Mom tells me, "Your sister and Ashlie are at North Park. You have to pick them up." "Okay." I dress in dark clothes and jump into the Jeep, dreaming up ways I could scare them. I contemplated breaking away from them halfway through the pitch black woods, then freaking them out by running through the forest and making weird noises. Then I thought, What if they are on the way back? So I decided that if they were walking, I would go past, turn around where they can't see me, turn on the brights, and follow along about twenty yards behind them to think they were being stalked. This all sounds quite mean, and I assure you, it is commonplace with me and these two girls. One is my sister; the other is like my sister she's here all the time. In fact she just left.

I get to North Park and I climb through the dark woods; it is too dark for me to see and I am tresspassing and I am thinking that I will be screwed if a cop comes and it will be the girls' fault for being too scared to walk through the woods without a guy. I keep my mind from running loops of imagination and only once does my heart skip a beat. Unfortunately, the girls are not at the swings. Nor are they by the lit-up bathrooms. Pacing around the park, completely alone, bathing in the light of a million fire-flies, I decided that they had eluded capture and made my way back down through the woods; this time my imagination was not held back, and I kept imagining a serial killer with a scythe blade running after me through the woods, watching with crimson eyes till the right moment to pounce. I almost tripped down the path and decided to pick up a stick just in case.

When I finally got home, Ash and Ams were downstairs in my room. They'd gotten a ride home from Al.