The Brink of Insanity

In the Woods

"Well, that didn't work," Milo sighed.

"No duh, Sherlock," Simone said from behind us.

I'll admit I jumped a little, but I wasn't exactly expecting Cara's younger sister to a) appear out of nowhere and b) be able to speak in complete sentences.

"Where did you come from?" I asked.

"Yeah, Burnt Sienna? Where?" Milo continued.

Milo had told me that Simone's hair color was an exact match to the Burnt Sienna crayon, and I decided to take his word for it. To me, Simone's hair just looked auburn.

Simone blinked. "I'll tell you if you can tell me the square root of a negative number. Deal?"

"Deal," I nodded confidently. "The square root of a negative number is imaginary. Now where were you?"

"I don't have to tell you anything," Simone smirked. "We didn't shake on it. Deals don't count if you don't shake on it."

"Seriously?" Milo sighed. "That's not fair!"

Simone stuck her tongue out. Not very mature for a girl who can recite the first thousand digits of pi. "Life's not fair," she scowled. "Also," Simone added thoughtfully. "You were correct about the square root of a negative. Have fun in the mud."

"What's her problem?" Milo wondered aloud as Simone walked back into the woods. "Like, does she know she's being annoying so she purposely flaunts it, or is she so socially unaware that she doesn't know what she's doing?"

"Honestly," I sighed. "I don't even know which is worse."

"Where are we gonna go next?" Milo asked me. "I mean, I've been locked out of my own house, and you can't go to yours, so..."

I thought about it for a second or two. "Let's follow Simone. She's got to be hiding something, and she's so annoying her secrets deserve to be exposed."

"I'm cool with that," Milo said, hopping on his bike.

We rode a bit farther than the edge of the woods and dropped our bikes. They were of no use in these thick trees.

"Where'd you think Simone went?" I asked Milo.

He shrugged. "I dunno. It can't be that hard to find a burnt sienna girl, can it?"

"It's Autumn. Her hair probably just blends in with the trees."

"Well, she's got to make a noise at some point, right?"

"Maybe she's a ghost.Or just really good at being silent."

"True. I didn't hear her talk until Fourth Grade."

"It would be funny if she were right behind us."

Milo and I turned around.

Shockingly, Simone was not there.

"Huh," Milo said, defeated. "I guess we'll have to actually look now." Milo glanced above him, like Simone could be hiding in a tree above us or something.

Thanks to the new watch I had gotten for my birthday, I could tell that we had 15 minutes before my mom expected me to be home. That wasn't a lot of time, but I could work with it.

We wandered alongside a ditch that would fill up with water in the Spring from melting snow, but Simone must have gone off that path.

None of the kids we knew would go off the ditch-path, because when we were in Second Grade, Audrey Bennet meandered away and got lost for hours. She was only discovered when her brother called her cell-phone to ask where she was. Audrey was okay, but that didn't stop the adults from installing a fear of straying from the ditch-path.

We reached the end of the ditch when Milo stopped and looked at me. "I'm not going any farther. Burnt Sienna could die for all I care."

I shrugged. "I need to get home anyway."

We ran back to our bikes, still with no sign of Simone.

Maybe she got lost, like Audrey Bennet.

It was a normal bike ride home. Milo braked at his house as I sped onto mine, not that far away. There was an interesting space between me and Milo's houses. It was too far to walk, but too short of a distance to drive. That was probably why my mom got me a bicycle in the first place.

Speaking of my mom, I was hoping against hope that she wouldn't be home. I was technically supposed to be at our house five minutes ago, but it took longer to get out of the woods than I had originally intended, most likely because Milo walked a lot slower than I did.

I opened the door to my house quietly, but there was no point. The way my house was set up, you could see directly from the kitchen to the front door, and my mom was in the kitchen.

"MAXWELL LUCAS JEFFERSON, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" my mother yelled.

Yup, that's my name. Maxwell is stupid though, so everybody just calls me Max. Well, everybody except Miss Burnt Sienna herself, Simone Dowtin, who insisted on calling me Maxwell.

I dunno, Simone is weird like that.

"I was with Milo," I told my mom. "We were outside, in the forest."

"You should have been home ten minutes ago!" she cried.

"Five," I corrected automatically.

That was a bad idea.

"You are going to your room, and not coming out until I say so," my mom demanded.

I walked upstairs and flopped down on my bed. This day was not going as planned.