Alianna limped over to him.

“Wha..What are you doing here? Please you need to leave, I..I need to be alone for a while.”

“No way, I peddled halfway across town to make sure you were okay, and I’m not leaving without you, plus this girl on this phone told me not to leave.” Said Jaius in as confident a tone as he could muster, although there was a good amount of concern building up in his gut for some reason. He dropped his backpack and hers on the ground. His shoulders had begun to ache something fierce.

“Jaius, It's Jaius right?”

He nodded, with a somewhat dumb look on his face, this concern that was building up inside him was turning to fear. He had absolutely no idea what there was to be afraid of.

“Okay, Jaius, I appreciate the concern, really I do, but I’m okay, really I just need a little time to myself, I promise I’ll head home in a little bit.”

“Lying seems to get easier the more you do it.” She thought as she was trying to think of some way to get rid of this kid.

Something in her voice brought Jaius’s full attention back to her. He had heard that tone before, the kids used it every time they tried to set him up for some kind of prank. She was totally lying to him.

“Uh-Uh Alianna, I saw what happened and you don’t just shrug that off and go home. Come on, we really need to get out of here.”

She looked like she was about to respond when instead she began coughing. She fell to her knees holding her chest. Jaius began to reach for her shoulder to see if she was okay, when he began coughing too. The air had suddenly become different. It had an odd taste to it, he sucked it in, but something at the back of his throat didn’t approve. He joined her on the ground coughing, holding his chest. He began to feel light headed. But then after what seemed like days, he was able to slow the coughing. Alianna was also able to get control of it.

She looked at him.

“Wha…What was that all about?” she stammered. “I took a breath and the air was different. It…it tasted different.”

“Yeah I know, I thought you had swallowed a bug or something, but then it hit me too. I didn’t even know the air had a taste till this moment.”

“I kinda did. This air reminds me of something else. Two years ago I had to have my appendix out.” She touched her abdomen where the scar was, remembering the pain and nausea that had hit her so suddenly, and also the fear of surgery that she’d had.

“I had to have surgery, and when I woke up again there was this tube that went across my face and the middle part had two prongs that were set under my nose. I freaked out a little cause I didn’t know where I was and I tried to pull the tube away, but the nurse told me I had to leave it in for a few more minutes. I asked my Dad what it was and he said it was oxygen, not like the stuff in the air, but he said it was pure O2, whatever O2 means.”

“It’s the elemental symbol for the oxygen we can breathe . O2, two molecules of oxygen.”

Alianna looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but then smiled a little and continued.

“Chemistry isn’t really my thing.” She said, blushing a little.

“It's not really mine either, I am a storehouse of useless facts.”

She nodded her head in acceptance of that.

“Anyway, this air, it reminds me of that pure oxygen. Jaius, how can the air just change like that? I mean one minute we’re breathing the air we’ve always breathed and then all of a sudden it changes?”

“Yeah, and what happened to the girl on the phone. I just looked at it again. When I was talking to her it showed four bars, but now it isn’t showing any.”

This brought his iphone to his mind. He reached into his pocket and tapped the screen. He checked the reception and it too was showing no signal. He hit the internet button and after a few seconds it told him it could not connect. His dad had told him that with the network plan they had he should have reception in most places in the U.S. The phone didn’t look broken. What was going on? Icy fear started to creep back into him.

“Alianna I think we...we better head back. Something weird is going on, I’m getting worried.”

She looked behind her, past the creek to the trail that led to the old quarry.

“He must be talking about Olivia. She must have stayed on the phone. She probably made him tell her where we were. I’m not going to have much more time. Her mom is probably calling my mom right now. My mom could be here any minute. If she shows up there is no way I’ll be able to go through with this. I could still make it, I could still run up the trail as fast as I could. He’d never catch me. I know where the fence around the quarry has a break in it. I’ll run up the trail as fast as I can and not stop at all. I can’t go back, I can’t do anything but this. God will understand won’t he? He knows what they’ve been doing to me.”

There was the smallest voice that spoke into her mind, it was Mrs. Shaffer's.

“Ali, you are strong, so very strong. You’ve endured more than a lot of grown ups had to. If the Bellows had had to go through what you have, they would have folded under the pressure months ago. I don’t know why these things are allowed to happen, child, but I believe that God is never far from us, and that he is holding us up in our times of need.”

“Oh God! Wouldn‘t the world be better off without me?” She pleaded.

