My grandmother rang a bell and all of us, used to the routine by the 8th day of our vacation, came hauling our tired bodies as fast as we could, so we could fill our hungry appetites. The kitchen was the like one you would see in a reality show; granite countertops, wooden floors, brown wooden table 5 feet from the oven, but her pantry was filled with lots of big pans, pots, blenders and a whole lot of other cooking utensils.

  “Coming!” yelled Will.

  “Strong boys need big appetite,” chuckled Grandma.

Jimmy whose brown hair and chubby cheeks were filled with lumpy oatmeal, and syrupped waffles had a right to be eating so quickly, because my Grandma acted like a chef who had won Hell’s Kitchen.

  After we ate, we sloppily went to the garage door. The stuffy room was filled with the smell of plastic, and there were mops, handyman tools, old baby tools, and other stuff she had never even used all over the room, but somehow I didn’t even see any kind of bug on the floor, because my grandma was occupied in being cleanly all the time, annoying us all to clean our messes “or else”. Our bikes were in their normal spots, so we got our helmets and waited for Jimmy to get his backpack.

  When he came back we hit the button to our garage door, gaining ground on our bikes, to hurry Jimmy, who was almost on his bike.

  “Porky, c'mon!” yelled Will. Will had on a stuffy, beige colored, jacket and his red hair was sticking out of it. He looked very skinny, yet he ate the most,

  “Wait up!” panted Jimmy. He then pedaled quickly enough to catch up with us.

  Our journey began then on Monday with Jimmy, Will, Charles, and me, striding constantly forward.

  As the green patches of the neighborhoods dead end came to view through the tall, brown, trees we came to our old and tattered grey tents, with the new polished and brown treehouse dangling above us, it’s brown, raw, ladder inviting us to come inside, so of course we wanted to go there as briskly as we could.

  “I bet you can’t get there as fast as I can!” wailed Jimmy.

  “I bet you you’ll lose like, as always,” bargained Charles.

  “Deal!” hooted Jimmy.

  But just as we were about to cross that divine path, Charles with his jet black hair, slicked back won the race, and suddenly Jimmy hit a stump and hurled forward, almost flying. Jimmy’s blood was a scary rosy, maroon, which may have touched me, and grossed me a little, so I made a face that seemed like a loathed the situation.

  “Oww!!” screamed Jimmy, as birds flew across to the sun.

  “I won!” teased Charles, his happiness fading as he realized the situation.

  “It’s all your faults! All of you are so annoying and don’t even care about little, old me!” said Jimmy, his eyes gleaming with fresh tears.

  “What are you talking about?!” asked charles and me. I was confused, but Charles seemed a little amused. This was regular behavior but I thought Charles was being a little too bratty.

  With tears falling down his muddy cheek, he went into his tent and locked himself in, the door to making a bang, and the handle slowly moving to a stop.

  “Just leave him alone,” huffed Will. Charles snickered a little.

  We then left his tent hearing his whimpering and began to play Dungeons And Dragons.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I told Charles.

  “Like you can say anything…” breathed out Charles.

  What had I done? Maybe I could have helped Jimmy out, but I tried to keep this in the back of my head. I wished he was there to play our game with us.

  After ten minutes of silence we saw the back door we had came through open and saw a trail of blood leading to Jimmy, who was in the small brown treehouse. We didn’t know this, though. His bike was still where he had fallen, and was already crowded with orange leaves, despite being there only 15 minutes. I wondered where Jimmy could be since he wasn’t going to be in the treehouse.   “Check where he is,” commanded Charles, unnerved, taking my thoughts away from me.

  “What the heck happened?!” wheezed out Will.

  “I don’t know!” I said, but with a shaky voice.

  “I already checked the tents,” declared Charles, heading out of the grey tent.

We then went to what looked like a creak of wet blood, oozing from the treehouse. There really wasn’t that much blood, but we had never seen this much blood, so it looked like a lot to us. This scared me so much because I thought he was dead. It looked as if someone had died, but their body had disappeared, making it so you could only see the flaming, dark, ground.

We heard a noise in the bushes, like you see in a movie, when something bad happens, but it was a cardinal, the color of grim, crimson, blood. It flew away with a flock of ravens. I still imagine that bird, in my dreams as if it was an assassin stalking me.

  We climbed to the top of our ladder and saw a sniffling Jimmy with red ears but a grey face, He looked like a ghost. I’d never seen him this absurd.

  “Dang, you bleed fast,” I said relieved he was ok.

  “Umm, did you put a towel or bandaid, or just something on that?” Will asked, scared Jimmy would faint.

  “Why are you h-here?” wondered Jimmy, shaking the treehouse.

  “Chill out!” I yelled back, but not as loudly, because my ears were almost bleeding from the noise. “ Come Back to the house so you can get well rested. You look like you’ve been through a car wreck!”

  “Whatever,” agreed Jimmy. I didn’t think he’d agree that fast, but I couldn’t argue with him. I hoped he really was fine, because if he wasn’t maybe we just needed to help him by being a better friend. How could we be better friends? Could we stay friends, or would this stay with us forever? There are so many questions that will stay unanswered, possibly until Jimmy feels comfortable with answering them, but until then these questions would stay a mystery.

We Pulled Jimmy out, almost falling over on a blue book that had been left there, and took him home, the sun striding behind us.

We left the bikes abandoned in the forest, a scar of our past life.