So, I wrote this, and decided to put it online to see what people think of it. Would you read a book that starts like this? Any tips to make it better? Like, hate? Want more? Leave a review with your thoughts. Thanks!
I waited for twenty minutes at the bus stop before I realized that the bus wasn't coming. The rain, cold and wet, fell down from the sky like the angels were peeing. Fat drops exploded on my head and shoulders, dripping down my face, soaking my black shirt. My long hair was a dark blond sponge on my head, dripping and streaming, and I could barely see ten feet in front of me.
I flipped open my phone, shielding it with my body, and determined that the bus was, in fact, either twenty minutes late or not coming. My parents had left for work already, leaving me alone. For lack of a better idea, I called my friend Nathaniel, a year older than me. My parents had forbidden me to ever hitch a ride with him to school, him being a teenage driver and all, but I wasn't about to walk for two hours through the rain to the high school.
I scrolled through my contacts and hit his number, asking him for a ride. He sighed melodramatically over the airwaves, complaining that I was a high maintenance friend, but, as it turned out, he was driving down my street the moment I called him. I hopped into his old pickup truck (a present from his dad who lived three states away) and put on my seatbelt.
"A little wet out there, Alex?" Nat asked, glancing at me. "Pity you aren't wearing white."
I rolled my eyes. "Shut up and drive. We're going to be late. Shouldn't you have left already?"
"I slept in," Nat said, putting the truck in drive. "Miss the bus?"
"Apparently," I muttered, turning the heat on full blast. "I think the world just hates me though."
"Huh," Nat said, running a hand through his soft dark brown hair. I was, apparently, the only girl who didn't run my hands through his hair, and I think he did it when I was around just because he missed it. Our moms were best friends, and I'm pretty sure they were secretly planning our wedding, even though I had no intention of ever marrying the most popular boy at school. Besides, he had a girlfriend, not that our parents cared about that. Nat's toned body and perfect grin made him the choice boyfriend for every popular girl at school, and the fact that he was a hockey star made him seem tough and strong. I for one saw him as an older brother, and I'm pretty sure he, despite the comments, saw me as a younger sister.
It was silent for about two minutes, except for the rain pelting the windows and country music blaring from Nat's iPod. I'm not sure what he likes about it.
In between our neighborhood and the school was a state park, full of untamed wilderness and beaches. Going around would have taken an extra ten minutes, which we didn't have. A narrow dirt road ran through the center of the park, reserved for forest rangers and police, but Nat turned down it.
I glanced nervously at the sign that read Authorized Personnel Only, before it was obscured by tall, mossy trees, dripping with rain water. "Nat? Aren't we not supposed to be on this road?"
"It's seven in the morning, Alex," Nat responded. "Nobody's out here yet. Lighten up."
I wasn't in the driver's seat, so I sighed and sat back let him drive, knowing that there were most definitely forest rangers out at seven in the morning, but hoping we wouldn't come upon any. Outside the window was pretty anyways, with the pale green light shining through the trees, and a slight mist hanging just above the ground. It looked almost surreal.
Suddenly Nat stopped short, and I flew forward, stopped violently by the seatbelt and Nat's arm thrown across my middle. Standing in front of us, solid as a force of nature, stood an albino buck. His antlers were like two pale trees growing from his head, gnarled and twisted and huge. I didn't know much about deer, but I knew he was much bigger than normal (his head was taller than me, and I'm five foot four). He stopped in front of the truck, and his big brown eyes met ours. He pawed at the dirt road impatiently.
Nat laid on the horn, and the irritating noise echoed throughout the woods, most likely alerting all of the forest rangers within a ten mile radius of our illegal presence.
"Holy crap," I muttered as he didn't move. I hit the off button on the iPod speaker, and slowly, quietly, opened my door.
The buck shook his great white head, but didn't still didn't flee. I set one foot on the ground.
"Alex, get back in the car," Nat ordered, grabbing my arm. "Alexandria!"
I set my other foot down gently, ignoring my best friend (not that I would ever admit that he was my best friend to him). I shook his hand off my arm and moved beyond the door, ignoring the fat raindrops that made no difference to my already sopping state.
The buck stared at me, ignoring Nat completely. I took a step forward, holding out my hand. He watched me curiously, snorting through his black nose. "Here, deer," I said. "Come here, you giant animal. Aww, you're just like a dog, aren't you? You just want some love," I cooed to him, reaching forward to touch his soft, damp fur.
