“Alright everybody, pair up,” says Penelope, glancing at Lexy.

Lexy and Mauven both stared at each other for a quick second before launching at Xinexa. She now had her right hand in Lexi’s left hand and her left hand in Mauven’s right.

“How about I go with Fork,” Xinexa says, pulling her hands away.

“I’ll go with Cerise,” says Peri, high fiving her sister.

“We don’t need to pair up because this is our own magic,” says Portia.

“Then I guess I’ll have to go with Allie,” says Mauven with a sigh.

“Don’t call me that,” growls Lexi.

“All pairs must hold hands and not let go until completely out of the portal,” announces Petra.

“If you let go, you’ll like, die or whatever,” says Penelope with a hair flip.

With that, they all do what she says and pair up. Pair by pair they jump in. When it was Xinexa’s turn, she takes a deep breath, nods at Fork, and together they leap into the unknown. It feels like there’s a billion inchworms were on my skin having the biggest dance party in the history of dance parties. Xinexa could barely feel Fork’s hand in hers, her head was spinning and it was getting hard to focus on her. Feeling her hand slipping out of Fork’s, Xinexa frantically grabbed the closest thing to her, which happened to be a tree.

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“We’re here!” exclaims Fork.

What? We’re here? Since when?! Xinexa opened her eyes only to be met by darkness. It wasn’t that dark but all the trees here were blackish brown with the darkest kind of green leaves. The sky was cloudy and seemed to be swirling like a hurricane.

“It’s getting late. Everyone start walking behind me so we can find a place to camp,” orders Peri.

As they’re walking Xinexa can just make out some whispering. She turns back and it looks as though Lexy and Mauven are arguing about something. They both looked up suddenly so Xinexa whips her head around hoping they didn’t see her staring.

“Are we almost there?” complained Fork.

“How about we just camp out here?” Cerise suggested.

“Alright, everyone make groups of three and grab a tent,” Mauven orders.

The three LPs of course went together and grabbed their tent from the RV which they conveniently transported here. The rest of them still needed to make groups.

“I’ll share with Xinexa!” both Lexy and Mauven shouted then glared at each other.

“I guess I’ll share with you both,” she said, trying to get rid of the tension that she was starting to notice between them.

“I suppose that means I’m gonna share with Cerise and Peri,” says Fork.

They all grab their tents and start setting them up. Once they were inside of the tent, Mauven and Lexy start to argue again.

“I’ll sleep next to her,”

“No, I’ll sleep next to her,”

“Guys, why don’t I just sleep in the middle?”

The boys looked at each other, still looking frustrated and reluctantly agree. Xinexa crawls into her sleeping bag and zips it up tight and then she put a pillow on both sides of her to separate herself from the boys a little bit. Even if they’re my friends, they’re still boys.

After getting comfortable, she starts to doze off but wakes up again when she hears something. It sounds like footsteps approaching their campsite. Xinexa slowly opens the screen of the tent and looks out. What’s out there is something she thought she would never see, something she’d heard rumors about, something that chilled her to the bone.