The In Between

Chapter four

• Air  fresheners gone too far • 

Ricky

 • October 28 •

Good news - the birds were gone. Bad news - I wasn't dreaming. I had really hoped I would just wake up and not be dead. But that wasn't going to happen, since this has been going on for three days now. If it was a dream, it was the longest dream ever.

When James pushed the boulder out of the entryway of the cavern, sunlight poured through. It was kind of burning my eyeballs. We evacuated the cave and I took a deep breath, the smell of the morning dew filling my nose. It smelt better than that musty cave, mixed with burnt crow.

"We need to make a stop," James said, a distracted look in his eye.

"Why?" I asked him.

"I don't want to die from blood poisoning,"

We walked to the river. My legs were aching and I'm sure james' were worse.

James brought some light down from the rays of sun and started playing with them and wrapping it around his fingers.

We got to the river, it was pretty clear which was good on our part.
James took his undershirt off and rolled up his pants. I avoided my gaze.

"I thought I was the gay one here," he said, glancing over at me.
"You are," I took off my boots and jacket and shirt, and rolled up my jeans. I didn't get as many cuts on me as James did, but there were still a lot on my face.

A sharp gasp drew my focus towards James, who just started to walk in.

"Is it cold?"

"Yeah. And painful."

"For your cuts?"

"Yes, what else except my cuts?" I shot him a look.

He dived in.

"I've noticed something," I said when he came back up.

"Wow, a sentence other than a question. What is it?"

"There's a new disaster each day. The first day, the sundew. The second, the birds."

"Like the hunger games," he said.

"I thought the hunger games were when kids went in an arena to brutally murder each other."

"Yea— have you read the Hunger games?"

"No,"

"Well frickk you then,"

"Wow, thanks." I went into the water.

I resurfaced and caught James looking at me with his weirdly golden eyes.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm trying to figure out how that much stupid can fit inside of you,"
I splashed him.

frickck!" He shouted.

"Stop swearing," I splashed him again.

"Maybe I will if you stop splASHING ME!" He splashed me back, shielding his eyes. Soon it emerged into a full-fledged water fight. He redirected the light to shine in my eyes.

"Stop! Stop! Fine!" I said. "Truce. Truce." He looked at me sceptically. "I swear."

"Fine, god..." his voice trailed off.

"It smells weird," I said. He nodded. I decided to ignore it. "It's probably nothing."

James started violently scrubbing his shirt.