Just then a picture appeared in her mind. It was of her mother, dressed in black. She was holding one of the twins and her father, also dressed in black, was holding the other. They were standing in front of a casket. Her mother’s face looked dead. Like the light had gone out from behind her eyes. Her dad had tears streaming down his face. She had never seen him cry before. Then she turned to look at the casket and saw her own lifeless body laying there.

“Oh my God, my mother, I can’t, I can’t do that to her. Oh her face, oh her face, Oh…”

Suddenly someone was touching her face.

“Alianna, come on, we need to go.”

She looked back at him and anger flashed through her, but she didn’t know why. It must have flashed in her eyes because he took his hand away and stood away from her.

“Hey look, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to touch you, but you looked like you had become paralyzed or something.”

She sucked in a deep gulp of this new air and let it out.

“Its not your fault Jaius, I.. I was just thinking of my parents.”

“Well, I’m sure they’d be glad to see you, come on let's head back.”

She laughed nervously.

“I’m not so sure about that. I think I might be in some trouble. Running away from school like that.”

She stood up and turned back toward the water. When she reached the edge she stared intently at the spot in the middle of the creek.

“I can’t ever let my mom’s face look like that! Not ever.”

She looked up into the sky.

“God I’m really sorr..”

She placed her hands over her mouth to stifle a shriek.

“Jaius, Jaius come here.”

Jaius ran over to her.

“What, what’s wrong?”

“Loo…look up.”

Jaius looked up and he saw the sky covered in a thick cloud like mass. They weren’t dark like rain clouds, but white and fluffy tinged with a hint of blue, like clear ice. He looked around him, the light hadn’t dimmed, it was still as bright as it had been when he came into this clearing.

He’d seen this before, somewhere, but what movie was it from?

“Jaius, I don’t remember that it was supposed to rain today, and I’ve never seen clouds like that before. This is all too weird! I’m getting scared, I definitely want to go home.”

“Me…me too. Come on, I think we need to go back that-a-way.” He said pointing behind him.

She nodded and began to run.

“Hey! Wait up.” He yelled as he stopped to pick up his backpack and hers and ran after her.

She stopped and looked back to see him trying to keep up.

She waited for him to get to her.

“Sorry, I forget how fast I am sometimes.”

He had his hands on his knees and was breathing too deeply to talk.

After a minute or two, he righted himself.

“Could we maybe walk fast?”

She smiled a little at that.

“Sure, actually you walk fast, I’ll just walk.”

Jaius shook his head.

“Great, thanks.”

They walked back the way he had come, following the creek, but they didn’t say anything. Alianna seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Jaius didn’t have the nerve to interrupt them. He felt like a pretty lousy Knight in armor. It looked like, from where he was standing, that she had taken care of her own problems. He had barely said a word, and all of a sudden she just wanted to go home. He began to believe that the girl on the phone had been overreacting. Alianna didn’t want to hurt herself.

When Jaius had pulled out his iphone before the clock had said 1:30 pm. He pulled out his phone again to see how long they had been walking. The time read 2:45 pm. He stopped as if his feet just sprouted roots. It took Alianna a few yards to realize he wasn’t with her any more. She stopped and looked back.

“What’s wrong? Was I going too fast?”

“N…No. Alianna, we've been walking for at least an hour. There is no way that it took us that long to get to that clearing. I know this is the way I came, but even if it wasn’t there are houses all around these woods. We would have found one of them by now.”

She walked back to him, her face going a bit pale.

“But we’ve been following the creek. Whichever way we followed it would have led us to some form of civilization. Jaius, I’m really getting scared now. Jaius what are we going to do? Where are we!”

He could hear the panic welling up. He knew what she felt because it was welling up inside him too. He also thought that this could be a chance for him to be that Knight in armor.

He tried to put as much confidence in his voice as he could.

“Don’t worry Alianna, we’ll be okay. The creek must branch off and we just took a wrong turn. Look let's go back to the clearing and follow the creek from there. Like you said, either way we follow it will lead us back to somewheres.”

He reached out his hand to her. She started at it dumbly for a moment, then , as his words slowly sank in through the layers of panic. She smiled and nodded.

“OK. It sounds like a good idea.” She took his hand and started walking back the way he had come.

He was rooted to the spot still. He had never held a girls hand before, outside of Anne’s, but she wasn’t a girl, she was his sister. His hand tingled in an odd way.

“What’s going on?”

