Playing With My Heartstrings

by Chloe Brewster

  Luke grinned. "Like, what did you do? Fall over or something?"

  My cheeks already betraying me, a neon shade of red - clearly not a sign of enduring a tiring walk during a burst of hot weather - coloured my features, burning-hot embarrassment straight on my heels. "Yeah, along those lines," I admitted, failing to keep my voice ultra-cool and relaxed. Then I dropped the laugh-out-loud bombshell - who was I kidding? Luke would either tickle the truth out of me or snicker so loudly that my blood would boil as ferociously as a pan filled with dry pasta. "In case you were wondering, I once fell into my friend's pond at her house, fully-clothed. Totally the most embarrassing moment of my life."

  Luke's eyes nearly popped out of his spellbound head. "That's what you define as embarrassing?" he questioned, quizzically, somehow doubting my painfully honest revelation. "Sadie, Sadie," he tutted disapprovingly, "you clearly don't know what you're talking about."

  An explosion of curiosity grabbing some reserved attention, I queried, with a hint of playfulness, "Oh really, what makes you think that you're the qualified expert all of a sudden? OK, I may not have gained a degree at Cambridge for dealing with embarrassing stories, but I do believe that I know what I'm talking about - all without the distraction of football blaring from the widescreen TV."

  "What does football have to do with this?" Luke asked, bewildered.

  "Um, I've just noticed that boys don't pay so much attention when their favourite team is playing against their rivals."

  A whoop escaped Luke's mouth. "Nonsense! We listen to all of your boring, send-me-to-sleep stories all the time - what is the difference?"

  He just didn't get it, did he? "Women are more focused than their male counterparts because they maintain a level head on the subjects that they are passionately and strongly talking about," I stated, accentuated with a smug, told-you-so smirk.

  "All because you asked me about camping," Luke muttered, holding his oval-shaped head in his hand, restlessness overcoming his worn out boy.

  Replenishing myself with yet another sip of hydrating water, I stiffly got up from the crinkly, dark brown log - forcefully ignoring the pain which shot through my sore ankle with all of my restricted might - and grabbed Luke's black Puma rucksack, in which he had placed a small, khaki-shaded tent.

  "Gonna help me set this up?" I demanded, poorly waving the bag in front of Luke, the contents jiggling up and down heavily.

  "I thought we were going to walk further."

  I waved the idea away. "No way! My ankle aches, sweat is pouring off you - we can reach the site tomorrow instead. "Besides," I added, my body relaxing as I put the bag back near the log, "I quite like it here."

  "Even with all of those squirrels?" Luke wrinkled in nose in peculiar amazement. "I thought you loathed the sight of them."

  A terrorizing chill slithered up my stiff-as-cardboard spine, as hazy memories of screaming my head off at the mouth-dropping appearance of fast, noisy squirrels flashed flickered in my mind. "No problem," I said, smiling breezily, before changing the subject to less furry one. "You didn't forget to bring the sausages for the campfire, did you?"

  "Um..."

  Was I the only one using her love-fuelled brain?

  **********

  What exactly was my plan in relation to finishing the monstrosity that Joel had started with his bare hands all of those weeks ago with me? Err, would heading back to the scene of the crime - OK, leaving me stranded in a forest wasn't technically an actual crime, yet it still felt like a criminal act in the laws of amour - be the perfect, unfailable solution? I desperately hoped so.

  Somehow, it seemed only right to return to the idyllic setting where my troublesome problems rose to the furore - and haven't fully disappeared into thin air since.

  Shortly after explaining the matter to a bleary-eyed Luke on my mobile, thoughts speedily raced in my mind about which step to take next - should I have been 100% honest to disloyal Joel, preserving my long-groomed dignity in not resorting to heart-quenching games as he willingly chose to do, or get my own back by tricking him into meeting up with me for the final word, playing him along with his unrealistic fantasy about falling in love with me? Alas, my heart hadn't frozen to stone and guilt would have trailed behind me like a lonely dog if I decided on resorting to desperate measures - therefore turning my back behind my devoted beliefs and destroying any self-respect I'd garnered for myself - so I wrote back a frank text to Joel, without displaying a hint of affection or love-infected emotion.

  Also, my mum - who had installed an old-fashioned manner of polite etiquette in both Cassie and I at a young age - wouldn't have stood for my teenage-rebel moment without demanding that I texted a remorseful apology, littered with repentant regret, straight away, therefore defeating the head-aching dilemma.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  ********

  A few hours later, the sun had beautifully set in the quickly darkening sky, fluffy pink clouds drifting away into the deepening sunset, and by then, Luke and I had successfully managed to set up the tent.

  Well, I might have said successfully, though thinking back on it, it probably wasn't the most accurate description; truthfully, silver poles kept falling onto my head, eventually creating an egg-sized lump, and Luke developed a potty mouth, darkly muttering about picking a smaller, yet simpler to assemble tent to bring instead. Yeah, I guessed that Luke's theory made enough sense - being wacked on my head half the time was increasingly getting on my flaring nerves - but I still couldn't agree wholeheartedly with him. OK, I was barely the Queen of Sheba (without any fishy references to the brand of revolting cat food), but I hadn't prepared to scrap on comfort - for all I knew, the probabilities of my lying on an uncomfortable pebble and maybe even a family of sandwich-munching ants were pretty high.

