Aythea

My Almost (Accidental) Death

Jeremy

"Jeremy! Are you ready yet?" My dad yells from the living room.

"Almost, one sec Dad!" I quickly pulled my shoes on, grabbed my backpack, and met my dad by the front door.

"Alrighty, let's get going. Your siblings are already waiting in the car."

I nodded and headed to the car. As I stepped into the car, Penny and Alder were arguing in the backseat about Penny's stuffed animal.

"Hey, you two need to take it down a notch, please. You're being way too loud." I shouted so they could hear me.

Penny whines, "Alder was making fun of my best friend Randy and hurting his feelings!"

Alder groaned. "Randy isn't even real! He's imaginary!"

"Yes, he is! He's right there!" Penny shouted back and pointed at the seat next to her.

My dad opened his door and sat down. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's all the shouting for?" He turned in his seat to see what was going on himself.

My two siblings continued arguing but decided it would be better for my dad to resolve the issue. While he settled things with my siblings, my mind wandered elsewhere, we left the driveway.

Leaning my arm against the window and looking out, still surprised about Eidri inviting me over again. I figured she didn't want to hang around me, as she'd avoided every encounter with me possible. On top of that, she refused to talk about anything but school in history. Which kind of makes sense for her, but at the same time when she shot down anything else - mainly any mention of Aythea - I decided she just didn't like me.

Then when I got her text about coming over, all I could feel is excitement. I knew it meant a chance to visit Aythea again, as well as figure out why she was avoiding me so much.

My thoughts shifted and I noticed a drastic change from cityscape to nature surrounding us on all sides. The houses disappeared and trees replaced the view outside as my dad drove on to the outskirts of the city. Even though this part of town has always been here, I never had been here before I met Eidri. If anything it was only driving through for a trip, but I couldn't recall even that.

I'd never really taken the time to look around either, the few times we had driven through here. Surprisingly the view was quite nice, kind of relaxing even. Through the trees you could see the occasional house, disappearing nearly as quickly as it showed up. It was quiet and calm, unlike in the city where I lived.

Out of the blue, I was torn from my thoughts.

"Jay."

Shaking my head, I turned. "Huh?"

"Did you hear what I said?" My dad asked.

"Umm... nope. Could you please repeat it?"

I was saying that you'll be at Eidri's for the remainder of the day. I have other things to do that may take a while, so I'll probably pick you up around 9 o'clock tonight, got it?"

"Oh, got it. Thanks, Dad."

"No problem." He didn't say anything for a minute then continued. "How far have you guys gotten along on the project?"

"We have all the actual info we need. Now we have to put it on one of those tri-fold project things."

"You mean a display board?"

"Yeah! That thing. Eidri's pretty spot on about all that detail stuff, so we have a pretty good handle on the project."

"That's good to hear, I'm glad things are coming along well."