A day in the woods (1,500 views)

“Listen to you. The help. You might pay people in your Beverly Hills mansion to help you, but in the real world, no one is going to help you. No one except your friends, which I doubt you have! You’re a lousy hypocrite, you know.”

Arthur glared at her. She didn’t know anything about him, about the time and life Susan sacrificed just so she could raise him. She couldn’t possibly realize how much she sacrificed to be a proper sister, a foster mother, to her baby brother.

“You don’t know anything about me.” Arthur snapped, sliding closer, just enough so that he could glare into her eyes. “So how about you stop making assumptions about my future, because no one can safely predict it. Not even you, little princess.”

Kara snorted. “They’re kinda hard to ignore, though. I’ll try.” She closed her eyes, trying to think of sleepy things.

“You tell me not to dare degrade your parents, yet here you are, insulting mine.” Arthur laughed that out, shaking his head. “You irritate me. Your existence is an eyesore. I can’t fucking believe anyone as selfish, idiotic, and hypocritical as you even exists! But don’t worry. Just to spite you, I won’t lose anything. I’ll have a successful life and when you die I’ll spit on your grave. Or your fathers. Whichever comes first.”

Arthur didn’t move back, just glared at her. If looks could kill, these two would probably be dead ten times over.

Kara sighed and rolled over, opening her eyes to look up at the stars. “I really wish their yelling would attract the search party. Then it’d be useful for something, at least.”

“Please. Don’t try to explain yourself. You completely insulted my parents. Not that I care, it just shows how miserable you are.”

He snorted, shaking his head. “Wow. You really are an idiot. Just because I wasn’t born into a fucking family business doesn’t mean I can’t work for a damn paycheck! Like I’d get killed by a junkie, you’ll probably contract food poisoning from one of your workers who hates your privileged guts, and that’s how you’ll die!”


Kara pursed her lips. “Yeah… well, I mean they’ll be looking for us. So I figure they’ll take the yelling as a good sign. To come and make sure we’re not being mauled.”

“Because no one likes you, with the exception of your family. You treat people like trash, they’ll see you as trash!” Okay, maybe that was a childish answer. And maybe he was in the same boat. But honestly, Arthur didn’t care.

“And you’re going to get so comfortable with your fucking life, you’ll fall to pieces when it’s ruined by something. You won’t—you can’t—adapt well to change and that is your fucking issue. Why would I want to be like you? Rely on a future that can easily fall to shit? No. I’d rather make my own damn future, thanks.”

He glared at her condescending look, gritting his teeth. She was so stupidly stubborn and he wanted to rip her stupid head off!

Kara rolled her eyes. “Yeeeeah…. Ugh… I just want to hope they’ll come, because I don’t want to be stuck hearing this for the rest of my life… I think I’ll hang myself from a tree by noon if this keeps up.”

“I don’t. I think you’re a vain, selfish little brat who only cares about herself and her precious daddy. Take that away, and what are you? A snob who gets on everybody’s nerves. And who cares if I have friends? I don’t.”

“And like I said, I can adapt to change. Just take you out here. You freak out, whine, and demand better conditions when nothing is going to get better! You can’t change! But I’m more than willing to change, and time throws a lot of curveballs! Sooner or later everything ends, even your precious five star restaurant! And you won’t be able to handle that!”

Kara sighed and took to mimicking their argument with her hand and mouth, making exaggerated angry expressions as she did so.

“Blah blah blah bla blah.” She mimicked, keeping her voice low enough to be drowned out by their yelling but loud enough to be heard. “That’s literally all I hear right now.”

--

Meanwhile, the search party was on the move. They’d been searching for roughly two and a half hours, and Susan was very visibly nervous. She’d taken the group to every group of those flowers she had located in scouting the woods, finding nothing. What if they’d been eaten? What if they fell in a river and drowned? Susan shone her flashlight in between trees, but everything looked the same!

So they could find their own way back, they had brought a very long rope, which was tied to a rock just outside of the forest. It was currently in Susan’s hand. The backup plan was a walkie talkie, which Susan had hooked to her belt. The other was in possession of Ms. Davis, who was staying up until the search party returned.