  Anyway, Luke had gathered what looked like hundreds of loose, leafless twigs and spare branches surrounding the trees housing our Scouts-free camp and easily constructed a warming fire, lightly toasting the tips of my mud-splattered trainers as I leaned on a log, devouring a bag of prawn cocktail crisps.

  "At least you didn't forget these," I remarked to Luke, gesturing to my half-empty packet of crisps with greasy-stained fingers.

  "You barely gave me any time to stock supplies," Luke replied, shaking his head. "My dad would've gone mental if I'd nicked almost the whole pack of crisps - luckily, I reserved his favourites, so he can't mind too much." Luke's tender chuckle rung in the air, overheard by the early hooting of awakening owls.

  "What's it like at your home?" I asked, suddenly struck by my lack of questioning Luke's home life.

  Luke shrugged. "I'm hardly ever home, really," he said. "My dad works quite late at work, so I don't always see him as often as I'd like."

  "What does he do?"

  "Car mechanic." Luke smiled. "Once, he took me to see what his job involves - although I was quite young, I still remember it pretty well."

  "Would you like to pursue a similar career?" I pressed, slowly.

  "I have no idea." Luke fumbled with his fingers, fidgeting for no apparent reason. "I really don't know what I want to do when I'm older."

  Getting the impression that I was heading into unknown territory, I returned to my original question, which I'd nearly forgotten about after becoming so engaged in Luke's fascinating response. "So, what about your mum?"

  "What about her?"

  "What does she do?"

  "She stays at home looking after my younger sister, Charlotte."

  A smirk firmly planted itself on my lips, provoking Luke to ask my secretive motivations.

  "Don't you see?" I wondered. "You are unravelling like a darkly-coated mystery - you never mentioned anything about your family!"

  Grimacing deeply, Luke scowled. "My view is 'if you don't ask, you don't get'."

  I snorted, my nostrils flaring manically. "That's a silly view to carry throughout life! You never felt inclined to ask me about my family because I already told you!"

  "And would
it have made the slightest difference by mentioning my family into one of our conversations when you were so deeply engulfed in your own?" Luke shot back, invisible venom spitting from his pouting mouth.

  I gasped aloud, struck by unforeseeable shock, and stammered uselessly, questions racing inside my head. What had Luke tried to imply? Was I so wrapped up with my own family that I barely cared about his? I shut my eyes closed, wishing forcefully that none of it was true, yet deep down certainty had already made up its mind. I had been and was thoughtless to those surrounding me.

  "Are you saying that I'm selfish?" I demanded, popping the all-crucial question.

  Luke sputtered, faltering by the out-of-the-blue demand. "I-I didn't say i-it like that..." he stammered, trailing off.

  "Then what else did you mean?" I stood up, shakily, gritting my teeth against the pain which shot through my throbbing ankle.

  As he made no hasty pleas or protests in apologizing for misplacing his words, Luke stopped fidgeting and became eerily still, his usual cheerful twinkle, visible in the corner of his eye, vanished.

  Ugh, I couldn't stand us fighting like this.

  "I'm going for a walk," I declared, in a cool manner.

  Luke, on the other hand, thought otherwise. "Sadie, you can't!" he insisted, magically leaping back into motion as though a spell had just been cast. "Your leg!"

  "Ankle, actually," I corrected, matter-of-factly, then smoothly added, "I'd rather hobble five miles than sit here at the moment, if you don't mind."

  Groaning loudly, Luke thrust his hands into the air, annoyance raging through his blue veins. "Don't be too long," he sighed, ignoring my cold-as-an-ice cube glare. "It'll be dark soon."

  "Fine." I crossed my arms together, my pulse pounding like the deep boom of a drum, and stalked off, heading into an unfamiliar direction by another set of oak trees.

  Hell, where was I going to go without collapsing in agony by my irritatingly sore ankle? The harmonious meadow of my over-imaginative dreams, of course.

  **********

  Placing an imaginary pair of Beats headphones over my ears, which couldn't stop sweating during the ridiculously high humidity, I calmly overlooked Luke's booming pleas to come back, as I treaded gingerly on the thousands of leaves gently scattered over the ground, straining my eyes to see the trees ahead of me.

  Although I could easily raise my head and shy away from the still-burning sun drifting away behind the candyfloss-pink clouds, all of the routes inside the forest were pitch-black; I seriously regretted not bringing a torch, even if it was an old Bratz one, which Cassie wouldn't be caught dead (wearing a thick layer of rice-powder pale foundation specially for vampire-themed Halloween parties) carrying in her lavender-scented hands. Great. I'd placed my foot into trouble - which was sorrowfully dragged around like a lumbering pair of steel chains - for what was probably way too many times to remember.

  Darn, I had to stop walking immediately, otherwise my brain would explode into a mess and my body would start to signal for a major lie-down. As if I was going to willingly place my body onto the ground, which had possibly be overrun with various creatures, including revolting rats, which I naturally loathed.

