Total pages in book: 12
Estimated words: 11130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 56(@200wpm)___ 45(@250wpm)___ 37(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 11130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 56(@200wpm)___ 45(@250wpm)___ 37(@300wpm)
But that’s okay. I’ve been paying attention during the wilderness survival lectures this year. I’ll be able to find food and water and construct a basic shelter out of sticks, mud, and dry leaves. Anything to avoid the shame of running into Jess around town and having her turn away from me with pity in her eyes.
Yeah, that would fucking suck. So why are you doing this, psycho?
Abort mission, man.
Now!
Before it’s too late.
But it’s already too late. I can’t go on like this, listening to her despair about dying alone and un-kissed when I would literally give my right hand and several years of my life to be her first kiss, last kiss, and every kiss in between. She’s just…it for me. The One. I’m never going to meet a girl as smart and funny and unique as Jessica Allison Cho.
So tonight, I’ll make my move. I’ll shoot my shot, and if she shoots me down, I’ll deal with the fallout then.
First, I have a “reasons you should be my girlfriend” treasure hunt to manage.
I wait until she starts up the center of the trail before I turn and run, taking the shortcut to the first stop on the map, determined to get there before she does and have her first surprise waiting.
CHAPTER THREE
Jess
I reach the first location on the map—a gnarled tree beside a plaque describing a fire that threatened the camp in the 60s—and pause to catch my breath. I’m wishing I’d brought my water bottle (and maybe the other bag of marshmallows) when I spot something red tucked into the hallow of the fire-scarred tree.
I cross the clearing beside the path and push up on tiptoe to see a bundle tied up inside a red bandana with a paper tag dangling from the knot that reads “drink me.”
I pull the bundle out and open it up, laughing as I collect a box of POG from inside. POG—Passionate Fruit-Orange-Guava juice—is our mutual addiction. God only knows how many miles we biked as kids to get juice boxes from the Hawaiian-owned market at the end of our town’s stretch of the Jersey shore.
I peel off the tab and lift the box to the woods, pretty certain Sam is somewhere close enough to see my silent toast. He knows I don’t dig being out in the woods by myself. He wouldn’t leave me alone and defenseless against attacking Sasquatch, and I bet he’ll be rejoining me soon.
He just wants to mess with me a little first.
Probably as revenge…
“Is this payback for programming an exploding kitten into your game?” I ask the dusky wood. “Because the kitten made the storyline, dude. The only thing better than a biker from hell who’s cursed to wander the earth until he makes amends for his sins is a biker from hell with a kitten that explodes when it’s stressed out in his sidecar.”
I think I hear a soft laugh, but I can’t be sure. It could have been the shush of the leaves as some woodland critter scuttled into the underbrush.
The thought makes me search the forest floor, but I don’t see any rabid bunnies are carnivorous squirrels. One might think that having a pet ferret in my home would have made me less creeped out by forest furries, but one would be wrong. Squirrels are just rats with fluffy tails, and I’ve been wary of bunnies since Sam and I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail a few years ago.
That killer bunny was hysterical, but also creepy.
Deciding it’s time to move along—harder to bite a moving target and there’s not a ton of daylight left—I glance back down at the map, frowning as I see what looks like a boulder with a hole in it a short sojourn into the woods.
Sipping on my POG, I step carefully off the path, already planning to bail on this treasure hunt if the grass gets too high. I love a surprise as much as the next person, but I don’t love ticks or Lyme disease.
Thankfully, the pine needles do a decent job of keeping the grass in check as I head up a steep rise and over the crest of a rocky craig that’s sprung up out of nowhere. On the other side, I see three giant boulders arranged in another clearing, one of them with a large hole in the center.
Settling onto my bottom on the sun-warmed stone, I study the sketch in my hands. Sam is no artist—except when it comes to coding, of course—but the line through the middle of the boulder makes it clear he wants me to go through the hole.
“If this is a portal into an alternate universe, I’m going to be pissed,” I call out before amending, “Unless it’s a really cool alternate universe where women are in charge and cats can talk and sprout wings at will. The only thing better than a cat would be a flying cat.”