdoor. We walked to the back of my yard where the woods began. Usually, people would associate woods with creepy places crawling with spiders and what not but these woods were completely accepting and truely felt like a home away from home. 

My barefeet touched the cool grass and dirt as we made our way to the creek, the sounds of bullfrogs and birds echoing off the trees. Jack and Alex seemed to be enjoying it as well.

"Wow, this is so cool." Jack said, jumping into the creek. "I could stay here all day!" 

"I could stay here my whole life!" I joined, jumping in too, my shorts and t-shirt already soaking up creek water. The water was clear, aside from mud kicked up recently, waterbugs glided on the surface and Jack and I hurried to catch one.

"I got one!" Jack called.

"Really? First try?" I shuffled myself over to see. 

"Well, it's been a while but, yeah." I saw a frog and decided to try and catch it.

Jumping for the frog broke the silence and catching it gave me attention from the two, the whole "Not afraid to get a little dirty" thing. I noticed Alex still hasn't even got in the water yet.

"Alex, come in!" I said, holding up my frog like a trophy. "It's fun!"

"Ah..." he looked uncertain, but then Jack pulled him in and he fell ontop of Jack. Awww- "WHAT THE HELL MAN?!" 

"Come on, Alex! Have some fun! Loosen up!" Jack lauged it off like it was nothing.

"No! I told you, I didn't wanna come in the first place." He walked out of the creek and back out of the woods. 

"Woah, ok. What was that all about?" I asked.

"Nothing, he can uhh... he can be a dick sometimes..." He trailed off and we sat in the creek for a few minutes, left in serenity and solitude.

"You uh... wanna go wading upstream?" I asked breaking the silence, standing up.

"Sure." we started walking and I guess I hadn't noticed, I started humming I'll Paint You Wings and Jack joined in, I guess to make fun of me but aparently the continuation told me that wasn't the case.

What seemed like an hour passed by and it was getting dark. We were in a part of the creek that I wasn't even aware of. We headed back and through the journey, there and back, we caught all kinds of bugs and frogs and it felt great anytime I was with Jack. He was like an older brother that would watch over me and protect me and have fun every once in a while.

We got back to my house, and exited the tall, welcoming, protecting trees and we got towels and dried off. My dad was sitting at the dinner table reading the newspaper and cutting out articles as usual. 

"Hey guys! How was the creek?" he asked.

Jack answered, to my surprise, "It was really nice out, we caught a bunch of frogs and stuff, it was so cool." He sounded like an eight year old.

"Nice. Wheres Alex?" 

"Uh..." We both looked at eachother.

"He came with us but then left because he felt tired and sick." I lied. "I'm going to walk Jack back to hus house and I'll be back in a few, Dad."

Jack laughed, "You don't need to do that, I'm fine by myself. Thanks for showing me the creek." Without another word, he walked out the front door and back to his house