The Forest

Only a little itty bitty piece of the full story. The full story is in Volume 28

(Content Warning: blood and slight gore.)

“God, my feet are practically falling off,” Jaime complained, and I rolled my eyes. I was as tired as anyone, but I didn’t feel the need to announce it every five minutes.

In front of us, John didn’t bother looking back, even as his two best friends joked and shoved one another loudly behind him. He paused at a fork in the road, made a big show of pulling out his fancy map, and then hooked a left. The rest of us followed aimlessly.

Above us, the sun was beginning its bedtime routine. I glanced up periodically, trying to assess how much daylight we had left.
In front of me, I noticed Jaime approach John. She grabbed onto his shoulder, but he shrugged her off. When she took his arm with a bit more force, he finally stopped walking and turned around. “What?” he snapped, staring down at the brunette.

She pointed a timid finger behind us. The group turned its gaze onto a sickly tree, bare of any leaves. “We’ve passed that four times,” she dropped her arm.

I stepped forward to John. There was once a time where I had the biggest crush on this boy... and by once a time, I mean right up until I grabbed the map from him and discovered it was nothing but a bunch of random scribbles.

“You led us out here without a map?” I showed the so-called map to the rest of the group. Of course, Jaime let out an audible gasp.