Alianna abruptly got tugged back a step because Jaius wasn’t moving.

She turned back.

“What’s wrong?”

He was too weirded out to be coy.

“I’ve… I’ve never held a girl’s hand before.”

Suddenly the innocent gesture didn’t seem so innocent to her any more. She pulled her hand free and backed off. She scrunched her face up.

“Ew Gross! Weirdo.” She didn’t know why he was a weirdo, just a scene from one of those books came to mind where something similar happened to the lead girl. So she continued with the scene. She turned on her heel and marched off back the way they had come.

“Huh? Hey wait what did I do? Alianna come back, or wait up, or Arg! Girls, why did all the men in the movies I watch always seemed to want to be around them.”

He grunted once, but seeing that she was getting farther away from him, he jogged after her.

She stayed ahead of him for a while but then she looked back over her shoulder and he saw her shake her head, she slowed down and after a minute he caught up to her.

“Hey, not sure what I did, but I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out.”

She turned her head and smiled a little at him.

“I’m sorry too. I don’t know why I freaked, you were just being nice. Maybe I’m not used to people being nice to me, and wasn’t sure how to take it.” She laughed a bit forcefully.

“Yeah, I know how that is, people in my family try to complement me and to me it feels like they just threw a bucket of crap on me.”

Alianna nodded.

“Yeah, I’ve started to feel that a little too. Why do you think that is? Why do we feel lousy when someone gives us a compliment.”

Jaius opened his mouth to respond but then closed it. He had never thought about it before. Why did he feel like crap when someone praised him.

After about minute of mulling it over in his head he looked back at her and shrugged.

“I don’t know, I’ve felt this way fro a few years now, never really thought about why I did though.”

“Maybe it’s a side effect of being picked on?”

Jaius made a disgusted noise. “That be great. They make you feel like crap whether they are there to pick on you or not.” His mood began to become very gloomy.

Alianna stopped and looked at him. He kept walking a few paces and then stopped and turned back to look at her. Alianna could see the depression engulfing him like a dark misty vapor.

“They’ve only been doing this to me for a year. He’s been tortured for two or three at least. How does he keep going on?”

“What? Was I walking to fast?”

He said with a bit of venom in it, brought on by the depression filling him.

She felt the venom, and for a brief moment was about to let it hurt her feelings, but then stopped as something else Mrs. Shafer said that morning came back to her.

“I am, however disappointed that after the others started treating you badly, that you never went over and talked to him. Tried to be his friend, It could have helped you both out a lot.”

She let the venom wash over her and let go of the biting remark that had sprung to mind.

She went over to him.

“I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for coming after me. I was pretty sure no one would, I had counted on it.”

The cloud seemed to lift a little from his face. He even bushed a little.

“Don’t worry about it, you looked like you could use some help. Believe me I’ve been through enough of what they dish out to know how much it hurts.”

He turned his head back the way they were going, like he was going to start walking again, but then turned part of the way back to her.

“Alianna, what were you doing there by the creek. Why did you come to this place?”

“Ali”

“Huh?”

She giggled a little. “You can call me Ali, it’s what my friends call me. Well, I guess it will be friends if you want to be friends, that is. The only friend I have right now is Olivia.”

Jaius blushed a little, but turned back to her and smiled a little.

“You’d want to be friends with me? You know that means more crap’s going to be thrown at you.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I know, but my only escape route from the pain has been closed off. I have no choice now but to stay at the dungeon and tough it out. Plus, it might be more bearable if we have eachother to hang out with.”

He thought for a moment and then his smile got a bit larger.

“Alright, Ali. Friends?” He said extending his hand.

She didn’t hesitate in taking it.

“Friends.” She smiled and turned to start walking, but he did not let go of her hand. She turned back. “Jaius, don’t get hung up on this hand holding thing again, we need to keep going.”

He was looking at her, his eyes filled with concern.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Ali, you didn’t answer my question. What were you doing there by the creek?”

A few tears began to run down her cheek. She wiped at them and turned away from him.

“I tripped over that branch. I….I.. was going to run up the trail to the Old quarry and not stop at the edge. I couldn’t do it anymore Jaius, I couldn’t go back to the Dungeon after today, and even if I went to another school, I’m sure the news of what happened today would be all over the internet. There isn’t a school in the world I could go to. I was just hoping that God would understand why I had to do it.”

