Pretty Follies

We had been walking in silence for a while now. It had been at least 30 minutes since we turned back; we should have hit some kind of road, even if we were coming at it from an angle. When I pointed us in the “right” direction, I thought we would at least hit it sometime. I was positive we wouldn’t come out of the forest at the same place we went in, but we would at least hit some sort of road.

No. Instead, tree after tree after tree. Log after log. Rotten branches after old stumps after itchy bugs after piles of dirt. I don’t know if it was just me getting irritated with being lost, but I felt the abundance of nature growing and the open ground to walk on, shrinking. After a while, Lorraine and I were forced to stumble and climb over logs and rocks, not just walk on grass and step lightly over branches.

I could tell Lorraine was getting apprehensive. She knew this was wrong. From behind her, I could see her strawberry blonde head of hair looking around worriedly. I could see hesitation in her dirt-smudged legs. By the time I was through humming the Jeopardy theme song for the fourteenth time, she couldn’t take it any longer.

“You!” she spun around and glared at me. Her big, brown eyes were fuming and her lips were carved into a grimace. I jumped in surprise at Lorraine’s outburst and widened my eyes innocently, not sure of what she was referencing. She glared at me even harder. “You didn’t know where “south” was. You had no fucking clue!” I didn’t say anything back to counter her argument and instead, twiddled my thumbs. “You idiot!!!” she screamed. She stomped her foot and kicked a pile of dirt, flinging it everywhere and getting it all over me and inside her shoes.

“Watch it, freak,” I said, brushing off the black dirt that had accumulated on my legs. Lorraine shook her feet out and continued to glower at me. She squeezed her fingers tight into her palms and locked her elbows with her hands down at her sides.

“I can’t believe you!! You are so despotic!”

“Not my fault you are that amenable.”

“Okay, alright, we’re okay,” she said, pacing. “You still have your phone?”

I took my cell phone out of my pocket to check it again. “Yeah, but it still doesn’t get service.”

She put a hand to her forehead with annoyance and continued to pace. “Okay, so you were busy texting while I drove. You have no idea how we got here, where we are and how to get out. So you just assumed you knew where we were. By doing that you got us lost. Like I said, ignorant.”

“That’s right, babe.” I smirked and walked past her, holding up my phone trying to get signal. As I passed her, I slapped her ass. Considering I hadn’t ever done that before and that Lorraine was seething, I could expect a good reaction out of that one.

She immediately stiffened and all joints went rigid. With my eyes focused on the non-existent signal bars, I didn’t hear anything at first so I was a little disappointed she wasn’t mad at me for it. But I thought too soon; I heard a loud noise behind me and turned to see what Lorraine was doing. To my dismay, I was met with a strong hand against my cheek. The sounds of the skin hitting echoed through the quiet woods and I raised my hand to my tingling cheek, where she had slapped me. I was speechless for the first time.

“Don’t you ever fucking touch me, Gaskarth,” Lorraine said with gritted teeth. She actually looked a little offended, which surprised me.

Despite the pain in my cheek, I smirked proud of the fact I learned new way of provoking her. “Loosen up, Lanes.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, jackass.”

“Don’t tell me what not to do,” I immediately shot back, a crooked smirk emphasizing its self on my lips.

I watched as Lorraine opened her mouth to say something and then closed it. She opened it and closed it again. “AARRrrgghhh!!!!!!” she finally screamed, throwing her hands in the air and stomping away.

“Careful, Laney,” I mocked. “Don’t get too far off track. Wouldn’t want to get lost.”

I could see Lorraine was past the breaking point. She stomped up to me and stood on her tip toes to scowl at me. Her face was inches from mine as she spoke through clenched teeth, “I want to drop kick you across the woods, so far that you will land on the road that is impossible to find. And then a trucker will come along and run. you. over.”

I was almost scared at her attempt at being intimidating. I easily let a smile grace my lips and I spoke happily, “Well that’s not gonna solve anything!”

Lorraine continued to confront me. She stared deep into my brown eyes, making me shift uncomfortably. “Well then, Alex. What do you suggest we do?” she asked me levelheaded. I tilted my head, flabbergasted by her reaction to the situation.

I had expected her to scream twelve octaves higher than humanly possible in my face, I had expected her to bring her knee up and nail me in the crotch, I had expected some twisted, out of this world vocabulary sentence to easily flow from her mouth. The hidden insult would most likely make me feel like an idiot and I would quickly have to defend myself.

But she just stared at me and nothing came out of my mouth. I was so surprised that Lorraine was willing to cooperate.

“Come on, Alex. Give me a suggestion. Anything.”

What was I supposed to tell her? That I was completely at a lost too? We had left the campsite almost four hours ago. Our car had broken down in the middle of no where. We had been walking around the woods for an hour, getting ourselves deeper and deeper into the bushy trees. It was almost high noon. Our parents were probably beginning to wonder where we were. We didn’t have a working cell phone to call for help. No food, no water. We were two 19 year olds walking around blind.

I looked up at the towering trees, as if they were going to rain down an answer for me, but all I saw was a soft wind ruffle through the leaves. I looked back into Lorraine’s fed-up eyes, “I guess we’ll just keep going…”