Remember the Best Hours

Haylee's Point of View

We walk through the trees, trying to look for any sign of Mars. Her pale face can’t be that hard to find. I had dropped back behind Jay and Bradie because the trees were too close together for all of us to walk in a line, so I’m walking next to Andy, as I poke Jay on the back of her neck.
“Ow, quit it,” she says. I giggle and poke her again. “Quit it!” She bats my hand away.
“What are you doing?” Andy asks.
“Juggling monkey’s, duh.” He laughs, then I whisper, “I’m trying to distract her from Bradie, but don’t tell her that.” I poke Jay again.
“Lee quit it!” She says, turning around. I grin at her.
“Sorrrrry Jay.” She eyes me for a moment before turning back around and we continue walking. This is fun.
“Question,” Andy says, but I quickly say,
“Answer,” I grin as he gives me an odd look, “Sorry.”
“Why does everyone call you Lee?”
“Well, these guys aren’t very…creative when it comes to nicknames. Because my name is Hay-Lee they just said I had to choose between Hay, and Lee, so I picked Lee.”
“I still wish you picked Hay, that would be funny hey Hay?” Jay says, before her and Bradie laugh. I flick the back of her head.
“It’s Saturday!” Andy says.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s not Saturday,” Bradie says.
“Hey Hey It’s Saturday? The Tv show?” Andy says.
“Ohh, I get it,” I say.
Bradie face-palms, “Seriously Andy? That is just so…”
“Lame?” Jay suggests.
“Yeah.”
“Was it worse than my lame jokes?” I ask Jay hopefully.
“Uhhh, no.”
“Dammit.”
“So now we’re stuck with TWO people who have a horrible sense of humour?” Bradie whines.
“Hey, from what I know Andy has a hilarious sense of humour,” I say.
“You know, you’d think she would defend her own sense of humour,” Jay says.
“Well I know there’s no point in that.”
“Where the hell is Mars, I’m hungry,” Andy whines from beside me, I couldn’t help but crack a smile.
“You’re always hungry,” Bradie says.
“Mars!” I yell. No answer. “Hey Jay, what’s the time?”
“Umm, I wouldn’t have a clue, my phone just died.”
“Brilliant,” I say. I stop and turn around for a second. I can’t see the shopping centre through the trees anymore.
“Don’t you have a phone?” Jay asks.
“Oh yeah…” I say stupidly. Jay laughs, “Shut up.” I reach my hand into my bag, but I can’t find my phone. “Shit,” I mutter.
“What?” Andy asks.
“My phone isn’t in my bag…”
“Maybe you dropped it?” Bradie says.
“Aww man,” I say. “I got that phone 2 weeks ago.”
“So what now?” Bradie asks.
“We keep looking for Mars, that’s why were here, screw the time,” Jay says as she keeps walking. I shrug and follow her, as we walk in the same formation as before.
“Mars!” Jay yells. It echoes through the trees, but that’s the only noise we hear.
“Maybe she’s back in the mall,” Bradie says. The bush surrounding us gets thicker, and the trees are growing closer together as we walk, so we have to walk in a straight line. Jay is leading at the front, with Bradie behind her. Andy is at the back, behind me as I walk behind Bradie. Bradie moves a branch out of the way, and when he lets it go it swings back and hits me in the face.
“Ow!” I say, holding my nose.
“Sorry,” Bradie says. That’s when I realise my hand looks rather dark. No, not just my hand, everything.
“It’s getting dark…” I say, looking around.
Jay looks around as if she had just noticed as well. “Wow, it is.”
“Maybe we should go back,” Andy says.
“I agree,” I say, turning around.
“But we need to find Mars,” Jay says.
“If we can’t get much further in here then she couldn’t of either, and she’s obviously not within earshot so she must be back at the mall,” I say.
“She’s got a point,” Bradie says.
“Alright,” Jay says, giving in. I follow Andy as we go back the way we came.
“Uh, was there a log here before?” Andy asks, stopping. I walk up to him and look over his shoulder, as there’s no room to stand beside him.
