yay i'm writing again!! please pray for us easterners, the wind is getting quite scary....
love you guys!!! please keep reading!
I followed Elliott up a hill right behind the barn, a bit nervous. I had only met him a few minutes ago, and now he was leading me to some secret location in the pitch black dark.
He turned back to me. "You okay?" He laughed.
"No," I huffed. We started walking again. "I should be back inside. My dad's going to worry about me."
"Okay, see you later." He kept walking on, not even turning around.
I stopped, frowning. Who did he think he was?
Elliott was a far distance in front of me. I decided it might be better to follow him the rest of the way instead of making the terrifying trip in the dark back to the barn and chased after him. "Hey, wait!"
Again, he didn't even look back. "I thought you were going back to the barn." His tone was simple and unaffected.
"Well, I was, but... I changed my mind," I said, trying not to sound like a 'wimp,' as he put it.
"Why? You scared of a little darkness?" He joked.
I didn't answer. Okay, maybe I was a bit scared of the dark.
Elliott waited at the peak of the hill, and I jogged to catch up with him. We stood in front of what appeared to be a tree house. A really old, rickety tree house.
I scoffed. "I am not going up there. It's not safe."
He shrugged. "Mmkay, you can wait out here." He started to walk towards the pile of junk.
I rolled my eyes in frustration and followed him to the ladder. "You're an idiot,"
He didn't answer, but led the way up the unstable ladder, careless step after careless step.
"Aren't you scared it'll like, tip over or something?" I asked, bewildered by his ease at climbing into the decrepit structure.
"I go up here all the time," Elliott answered. "It hasn't let me down yet."
I popped my head into the tree house, and it looked like it definitely was used often. There were a few bean bags strewn about in one corner, some blankets folded neatly and piled on a wooden chair, a couple of board games and books on a shelf, and small candles in little dishes spread about the place. "Nice crib," I muttered.
"Thanks. Decorated it myself." He replied, running his hands through his dark curls. "Sit." He motioned for me to sit in one of the bean bags.
I sat, taking in the home-y atmosphere. Elliott removed a blanket from the chair and tossed it to me.
"Thanks." It felt a bit chilly in the woods despite the humidity from what could have only been the sign of a coming rain.
He took a lighter out of his pocket and lit all the candles to provide some light before sitting down on the chair with a blanket for himself. "So. How was the move?" I was wondering about the lighter. Did he smoke? Was he a pyromaniac or something?
I dismissed the crazy thoughts from my head, as I was probably just being paranoid.
"Awful," I answered truthfully. I was starting to trust him; so far, he didn't seem as sketchy as I assumed he was.
"'Sucks. Do you miss your friends and all?" Elliott inquired.
"Not exactly. I didn't really have many." I stared down at my Converse.
"Hmm," He replied.
It stayed silent for a while, which was making me uncomfortable. The only thing I hated more than pointless small talk was awkward silence. After suffering some more, I spoke up. "So, what about you? You seem to know everything about me but you're still in stranger territory."
He frowned. "I told you, my name's Elliott." He didn't seem to understand that there was more to knowing someone than remembering their name.
"Great to know. But what else? Like... Where do you go to school?" I mentally smacked myself for asking that. I was pretty sure there was only one school in the entire area.
He gave me a look like I was a complete moron . "Same as everybody else."
"Right, yeah... Well, what do you... I don't know, do for fun?" I tried. This wasn't working. Elliott didn't seem like one who liked to share.
He put his hands together and thought for a moment. "Fun stuff."
I sighed. "Like what?"
"I don't know... Stalk newcomers." He joked.
"Ah, just as I suspected." Elliott laughed, and then it was quiet for a bit. "Why did you just come over and talk to me?" I asked, curious.
"You looked like you didn't have anyone to talk to. Neither did I. So I said hello." He shrugged. He did that a lot.
Same answer as before. "Really? That was it?"
He was amused by my interest. "Did you think I wanted to gallop over to you on a white horse and win your affection?" I laughed. "Actually, there were some people that were going to arrive soon. I kind of wanted to meet you first, so you wouldn't... So they wouldn't, like... Make you part of their group." He said that last word bitterly, like it tasted bad in his mouth.
I frowned. "What, are they going to force me to join their cult or something?"
He laughed. "They're almost like... The popular kids of Silverwood." Elliott spoke slowly, like he was choosing his words carefully.
"Oh, so you stole me away to ruin my chances of popularity, huh?" I joked. "Thanks."
"No, no. You just looked like someone who wouldn't belong with, um, with them."
"Is it your decision where I belong, socially?" I asked defensively.
"I'm not saying that. Look, they're just... They're not very good people, and I wanted you to get to know someone else before they tried to get you to-"
"Again, you aren't the judge of me and you don't dictate who I should be hanging out with." I stood up, getting ready to leave. "Maybe I'll just go back down and see for myself if I 'belong' with them."
Elliott stood up as well. "Annie, please stay. I didn't mean to offend you. You're right, I'm not the one who decides who you make friends with." He was desperately trying to keep me there.
