Eden woke up in an incredibly sour mood.

For one, it was the middle of the hottest summer Rosewood had known for years, and she was not feeling it. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she woke, hot yellow sunlight pouring through the gap in the curtain, where a fly buzzed in languid circles.

This was wack. When did dingy ol’ Rosewood ever stop raining?

That was the first thing that was throwing her off. The second thing was why she had woke. She had dreamed a strange nightmare, where she saw that Rutherford boy, the one who hadn’t been seen for six months, being lead by a dark, bird like figure into the forest.

God, she thought, it really had been six months since Toby Rutherford's disappearance. Though they had gone to the same school, in the same year, she couldn't pretend she ever knew him very well. He was that kind of a kid; Reserved. It was common that he was just “Sam’s Twin,” because with that hamster on a sugar high personality, Samuel was hard to forget. Toby faded away.

The alarm clock read 11:35 am. She thanked the Gods it was a holiday, and trudged downstairs, past Chloe and Vicky’s room, Joaquin’s study, Marco’s little playpen… Her home was always bursting at the seams with family, just the way she liked it.

Her uncle was sitting cross legged on the living room carpet as she came down, entirely absorbed in the TV’s novella.

"Hey,” she said, grabbing a muesli bar off of the coffee table, mentally patting herself on the back for actually eating breakfast for once, "I'm heading out. To the park. I'll be back by four."

Uncle nodded slowly, partly because he was very focused on his show, partly because he mostly spoke Spanish and Eden could not.

"Be safe." He replied, heavy accented.

"Yeah, yeah, I will.”

There weren’t a lot of places for teenage punks to hang around in Rosewood. It was too small for a mall, or a starbucks, or anything like that, so they chose the one and only park to haunt. It was actually pretty decent sized, compared to pretty much everything else in the town. However, it was also tragically under kept, so the playground was peeling in paint and rusted on every joint, the grass choppy and infested with weeds, it's chain link fences unraveling at the ends. But Eden liked it. She thought there was something undeniably aesthetically pleasing about the whole ruined place.

She tucked her skateboard under her arm and put an ear bud in, and the thrum of drum music blasted into her ears. The sun had been hot in her poorly AC’d house, but now in just her tank top and ripped skinny jeans, the atmosphere was pretty nice. She ran a hand through her choppy hair, bright blue, and smiled.

As she approached the park, she saw none other than Lewis leaning against a telephone pole with his little notebook out, brow furrowed as he scribbled into it furiously. They were best friends, had been since primary school, but Eden could never for the life of her understand why he was always writing notes.

“Lewis, hey, Lewis!” she ran up to him, but he was totally engrossed. He did that sometimes, focused so much it’d take a hurricane to move him.

“Lew. Is. Are you listening, jackass?” she ruffled his unruly mop of white-blonde hair, and a pencil, which had been tucked behind his ear, clattered to the ground. This seemed to snap him back to reality like a gong, his grey eyes wide in surprise.

“Oh." he remarked. "Hey.” 

The moment of surprise over, he resumed his resting face. Which was tired. If the half lidded eyes didn’t give it away, the pale skin, gauntness of his cheeks and eyebags did. 

“Just ‘hey?’ Lewis are you even happy to see me?”

“Well,”  he bent over to pick up his fallen pencil, “You just made me drop my pen and lose my concentration. I was on a roll-”

“Writing what?”

“Secrets.” He always refused to show his notebook.

“I bet it’s fanfiction.”

“What? No-”

“I bet it’s anime fanfiction-”

“-Look, you are being such a nuisance today, but! You came at a good time.” 

A smile, just a shade wicked to the trained eye, spread on his face like ink in water.

“Take a look at who we have here.”

“What?”

He nudged his head to the side. Eden’s eyes followed the motion, and landed on a figure of a short, ginger boy, sitting alone on a park bench. If his appearance didn’t give it away, his solitude did. It was Sam Rutherford.

Ah, of course Lewis had been excited. In a town where nothing, especially nothing bad, ever happened, the Rutherford brothers had become somewhat of a taboo. And Lewis loved taboos. He loved picking them apart, and learning what made them strange.

Eden? Eden just kinda felt bad for the kid. Her dream had reminded her suddenly of how sad the whole thing must have been for him, to have to lose his brother. He looked lonely. Like, stray puppy left in a cardboard box kind of lonely on his bench.

Luckily, Eden could fix that.

“HI SAM!” she called, waving her entire arm in the air.

The boy, frenzied eyed, turned around suddenly and met her gaze. He smiled, beaming contagiously, and Eden felt a smile tug at her lips just at the sight of it.

“Hello, Eden!” He waved energetically in reply and bounded over, the yellow backpack on his shoulder bouncing with every step, “Hi Lewis!”

Lewis nodded, still leaning against the telephone pole, his face was completely unchanged. Lewis had the incredible talent of not being affected by Samuel’s persistent energy. 

“Where are you going, Sammy?” she asked, setting down her board.

“Ah, just the library. Doing some... Research for school.”

Lewis raised an eyebrow.

“Library?” he questioned. Indeed, it seemed incredulous that a boy like him would sit on the floor and just read for a few hours.

“Yeah. My parents say I’m not allowed to go into the woods anymore, so-”

He looked crestfallen. Rosewood forest was his life’s dedication.

Eden glanced at Lewis. The quirk of his brow was so readable; He was thinking of a plan, with so much deviousness, she could almost hear the cogs turning in his mind.

“Well,” he said, too casual, “If you went anyway, would they need to know?”

Samuel’s eyes lit up, widened with a spark of adventure.

“I hadn’t considered that.”

Goddamnit, Lewis!

“Guys.” Eden metaphorically put her foot down and literally crossed her arms and frowned,

“As much as I’d love to explore a woodland full of kidna-” she stopped, quickly glanced at Sam and changed her sentence, “-And God knows what, the last time I checked,” Eden shot a poisonous glare at Lewis, “Both of us failed our drivers test. Unless you can drive-?”

Sam shook his head quickly.

“Worst hand eye coordination in the world.” He said, pointing at himself, ‘I think whoever was taking me for the test threw up after we were done.”

“Then, fellas, I don’t think we can go. Signs point to no.”

‘Wait, wait a minute. You rea-a-a-lly wanna go, right Sam?” Lewis cast his eyes, smug as anything at Eden.

“If it’s not too much trouble, you know, because I haven’t been out there in ages-”

“Yeah, see, Eden, you wouldn’t want to break Sammy’s cute, freckled heart right?”

Here we go.

“Well, there’s no way to actually get there so-”

“Actually I think we both know someone who can drive and wouldn’t rat us out.” Lewis continued, looking absolutely devious now, “A certain girl we know…”

She put the pieces together in her head, a girl that knew how to drive, and knew them personally. She suddenly understood Lewis’ unusual enthusiasm for this plan.

Oh no.

“No way, Lewis. No way am I going to spend hours in a car with her-”

“Oh, but we wouldn’t want to let poor Sammy suffer because of your personal grudge, now, would we?”

The ginger boy, though probably extremely confused, played along and pouted comically, puppy faced.

She gritted her teeth. Today was a perfect day to explore and run as rampant teenagers through a woodland, no restrictions. God, she wanted to go somewhere other than the dingy park. It was killing her, she wanted to do something reckless so bad- And Lewis knew it.

“You shithead,” she sighed, resigned.

“So it’s settled then!” Lewis grinned, clapping his hands together celebratorily. Best friends were such pains sometimes. Especially when they knew you well enough to blackmail you.

“I’ll call her. I’m sure she’d be willing to pull us a favour.”