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“There have been a lot of times that I’ve stared at my Dad’s desk drawer. It’s where he keeps his hand gun and ammo. He keeps it locked, but I’m pretty sure I could get to it if I wanted to. Really the only reason that I haven’t done it was Anne, my little sister. I keep having this image of her standing there at my funeral. Her face, well the look on her face is more then I could bare to see. So I keep going, praying that senior year will come very quickly. What stopped you?”

She laid her hand on top of his hand, and then turned back to him.

“The same thing that stopped you. I had a vision of my parents standing before my casket. The look on my mother’s face was horrible. It was like all the light had gone out of her eyes. I couldn’t’ let that happen Jaius. I’d go back to the dungeon and endure whatever I had to prevent that look from ever being on my mother’s face.”

He nodded to her.

“Alright Ali, lets make a promise right here. We’ll never let those visions come true. No matter how hard things get we’ll tough it out and keep going.”

She thought about it for a moment and the nodded her head and held out her hand.

Jaius, looked down at it and then took it in his and they shook hands.

“I promise.” they both said in unison. This brought smiles to both of their faces.

They began walking again, but this time they were talking. Talking about where they grew up, funny and embracing things that happened to them in childhood. Their family’s. Alianna talked a lot about her Nana. When she was describing the book that her Nana had given her Jaius stopped and slapped his hand to his forehead.

“Jaius, what’s wrong?”

“I totally forgot.”

He pulled off his back pack, and opened it. He pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it and handed it to her.

She took it and looked at it closely. Soon her vision was blurred by tears of joy as she realized what it was. It was the missing page from her book. She was so happy that she threw her arms around him and hugged him.

Jaius stiffened at this reaction, but after a few moments returned the hug. There was a moment of healing within each of them that neither would notice for quite some time.

After they pulled apart Jaius had this odd look on his face. Alianna raised her eyebrow.

“What, you’ve never hugged a girl either?”

Jaius face went red at that.

“Just my sister Anne, but she doesn’t count.”

“Why not?”

“Cause she isn’t a girl.”

Alianna laughed at that. It was a loud deep laugh, on she hadn’t of been able to produce in over a year.

At first Jaius looked really hurt, but then what he had said became clear to him and he began to laugh too.

“I guess that was dumb thing to say.” He said running his hand through his hair.

“Not really, I mean I got a little brother too and I can totally see what you were saying. It just caught me as really funny just then.”

They both began walking again as they laughed some more at what Jaius had said. She took the page and finally, noticing that he had her back pack she jumped for joy a few times and thanked him profusely for bringing it along. He handed it to her and she opened the main pocket and placed it inside.

Before they knew it they were back in the clearing, with the creek bubbling along a few yards a way. They both walked over to the edge of the creek and then looked to the right where the creek meandered for a hundred yards or so, then disappears around a corner. To the left it continued straight for as far as they could see. About twenty feet from where they were trees rose up on either side of the creek, creating a kind of tunnel.

Alianna squinted her eyes, trying to see as far down that tunnel as she could. At the farthest point that she could see her imagination took over. She envisioned herself following the water until it came out to a wide plain, and in the middle of that plain was a gleaming city made of crystal that radiated hues of rainbows as the sun’s rays passed through its structures.

“Ahem.” Jaius cleared his throat. “Which way do you think? If we go right, it looks like the creek bends back the way we just came. I…I think that that was what we were following and not some branching of the water.”

‘Sorry I was just…Just…”

“Just trying to imagine what fantastical place might exist at the far end of that tunnel.”

Her mouth dropped open and she turned to face him.

“How…How did you know that?”

“I do it a lot too, mostly in the movies I watch. I try to imagine the places that might exist on the other side of the mountain range in the back ground, or if they pass by a city or village and don’t stop I find myself wondering who those people that lived there were.”

Alianna took Jaius’s hand in hers and began to walk to the left.

“Come on then Jaius, let see what lies beyond the furthest point that we can see.”

He felt that strange tingling again as she grabbed his hand and began moving. The tingling didn’t freak him out this time, so he followed her up the small incline toward where the trees started again.

Before they got there, he stopped and looked up once more at the odd sky.

“How can the sun be covered by clouds and there still be all this light around?”

She stopped when he did and looked up too at the odd sky.

“So you think its some kind of weird storm? I mean there was that strong wind that came through the clearing right after you got there.” She said.

He looked back at her and shrugged. “I have no Idea. But I ain’t never seen anything like that before.”