"Alex, the thing probably has rabies!" snapped Nat, jumping out of the car and stomping towards me. The deer shook his head, and bounded off a few feet, then paused, turning, and watching me.
"We're gonna be late to school anyways," I pointed out. "This is a once in a lifetime chance."
"It's an albino deer, so what?" Nat said dryly. "Wait, don't walk away from me!"
I pushed the ferns aside and walked under the trees, towards the buck. This time he let me touch his damp side before he hopped away a few more feet. I grinned, and followed him, vaguely aware of Nat crashing through the undergrowth behind me. "We're gonna get lost in here, Alex," he warned me, but I think he gave up, and had resigned himself to the thought of chasing a deer through the woods.
It felt like the deer was leading me somewhere, but that was a dumb thought. But still, he'd stop, letting me get tantalizingly close, sometimes letting my fingertips brush his side or his face, before he'd leap off again, further into the undergrowth. All of the plants were dripping with rain water, so it was like running through a swimming pool.
Suddenly I stopped, looking back. All around us was trees, more and more trees, and bushes, and ferns, and little squirrels and chipmunks. It was all very beautiful and peaceful, with only the sound of the plop of raindrops and the small skitterings of animals, and the breathing of Nat, me, and the deer. The only thing missing from the scene was the road and the truck.
"You have your phone?" Nat asked me.
I nodded. "But I don't get service out here."
Nat pulled his iPod from his pocket (great to know that, even when trying to protect me, he stops for his electronics), and sighed. "No Wi-Fi. Let's retrace our steps."
I sighed sadly, taking one last look at the buck, before nodding. We didn't take three steps backwards before the ghostlike creature gracefully took a hold on the end of my t-shirt with his mouth.
"Hey boy," I said, stroking his head nervously. "Don't bite me. You wanna show us the way back to the car?"
He took a few graceful steps, affectively cutting me off from the direction the road was in. "Nat?" I said. "I think he's not going to let me go."
"What the hell?" muttered Nat, walking up to us. "No animal does something like this."
"My neighbor's dog does," I pointed out. "He'll lead me to his food bowl."
"Does that look like a dog wanting to be fed?" Nat asked. Cautiously, he reached out, and touched the deer. "That thing made us be late to school," he said.
"School's the least of our problems," I pointed out, taking a step in the direction the snowy buck had wanted me to go in. He let go of my shirt and gracefully walked a few feet away, watching us. I looked around for a solution to the problem. "Here," I said, picking up a sharp looking rock from under a thorn bush. I scored a shallow mark in the tree next to me. "We'll see if we can walk back to the truck from here, but we'll leave a mark in every tree that we pass, so we can find our way back and try a different direction."
Nat nodded and took the rock. I walked over to the deer. "I'll come back after school," I promised, though I doubted that he understood English.
Instead of grabbing my shirt like he just had, the pale creature merely watched us go, scoring every tree that we passed. As we walked, I nearly felt tears prick my eyes. What was I leaving behind? What was I never going to discover, now that we put school above living?
The truck never came into view. I glanced behind us, and there were the score marks, and there was also the buck, a few feet behind us, keeping pace with us.
"We went the wrong way," I said quietly, trying to keep the jubilation out of my voice. "Somehow we got turned around, and now we're going the way the deer wants us to go."
Nat looked at the deer, and at me. "Right then," he said. "I guess we have no choice but to follow the freak of nature. Hope you're happy, Alex."
I spread out my hands innocently. "Hey, it's better than school, right? I'm sure someone will stumble on our bodies someday. Come on."
I ran a few steps, pushing away the rising worry in my chest. We were officially lost in the woods, with only a huge impossible deer guiding our way.
"Have the trees always been this big?" Nat asked offhandedly after a few moments of walking. I looked up, craning my head to see through the leafy canopy, which was an impossible task.
"No," I answered. "Maybe we've stumbled upon Narnia?"
"Probably," Nat answered. "Just don't get hurt or anything, okay? My mom's going to kill me when we get out already."
"We'll divvy up the blame," I decided. "You drove through the park, but I followed the deer. Well, the deer's pretty unbelievable. Let's say there was a stray dog. Sound good to you?"
Nat nodded sullenly. "At least it's stopped raining."
I paused so the sound of my footsteps wouldn't pollute the air, and held up a hand. A morbidly obese raindrop exploded on it. "No," I corrected him. "It's being stopped by the leaves. See, they're still falling."
