Hurricane Love

Twenty Five

'Are you girls sure you have everything you need?' Mrs Baker asked us, as we pulled our bags from the boot of her car and giggled.

'Mum, you've asked us that a hundred times,' Abbie replied. 'We have everything; I made a to-do list.'

'Of course you did,' Mrs Baker chuckled, kissing her daughter on the forehead before they hugged. 'Come here, Amelia.'

I laughed as I stepped into her open arms and gave her a quick hug, thanking her once more for driving us.

'Make sure to text me regularly,' Mrs Baker said, as she climbed back into the car.

'I will, Mum!' Abbie called, as Mrs Baker closed the door and waved out of the window before pulling away. 'I love you!'

'Well then,' I said, exhaling. 'Let's head for the pitch that Cassie texted to me and find the others.'

Grabbing our things and hoisting them over our shoulders, we headed up the winding footpath, surrounded by trees. The campsite was actually a huge forest that had small pitch areas stationed throughout it for groups to set up camp in. Cassie had sent me a text with the site we were staying at and now we just had to trek through the forest and find it.

I was looking forward to a weekend away with a large group of people from school. Now that Cassie and I had seemed to make amends, I was actually pretty curious of how she and I would be and I was hopeful that it was going to turn out okay with her now being so nice to me.

I was also really hoping that Ryker had agreed to go with Mason. I'd planned to ask him about it at school but after our conversation in the girls bathroom that day, he hadn't spoken to me much. I had seen him in our shared classes but he seemed to keep his eyes on the teacher and not make much of a glance at me and at the end of the hour, he left the class quickly and wasn't around campus much of the time other than that.

It was obvious he was avoiding me on purpose and I had no idea why but at the same time, I wasn't feeling anything other than used to it; it was Ryker and I knew that if he was here this weekend, I could find out what was up.

On the other hand, I was not looking forward to spending the weekend with Mason. After the chaos in the pizza parlour, I couldn't deal with another repetitive conversation with him vowing I would eventually go back to him. I was pretty convinced at this point that that was not going to happen, as much as it did sadden me a little to think that way.

'God, I hope it's close, these are getting heavy,' Abbie said, breathing heavily.

'We just passed a signpost for D13 and we are D21, so, I'm sure it's not far,' I said.

After receiving our invite to go camping, Abbie and I had borrowed a load of stuff from her father, including a tent that was just big enough for the two of us to share. We had our sleeping bags and backpacks full of drinks and snacks and one other large duffel bag each with our clothing and shoes. I had also snuck some bottles of vodka from Stan's locked cabinet in the dining room; after stealing from it for all of these years, Stan would hide the key in a new place every time I did, and every time he did so, I always found it. This time, it had been underneath a candle on the side table and it amused me to picture his face when he realised that I'd re-hid the key in a totally different place.

'Oh, there's D19!' Abbie cried.

'And that's D20 on the opposite side,' I said. 'So that next post should be D21.'

We kept walking until we finally were able to read the signpost ahead and confirming it was D21, we headed off the footpath into the trees, moving through them carefully until we could finally hear laughter and voices.