Bright - Chapter Four - The Fork

Emma gets a ride home from creepy Gus. The group go to a haunted maze walk. Emma makes a choice.

Chapter Four

The Fork

I had just finished my last lap around the track. I was trying to catch my breath when I looked up at the bleachers and saw Ryan and Danny sitting next to each other. They weren’t touching thighs or anything, there was enough space to fit at least two of me between them, but It still struck me as odd. Ryan didn’t know, but I knew that Danny wasn’t very fond of Ryan. Danny found a lot of people annoying. He was a little bit judgmental in that way. The only people he considered to be his friends were myself, and his long time pal Owen. Danny didn’t like Ryan because he was a jock and Danny hated jocks. I knew that eventually, if he could just give him a chance, he could see how nice Ryan was.

I grabbed my bag that I had left by the bottom of the bleachers and took a sip of my water. Ryan made his way down to meet me, looking like he had something to tell me. Danny nodded his head at me from above, grabbed his backpack and also descended toward me.

“Hey beautiful.” Ryan said and bent his neck to kiss me. I looked at him with curiosity, I wanted to know what was going on. Danny stood next to Ryan, one hand in his pants pocket, and the other, clutching the strap of his weathered backpack that hung from his shoulder. Danny wasn’t revealing much to me.

“How would you like to go on a haunted maze walk tonight with the guys.” Ryan offered.

“The guys?” I asked.

“Yeah, Mike and Tim…” (aha, RYAN's guys) “and Danny of course, and you can bring that girl that's always hanging around you, the one with the red hair?” Ryan said. He had trouble remembering people's names sometimes.

“Kiera.” I offered.

“Yeah, Kiera. So do you want to?” 

“Well I guess if they want to.”

“Well I already asked Danny here, he says he'd go.” Ryan said.

I looked at Danny confused. He was still standing there, he seemed to gesture to me that he didn’t care. 

“Okay.” I smiled up at Ryan. “I’ll ask Kiera when she's done.”

“Okay sweet!” Ryan’s voice got louder with excitement, in a jock-ish sort of way. He kissed me quickly on the lips before running off, he was clearly expected somewhere else and he kindly waited for me to finish track practice before leaving.

“I’ll pick you guys up at your place at 8!” Ryan shouted back at us as he ran. He probably had a hockey practice to get to, it was difficult for me to remember his schedule.

Danny looked at me with a “yep, that just happened.” Kind of look. 

“You’re going to spend an evening with a bunch of jocks.” I queried him. “You hate jocks.”

“Yeah but I hate everyone.” That was pretty close to the truth. Danny was never mean, he usually just got extremely quiet when he was near someone who was annoying, or someone that he disliked. He got me into trouble a few times though. Once in a while he would look at me with this face, and it was him saying ‘get me out of here' or ‘can you believe what that person just said'. It always made me laugh, I just couldn't hold it in, his misery amused me and he knew it.

“Yeah, you kind of DO hate everyone.” I said as we started toward the field where Kiera was doing summer salts and jumps with the other cheerleaders. “So is this the new Danny?” I poked him in his rib. He jumped back a bit. He was really ticklish.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“New haircut, you’re making new friends…” I trailed off.

He smiled out of the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, maybe. I guess I'm growing up.” His red, plaid flannel shirt was open and flapped in the wind a bit. He was wearing his Metallica tee-shirt AGAIN. He worked all the time at his dad's mechanic shop, you would have thought that he could buy himself a new shirt once in a while. 

A loud whistle blew from the field and I brushed my blowing hair behind my ear. Kiera’s practice was over and she saw Danny and I standing on the side of the field. She grabbed her bag and ran up to us.

“What up girl!” She said directly to me, and quickly grabbed both of my arms and put her face very close to mine. She clearly had something very important to tell me.

“Brittany just told me that a bunch of the hockey guys are going to the haunted maze walk at the Mackenzie farm tonight!” She said.

“Yeah I know, Ryan told me, and he invited you and Danny too.”

“What!?” She didn’t really mean it as a question, more of an exclamation of her excitement. She was very hyper. I thought I heard Danny's jaw clench.

“Oh hey Danny..” Kiera noticed him and her face and voice softened. “Love the new hair.” She tried to say it in a sultry kind of way, as she put her fingers through it. He gently moved her hand away and said a quiet ‘thank you.’

#   #   #

We had been waiting in the parking lot of the school for at least an hour. I walked over to where Danny and Kiera were leaning up against the brick wall and had a funny thought. Danny's back was to the wall and he was looking out ahead of him, while Kiera was on her side, facing him, talking to him about something. With his grunge look and her cheerleader outfit, I was immediately reminded of ‘The Breakfast Club’.

I handed Danny back his flip phone and they both looked at me with curious eyes.

“My mom got stuck at work, so she asked Gus to pick us up.” I told them.

