[Alex's POV - 16 years old ]

Four months after my friend Johny had made that ridiculous prediction of zombies wanting to eat my brain, I'm sitting high up in a tree. No, not because a horde of zombies is chasing me and climbing a tree was my last resort; Climbing trees is a hobby of mine.

Up here, in a tree, hidden from the hot summer sun by a full canopy of leaves, the breeze feels slightly cooler. Which, in return, makes it a perfect place to read a book.

On a ridiculously hot summer day like today, you won't see me move more than I have to. But down below, on the open grass field next to the tree I'm sitting in, I can hear people cheer enthusiastically. When I sneak a peak between the leaves, I can see a group of friends playing a game of frisbee.

Honestly, their game looks like a lot of fun. Shall I go down and ask them if I can join the game? No… maybe not. I don't have the courage to approach them. I never thought I'd be someone who has trouble making friends, but the fear of becoming a recluse is starting to become very real. I even gave up on my initial plan of joining the local judo club because of their incredibly awkward initiation day.

I focused on exploring my new neighbourhood instead and already quickly found the park. The park in this town is filled with beautiful trees, so it pricked my interest immediately.

Yet, it didn't take a genius to realise that nobody else in this town climbs trees. All the trees that look like great trees to sit in are all covered in green algae and thin young branches sprout everywhere. It had been a nightmare to climb them, not to mention dangerously slippery after a downpour. I had ruined a few outfits on it.

I'm pulled from my thoughts by a flash of blinding light, and quickly hold my hand up to shield my eyes when something hits my palm that would have otherwise hit me in the face. The object bounces off my palm and continues its noisy, bouncy trajectory further down to the ground.

What was that? A flashy purple disc of some sort? O! The frisbee from the kids on the field below.

My suspicion gets confirmed when I hear a male voice cheer: "Lucky!! It didn't get stuck! Otto? Are you trying to boycott this game?"

I crane my neck and am just in time to see a girl with long blond hair tied together in a ponytail shoot a sheepish, yet apologetic look at someone outside of my field of vision. Why does that girl look apologetic? Hadn't the male voice called a male name earlier? I must have heard it wrong.

I hear footsteps move through the grass towards the tree and suddenly I have the urge to flee. Whoever is coming won't see me, right? Why would anyone look up into a tree?

I hold my breath when someone steps into my field of vision underneath the tree's canopy. I think it's the boy I heard talking earlier. He looks normal enough. A teenager, about my age, who clearly had a recent growth spurt. I can tell because his movements look awkward. As if he isn't used to the length of his arms and doesn't know what to do with them. But apart from that, I can't spot any other signs of puberty. From this distance his skin looks clear and his short brown hair looks kept, even though it is currently dripping wet with sweat. But who wouldn't be sweating in this weather?

He stands at the edge of the canopy for a moment, scans the area under the tree, until he spots the frisbee and beelines towards it. I watch as he hunches down to pick it up from the ground, but instead of jumping up happily and running back to his friends, he lingers in his hunched position for a moment longer. It takes me a full three seconds to realise that he's staring at some sandy foot marks my shoes left on the bark when I climbed it earlier, but by the time my brain manages to figure out that the boy is probably going to look further up into the tree, he is already staring at me.

I swallow. Why do I feel so busted? I'm allowed to sit in a tree, right? I'm not doing anything wrong.

However, my sense of unease completely vanishes when the boy loses his balance from his hunched position, releases a yelp and tumbles onto his but. I can't help but laugh.

"Damn. You scared the living daylight out of me!" I hear him say as he heaves a sigh in relief.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," I say, as I raise my hand in an apologetic gesture.

"Dear Lord, for a second there, I thought you were some kind of wood nymph," he mutters more to himself than to me. A wood nymph? Does he mean those mythical creatures associated with nature? That's a fantasy reference, right? I like it!

I hadn't thought about how other people might see me. But now that he mentions it, I can see where he's coming from.

"Who are you talking to?" the girl with long blond hair I'd seen earlier asks as she joins the boy under the canopy and I freeze in place again. I hadn't noticed it before, but this girl is breathtakingly beautiful. A princess type, even though she is wearing a summer T-shirt and shorts, with delicate features and long blond hair that would reach the hollow of her back if it hadn't been tied up in a ponytail.

"To the tree spirit up there," the boy says. Honestly, I must have startled him harder than I thought I had, because he still seems out of it.

"Don't be ridiculous! Have you been gaming all night again?" she says in a scolding kind of way as she looks up in the tree, until her eyes meet mine and she freezes in surprise too.

"J-Jasper?" she asks and the boy next to her hums in acknowledgment. "There really is someone there?"

To me, it feels like the unspoken words "Is he really a tree spirit?" are heavily insinuated in her question. As if she is considering the existence of magic to be true, rather than considering if her friend is playing a prank on her.

I sigh heavily. Looks like my presence has been exposed. I guess it's time to climb down.

My descent to the ground takes me about a minute, but by the time I am standing on the ground next to them, they are gawking at me so intently that it makes me self-conscious.

"What? Is there something on my face?" I ask awkwardly and the boy seems to snap out of his spell.

"Sorry," he says as he shakes his head briefly. "But I need you to verbally confirm that you are, in fact, NOT a tree spirit."