  Luckily, another log - which my eyes caught by a glimpse of natural light - was parked a few steps away, so I hobbled as quickly as my ankle allowed me, before literally collapsing onto the wood, which unfortunately wasn't as smooth as the log I came across with Luke a few hours earlier. Still, it was far better than nothing.

  At this rate, my chances of reaching the meadow - which my heart promised was situated close by - were increasingly slim if I was only going to lie on an unsatisfactory log for a long while. As Mum had once explained to my flower-adoring six year old self, a meadow was a sanctuary to discover long-lasting peace and find the answer to your problems, whether it was related to 'being unable to wear a favourite rose-patterned dress to school' or 'learn how to appreciate your sister without resorting to locking her in a cupboard as a form of punishment' (hardly the mature examples I wished to display, so I chose Mum's witty ones instead).

  Considering that eternal peace was the furthest emotion that my raging hormones could dare to experience right at that moment, it was a huge, Guinness World Records-breaking wonder that I wished to visit the beautiful pasture - the one that had once popped into a soothing dream, which quickly became a chilling nightmare - during a time when harmony wasn't in my grasp and livid fury was raging throughout myself, still distraught about my poisonous spat with Luke.

  Although he would presumably begin to spout endless apologies for his remarkable exchange of vile speech, Luke was right about my selfishness, to which I had chosen to turn a blind eye for ages in sake of not facing up to my inner demons, which had reached a boiling point. What sort of girlfriend - so-called, in light of my rude awakening - wouldn't think of their partner and ask him about his life every once in a while? I had no idea what sort of person - or monster, as petrifying fear warned - I'd become.

  Selfish, thoughtless, self-centred. Those were the true-to-life adjectives - at one stage, the complete opposite of my gracious personality - which described me best in my depressing moment of realization. What had Luke - and my cherished family, all of whom I loved like nobody else in the world - sacrificed to make time for myself, when a stream of tears were on the brim and a bout of sadness engulfed me as strongly as a bewitching charm? The first few weeks, as Luke and I become familiar with each other and started to share our interests, were complete and utter bliss for, not only myself, but for Luke, too, which nobody could have denied by the dazzling glow which radiated through his handsomely freckled face.

  Ironically, another selfish act of wishing to transport myself back to a better time in the long-gone past overcame me, as desperation tightened its grip on me and I was falling into a sombre hole, inevitably hitting rock-bottom within no period of time.

  A moment-long shiver passed through my body, after a gust of wind replaced the weak summertime breeze that had been threatening to break into the stifling air, provoking hundreds of goose bumps to break out over my bare arms, all as bumpy as a dreaded outbreak of acne.

  I felt cold, both inside and outside. No, cold didn't define the lack of life that was running through my veins, each pump of blood failing to offer any warmth. Secretly sensing that I was proceeding towards a dangerous domain, overwhelmed with bitterness and mistrustful self-doubt, an unforeseeable force motivated my body to move and get up from the log, my skinny-as-breadsticks legs strolling far ahead of my stunned-in-silence mind, which couldn't process the path to where I was trekking, yet reliable instinct eventually overrode all traces of confusion.

  I was going on foot to the meadow, the safest and most calming place in the whole of the eerie forest; hopefully I'd obtain some much-needed peace there.

  Chapter 15

  The pretty, quaint meadow became a vivid picture inside my mind; after having walked through several wide, bumpy paths, the pasture, whose luscious green grass had been licked wet by a sudden spell of rain, was in sight and my pace quickened, thrilled to be getting nearer towards the destination. It seemed like a precious, little secret that I'd kept to myself: no other people were in sight and the only sound that filled the air was birds singing a cheerful tune, alongside a couple of owls hooting quietly.

  This meadow was my piece of heaven - much more glorious than the yearly slice of celestial chocolate fudge cake I'd picked for my birthday since I was five - and I wanted to enjoy it all by myself, without a single person being aware of my actions or thoughts that ran through my head during my short-lived stay. It was mine and, despite my recent dawning of realization to selfish actions, guilt didn't bother me at all. I would only keep it for just for a little while.

  A minute later, I arrived at the old, silver gate and fumbled around for the handle, which was so rusty that it took at least two strong tries to move it, before opening the gate and entering the meadow. It was just the way I'd imagined it as I once did in a drea
m/romantic nightmare: bundles of flowers, both wild and tame, had shot through the grass and glowed gently against the twilight sky, which brought a tear, overwhelmed with pure beauty at the magnificent sight, to my eye.

  Light pink carnations - one of the flowers which were blessed with the gift to place a massive smile on my face - shone brightly beside a patch of vivid red roses (the ultimate romantic flower, I remarked in my head) and a bunch of stunning violets took my breath away, all of which were lightly scattered around the meadow, along with humongous lots of preppy daisies, too.

  Just as I was on the verge of leaning down onto the light blanket of grass, a voice - quiet and almost as peaceful as a whisper - caught my utmost attention, sending my head around into a dazed spin.

  "Nice here, don't you?" the voice said, with a faint hint of humour. Then it - he, as I quickly realized - chuckled lightly, somehow coming nearer towards me.