{Chapter 1}

Leaves leaped through the air, jumping from one breeze to another. The trees danced with the wind, birds flying overhead starting to make their long trip south. The air smelled damp. It had rained last night, worms littered the ground, trying to find a way back home. I was walking down the sidewalk, coming back from the store. Wires were dangling from the sides of my head letting the sound from my phone zip up to my headphones. Humming to the beat of the music, I watched as a plastic bag made its way to the middle of the road. A car rushed by making the bag fly into the air and get stuck on the branch of a nearby tree. I wondered where the bag came from and who was the person that dropped it, if it was an accident or not. I shook myself from that state of mind. Sometimes I get lost in thought over things like that.

I stopped in front of my house, worn down, pieces falling off the sides. A horrible paint job done in this odd yellow color all over. My mom still thinks it’s suitable for living, I guess it is. It has two bedrooms, one extremely small bathroom, a little kitchen and something you would call a living room but there's too many boxes and items in it. No space to walk anywhere.  

I opened the door. It got stuck on its rusty hinges. I gave it a half hearted kick, and it easily gave way.

“Mom, I’m home! I got the stuff you wanted.” I shouted after taking off my shoes. A shattering crash came from the kitchen. Walking down the short hallway I went into the room of the noise, finding my mom cleaning up some sort of spilled liquid and glass. She looked up.

“Sorry for the mess! Y-You just startled me hun.” Mom said, looking back down to the puddle. I looked on the counter space. It was covered in cooking supplies, bowls and utensils. I put the bag down by her and walked away to my room, leaving her to clean.

Jumping onto my bed, I took off my headphones and got my phone from my pocket, checking it for messages. I had two, one from my friend Zander, and another from Cole, my dad. I looked at Zander’s first. It read,

“Hey Harper! Just got out of school. Hope your doing good.”

I replied, “Hi Zander. Not much happening, good you went and did stuff.” I sent it without thinking much. Opening up my dad’s message, it read,

“Hi my little Sugar Nut! Hope all is well in the new town!” God, I hate it when he calls me that stupid name. My phone’s power was running low, maybe for the better. I turned it off, never knowing what to say to Cole. My mom divorced him a month ago, It’s been pretty awkward since.

I plugged my phone back in the outlet and looked out the small cracked window I had, watching the neighbors play soccer. They were really good at it. I recognized one of the kids playing. I opened the window with force and yelled,

“Hope! Hey!” I waved my hand vigorously. Hope has been my friend for years, but more of a penpal. We lived in different towns so we just texted and stuff. But after I moved here we got even more close. She's one of those sporty girls that doesn't care about boys or drama, just really what's important to her. Her hair is a short spiky out-of-control blond that's not washed much. Hope mostly wears baggy sweat pants and numbered team T-Shirts. Or just normal T-Shirts. You can find her hanging with the boy group (a surprising amount of them have a crush on her, I can tell) playing soccer, softball, dodgeball, volleyball, tenis. Not basketball, she's too short for that. But with less height comes more strength! That's how it works right? Hope's super strong even with her smaller height is what I'm trying to say.

“Oh! Harper! hey!” Hope shouted, Looking up from the game. The ball flew past her head. Ducking, she rammed her forehead into it making it fly upwards. Then landing on another kid’s face. He fell to the ground, not to hard, luckily. I couldn’t hear a word that was said, but I guessed it was mostly full of apologising. Hope looked up at me again. I signaled for her to come over. She nodded, telling the other kids that she’s going and started walking towards my house. I went out of my room to the kitchen where my mom was,

“Hey,” I said when I found her still in the kitchen, “Hope is coming over right now.” She didn’t look at me when she said,

“That’s fine dear, though maybe you can go out somewhere else?” I knew why she asked this.

“Yeah, ok.” looking down to her for a second, I went to the door when I heard a knock, I was sure it was Hope and opened it. That wasn’t the case.

The man standing there was tall, very, very tall. With long brown hair and green eyes, and a shirt that said, Nature. in funky letters.

“Um, and you are?” I asked, slowly closing the door. He put his hand on the open side of the door, keeping it from closing, but he didn’t say anything, just stared into my brown eyes and handed over some kind of paper. I took it so he would leave and stuffed it into my pocket. I didn’t like him. He stepped to the side, showing Hope standing behind him, and walked off.

“Who’s that guy?” Hope asked. I shrugged.

“No clue.” We both watched him walk off down the street.

