The Woods At Night

Chapter 3

When I get home mom is busy talking to some people I haven't met yet, I sneak by to avoid being dragged into a boring adult conversation and head up to my room. When I plug my phone back in I decide to make a new account on Instagram since I keep getting more and more messages and its getting harder to ignore it. I make sure I only tell Vivian that I have a new account and I tell her not to let anyone else know about it. When I'm done I set my phone down and go back downstairs to get something to eat since I didn't have lunch.
I can overhear the conversation happening in the other room although I'm not really paying attention to it, until I hear someone say
"be careful not to let your kid out into the woods, there's something strange happening in those woods. Something, other worldly." I don't know why but for some reason this strange sentence piqued my interest. Someone else told that person that it was probably just the raccoons, telling my mom she should still be cautious though. I wanted to believe that the first person I heard was crazy but for some reason I couldn't get what they said out of my mind. I went back to my room after my meal and went to sleep.
I wake up to the sound of something tapping at my window. I go and check only to find out it's just a small tree branch. I break the branch off and I'm about to try and go back to bed, until I remember what I hear earlier. My curiosity got the better of me so I climb out the window and start heading into the woods with a flashlight I grabbed on the way out. I don't know where I'm going exactly but I just keep walking in a straight line to try and make sure I can still find my way back. I'm about to start heading back, deciding the person from before is just a crazy conspiracy theorist or something, when I see something move past me from the corner of my eye. I turn around and see a boy who looks to be about my age walking away from me.
"Hey!" I call out to him and he turns around.
"Oh, hiya! I didn't see you there." He greets me in a cheery voice, smiling as he says it. He's got messy brown hair that matches the color of the tree bark behind him, pretty green eyes, sun tanned skin, and a beautiful smile. Basically what I'm saying is he's really handsome.
"What are you doing in the woods at night?" I ask him.
"Couldn't I ask you the same thing?" He asks back.
"I was... curious." I tell him.
"Well if you want to know why I'm out here, you should come with me." He says. "My name's Kai by the way. What should I call you?" He asks as he continues walking again. I start walking with him.
"Pheonix." I say.
"That's an interesting name," he replies, "I like it." He continues. We keep walking and talking about random things until we reach a clearing in the trees surrounded by a nearly perfect circle of nature. There's a big treehouse high up on one of the trees.
"We're here." He states.
"What is this place?" I ask.
"This is the best place to be, I like to hangout here a lot, it's the perfect place to watch the stars and the treehouse has a great view of the woods. Come on, I'll show you." He says, as he starts up the long ladder that leads to the treehouse. So I go up with him and when we get to the top we sit next to each other with our legs hanging off the ledge of a makeshift porch. I look up and see a sky full of stars, I look around at the woods and see a seemingly endless sea of trees that goes on for forever.
"It's beautiful." I tell him. So we stayed there, watching the stars for many hours.

(On the other end of those woods, thousands and thousands of miles away, was boy named Michael, wearing a masquerade costume. He is sitting on the roof of a large, old, abandoned building, watching the same woods and admiring the same constellations.)