BLACKOUT; JR [1]

4.2

"Sinewy meats, like pig and boar, are the usual diet of panthers." Andy stated, picking up the walking pace. Science Andy was on a mission.

"What?" Jake asked, sporting his usual confused face whenever Andy said something science-y.

"Pork. The panther will go for pork."

"You know a lot of random facts don't you?" Jake said, rather slowly. Don't I know it.

"Excellent fact retention." Andy smiled a proud smile, and we kept on walking. "You think I'm bad? You should hear my dad, he's even better than me!"

"He knows a lot about blimps..." I added, only realising how odd my statement sounded after I'd said it aloud. Andy laughed, because I was right.

"It's so weird how everything is exactly like home, but it's not." Jake said after a moment of silent walking. He seemed sad.

We were kind of always sad. It lingered. 

"It's not just that we've been forgotten, there are whole new lives. Oscar walking, Sam and Sammy, and your mum. It's like a different version of the same reality." Andy said, sighing. Then he stopped walking.

"What?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"You idiot, Andy! That's it!" He shouted to himself, smiling widely.

"What now?" Jake asked.

"Wormholes!" Andy yelled in our faces, his smile not faltering. Jake looked at me, just as confused as I was.

"Okay..."

"What the hell is a wormhole?" I asked, internally groaning at the fact that Andy had figured out another thing I couldn't understand.

"Quantum mechanics! Matter can clip between space and time, it's just that in this case, we're the matter, and we're slipping between infinite variations of the same reality!" I stared at Andy, trying to understand what he was trying to tell us. You'd think that I would be able to understand the scientific stuff Andy said, because we were so close, but I've never been very good at science.

"That's the answer!" Andy finished, waiting for a response from either me or Jake.

"Yeah, you lost me at wormholes." Jake shook his head, but Andy just smiled and stared running towards town. Jake shot me a small smile before we both ran after Andy.

We got into town fast, and Andy didn't stop running until he got where he wanted to be. We crept behind a red car, suspiciously eyeing the back door to the Chinese Restaurant. "My family is a well-oiled machine, 8:05 has always been the market run." We waited behind the car, watching Andy's grandmother walk quickly out of the family restaurant, and yelling at her granddaughter to get her purse.

"Yep, it's the same in this reality." Andy smirked as Vivian walked through the back door of the restaurant. 

"Coming!" She snapped, and I couldn't help but notice she didn't have the purse. She looked extremely different to what I was used to. She was wearing stockings with her school uniform, and her skirt was shorter than she would have approved of if she was the real Vivian.

I'm pretty sure I cringed, because Andy nodded when he looked at me.

"Wormhole weirdness." He said quietly as she returned to her grandmother. We waited a minute or so, just to be sure they were gone, before getting up and unlocking the back door. "I hope my key still works." Andy said before he successfully opened the door.

Once inside, Andy went straight for the area of the kitchen where they kept meat. Jake and I lingered around the benches, not really knowing what Andy wanted us to do.

"Give me a hand with this." Andy said, returning to our sights with a very large piece of meat on an even bigger hook.

"Food first." Jake said, not moving as I went to help Andy. We placed the meat on one of the benches with a loud bang. It was heavier than it looked. 

Andy gestured to the pantry around the corner, it just had a bunch of canned and dry food in it, but I'm sure Jake won't be complaining. He smiled at us before disappearing around the corner.

Without warning, the back door pushed open and in walked Vivian. Andy and I looked at each other with wide eyes, before he mouthed the word hide and I ran around the corner.

Jake stared at me, bewildered, before I pushed him further into the pantry and shut the door as quietly as I could.

''Pervert!" Vivian screamed, then a loud bang of metal against metal could be heard.

"Get away from me you maniac!" Andy retorted, before his grandmother started shouting.

Within the next ten minutes, Jake and I were silent and intently listening to what was being said from beyond the door of the pantry. I was standing at the door, as Jake was seated on a small stool in the middle of the very small room. I heard Andy's dad shouting at his son, Andy and his sister fighting, but I couldn't really make out what they were saying.

Jake stood up and opened the door slightly, letting Andy's words echo in from around the corner. He was talking about wormholes again, and I shut the door. Jake looked at me in confusion, and I gestured for him to move out of the way. There was a large bucket of prawn crackers next to the door, and Jake stole some as I fetched other snacks.

I stood on the stool to reach one of the higher shelves, and snatched a bag of fortune cookies from the back of the shelf. I nearly couldn't see them, the lighting was so bad in here. I threw the packet at Jake as I hopped down from the stool.

"How did you know where these were?" He asked, slightly dumbfounded.

"I work here sometimes, when it's busy."

Jake nodded and resumed his seat on the stool as I was too anxious to sit down. Being locked in a food cupboard with Jake Riles, wasn't exactly very calming.

He opened his fortune cookie, and I waited to hear this famous fortune.

"Stick to the path." He murmured quietly, turning the small paper over. "Or suffer what comes." He scoffed, and I rolled my eyes. "Too late for that. What does yours say?" He asked, eating the cookie and laying the fortune on his knee.

I cracked my cookie open, and scanned my eyes over the words on the paper. "Open your eyes." I flipped it over. "Or you will miss out." I looked at Jake, hoping he understood better than I did. "Zero sense. Why does yours make sense and mine doesn't?" He shrugged, smirking at me.

"Maybe it does make sense, you just need time to understand." Jake said, standing up. Suddenly, the atmosphere changed completely and my mouth grew dry. "You know, I heard these things never lie." He said quietly, staring at me with a fondness I hadn't seen in him since the day we woke up in the forest. "I think I get it." He said lowly, his face now inches from mine.

Jake moved slightly, and that movement sent a small metal bowl to fall to the ground and create a loud crashing sound. It startled Jake and I so much, we jumped a foot away from each other.

"Crap." I mumbled, staring at him with wide eyes. He reached past me, picking up the entire bucket of prawn crackers and opened the door.

"Just run behind me." Jake said, a sense of adventure in his eyes. He ran out the door with me hot on his tail, and as we rounded the corner, he threw prawn chips all over Andy's startled family.

"Run, run, run!"

Andy was the first to run out the door, and I was the last, but we didn't stop running until we got into the forest.