Music blares through my earphones, drowning out my restless thoughts as I gaze around me, disoriented. I thought I knew these woods, but when I left Shane, I went farther down the path than I usually do, and it stopped being a path a while ago. Now would be a great time to ask someone with a better sense of direction than me which way to turn, but I can’t.
I’m completely alone in the woods.
I can’t text Shane; even if we’d exchanged numbers, which we haven’t, there’s no reception here. “It’s fine,” I mutter to myself, but my words are swallowed by the music, and suddenly it feels ominous that I can’t hear anything around me.
I pause my playlist and pull out my earphones, listening to the chirping, rustling, crackling noises of the woods. I look upward, searching for the sun, because it should be dropping to the horizon soon, setting over our school. The canopy of trees above me is dense, but I think—no, I know
—it’s brighter to my left.
I turn that way, and within a few minutes, I hit an incline, much steeper than the path I’ve been following so far. I know where I am now; it’s the
ridge near Shelton Park, the most elevated part of the forest. I’ve gotten even farther off track than I realized, and I’m a lot closer to the fire pit, where Shane and Charlotte are meeting up, than I wanted to be. Still, I’m relieved that I’m no longer completely lost. I was right all along; school is to my left.
I’m about to follow the sun when I hear a rustling sound, lower to the ground this time, and the loud snap of a twig.
Then the screaming starts.