“Arthur! Ace! Kara! Chardonnay?” Susan called out, listening for any response.

She had insisted the team stick together, so no one else got lost. Todd Bennett was behind her, frowning at his flashlight which wasn’t working. By now, Todd wanted nothing more than to go to his room and sleep…

He yawned, hitting the side of his dead flashlight a few times. He hadn’t heard any response from the trees at all tonight. He was beginning to feel bad for Ms. Summers, she looked like she was in a panic after two and a half hours of nothing.

He sighed.

“That’s why you’re going to fail in life! Because you can’t change! I don’t care how secure you think your dumb restaurant is! What if you fail a health inspection? If it burns down? Then you’re screwed over. You whine about everything expecting it to improve your situation but it won’t and it never will, because you’re just a baby who can’t do anything for herself and relies on money!”

Arthur turned away from Chardonnay to glare up at the stars, which were no longer hindered by smoke. The fire had gone out long ago. The sky suddenly made him angrier than it did before.

“I hope you get murdered by some mugger over 50 bucks!”

Kara blew out of her nose and mimicked them more. “Weh weh weh how dare you have a different opinion than me. Them, in a nutshell.”

--

Susan looked through some more trees.

“Yeah… but… being alone out here at night? It’s terrifying…” She muttered. “I think I’d…. find a cave, or make a fire…”

Todd finally got his flashlight back on, and shone it around, almost jumping when a shadow scared him.

“Woah, that was a scary shadow…” He muttered, the adrenaline the scare had given him perking his senses slightly. He thought he heard a voice, and stopped, listening.

“I… think I hear something…” He said, aiming this more at Max than at Ms. Summers, who was busy searching the trees. He didn’t want to give false hope if he was just hearing things, after all.

“….is that… arguing? Can you hear anything, coming from this way?”

He pointed.

“No. You can’t rely on money. Money is just paper.” Arthur scoffed. “Take away your material possessions and what do you have! Nothing! Nothing at all!”

He groaned and ran his fingers through his hair, giving the sky his best poker-face. He was hungry, he could feel it in his stomach. He was wide awake now thanks to ‘miss wine a lot’ next to him, but unfortunately she was probably awake, too.

“Childish? Me? Okay. If I’m childish, then you’re a fucking infant.”

Kara turned to face Ace, shaking her head.

“Since they’re gonna keep us up… want to play tic tac toe? I’m bored.”

--

Todd opened his mouth when Max seemed to hear it, too.

“Ms. Summers! We hear something up here… m… maybe we should check it out?”

Susan turned to face Todd and Max, shining her light in the wood. She heard and saw nothing, but…. Why not give it a shot? They probably had better hearing than her, anyway.

“All right… keep an ear out for anything! We'll find them, I hope!" She said, sounding a bit peppier than before. "Arthur! Kara! Ace! Chardonnay?” She yelled out again, taking her place as leader with the rope.

Todd sighed and followed her, grunting as his light went out again. He followed beside Max and behind Susan, hitting at his flashlight repeatedly to try to knock it back on.

“Money doesn’t mean shit if there’s no silver in the banks! And guess what! That shit’s running out! What if we turn into post-war Germany, hm? Throwing away thousands and thousands of dollars for a single loaf of bread! Where would your business wind up then, hm?”

Arthur looked back at her, to glare.

“I have everything I fucking need. I don’t need to shower in money to be happy unlike you.”

Kara tilted her head, a bit surprised he didn’t know the common game.

“Tic tac toe is… what?” Kara perked her head up, hearing something in the distance. She’d never been so happy to hear distant yelling than she was at this moment! “Ahh… I do! And it’s not thing 1 and thing 2 over there! Hello! Can you hear me?”

Kara rose to her feet, hope filtering into her eyes, as she stared at the blank forest in front of her. The search party was coming!

--

Susan kept approaching, hearing something herself, finally.

“Ahh! I think we’ve found them! Thank God…” She breathed out a sigh of relief, feeling so much lighter all of a sudden. Todd smiled hearing the voices, glad that he wasn’t leading the group to a dead lead.

“Hello! Uhm, we can hear you?” He called out, feeling stupid shortly after he said that, his voice rather soft for a shout.