She looked back down at the creek, needing to reassure herself that it hadn’t changed. She saw many gleaming points of light in the water. Now that they were a little above it she was able to see them. When she had seen the creek from the shore, she had thought the gleaming was just the light from the sky reflecting off the water, but apparently there was something in the creek causing the effect.

“Jaius, look.” She said pointing at the water.

He looked down and after a few moments. “What the heck is that?”

“I don’t know but I want to find out, maybe it has something to do with all this weirdness.” She let go of his hand and ran back down to the edge of the creek.

“Ali, Wait.” He said as he ran after her. By the time he got to the water’s edge she was already in the creek swimming toward the middle. She then dove under the water. He looked down to see her boots set right by the water’s edge.

He took off his back pack and took a step into the water.

She swam down toward the lights, and she saw clear crystals, glowing like they had a mini star inside them. She reached out and touched them, and they felt cool and smoth. “Oh wow.” She gurgled as she let out some breath. Suddenly everything turned white, then black.

Before he took another step, there was a flash of light from the spot where she had dove under and a moment later her body rose to the surface. She was face down and not moving.

“Ali!” he cried as he ran forward and then swam the rest of the way to her. He turned her face out of the water. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t breathing.

He put his arm under her’s and across her chest and then swam with his free arm and pulled her back to shore. He silently thanked his mom for those swimming lessons she had forced him to go to for all those years.

When he could touch the bottom he stood up and dragged her to the shore. He was very thankful she was light, or else he never would have gotten her there.

He stood frozen, looking down at her.

“Oh crap, what am I going to do, I’m not a doctor, I’m a kid.”

Her chest wasn’t rising or falling. He did know that unless it did that she’d be dead in a few minutes. Suddenly scenes from hundreds of different movies came flooding into his mind. Scenes of people pushing on the chests of people who had drowned, or they weren’t breathing.

He immediately knelt down next to her and put his hands, one over the other, in the middle of her chest and started to push down. He did it way to gently at first, but started adding more pressure as the seconds ticked away.

“Come on Ali, come on back. It would be the stupidest thing I can think of to decide not to drown yourself, then die from drowning.”

He had no Idea how long he had been pushing on her chest, but he was beginning to fear it was too late, when she began coughing up water. She jerked onto her side and kept coughing. Jaius sat back and just watched her.

After a minute or two, she stopped coughing and looked up at him.

When he saw her looking at him, the relief that she wasn’t dead left him and was replaced by a deep anger.

He jumped up and picked up a rock. He glared at her and then turned and threw it into the water. He then reached for another and did the same, screaming his rage with each throw.

Alianna had no idea what was going on. She was soaking wet and Jaius was a few feet away, also soaking wet, throwing stones in the water and yelling unintelligible things.

“Jaius…” She croaked. “Jaius, what are you doing?” He didn’t seem to hear her.

“Jaius!” she was finally able to yell. Her throat and her chest hurt, and she felt like she had after the time she stuck that fork in the electric outlet.

He stopped in mid throw and turned back to her, anger flashing in his eyes.

“What!” he growled.

She cringed back from him a little, her disorientation making it hard to resist that anger, “What…Why are you so mad?”

“Why am I so mad!” he said as he threw the rock into the ground.

“Friends might grow on trees for you Ali, but I haven’t had one since we moved from Pittsburgh. After all these years someone tells me they actually won’t die just being seen with me, and then she goes and does something so stupid as jumping into water to investigate something that we know nothing about. There shouldn’t be lights at the bottom of this creek, Ali. The fact that there are means that there is something totally strange going on. But does that make you the least bit cautious? No, you go running in without even trying to check for danger. Then I come down here to find you floating face down in the water. I…I thought you were dead, and I didn't know what to do…and…”

He knelt down, hung his head and began to cry.

“He’s right, that was kinda stupid.” She thought to herself as she tried to stand up. Her legs felt like jello, but she was able to make it over to him. She knelt down and closed her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder.

His whole body shook with his sobbing. Three years of pent up grief poured out on her shoulder, but she didn’t mind. He was her friend now and this is what friends did for each other. She felt so sorry for him, for what he’d had to endure. She felt a lot of guilt for not doing this back in sixth grade, when she first saw what the other kids did to him. She had had Alison, and since the other kids didn’t bother them, she had been too scared to risk drawing their ire.

