Beating Hearts Flower

The Incident

In the summer of twenty fourteen, my friend Hannah came to town. Since I had last seen her she looked more grown-up. At the time we were eleven or twelve so looking even a little bit more grown-up was unheard of. She had short brown hair, a few zits, and a leadership aura. She was still shorter than me and our friend Liv though. My friend Liv had blonde hair and was a little bit taller than me, though she was a day younger than me.

We all hung out for the entire day when she came to town. We walked around town and talked about how much we had missed each other. I lived in the town over from Liv's town, and Hannah lived a couple of hundred miles from us. I was electric that Hannah was in town because we had been friends since the third grade but she moved away in the fifth grade. We didn't want to go home but the sun was setting so we said our goodbyes and walked back to our houses.

We loved seeing each other and Hannah was only in town for a few days. We didn't want to waste any time so we video called all night. The next day we hung out around one thirty but Liv's dad was the worst, more on him later. Anyways they had to go back thirty minutes early. We didn't want it to end, but I didn't want them to get in trouble so I said goodbye once again and walked home.

As I walked home I thought about how we could maybe stretch the day tomorrow. I couldn't come up with anything, but later around nine-thirty Liv texted me. The text was asking me if I wanted to sneak out, me being an irrational twelve-year-old said yes.

Before I left for the "sneak out" I told my grandma I was going to study with Hannah and Liv. My grandma's response was a surprise to me. She said, "Okay no twelve-year-old would want to study at ten pm, so have fun on your sneak out". "I-" my grandma cut me off "shoo I never saw or said a thing". Secretly she was worried but I wasn't and that's what mattered to me.

As I left I got a call from Liv, all she said was that they had just gotten out of Liv's window. I walked past the town's firehouse and one of my old friend's houses. From there I ran behind a wall to hide from the police department. I rushed over the bridge in perfect view of the police department. From there I took the side path to another bridge and went down Liv's street. I hid in between her parent's cars and waited from there. They walked out the front gate and we met up.

Liv was extremely paranoid but besides that, we were having a lot of fun. Liv's dad was a hunter and an ex-navy officer or something like that. Because of her dad, she knew to ask for the name and badge number of an officer if one stopped us. That night I wore all black and so did they so we looked kind of suspicious.

There were a lot of close calls but Liv had done these types of things before, so we didn't get caught, yet. We ran past the police department and headed back to my grandma's. We snuck in through the poorly made fence. We thought to spin the bottle would've been fun. Being the age we were we backed out before every kiss so the game was done quick.

We snuck back through the fence and left. We passed the old ugly lime house that we thought was haunted, the house with the cool stump outside, and the house that the sweet old lunch lady lived in. We thought it would be scary for me to walk back home alone so we started to head back to my grandma's so they'd get a ride back. We saw a car, but we knew it saw us so we walked casually.

The car pulled up next to us and we saw words on the side, the words read " sheriff".  He said "do you know what time it is" before I could respond Liv said, "around tenish, I think". "No, it's eleven, nearly twelve" before Hannah could defend us Liv said, "oh well is that past curfew because he was just walking us home". "well where do you live" again before I could respond Liv said, "his grandma lives just down the street". "I was asking him, and I asked HIM where he lives" I finally got the chance to speak "I live in the town over from here but I'm staying with grandma". "who does live-out here then" Hannah didn't respond but she pointed at Liv. "Well what's your name then" Liv responded "my name is destiny, well I go by destiny" she paused "in front of friends". "stop playing with me here what is your name!" Being slightly fearful I blurted "Olivia". "Okay well what is your address Oliviahh," we all thought he was intoxicated but Liv responded, "oh, um I don't know". "How long have you lived here then" Liv answered "all of my life". " I'm taking you back to your grandma's with the girls," Liv said immediately "I'm not comfortable in a cop car". "well then get comfortable" I responded after a silence "can you just follow us back". He responded with a nod and we started walking.

As we started walking I asked Liv "what do we do now" her response was "I don't know". We kept walking and he turned on his flashers, I think it was like a walk of shame thing. He spoke to my grandma and told her to talk to Liv's parents which she couldn't do but again more on that later. When we got in the car I asked Liv if she was an idiot, but I didn't get a response, and the car ride from there was completely silent.

The next day Liv kept texting me but I didn't respond because I was really mad at her. Not only for lying but for not letting any of us talk. I didn't speak to her for a while after that, she was always dragging me into her drama, and I couldn't imagine how much worse it would get.