“Hey!” a voice called out behind me.

  I swear, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. I was so busy being lost inside my drowning mind that when the voice had called me out, I had been ripped away and I was truly terrified.

  “#+*%*# %^#+^#”

  Yeah… so, as I intend for this book to be as widely accessible as possible, I am censoring the naughty words that I had actually said. I pretty much shouted it out as I turned around to face the person. Luckily, what came next was a moment of intense laughter that escaped from Elise’s mouth. She didn’t stop laughing as I released all of my tension into a massive hug that pulled her under the shelter and away from the heavy rain around us.

  “You scared the hell out of me!” I said mid hug.

  “I know!”

  She laughed.

  “It – it was so – so funny!”

  She couldn’t seem to stop laughing so I did what I had done the previous night and flicked her shoulder.

  “Ow!” she cried sarcastically.

  We hugged once more and sat down talking about how each of our days went. She told me that hers wasn’t too bad but was slightly dull and I said about Jenny wanting all of us to be friends together.

  “But she hates me,” Elise said, clearly confused about why Jenny could possibly want to be friends with her.

  “No, she doesn’t hate you at all…” I began. “She was just upset and worried about losing me as a friend when we spent the whole day together. She didn’t know what was or could happen so went sour trying to hide the fact that she was hurting. She is fine now and earlier she apologised and actually wants to be friends.”

  “Oh…” Elise said, shocked at the realisation of the drift she had caused between me and Jenny yesterday.

  “Don’t worry!” I pleaded with her as her head slumped down. “Look, without yesterday I would never have become so attached to you as I have now. Honestly, you are so important to me and I have no idea why. Jenny knows why but I don’t just yet, so please, become one of us and let me find out for myself.”

  By this point I was holding her face in my hands and speaking the words as I was staring into her eyes. I had a sudden feeling to kiss her for some unknown reason, or I knew the reason I just didn’t want to listen to it just yet, but instead of doing what most people probably would in this situation, I let go of her face and hugged her tightly. I wasn’t sure on what this hug was supposed to convey but I knew that it held everything I needed to say but couldn’t understand, nor find the words to say.

  “So, I have one for you,” Elise said slyly.

  “Alright then… impress me,” I replied, knowing what she was on about.

  “Oh, I see how it is!” she said getting competitive. “You think you’re a better story teller than me?”

  “I never said that…”

  “Hmm…”

  She scoffed.

  “Of course, you didn’t, Master Olly Jackson.”

  That is my surname and I’m not entirely sure on how she found out. Most likely during a registration period.

  “I bet you a fiver that I can tell a better story than you.”

  I don’t reply to her but she has a smug smile on her face now.

  “I take that as a yes then? Fine, I shall begin. There once was a war.”

  She began, attempting to darken the atmosphere.

  “An everlasting war that began with one race obsessed with dominance and violence. That race lived on a planet called earth and called themselves humans.”

  “Ooooh. This is going to be fun,” I said, moving to the mirrored bench and breaking her serious concentration that almost looked like a scowl. I always found it adorable.

  “Shut up…” she said as she tried to look angry without it working. “Never disrupt a professional at work.”

  I smile and then move again to sit next to her, wanting intimacy. In that moment I felt like we were both exposed and revealing our true thoughts. She smiled as I placed my arms around her before continuing the story, which I dared not interrupt again from fear of a slap.

  “Anyway, as I was saying before I got rudely interrupted.”

  She poked her tongue out at me.

  “I was telling a story about an everlasting war that those bastard humans started.”

  I found it difficult not to laugh.

  “The humans have always been creatures of hate and violence so it was inevitable that they would get into an everlasting war with the rest of the universe. One day, about a thousand years into the war, one man, or woman depending on what you want” – she winked at me at that point – “stood against her, or his, own species to end the war in the only way possible. He had managed to crack time travel so, thinking that it was the easiest way to end the war, she gave the secret to their adversaries so that they could use it to destroy his species when they were most vulnerable. The creatures of the universe used this knowledge to travel back in time to when the humans were at their weakest, a world war of some kind, and wiped out the humans with one single attack. Needless to say, the future changed and the universe lived in peace, never knowing the existence of a war that had been wiped from history, never knowing of the bravery of one man, or woman, that ended his entire species to save everyone else. War will always be present in our universe but the humans will not be there to make it worse.”

  She finished the story and we sat in silence listening to the heavy rain around us. She seemed angry in her latest one, angry about the way the world is and works and that there should be someone to change everything. To save us. I never questioned if she believed that it was down to us to save humanity but either way, to me at least, that second night in the rain with her felt pretty romantic. Even though I said I never understood how rain could be romantic, I do know now. I’ll tell you one thing for certain, it was.

  “Your turn…” she whispered.

  I have to admit I paused for a while and then fluked most of my next story. I wasn’t sure what to think or feel at that moment so I decided to tell a similar anger driven story as the one that she had just told me. It was about a place where the worst criminals of this world are sent to face justice.