Hope and I started walking to the store, “I guess we can go to town and do something.” I told Hope. Nodding, she walked beside me. I didn’t know this at the time, but what happened at that store changed my life forever. Something so small, yet so important, just happened to take place at a little grocery store that sold camping supplies.

Me and Hope were about halfway to the store talking about random topics, it was kind of our friend thing to just say something out of the blue and then grow the conversation around it, it worked well. When I noticed something in a tree, it’s not something you can really describe when it’s spotted in the corner of your eye. I looked up to see a well, normal oak tree. I squinted my eyes looking closer, but still a normal oak tree. I brushed it off and kept walking. Hope looked up to another tree.

“Did you see something?”

“What?” I asked, thinking maybe she saw the same thing that I wasn’t able to spot.

“I don’t know.” She said with a concerned voice, “well nevermind. We're here.” She pointed to a building with a sign that read, “Logan's Shack Of Riches.” I sighed, Logan was not the real name of the owner, Logan had sold his business to Realyn. A women who moved here around the same time I did, two months ago. I don’t know why, maybe because of her lack of creativity, but she didn’t change the name when she bought it.

Hope opened the door for me. A wave of horrible chemical flower scented air rushed past me, making it hard to breath. I never was that fond of even normal scented flowers. A bell rang when the door was opened, I guess to tell the people who worked there to wake up cause there’s a customer. The first thing I saw was a wall of soda and chips.

“Ah, ello ello! My name is Realyn hm? Anything you need just ask!” Realyn was behind the glass counter with cakes and sweets galore, also some weird looking watches were in a box by the register. They had birds, ants, water waves, and I think penguin designs all over then. I kind of pushed her out of my sight, not wanting to deal with it. Hope walked up and down the wall, browsing through the items. I went past that wall, walking deeper into the store. I ended up in the frozen foods section, which was basically a glass trophy case of pizza. Past that place, I found the odd collection of camping supplies. Where I found someone else.

“Oh! Zander!” He turned to me, a camp lighter in hand. His short brown hair was gelled back, which was odd for him. He wore a plaid long sleeve shirt with some normal blue jeans, another unusual fashion choice. I’d never seen him wear jeans before. I could tell he was startled by my sudden introduction,

“Harper! Hi!” His shock turned to relief. He set down the green lighter.

“What are you doing here? Why in the camping section?” I asked, I didn’t think of Zander as a camping person. He shrugged,

“A guy came and gave me this,” He took out a flyer, “I was interested, it looked weird enough.” Then I remembered. I took out the piece of paper the guy from before gave me, I stuffed it in my pocket before not really thinking about it much. I hadn’t looked at it, but now I saw what Zander was talking about.

The flyer said in big black letters, One week nature trail! See what club tree is all about! I stared at it,

“Club Tree ?”

Zander answered, “Yeah, I know strange name, but it sounds fun! Like, what if there really aliens in disguise and that’s the only word they know? I mean the dude didn’t talk much.” He pointed at another part of the paper, I read outloud this time.

“See how it’s like to live out in the wild for one week. Find food. Get drinkable water. Survive the harsh night.” I looked below that and read what was in tiny letters,

“Tree club takes no responsibility of any harm any person may take on the trip.”  

I looked back up to him, “For one, they obviously know more than one word, second, Really?” He hesitated, then answered with a high pitched voice that sounded unsure.

“Kinda?” He pointed back at the shelfs of camping stuff, “But just look at all the cool gear you can get!” I looked at the shelf, bottom to top.

“Just look at all the money you can waste!” Zander seemed defeated at that point. I really don’t know why, but he was always in that kind of mood. Then he shoved his hand into his pocket, pulling out a hand full of lint.

“Um, you got anything?” He asked. I huffed,

“Are you serious? Why on earth would I, of all people, want to give you my hard earned cash? So you can buy a load of camping supplies, to then die in the forest?” He looked down, then back up

“Cause you're my only friend?” I stared at him, irritated. Zander always brought that up.

“You have plenty of people that would love to give you the money for that.” I knew it wasn’t true, but I turned to walk away anyway; fed up with it all. I bumped into Hope, as she was on the other side of the corner.

“Oh, there you are.” Hope said, she was browsing through the useless knick knack shelf,

“Come on let’s go.” I started, pulling her arm. Zander yelled, a little too loud.

“Come on! You have to help me, you have a job! No one can get a job!” I yelled one last time,

“Well then, maybe you should try for a change!” I stormed out, Hope trailing behind me.

“What was that?” Hope asked, a confused look on her face.

“Camping, Hope. Camping happened.”