She saw his hands clench the water soaked gravel at the edge of the creek, as if he was holding on to the only thing keeping him from falling into a pit. She gently whispered soothing words into his ear, and rubbed his back like her mother did when she cried. The breeze picked up a little, and it hit her like having ice dumped over her head. She began to shiver. This must have brought him back to himself, because his sobbing eased and he pulled away from her and looked at her with red, puffy eyes.

She looked back at him, teeth chattering together. His cheeks turned red with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry Ali, sorry I yelled at you. Sorry you had to see me crying like a girl. I was just so scared that you were dead. We got to get home though before we get sick.” His teeth had begun chattering just like hers

“Yeah…Yeahh…, I did..didn’t think about being cold when I dove in the water either.”

He stood, and then reached down to help her up. She put her arm around his shoulder and put his around her waist to steady her. She leaned on him for support, as if her legs weren’t working right.

“Can you hand..d hand me my backpack?” she said through chattering teeth. “I have my gym uniform in there annn..d a towel. I had forgotten that picture day had a short schedule.”

Jaius thought for a moment and he also shivered violently as the wind tore through them and then smiled.

“Hey, I gooo….ttttt mine with me tttoo, and a decently large towel. My mom must have forgotttteeen that we didn’t have morning classes too. At least we have a spare set of clothes.”

On the inside she did mentally scrunched up her face at the thought of wearing the very unstylish St Pious X gym uniform, but just as she was doing that the breeze blew through her again turning her blood to ice.

The mental picture was erased and any thought of not putting it on went out the window.

She took the bag from him and started to turn to head up to the trees for privacy. She paused and looked over her shoulder. She wasn’t sure why this mattered, but she had read this type of scene in many of her books, and the information in those books was what she was running on at this point. Having never been stuck in the woods before with a boy.

“No peeking now.” she said sternly.

He looked up from his bag. “Why would I peek at you changing?”

That wasn’t the response that always came in the books. She faltered for a moment.

“I..I don’t know, its always what the girl says when I read a scene like this in my books.”

“Yeah, it’s the same way in the movies. The girl goes off somewhere to change, but before she goes she tells the guy not to look. I really am not sure why, but the guy usually doesn’t listen and looks anyway.”

“I don’t get it either, but just to be safe, don’t look OK?”

“OK, same for you I guess. I’ll get changed here.”

“Deal.”

She nodded her head and then turned and moved up the incline to the trees.

She walked slowly a few hundred yards up the hill and found a ring of bushes that should offer enough privacy. When she opened her pack and got out the towel and fume uniform she got an added surprise to find her swimsuit wrapped up with her gym clothes as they had been using the pool at the nearby WYCA for Gym this semester. She smiled at that additional, most welcome, accessory.

While she changed she had time to assimilate what just happened. All she remembered was there being glowing crystals on the creek bottom. She dove down to investigate and had reached out to touch one. There was a blinding flash of light and then all of a sudden she was laying on her side coughing up a lung. She must have been knocked out. But why hadn’t she drowned? Then she remembered how wet Jaius was and it all clicked into place.

“He saved my life. He saved me and… and he kept my mom from having to go through the vision I saw.”

Gratitude, like she had never felt before flooded through her. That was twice today he’d saved her life. That feeling of gratitude did not go away.

“Well only one thing to do then, according to Nana’s book.” She hurriedly finished dressing. She then put her swimsuit back in her pack and neatly folded her wet clothes and carried them and the towel in her left hand. She hurried back down the hill, trying not to think too much on what she was about to do.

She saw him standing there. He had gotten his Gym uniform on and was in the process of laying out his wet clothes and smiling as he lifted up a pair of swim trunks . She didn’t even miss a step. She thought if she hesitated she wouldn’t go through with it. So she kept going.

Jaius heard something behind him and thinking it must be her he said “Hey Ali, look I got my swim trunks….”. Was all he got out as he saw a flash of blond hair before two lips were pressing on his. He had no idea how long they stayed there. He didn’t notice when his own lips pushed back, something had shut down inside his mind, he had no Idea how to process this.

Alianna pulled away. Up till a minute ago she had believed with all that she knew that kissing a boy was at the same time the grossest thing in any of the books she read and that which made her and Alison’s heart flutter. Even the scene in Nana's book made her cringe and giggle every time she read it. But as she backed away from him, she thought that that wasn’t the grossest thing she’d ever done.

Once Alianna backed away from him, whatever mechanism had unhinged in Jaius’s head, jumped back into motion. The full realization of what had just happened came crashing down. He began furiously wiping at his lips.

“What are you doing?” he spluttered.

