Forget-Me-Not

Chapter VII: Runaway

The morning sunlight was lighting up the vast field of carabao grasses, with the rays being reflected by the dews that had formed on the green carpet stretching miles and miles away. The cool breeze sweeping over the area and travelling to the smallest spaces was overwhelming the warmth of the sun. Even so, that was the least of her worries as Phoebe focused on reaching the Calabur tree where she and Raine were supposed to meet up.

The moment she emerged from the line of trees and tall bushes, she immediately caught glimpse of the guy standing beside the tree with his back facing her as he waited patiently. She jogged down the dirt path until she reached his side, the guy looked over his shoulder and stretched his lips into a smile.

"Hey, have you been here for a while?", Phoebe asked with concern, knowing that the time wouldn't be 7:30 anytime yet.

The guy answered casually. "Nope, I just got here too."

She nodded as she stared down her shoes. "How did you slip off your brother's tight security?"

The guy squeaked a very slight laugh. "Ahh... well, it's Friday so Ray's schedule is quite hectic. He left earlier and he won't be back until dusk."

Phoebe vanquished her restlessness after hearing that. "So... we just have to be back before nightfall, right?"

Raine nodded joyfully. "Yeah"

Phoebe had to admit that she really felt like she was kidnapping a child in the setup they'd been put in, well except that the child actually stood 5'11. She kept telling herself that she was also doing this for Raine to at least make him experience the things he should have experienced when he was still a teenager. It was too late for that in his age now, she knew that, but she didn't have the heart to just leave it like that.

Why would she bother herself so much when she'd never wanted to do these things in the first place? As the point of fact, she'd never had social life herself. What was the real deal? Did she even know anything about socialization? Even if you asked those to the girl, she wouldn't be able to come up with a sane answer for she herself didn't know why.

Phoebe had this classmate who used to nag her whenever she had time to spare. She kept telling her things about life, about herself, about her ambitions which Phoebe never really had interest in because she didn't know her in the first place and she didn't really care about other people's businesses.

She understood the sole intention of the girl, she wanted to become friends with her, it wasn't that she didn't have friends, well in fact she had bunch of them since she was a cheerful one and that could attract people, but maybe she just wanted to pull her out of her comfort zone despite Phoebe being so resistant. What is her name again? It was Zerene, as she recalled.

The two walked together without exact destination in mind. They passed through the tall bushes and crossed the line of trees along the way until they reached the pavement that stretched to all the houses located in the area. They just continued walking in a constant pace while staring down the identical houses on either side. Phoebe realized something, if there were two things that distinguished each of them from one another, it would be the cleanliness and creativity which depended on the owner of course. Some had well-kept garden in front, some didn't, some had fancy decorations, and some didn't. If she was to evaluate their own house, she could proudly say it had both sense of cleanliness and creativity for her mom and dad were a perfectionist couple made in heaven. Now it would make sense if she said she had inherited that attitude from them.

Phoebe glanced at Raine, the guy was silent with his eyes fixed straight ahead. She decided to start a chitchat, partly because she wanted an assurance that the guy was doing fine, and because she was worrying about herself getting a stale saliva.