Young Writers Society

I never thought that it would take so long for the sun to come up. Or is it just me? Time seems to last forever when it is spent trying to answer impossible questions. Last night felt so unreal. Who were those people? Why was my mother crying? What is coming?

Breakfast is awfully silent, my mother avoids not just mine but everybody’s eyes and my father is uninterested in making conversation. Nolan, like always, seems to be on a completely different planet. He is one of the only people who has the power to make me smile just by being himself and he reminds me so much of Sky. They don’t have to do anything. Just by sitting at the table, unaware of the world changing around him, falling apart, he is able to make me laugh.

I ruffle his hair as I get off my chair, and he seems to wake up from his daze.

“What?”

I laugh. “Nothing. Love you, Nole.”

“Love you too, Em.” He keeps looking at me as I head for the door. “Where are you going?”

“Meeting Sky. I’ll be home soon. Try not to cause too much trouble.” I say.

“I’ll try, but I can’t help it!” He grins and I smile back as I close the door behind me.

I’ve decided the only person who has any chance of helping me get rid of at least some of my questions by either giving me unreasonable answers or making me forget by dragging me completely off-topic is my best friend. He would love this information anyways.

I open the door to his house by baring my number ‘13’ and scanning it. He and I are both permitted by the Authority to enter each other’s houses so our numbers are already registered. As I walk past the kitchen I see his mother’s blonde hair scattered on the table with her face buried in it. There is a photograph of a handsome man locked in between her fingers. Sky’s father. I try hard not to wake her and go up to find an empty room. Sky isn’t here. Where could he be so early in the morning? After confusion I immediately start having a panic attack. What is he doing especially after what happened yesterday? Thoughts are rushing into my mind, making me so dizzy I sit down, unsure whether I was turning on my feet or just in my head. What if it’s not him who left? What if somebody took him?

I get up, look outside his window which overlooks into mine and I see a skinny boy running between the two houses. Before I have any time to start questioning everything like I always do, I find myself downstairs, running outside his home and following Sky’s tracks against the tiny pebbles.

For some reason something stops me from calling out for him. Who knows for how long he’s been doing this every morning without telling me? A bolt of pain hits me. I realize I feel betrayed. Maybe even for the first time in my life. And it is definitely not from the person I wished to be causing me this feeling. We’ve always told each other everything, never felt the need to keep secrets or maybe was never even able to, both of us always able to figure what was hidden beneath the other sometimes even before we knew it ourselves. At least that’s how I always saw us. Was it all just from my eyes?

Now I am even more careful than before, I do not want him to see me. He is in a part of the city no one ever goes to. We are uphill, the blocks of houses and pebbled roads far behind us now. Somewhere beneath all my curiosity and even anger towards him I sense a new feeling coming over me: fear. I don’t like where we’re going. Ever since we were little kids our families have always told us that the forest up this hill was haunted, and called it the Infernal Forest. Where Hell had been brought upon years and years ago. Of course, I would never believe any such thing now, but part of me also wouldn’t want to test it. I’ve always trusted Sky as if he were the second half of me but I just don’t have the slightest clue why he’d be coming up here at 8 in the morning.

As we’re back on flat ground I see trees towering over our heads, covering the sun and bringing a shadow across our faces. In front of me, Sky hasn’t stopped once, obviously knowing where he’s headed. Where we’re headed. I can’t afford myself to have come all this way and then turning back because of a childish fairytale. I also can’t afford to waste time deliberating whether or not to enter the forest while he camouflages himself amongst the trees.

I let out a breath of air I didn’t even realize I was holding onto and step into the Infernal Forest.

***

I don’t know what I was expecting. A witch’s cackle echoing as I walked? Birds falling dead from the sky?

Instead I feel as though I entered inside a labyrinth. Tree behind tree behind tree is standing in front of me, with hardly any room to walk in between. The green above acts as a blanket to hide the forest from the sun and the sky. There is absolutely no light, no thin rays of sunshine peaking out from small cracks in between the leaves. The only reason I am not collapsing onto the hard soil or banging my head against one of these huge tree trunks is because of Sky’s blonde hair, his golden aura lighting the path in front of him. Now I’m certain of it. He must have been here before. More than once. How does he know the way so well?

After being deep into the hollows of the Infernal Forest, knowing there is no way I could ever possibly go back without him, I realize what it is that’s been sending constant shivers tickling up and down my spine all this time.

There is no life.

Where are the animals? No chirps of the birds, no paws to crackle the leaves against the ground. I start looking around me in quick glances while my feet follow Sky. Green. Dark green. More green. Where is all the colour from the flowers I’m used to seeing in the Greenhouse? It is like watching the life of someone in black and white, with no happiness or joy. Somebody with their light switch turned off. It is like seeing the white wall behind the bench in the Greenhouse without the glowing fuchsia bougainvillea to bring it to life.

Goosebumps start prickling all over my arms and legs. I look ahead of me, concentrating only on the direction in which Skylar is heading.

He slants slightly towards the right, just enough for me to look further ahead than his head. Not too far in front, I see a single ray of light which managed to escape from the forest’s hard cage.

We are moving towards it. As Sky’s pace is slowing down I hide myself behind the trunk of a tree, which is twice as wide as my body. He comes to a halt.

It is like his legs suddenly disconnect from his brain, and they sink all of a sudden onto the grass beneath his feet.

I step away from the tree, wanting to run for him, wanting to scream for him.

But something stops me.

I look at him. His head is turned away from me so I cannot know if he is in pain. I realize I don’t know what he is doing. He starts bending his back closer towards the grass. Is he praying? Crying? Should I go comfort him?

I stay still where I am, my eyes widening as I pay closer attention to what he is doing. It is times like these where being taller would be such an advantage. I can’t see exactly what he is doing but I know he is moving his hands…stroking the grass? No. It is more as if he were moving his fingers. Before I can know for sure he straightens his back, still without standing up.

I feel my lips part separate ways, forming an “O” with my mouth.

Before my eyes I see what just a few seconds ago was dry grass on soil rising slowly above the ground as if it were a door into a new world. Again, I am at a loss of words. My mind still hasn’t registered exactly what is going on and while my brain is working at full speed I catch a glimpse of that familiar blonde head disappearing beneath the darkness of this entryway.

I run towards it. Towards him. I quickly look at this piece of land moving slowly to open itself. The only thought which comes to mind is, It must be really heavy to be so slow. I notice what Sky must have been using his fingers for before opening this door, on the ground, hidden beneath a rock is a type of scanner which reminds me of the ones outside our homes. But it’s not. It has buttons with numbers on them. A combination lock, I guess.

I don’t waste too much time debating whether to follow him or not. Before the mechanical door starts to close itself again, I jump down into the emptiness below.