“Every knight in armor deserves his reward for saving the damsel. You saved my life twice today.” her tone became more serious. “More importantly Jaius, and I will never be able to repay this, you kept that vision of my mom’s face from coming true just now, you kept your word to me.” She smiled. “What are you on about anyway? Are you telling me that I’m a bad kisser?”

He blushed furiously, but looked her in the face when he shook his head.

“No”

“Good, cause your not that bad yourself.” she said, sounding like she had all the experience in the world to draw from.

He felt lightheaded and totally confused. No girl had ever looked at him twice, let alone kissed him. He had to admit to himself that it wasn’t the torturous act that he had always made it out to be.

He smiled a little, shook his head and proceeded to finish showing her the swim trunks. Alianna smiled as she walked past him and set her wet clothes near his and slipped on her boots.

“I have mine too, I totally forgot about swim Gym at the Y.”

As she got up she looked at herself and began to laugh.

“What is so funny?” He said looking at her, trying to figure out what made her laugh.

“Me. This has got to be the absolutely worst me I’ve ever seen. Hair all out of wack, makeup running all over the place, Soft boots, and a St. Pious the X’s gym uniform. Wow, I’m glad no one has a camera, if this got out, I’d really never be able to….”

There was an audible click. She looked back at him to see what had made the noise. He was holding his iphone up in the air and pointing it at her.

“What was that?”

“Oh nothing.”

Then a memory surfaced of everything the person at the Comcast store had told her that her phone could do. It could take pictures.

“Jaius.” she said threateningly. “Did you just take my picture?”

“Huh. What do you mean? I…”

“Delete it now!”

“Um…nope.” He gave her a huge grin, and he took off running up the hill.

“Get back here you louse!” She took off after him.

“What is he thinking? He can’t outrun me, he does have a nice grin though.”

But as she ran her legs began to protest. What ever had happened to her in the water had turned her legs to mush and her head kinda hurt. Plus he was weaving in and out of the trees which made her have to keep changing direction. Due to her impairments and his zigzagging, he was able to hold his own.

After twenty minutes she had lost sight of him, she couldn’t believe it. There weren’t many kids that could out run her. She kept moving forward though and finally, she saw a light up ahead. The trees must be thinning. She ran past the last tree and would have run right off a cliff if Jaius hadn't heard her coming and tackled her. She hit the ground hard and all the breath left her. She spent minutes on her back, trying to breath, and finding herself unable to get a breath. She had had the wind knocked out of her once during a soccer game, she remembered how scared she had been. A good amount of that fear was returning now. Slowly, she was able to bring in more and more air.

When she opened her eyes he was looking down at her.

“Ali, I’m so sorry, but at the speed you were going, you would have run right over the edge, and believe me you don’t want to do that.”

She could hear him trying to keep the fear out of his voice, but she knew something wasn’t right.

“Its Okay Jaius.” She groaned. “The edge of what?”

“That.” he said pointing to her right. She looked right and saw the white mass of clouds extend toward the horizon, but the ground ended in a line not five feet from where she lay. Fear began to creep up her spine.

She stood up, with some help from Jaius. It was a good thing that he had put his arm around her because she collapsed against him as she looked out upon something that shouldn’t be there.

They stood on an incredibly high cliff face. She looked down over the edge and could see water sparkling far, far, below. The cliff face itself seemed to slope back inward about a hundred feet down. Kind of like a man upside down candlestick she thought. The cliff face below her, as far as she could see, seemed to be made of gold. She looked up and saw, opposite them, another cliff face about a mile away. It too looked like it was made from gold and it sloped inwardly like the one below them. As she followed it down she saw that these cliffs really did resemble an upside down candlestick. In fact it was a pillar. The gold stopped after a certain distance. Then it was replaced with silver, and then other metals such as a layer of copper, Iron, and other minerals that were so far down the pillar that she couldn’t make them out. There was also a fait shimmer cascading up the face of the pillar. At the border between metals there was a glittering ring of rainbow light. The two cliffs went around and met each-other about a mile to their right and left. It finally dawned on her what this was. It was a massive hole that led down into some kind of subterranean lake.

“Just like the underground lake near the White Queen’s city in the Silver Chair!” She thought as excitement began to replace her fear.

She moved away from Jaius, and began to bounce up and down.

“Ali what are you doing?”

“Jumping up and down with excitement.” She giggled.

“Why?”

“Cause we’re in Narnia!”