  “They, each in their own turn, have to complete six deadly challenges,” I said.

  I explained to her that the challenges are there to torture their bodies and minds until they reach breaking point. Only once the final challenge is completed, a maze filled with more horror than you could ever imagine, they can escape, free from all sentences of justice. I told the story from the perspective of a man accused of the murder of five families. I won’t tell you the ending as who knows… one day I might write the story myself.

  Elise sat there and listened to my story. Only once I was finished with my supposed masterpiece, her words not mine, of a story, said that I was a better story teller than her.

  “Oh, God, no I’m not!” I exclaimed, not feeling that I was even remotely good at telling stories.

  I always paused and stuttered a lot when trying to tell stories from my head but Elise always seemed fluent and elegant with every word crafted.

  “Thank you, but I’m seriously not.”

  “Hey, don’t ever doubt yourself,” she said before letting out a large yawn that spread almost instantly to me.

  “Look what you made me do!” I said as I flicked her on her arm. “Just because you’re tired doesn’t mean I have to be.”

  I poked my tongue out at her.

  “I am not tired!”

  She denied, like a small child might do when told to go to bed early, before yawning once more.

  “That’s not the way I see it…” I replied sarcastically with a giant grin and wink.

  “Okay, fine!” she said exasperated. “I’m tired… are you happy now that you have won?”

  I tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t.

  “Oh, hun, I’m always going to win against you… except story telling of course.”

  I laughed at her stern face for a while before I too yawned.

  “Ha! You’re tired to!”

  Then again she yawned.

  To be honest this lasted another few minutes as if we were in some lame comical sketch that wasn’t funny anymore. The only trouble is that the reason for this is because silently neither of us wanted to leave the other, still needing more of this short time together.

  Inevitably we decided that we had to part each other’s company, each admitting to the other that we had struggled to wake up that morning. It wasn’t long before we once again walked home hand in hand.

  “I won’t be able to meet tomorrow night…” Elise said downheartedly as we neared my house.

  “What?”

  I stopped us both still two doors away.

  “Why not? I-I don’t understand… do you not like what we do?”

  I know I over exaggerated just by looking back but it was the type of person I was. Every little thing that hinted about losing someone caused me to freak out for a few moments before the person quickly reassured me the opposite. I was lucky that this was one of those moments when the person didn’t leave me.

  “No!” she protested. “Don’t say that! Of course, I like this… it’s just that I go out on Wednesdays…”

  She seemed slightly embarrassed by that fact so I decided to probe an answer out of her.

  “Doing what?” I asked slightly to sweetly.

  “Don’t laugh…”

  “I promise I won’t!” I said as I grinned at her.

  She looked shy but replied all the same.

  “I act.”

  I suddenly had the urge to hug her, so I did. I hugged her and told her that she truly had nothing to be embarrassed about and that it just made me more intrigued about her hidden talents. She smiled at my reaction and thanked me before giving me a quick kiss on my cheek and running off up the street and into the blackness of the night.

  I wasn’t sure on how I should have reacted but I just smiled to myself and imagined the girl I knew in a completely different scenery – ignore the acting pun – and acting out a life that wasn’t hers. To be fair, I shouldn’t have been so surprised at her acting as it was extremely similar to how we both were at the time. Both of us living in fictional stories to escape our own realities. I was like this all the way until I was in bed about to fall into a peaceful slumber, silently hoping that my plan for Elise and Jenny would work without a hitch.

  Chapter Five

  I don’t think there has ever been any explanation on how people become friends. From my knowledge, the process is so random and abnormal that there is no pattern and there never will be a pattern on how some people become friends with some but not with others. Of course, I could be wrong, but from my experience it is one of the most baffling things when it comes to people’s connection with others. There are clearly circumstances where people go from liking one another to loathing each other the following day. Each person has different experiences. That day however, for me at least, trying to get both Elise and Jenny to become friends almost ended in disaster.

  I was lucky that morning. I managed to actually wake up on time – or stupidly early if I’m honest. I was sitting on my bed for at least two hours watching a film before my alarm clock announced my time to get out of bed. I got ready without talking that morning, lost inside my own mind from the fantasies of what could happen and the emotion from the film filling my motivation to keep Jenny as my best friend, but add Elise to my life in a way that doesn’t compromise anything.

  As the same routine unfolded, I got more fired up and confident about my plan. But as Jenny knocked on my door to walk to school, the time had come to put my plan into motion. It started with a smile at the sight of Jenny.

  “Hey!” I said positively.

  Jenny laughed at my reaction of her.

  “You seem over the top happy today.”

  She laughed as I tied my shoes up. I pulled an alarmed face at her statement.

  “So, I can’t be happy in the morning?” I gasped sarcastically.

  “You are…” she said trying to cover her tracks. “But it is school and you look like you have just won a holiday to Comic Con!”

  She laughed jokingly.

  I rolled my eyes at her and simply just grinned.

  “Because I have a secret plan and you don’t know what it is!” I teased as I got to my feet, grabbed my bag and walked out the door.