Arthur rolled his eyes but didn’t comment, and Susan looked down at Chardonnay’s ankle, feeling horrible. It was supposed to be a simple trip into the woods, to get the kids to appreciate nature, have some time outside, and enjoy the flowers. She hadn’t meant for this to happen, but she supposed she should have thought this through before she sent them trekking far into the woods.

“I’m so sorry… we’ll get you back to the school as soon as possible! I’m sorry, Chardonnay, you’re right, this is all my fault. Now all we need to do is figure out how to get you home! I assume you can’t walk, am I correct?”

Kara shook her head. “Honestly? I have no idea. I tried to sleep, but they woke me up yelling, so I started mimicking them. Then you guys showed up.” Kara said, throwing her hands in the air. “Hallelujah!”

She brought her arms down and scratched her head. “…well… we came in here, walked on the trail for hours… and then we thought we saw some yellow flowers. But they weren’t the right ones, and we couldn’t find the trail again. So we wandered.”

Todd made sure the fire was extinguished completely, looking the pit over.

“Oh, yeah, that does look bad… someone will need to help you...” Susan examined the ankle, then her gaze fell onto Arthur, and she smiled. Arthur returned the smile with a challenging, apprehensive stare, before he sighed, shook his head, and walked a little closer, glaring down.

“I told you before, I could probably lift you.” Arthur said, in a monotone. “Guess like I’ll be the one lugging your prissy ass back to your tower.”

Susan smiled, and turned back to Chardonnay.

“If you don’t mind, that is. We could ask someone else if that idea makes you uncomfortable, Arthur’s not exactly very nice company for extended periods of time.”

Todd would have offered to carry Chardonnay, but he wasn’t sure he could handle carrying a fully grown girl all the way back to the dorms. His light suddenly went out again and he let out a little whine, hitting it again to trigger it back on.


Kara sighed and blocked her ears. “La la la, I can’t hear it anymore, I am so glad I don’t have both of them as housemates, Arthur is bad enough alone.”

Kara unblocked her ears and stared at the rope.

“Hnn… so we’ll follow that all the way back? Ahh, it might take a while. But at least we know it ends at sanctuary!”

“Wonderful! Well let’s get moving as quickly as possible, I want to get your ankle medical treatment straight away!” Susan said in a bright tone, turning to the others. “We’ll be heading back shortly, please everyone stay together, and we should find ourselves back on campus in no time!”

Susan quickly took a break to use her walkie-talkie, likely to inform Ms. Davis that all the students had been located. Meanwhile, Arthur rolled his eyes and knelt down in front of Chardonnay, his back to her. He was close enough that he could hoist her without twisting her ankle, but first she had to latch on.

“I won’t have to drop you so long as you don’t strangle me or cut my skin with your nails. Hurry up and wrap your arms around my neck.” He snapped.


Kara looked at her phone and pouted—it was running out of battery. Good thing they were going home. “Lucky you. Yeah… they always say the way back is quicker than the road getting there.”

Todd waited for Susan to finish her call, glancing at his watch. Woah, it really was late!

“If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it a long time ago!” Arthur snapped, reaching his hands back so that he could secure Chardonnay’s thighs, and he hoisted her up, having to lean forward a bit so that Chardonnay’s ankle wouldn’t bend or twist at all. Once he stood up, he sighed, and glanced over at Susan. Since he and Chardonnay weren’t too different in terms of height, holding her like this was somewhat awkward, but he could manage.

“And do me a favor and don’t start bitching about how i'm not a fancy new car, or I’ll make sure to stumble over every root I find.”

“Well!” Susan turned around, shining her flashlight dead ahead. She looked to Todd, who held the rope. “Let’s all get moving! I’ll take the back, and make sure no one falls behind! And remember to watch where you step!”

Kara started to sing as he walked into the wood, her eyes following what she could see of the rope. “Hallelujah, Hallelujah! I’m going to make myself some tea when I get to my room and just nap until tomorrow! And yeah, I figure it should go better, because we actually know where we’re going!”

Todd followed along, and unfortunately, his light blew again. He gave up and walked, using the other kids lights as a guide.