“Who's Gus?” Kiera asked. She was filing her nails and smacking her gum around in her mouth.

“Our weird neighbor.” I said, disappointed. 

“He’s not that weird.” Danny said, defending him.

I raised my eyebrow at him.

“Okay, he is a little peculiar, but why is that a bad thing?” He said.

“Because… he's too nice.” It was the best I could do.

“Well that makes sense.” Danny teased.

“Yeah, I get it. It's like the creepy guy in the movies. You think he’s really normal, until you find out that he keeps kids chained up in his basement.” Kiera said.

“Well, no, I mean frig, I hope not.” I said.

Just then, Gus' station wagon pulled into the parking lot. He stopped in front of where we were standing and he waved at us through the passenger window. Kiera and I looked at each other. Danny rolled his eyes and got in the front passenger seat.

“Hey Gus how's it going?” Danny said when he down. “Thanks for doing this by the way, my truck wouldn’t start this morning.”

“Oh no problem at all.” Gus said. Kiera and I walked over to the back of the car, attempting to put our bags in the trunk. Gus quickly vacated the vehicle and requested to take our bags from us. We slowly obliged, both finding that a little strange and we took our seats in the back. Gus quickly placed our bags in the trunk and closed the door. I glanced back, trying to get a look at what he might be hiding. There was a big blue tarp on the floor of the trunk, and our bags rested on top of it, along with a small wooden crate of fresh oranges. The tarp had a bit of dirt on it, but it made sense since grew his own food and if he had any extra, he would drive up and down the road, offering it to the neighbors. But other than that, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. 

Gus drove pretty slowly. And the car was relatively quiet for the majority of the drive. Danny asked Gus if he liked oranges.

“Very much actually, how'd you know?” Gus said.

“You’ve got little white stickers all over your dashboard here, they all say ‘california orange' on them.” Danny pointed out.

So the guy had a bit of a citrus obsession, if that was the worst of it, I really didn’t mind. I could handle that. 

“Yes, I order them by the crate. Just one of those things, you know. Like people with their cola drinks.” Gus said.

Cola drinks? What planet was he from, honestly, sometimes the way he said certain things made it seem like he had just landed on earth. He wore camoprint clothes, much like a lot of the other men who lived around here. But he never hunted. He rarely left his property, and we never heard guns going off. And his accent, I couldn’t identify it. I wasn’t super worldly or whatever, but I watched a lot of movies. Sometimes he seemed to have a southern accent, and sometimes he had some sort of European accent. It was subtle and only when he said certain words, but it was there.

#   #   #

We made it to my house without being killed, or chained up in Gus' basement and we headed for my room. Danny went straight for my album collection and started sifting through it, looking for any new additions. Kiera went to the bathroom to change and I changed in my closet. 

“Who are ‘The Smiths'?” Danny asked me through the door.

I had my head partially out of my tee-shirt, it was a tight space to change in.

“They will change your life.” I told him.

He giggled turned on my turn table, and started ‘Hatful of Hollow'.

I emerged from the closet in my jeans and hooded sweater. Kiera joined us moments after, wearing an extremely revealing shirt. Danny looked, and I even saw him checking her out. He quickly turned away and smirked.

“Kiera, you might want to wear a sweater. It gets cold at night now.” I said.

She ‘rearranged’ herself, looking down and said “No, I'll be fine.” She walked over to my mirror and I watched her apply her pink lipstick. 

“Okay, well I will bring an extra sweater, just in case.” I grabbed an over-sized hooded sweater from my laundry heap and handed it to her. She looked at it with disgust.

“I am NOT wearing that.” She said.

“No, it's clean, I only wore it once.” Although, holding it out in front of her, I remembered that I had cut my finger on a can of soup the other day when I was wearing it. And I may have used the sleeve of it to stop the bleeding. The sweater was black though, and there hadn't been a lot of blood, so it wasn't visible. 

It was obvious that she was not going to take the sweater, so agreed to bring it along just in case.

#   #   #

Ryan showed up on time as usual, and the three of us joined the other three in the large SUV. Mike and Tim were sitting in the very back, they were bickering about something. Mike had a game boy in his hands and Tim seemed to want a turn on it. They sounded like children. From what Ryan had told me, and what I had gathered from my brief encounters with them, they had been lifelong best friends, but they butted heads a bit. But Ryan told me that they were something of a ‘secret’ weapon when they were on the ice together.

They finally acknowledged us and we all said our Hello’s. Mike handed Tim the game boy and Tim finally fell silent, engaged in whatever game he was playing. Mike asked if anyone had an extra coat. My face lit up and I handed him the large sweater that I had under my arm. I passed it back to Danny, who passed it back to Mike. Mike saw Danny's face and smiled.

“Hey! Danny! You cut your hair.” Mike said.

Danny smiled. “Uh, yeah.”

“Wow, looks good bro.”