  Jenny questioned my secret plan but as we walked, I simply dismissed anything that I had mentioned about a plan until it was too late for her. I had walked quickly passed the alleyway and when Jenny questioned me again, I ignored her. We stopped outside of Elise’s house. Jenny gave me a dirty look and my heart plummeted.

  What if my plan had only been a fantasy? What if I was actually stupid to believe that they would get on? My fears erupted from my gut and I felt like I wanted to quickly run and hide in the memories from the previous two nights. Safe from anything that could happen next.

  I stared wide eyed at Jenny terrified at what she could say but this tension – like last night – was completely over exaggerating as the next thing Jenny did was shake her head and smile at me.

  “Come here!” She laughed as she pulled me into a hug. “You’re always so terrified of losing everything…”

  I slowly began to release all my tension and smile softly into the hug.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.

  She pulled me back. And looked down at me.

  “Stop it now!” she warned. “Go knock for that girl and bring her out here. She makes you smile like a pig in mud and that makes me smile.”

  “But you don’t like her,” I said confused.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. It’s just some stupid ego thing that girls do. I was trying to be intimidating and showing her that you’re my best friend and she won’t replace me,” she admitted to me.

  Even to this day I am actually stunned by what she said. I had never considered that she felt threatened by Elise. I know now that there was also an added reason but back then, that statement knocked me off guard and proved to myself that my plan may have had a chance after all. Jenny wipes away a small tear from my eye that I hadn’t even realised had escaped. I felt embarrassment and it showed on my face.

  Jenny laughed at my reaction and almost pushed me towards Elise’s door as I still tried to comprehend what was really going on in everyone’s mind. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be feeling at this moment, let alone know why either of these girls were acting weirdly towards me. That kiss from the previous night had set me on a straight path but then that hug from Jenny a few moments before had sent my mind into an endless labyrinth that I didn’t understand the layout of.

  It felt weird this moment in my life. The reason – as I’m sure you are aware of by now – is that, this was the first time I had ever knocked for her. There was silence for a few moments after the knocking and in that seemingly eerily couple of seconds, I glanced back at Jenny for reassurance. She – to my delight – smiled back at me, giving me strength to turn back around just as the door opened.

  In the door’s place stood a woman that looked the exact replica of Elise, just a little older, and the sight disorientated me for a moment. I stepped back in shock before the woman smiled at me.

  “You must be Olly!” she said gleefully at me.

  I was stunned again. How did she know my name? How did she know I even exist?

  “I’ll get Elise,” she said to me before walking into another room calling to Elise.

  I realised quickly that Elise had told her parents about me. That was also a strange feeling. Feeling slightly awkward at her reaction to me, I walked back to Jenny and waited patiently for Elise to arrive beside us.

  “She told her parents about me!” I hissed quietly to Jenny who laughed quietly in response.

  “Oh! You two must be serious,” she teased before Elise appeared at the door and smiled at us cautiously.

  “Shut up now!” I warned as Elise walked towards us.

  Elise looked amazing. I know you won’t quite believe why I described her as beautiful as we were wearing disgusting school uniforms and frankly, you would see her as a mess. Her long dirty-blond hair was all frilly and it looked like she had just woken up a couple of minutes ago. Clearly the so-called early night we had, hadn’t worked as well as we had planned. Despite this though, I thought that she looked incredible and her messy hair just made me smile stupidly.

  Elise noticed.

  “Don’t say anything…”

  She smiled weakly at me.

  I smirk, still trying to keep our nightly activities secret from Jenny until I know how to classify it.

  “You seemed to have slept well.”

  I laughed softly.

  Jenny laughed at my comment to and introduced herself properly to Elise. They seemed to suddenly be getting along slightly and it was clear to me that Jenny was also trying her hardest to make Elise feel more comfortable around us.

  We began walking to school and both Jenny and I tried to keep a conversation going. The plan faulted a few times and the conversation for about a quarter of the journey fell flat. That is until we went full on nerd mode. This was the topic that we all knew well. We laughed and talked all the way to the school gates about upcoming events in the nerd world – new movies, video games and conventions for your information – until we stopped outside.

  Jenny then decided to hug Elise – which confused both Elise and I at that moment – before then pulling me into the same hug so all three of us were hugging each other right in the centre of the path. Several people complained at us as they walked around but we didn’t care. It felt peaceful and yet as strong as a hurricane. We had sealed a bond together in that hug and each of us knew how important it was to the other. It continued like this for a small while until Jenny whispered something that made my life perfect.

  “Welcome to our family!”

  Then Elise collapsed.

  Chapter Six

  Pivotal moments in your life can happen in a blink of an eye. They can happen during the worst moments of your life. Or they can happen at the best. Either way, you know – or will realise soon – that your life will never be the same again. What makes things different in my story is that the pivotal moment occurs twice. The first was sort of as a teaser to something that would come hurtling towards my life soon – a further two weeks forward to be precise.