An Open Sky

Chapter Fourteen ~Alexa~

I had until three-thirty to do whatever I wanted. It was getting warm, so there was actually some excitement associated with the thought of swimming with Jay. Three-thirty couldn’t come any slower. As my eyes watched each second tick by, I was considering the increase of time between each one. Until my phone confirmed the time, that is.  

                I decided to go read. I grabbed the book that I’d been reading for years now, and walked downstairs. I pulled open the patio door and stepped out onto the warm deck. I let the heat heal the bottoms of my aching feet; I let it seep into me.  The sun was just coming up above the trees, finding itself alone in the sky today, no clouds to accompany it, no storms to bellow at it. It was just the sun. Jay was right; it is getting warm. I made my escape down the deck and stepped carefully into the trees. The grass was cool under my toes. I kept walking through the trees. I scanned each one, taking in the individuality of them. They were similar to people: all the same, but yet so different, so many kinds…I slid down next to the largest tree I could find where my house was still clearly visible.  

                I opened the book, which was reluctant to obey, and creased the first page. Leaving the book open, I leaned my head back against the tree and closed my eyes. Even though I was hidden by the trees, the backs of my eyelids were bright with light. I opened them to find that I was staring into the bright blue sky. There was an opening in the trees above me. No branches to block out the light. This would be a great place to watch the stars, I thought.  

                I looked back to my book to find a fairly large spider crawling over the page. Normally, I would have pretended it was going to kill me or something and run away screaming to put on an act for my friends, to show them that I really was one of them, but no one was here now. I watched it move each leg slower than the last until it came to rest on the middle of the page.  I didn’t get what made them so scary. It was just another living thing trying to find a way in the same world we were. In a way, it was just like us. It’s just small, and has eight legs.

                Suddenly, there was a loud thud that came from behind me, and a sigh that followed. I turned to find Creeper Boy leaning up against the side of the tree. The sudden sight of him being right there pushed a scream out of me and sent my book, spider and all, flying through the air.

                His head flashed toward me a second before he screamed and lost his backing on the tree. He crashed into the branches that were behind him before landing on the ground. I sat there for a few moments, not knowing if I should run or go to help him. My curiosity got the best of me. I stood, holding onto the tree as I peeked my head around the thick trunk. His body was blocked by the branches that he’d broken through, but his mud-coated shoes were only inches from mine.

                I cautiously took another step towards him to find him sitting there trying to pull himself back on his feet with a branch. His long blonde hair was the same as I’d seen him before. He looked up at me as I made my way to him. He stopped struggling to pull himself up and focused completely on looking at me. It was like he was frozen. That’s when I noticed them: his eyes. I couldn’t move my gaze from them. They were as green as the pines around us. The beautiful green that had captured me, just like the woods surrounding us, was surrounded by a circle of red. He was tired, exhausted. There was something else that was red covering him. It was blurred out of my focus of vision, because I couldn’t break the intent look we had on each other.

                My intent was to shift my gaze for only a second, but as soon as I saw the blood, that second turned to a minute. He abruptly turned his head away from me to block the cuts on his face. I could tell he was uncomfortable. His cheeks started to bloom a bright pink and he was fixated on the ground. His sweatshirt was gone, revealing a loose-fitted shirt baring the name of a band that I didn’t recognize. His jeans were torn at the knee and the ends by his dirt-caked shoes were worn to threads. There was dirt and small pieces of bark covering his arms from his fall.