The buck came up from behind us and gave me a nudge with his nose. A branch of one of his antlers hit me on the back of my head, hard and unyielding. He pushed between us and continued, turning his head back to look at us.
In that moment, Nat whipped out his iPod and took a picture with a decisive click. The deer ignored him and continued walking. "Here, I'll take a movie too. Alex, say hi."
I waved obediently at the device. Nat turned it to film himself. "Well," he said, "this is why we're late to school. Alex here wanted us to follow this deer. Say hi deer!"
The deer turned his head back and snorted at Nat. Apparently the mysterious animal was having a hard time ignoring the hockey player. "So, this is proof of why we're late," he said, still filming the buck. "And you guys are all going to think this is a fake that I downloaded onto my iPod touch, but no, it's very real. I'm trying to conserve batteries, because I don't have a charger, so I'll send updates later."
He turned off the device and shoved it deep into his back pocket. "So when do you think we'll get to where this deer is taking us?" Nat asked.
"I think we're here," I said quietly, pointing at a medium sized pond. The deer stood on the edge, watching me expectantly. I walked to the edge of the pond, standing just beyond where the mud started. "I'm not swimming," I declared. "There's probably leeches."
Nat gave me a weird look. "Well, the deer wants you to swim," he pointed out. I looked at the deer, which snorted and nodded towards the water.
Wait. Nodded?
"Damn," I muttered.
"Yep," Nat agreed. "It looks clearer out in the middle." I think he was enjoying this.
I scowled, and pulled off my shoes. The only good thing about the moment was that the rain had stopped tsunami-ing. I looked around, wondering how it was possible that the woods looked wilder than the park ever looked. I was wondering how any of this was possible, period.
"Let's find the road," I declared, sliding my feet back in my soaked shoes. But before I could take a step towards the nearby tree line, the deer leapt in front of me, nudging me until I was facing the lake. "Dammit," I moaned.
"Here," Nat said, stripping off his shirt, pants, and shoes, and leaving himself in his boxers. "I'll see what the deer wants." He waded into the pond, which couldn't have been more than fifty feet across. Judging by the water already around Nat's armpits, the bottom was dropping fast, and it was probably twenty feet or so in the center.
"I can feel the mud and dead stuff squishing between my toes," Nat informed me, and then dove under, coming up for air about ten feet further out. "It's all muddy and full of algae," he shouted to me, and dove under again. For a moment, his foot flipped above the surface before he disappeared completely for nearly a minute. He came up again, gasping. "There's something glowing, right underneath me!" he shouted. "Tape me getting it!"
I fumbled with his pants, pulling out the iPod touch, and turning on the camera.
"Right," I said. "It's like ten minutes later, and the deer wanted us to dive into this pond, so Nat did. He's there now, at the bubbles. He said there was something glow- Holy crap. Is that a freaking sword or just a shiny stick?"
Nat swam out of the water, holding what seemed to be a sword, covered in muck and seaweed, in one hand. He swam, ignoring the plants and mud, and jumped onto the land. I tried to grab the sword from him, but he held it above my head. "Give me my shirt," he ordered, and I sullenly obeyed. He wiped at the blade with one of his sleeves, revealing shining new metal. He ran the fabric all over the weapon, taking off all the mud. "See, Alex? You could have gotten it if you had gone swimming.
"It must be from some collector or something," I said. "Oh. Here, this is the sword. Now conserving batteries." I turned off the iPod and put it back in his pants pocket.
Nat held it at eye level. "There's some writing on it," he informed me. "Weird symbols and junk."
"Glad we followed the deer now?" I asked, punching his shoulder. He rolled his eyes at me. "Seriously though," I continued. "What the heck is going on?"
Suddenly there was a crash as the deer leapt away, into the woods, leaving us alone. Alone in woods that looked nothing like the park. Alone in cloudy, ominous weather.
Alone.
Nat's hand grabbed my arm. "What the hell, Alex?" he asked. "What the hell do we do now?"
"Why are you asking me?" I wailed. "I don't know! I just wanted to follow the deer!"
We stared at each other for a few moments, my green eyes meeting his pale brown. And then, simultaneously we heard the footsteps, walking through the trees, coming closer to us. "Please be a forest ranger," Nat muttered as we both turned towards the footsteps.
The source of the footsteps entered the clearing. It wasn't a forest ranger.