I sighed and plopped back down in the bean bag. "Fine, I'll stay."
He sat back in the chair and scratched the back of his head.
"But I wanna know more about these 'popular' people." I smiled.
Elliott didn't. "I don't really have much to tell." I could see he was lying.
"That's not true." I confronted him. "So why can't I be friends with them?"
"Well, that's for you to decide, I guess. But they're just kinda..." He ruffled his curly hair. "They can get you involved in some bad stuff pretty easily." He was still having trouble finding the words to say.
"How would you know?" I inquired.
"I, uh... Well, a few years ago I was in their little 'group.'" Again, the word 'group' was uttered like it didn't belong in his sentence. As if it wasn't fit to describe them. "I just wanted to be popular. They seemed so exclusive, and they were. I had to go through a... A sort of a test, for them to let me hang out with them."
The entire time he told the story, he didn't look at me once.
"They told me to do this... This awful thing. And I wanted to be part of them so badly. They made it seem like if you were allowed to hang out with them, you were almost... Special. Better than anyone else." Elliott was bouncing his knee. "So I did what they asked me to do."
"So? Were you accepted into their 'special group?'" I asked.
"Mmhmm. But I quit."
"Why? You were so desperate to be a part of them."
"Yeah, I was. But I didn't see how... I couldn't tell from the outside what it was really like. These people, they weren't as... They didn't feel so bad about some stuff as others, you could say." He bit his lip and stared intensely at the bookshelf. "I didn't like what they did. I didn't want to be a part of that. It was different on the inside, and I didn't like it. So I quit, and... I could tell people about the things they do, so I guess the threat of their private activities getting out scared them into keeping my initiation act a secret."
It was silent for a few moments. "What did you do? Graffiti something?"
"No," Elliott answered. "No graffiti."
"Well... What was it?"
"I don't want to say. I haven't told anyone." He seemed almost overwhelmed at the memory of what he did.
"Come on. You can tell me, I'm good at keeping secrets." I smiled at him, but his eyes were fixated on the floor now.
"No thanks," His mood seemed to shift quite quickly from lighthearted to anxious and secretive.
"Then at least tell me about the stuff they did. Are they all drug addicts or something?"
A strong gust of wind blew through the window, blowing out all the candles and returning the room to pitch blackness. Rain started to make sploshing noises against the leaves down below and I could tell it was pouring.
"Come on, we should get back to the barn," Elliott shouted over the rain. We threw off the blankets and climbed down the ladder.
"Can you even tell where you're going with all this rain?" I yelled.
"It's this way, follow me," He took my arm and led me through the trees back to the party.
We opened the door to the warm safety of the barn and sat down on the nearest stack of hay. Both of us were dripping wet, cold, and out of breath.
"You okay?" Elliott asked, brushing his sopping wet hair to the side.
"Yeah," I said. A shiver went through me, reminding me again that I was soaked.
My dad spotted me and hurried over, a worried expression on his face. "Annie!" He gave me a huge bear hug. "You're alright! Gosh, I've been worried sick about ya!"
"Al, you're suffocating me," I said, and he let go.
Darcy rushed over as well, shooting a look at Elliott. "Where have you been? We've been looking everywhere for you two. And then it started raining, and we were scared that you might have gotten lost..." She rubbed her temples.
"Calm down, Auntie. We just went up to the tree house. We came straight back when we heard the rain." Elliott assured her.
"Don't worry us like that. Elliott, you know better." Darcy scolded.
Al, always the more courteous among anyone he was with, smiled instead of giving a lecture. "I'm just glad you two are safe."
"So, Annie? I see you've met my nephew, Elliott." Darcy said to me.
I nodded.
"I saw her standing by herself and thought I'd say hello." Elliott spoke up.
"I see. I'll introduce Annie's father to ya as well. Al, this is Elliott, my nephew." Darcy said politely.
"Nice to meet you, Elliott." They shook hands. "Well, this was a fun party Darcy, and thank you very much for havin' us. We better be heading home, though, it's pretty late." Al said regretfully.
"Aw, well I'm glad you had a good time. I'll see y'all in the deli soon, I hope?" She winked at us.
Al chuckled. "Absolutely. I'll go pull the truck around front, Annie. Be right back." Both adults went their separate ways and left Elliott and I alone.
"She's your aunt, huh?" I asked.
"Yup." He answered. "Was the tree house as bad as you thought it would be?" He joked.
I rolled my eyes. "I guess not. We're just lucky it didn't crash to the ground."
Elliott laughed. "Whatever. Hey, your dad's probably waiting out there. I'll see you later," He said.
"Okay, bye," I waved and walked out into the rain, where the truck was waiting for me.
Yayyy! another chapter! did you like it? (to the one of you all who is actually reading... but thank you for doing so, i appreciate it!! <3)
comment and vote if you liked it! tell me what you think! and keep us in your prayers! the wind's pretty insane now and my lights keep flickering... -_-
love you! xoxo