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Now it is my turn to gawk at him. It doesn't help that I notice the girl nod her head briefly at his statement.

Wow! Ok. That's a first.

"I am not," I say. I see the girl sigh in relief to my answer, but the boy frowns.

"You are not NOT a tree nymph, or you are not a tree nymph?" he asks.

"I am not a tree nymph," I clarify quickly. "But then again, why do you even bother to ask? In a world where magic is not supposed to exist, do you think any magical creature would readily confess to being one?"

"You have a point there," the boy mutters as he holds a thumb and index finger to his face in thought.

Someone's laughter at the edge of the canopy, startles me and makes my blood run cold for a second, but then I notice that it isn't who I thought it was. It's a girl with dark-blond hair. I think I saw her play along with the frisbee earlier when I snuck a peek through the leaves. She looks relatively similar to the girl with blond hair, but where the blond girl radiates an air of innocence, this girl radiates an air of confidence.

"I like him," she says as she comes closer to join the conversation. "Don't mind these two airheads. His name is Jasper, this her is Otto and I am Jessy. What's your name?"

Both Jasper and Otto splutter a few words in protest when Jessy calls them airheads, but no one reacts to their complaints.

So I had heard correct earlier. A girl named Otto.

"My name is Alex. Alex Black. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you!" Jessy chimes happily. "Would you like to join our game?"

I am about to accept her invitation, when my phone chimes. I don't need to look at the message to know what it says, but check to be sure anyway.

"I would love to, but I got a text from my dad, just now, to let me know that dinner is served." I show them the message on my phone to prove that I'm not lying.

In return, Jasper's face goes white and he gasps in surprise: "It's already twenty past six?! O, my God! My mom is going to kill me!!"

To his reaction, Jessy looks exasperatedly at the sky and says: "Well, I guess that's the end of all of our game."

"Sorry," I say to her, but in return she looks up in surprise and then grins, not mad at all.

"Not your fault in the slightest. If anything, I hope we bump into you earlier the next time we play at the park."

"I'm looking forward to that," I say, as I glance a little distractedly at Jasper who is scrambling to gather his things and is calling his goodbye from to open grassfield.

"Anyway, bye," I say as I wave shortly at the two remaining friends and leave after they've said their goodbyes.

I look over my shoulder one last time when I hear Otto's laugh chim all the way over to where I'm walking. Jessy must have cracked some kind of joke because I can see her playfully elbow Otto, which quickly turns into an impromptu game of tag as they run from my view.

That group of friends seems like a lot of fun. A little on the crazy side, but fun.

I've had a lot less fun encounters in this town already.

It still gives me shivers when I think back on it.

A little over a week ago, I had been exploring the park, searching for good trees to sit in. I'd already climbed two, which hadn't been easy because of all the baby-twigs that grew everywhere. I was covered in grime and felt really sweaty, when a girl suddenly stood next to me.

"Hi there! I'm Hanna! What are you doing?" She said. I had been looking up into a tree to figure out the best way to climb it and she was mimicking that now. If I had to guess, I'd say she was at least two years younger than me, based on her size, but there were a few factors which made me doubt that. She was standing so close to me that I got a rather skewed view of her, but I could see auburn hair hanging in large curls over her shoulders, a little bow keeping the hair out of her face. Her chocolate eyes were looking up into the tree, even though I was pretty sure she wasn't actually seeing it. Her lips were screwed up into a mischievous grin and her chest was pushed out purposefully which gave me a full view of her cleavage with lace embroidered bra and everything. A giggling at the edge of the tree caught my attention and I noticed two more girls standing there. One tall and skinny, the other short and plump. They never introduced themselves, so I refer to them as Tweedledee and Tweedledum in my mind.

At this point, I got a really bad feeling about these girls, but I hadn't talked to anybody my age in over a month, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"I'm trying to find a comfortable tree to read in," I'd decided to answer her question as I step away from her, around the tree, looking back up again, uncomfortable with the lack of distance between us.

"Wow! You climb trees?! Nobody ever does that these days!" she chirped overly-happy, like a bird, and with a few hops she was practically glued to my side again.

"Do you mind?" I asked, as I awkwardly pushed her an arms-length away from me. "I can't climb if you're standing this close to me."

"O! Sorry!" she said, grinning at me like the Cheshire cat, but at least she keeps her distance this time. I decided to ignore her and go back to what I was doing. So I reached up to test the sturdiness of one of the lowest hanging branches, but before I could even start to tug on it, I felt two small hands going up and down the sides of my stomach. I jumped away startled, and quickly pulled at the bottom of my T-shirt, which had ridden up because of my reaching for the branch. Hanna had taken the liberty to fondly me because of it.

"Oh! Sorry," she chuckled, a fierce blush colouring her cheeks. At the very least she had the decency to look ashamed. But then she continued with: "Ticklish, are you? I'll keep that in mind next time. Those are some fine abs you have there. Is that just from climbing trees?"

A shiver runs through me once again at the memory. Despite the hot temperature, both my arms are covered in goosebumps.

I walked away that day with my head held high and I've taken care to avoid those girls since then, but I can't help but notice that they've left me scarred. I've never been super sociable, but I've never avoided people either. Heck, it had probably made the extremely awkward initiation day at the Judo club worse.

I sigh. I miss Johny. And I hate that I only now understand why he'd asked if I wasn't scared to move.