"Pretty girls like you get lost in these woods all the time, Alexa."
On the night of Sebastián's annual Beginning of Summer Bash, amiable and adventurous Melody Tryniski went missing. What might have appeared as a juvenile escapade - a casual incide...
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SEBBY'S SUMMER HOUSE IS packed by the time we arrive.
It's a short distance away, but the house is visible on the end of this curvy path. Some cars loiter around it, parked at aimless angles that prevent other people from parking. Not that any of us do that anyways, we just leave our cars behind and walk through these woods to get to his house. From this distance, I'm able to see a group of idiot drunks hanging out on the front porch, already puking their guts out on the grass and tripping on their own steps. It's truly pathetic.
The party blasts inside with streams of green and purple lights, their constant flicker flashing on the dark green of these woods. The muffled sound of the music shakes its wooden structure and the ground that surrounds it, making my body sway with each step I take. I already feel tipsy as I step on small twigs and branches, but that's the effect of Sebby's parties. They can make me feel drunk without tasting a drop of booze, and he gets me high without smoking a blunt.
"Man, why do we gotta do these parties so far away?" Logan whines, loosening his hold on my hand. "This is some horror movie shit."
Alexa, who's been awfully quiet during our walk, quirks an eyebrow at him. "It's tradition."
"We ain't little kids anymore," Logan says, interlacing his fingers with mine once again. Their voices lower and lower as they continue to talk in front of me, until they become background noise.
The full moon is like a silver lantern on an otherwise empty sky, its reflection shimmering on the flowing waves of the calm riverbank. I tilt my head up at the moon as I walk ahead and it follows after me, some trees and dry branches hiding it from my view. My gaze then settles on its reflection again, where the riverbank gives it a more broken appearance - pieces that float and twist on the water to form abnormal shapes. He says my eyes are like two full moons, icy and gray and mysterious. Dangerously innocent, he always says, you're dangerously innocent.
I like to think that I am.
Trees and bushes pass by in blurry shades of dark green, covering the riverbank that's far behind Sebby's house. I may not see it anymore, but the crashing of water against rocks is loud in the air, a distinct splash that brings me back to my childhood. My body feels as though it's floating on water, where there's only me and the heavy sound of my breath. Everything else is muffled.
As we approach the house, the thing getting bigger and monstrous by the second, I shiver. Sebby's place is right in the middle of a circle of trees, lonesome as it stands tall close to the riverbank. When we step inside this circle, I crane my neck up to look at the round shape made by the heads of the trees and notice the moon hanging right in the middle, showering this obscure part with streams of silver. Now the grass reflects streams of green and purple and silver.
