Who's Laughing Now?

1

     "Once upon a time..." Lewis whispered, swinging the flashlight around. "There was a banana peel and...." He dropped the flashlight onto the ground. "I don't know what happened after that."

     "Boo!" Ari called. "That was the worst story I heard all day." Lewis glared at her, crossing his arms.

    "It's not like you can do any better!!" he shouted back.

     "Guys, guys, let's not argue now!" Tori, suggested standing up. "We're in the middle of nowhere, and Layla over here is having a mid-life crisis!!" 

     "She's always having some mid-life crisis," Seth spoke. "Nothing new- OW!!" Layla hit him in the head.

     "Seth, stop it!!" she cried out. "My parents are going to kill me." Layla tugged on her hair in panic.

     "Why are you upset? You're the one who got us all stuck out here thinking that you found some stupid new invention that we ended up not finding," Lewis groaned.

     "And now we don't know our way back! Yay!" Ari cheered apathetically.

     "Can you shut up?" Lewis asked. "Your voice is so annoying!!" Tori let out a deep sigh before turning to her friends.

     "Guys!! You're not helping!!" Tori tried to say over their loud angry voices. "Why can't you just be like Ainsley over there?!" She pointed over at the red haired person sitting on a nearby bench. "Quiet, unbothered and not childish!!" 

      "Unbothered?" Ari repeated. "Ha! They barely even like us. I don't know why you decided to bring them along anyways."

      "Maybe they would if you treated then with respect!" Ari pointed at the empty bench.

      "You scared the weirdo off. Great."

      "Me?" Tori asked surprised. She looked over at the empty bench and sighed.

*     *     *

   Ainsley walked as far away from the crowd as she could to somewhere more quieter to write their book. They were currently sitting behind a large rock writing a mini fantasy story using real life people they knew. Real life people they hated. They included Tori as well, but they didn't hate her. Tori was one of   their good friends. But for the book, they wanted to make all of the characters evil, including themselves. They even drew designs of them each, and made them all look somewhat different. They all had the same personality but just, evil. Their plan was to replace the real people, because they've been living in such an abandoned universe for so long. They want to be out in the real world like they currently are, but without duplicates. So they kill the real ones. But the only catch is, they must kill their duplicate. 

    So far, Ainsley has halfway wrote the story. All of their brainstormed ideas were typed electronically on their laptop at home, so they couldn't get too much written out. So they closed their book to start thinking of an ending for the story since it was coming near. It wasn't that they didn't know how to end it, they just had many possible endings to choose from. Little did they know, Lewis was right behind them and he took a chance to snatch their book.

    "Hey!"

     "Oo, what do we have here?" he asked aloud.

     "There you are! You can't just leave us. We're all lost, so we stick together!!" Ari called out to her, catching up with Lewis.

     "Maybe I don't wanna do that!" Ainsley yelled. "You're all annoying crybabies who never shut their mouths and only care about yourselves!!" Ari was shocked by their sudden outburst. Then, she snatched the book from out of Lewis's hands.

     "Gimme that." She threw the book far out of sight and it fell down the cliff they were on. 

     "Come on guys!!" Ari and Lewis turned their heads. "Seth found a way back!!" Tori called. The two teens ran forward.

     "Ugh, finally!" Tori was going to follow them back but she noticed that  Ainsley was still standing in the exact same spot, frozen.

     "Come on Ainsley, what's wrong?" She walked over to Ainsley and laid a hand on their shoulder.

    "My book!!" Ainsley's eyes began to well in tears. "She threw my book down there!!" Tori looked down at the trees and bushes.

     "Oh...I'm sorry..." Ainsley turned around and kicked the dirt. Before Tori could say anything else, Ainsley shouted aloud.

     "Goddammit!! I wish my story came true!!" They hustled off without Tori. She didn't know how she could help her friend get back their book, so she just followed behind them, feeling bad that there wasn't anything she could do to get I back.