“Um, I don’t think so.”
“This is the way we came, isn’t it?” Jay says as her and Bradie catch up.
“It should be,” I say.
“It has to be, we’ve done nothing but walk straight ahead basically,” Andy says.
“It might be because we had to go around a lot of things getting in here,” Bradie says, indicating the thick scrub around us, “We mightn’t have actually gone straight ahead.”
“Well which way did we come from then?” Jay asks. We all look around, trying to see something we recognise.
“It must be this way,” Andy says pointing to our right, “Look, there’s a track, that’s what we would have been following before.”
“Oh yeah, I think I remember that,” Jay says. I follow Andy as he pushes branches out of his way (and unlike Bradie, actually makes sure they don’t hit me) heading towards the track that he had spotted. I look up as we wait for Bradie and Jay to make their way through the thick trees to get to the track. There’s no light shining through the canopy.
“C’mon, let’s hurry up, we don’t want it to get too dark on us,” Andy says, as he starts to walk back down the track. After walking for maybe five or ten minutes, I still can’t see any light in the distance that indicates we are near the mall. We keep walking and soon I cant’t even see my feet very well. This worries me, and then my foot hooks on a tree root and I trip, stumbling into Andy. If he hadn’t been there I probably would have face planted.
“You right?” he asks.
“Yeah, just tripped over a tree root.” I expect Jay to say something about my tripping over, but when I turn around, she isn’t there, and neither is Bradie. “Jay? Bradie?” I call. No answer. “…You know, if this was a movie, Mars, Jay and Bradie would have been murdered by some serial killer and now they’d be coming for us.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Andy says. “They probably just fell behind.”
“Because this isn’t a movie.”
“Exactly.”
“Still…” I look behind me again. “Jay! …Jay!”
“Bradie!” Andy calls.
“They can’t be that far behind us to not have been able to hear that…” I say.
“Well…maybe they…” Andy says obviously trying to come up with some explanation.
“There’s a serial killer in here somewhere…” I say suspiciously. I hear a twig snap and jump.
“Haylee, calm down there’s nothing out there, apart from Jay and Bradie. I bet they’re just playing a trick on us.”
“If they are it’s not funny. You hear that?” I yell. “It’s not funny!” There’s complete silence. Complete and utter silence. “I sound insane don’t I?”
“You don’t sound insane,” Andy says reassuringly.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“I don’t know…I guess we should keep going, the mall can’t be too far away.”
“But what about Jay and Bradie?”
“They’re probably making out somewhere,” I laugh and start thinking logically again. That seems more likely than some stupid serial killer. I keep following Andy as we walk along the track. It’s now completely dark, and it’s starting to get cold. I cross my arms as we walk. That’s when I hear the sound of running water. Andy stops in front of me and I stand beside him. We’ve stopped at a river.
“Um, when was that there?” I ask.
“It wasn’t…” Andy replies. I try to look through the darkness; it looks like there used to be some sort of means to get across that involved rope and wood, but the river had swallowed it up. We turn around; it’s so dark I almost don’t see the tree in front of me as I step forward. Luckily my foot hits it so I stop.
“Andy, I think we’re lost…” I say.
“I’m afraid to admit it, but yes I think we are.” I sigh and sit down on a rock, as a breeze passes through the trees. I shiver and roll down my three quarter sleeve shirt, but it doesn’t do much.
“What do we do?”
Andy sighs and sits down next to me, “I don’t know.” The wind picks up and I pull my legs up, hugging them to my chest as I shiver. “Are you cold?” He asks. I nod. He looks down at himself before looking like he realised something, “If I had a jacket I’d give it to you.”
“Its fine,” I say, still shivering. “I’ll get used to it eventually.” I don’t realise until then that my teeth are chattering too. Man it gets freezing at night time. Andy sits silently beside me for a moment, probably wondering what we’re going to do to find our way back. It looks like he hesitates for a moment, before he wraps his arms around me.
“I hope you don’t mind, you look like your freezing,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say. “Your arms are really warm.”