“Thanks.” Danny said. I don’t think he was too happy the with the amount of attention he was getting from his hair. Danny remained silent for most of the car ride. Kiera made conversation with him, and I heard him respond when he thought he needed too. The two noisy boys in the back bickered a little more, and Ryan held my hand the whole way. He listened to the Top 40, which wasn’t really my thing but that was okay.

#   #   #

I had thought that there would be a line up to get into the place, especially on a Friday night, and only two weeks away from Halloween. But we were the only ones. The guy running it was standing by a large bonfire just near the entrance. Apparently it was near closing, so the tractor/wagon haunted tour was finished for the night, and their hired zombie actors had all clocked out. He said that we could go in for free if we wanted, and he could play some ‘spooky’ music for us. Mike and Tim agreed right away for all of us, and they both took off running like idiots into the maze. We could hear them trying to scare each other, they were pretty hilarious. Ryan and I laughed. He took my hand and walked me to the entrance. I looked behind me to see that Danny and Kiera were close by. Danny looked miserable. I didn’t understand why he had agreed to come if he didn’t want to. He bothered me so much sometimes. He just went along with things, keeping hiss mouth shut.

He was a big boy I thought to myself, and it wasn’t my job to take care of him. 

As soon as we entered the maze, there was a fork. You had to choose too go left or right. Ryan and I stopped and he asked me which way I wanted to go. I thought for a second.

“Left.” I said. And we went left.

Author's Note

This is the "skeleton" of what this chapter will become. Just need thoughts on the action, emotions etc. thus far. And anything else! All opinions are welcome :)

Reviews

[emipoemi]

ooooooooh! I'm so excited for the next half! So you have the usual spelling/grammatical errors and unnecessary repetition, but working on this from an iPad and other touchy apparati, I'm just going to point out that they're there, but I do have a question about one aspect: when you say "there wasn't a lot of blood, you couldn't see it at least"....the two phrases kind of counter each other. What you're referring to is that there "hadn't been a lot of blood" (because it had happened some day before, and the blood would have dried by now, so....) "you couldn't see it anyway".

And now: This story just keeps getting better and better! And you are a wizard- or day I say witch - with the "in medias res" aspect of story telling, and that is talent, my friend! Not many writers have that fully mastered, but you do! Fantastic! The story itself, now, is filled with hilarious clichés, but you've successfully made them your own and part of the story that they don't sound so bad. Kiera kills...ok?.... she's so cliché she's hilarious, but she's also not 2-D, which is why we love her so much. With every chapter, I find that you're spoofing a certain RomCom or two, for I got a Perks About Being a Wallflower meets American Beauty out of this chapter. Well freaking done! A publisher would have to be an absolute philistine not to go crazy for this, if not for the story itself, for how well it's written. Brava!

(I sent you a message regarding this, but I think I'll repeat it here: Chapters 1 and 4 are in first person and 2 and 3 are in third person. It's an interesting way to go, but I find that whenever Emma is in the picture, if you're going to go that route, the chapter should be in first person. OR have everything in third. It's the only thing that I'm finding weird about the story. If you want, you could somehow even make Danny and Kiera first person characters too, your choice. All I'm saying is don't keep switching narraters like that, for it's going to confuse the reader. Emma = first person, Danny = third; Emma, Danny, Kiera = first person; OR Everything = third. Such a good story overall. Keep at it!)

[J.L.Q.]

Lol thank you! (Not gonna lie, I had to google ‘in medias res’ Haha but thank you!) yes. I feel like I should really stop trying to post chapters so late at night lol. But I will definitely go back and fix those issues! I will hopefully have the spelling/grammar/tenses nailed eventually! And you have helped me so much! And I loved that it reminded you of those movies! I didn’t even realize the American Beauty vibe, but holy s**t you’re right! And I haven’t seen the Perks About Being a Wallflower yet! But I have a friend who keeps telling me to watch it, so I better check that one out :) Thanks again! So helpful!!

[emipoemi]

you're very welcome. My pleasure.

[J.L.Q.]

I've realized that the scenes for this book are rushing out of me so fast that I'm going to just write the "skeleton" as neatly/quickly as possible, just to get a feel for the action and the plot. And I will definitely take all opinions into account before going back and bulking it up. Or, I might write some chapters at a time, and then spend a few days editing and bulking those up before moving on. I'm not totally sure yet. But if you do happen to read some that are REALLY bare, lacking in substance etc... don't judge! lol I'm just kind of going with the flow right now. But again, you are literally my hero right now, I don't have the guts to show this to anyone that I know, so you have been a life saver!

[emipoemi]

First off - Aww shucks.....you're making me blush :p

Second - Nice one: I'm "literally" your hero..... :p

Third, you do you and I'll do me. Your only errors are nitpicky banalities, and that's really good compared to other writers. You were born to write this book - it wants you to write it (and then its sisters....or brothers, however you'd like to consider them). You're doing well. Keep at it ;)