All Around a Rope of Hope (Part One)

By yYDa_RockPotatoYy - 1 Review

I breathed in the fresh clean air as I watched the ocean sway side to side, right to left. It was such a beautiful sight to see, how the sunset beamed onto the water, creating sparkles. I wish this moment could last longer than I could, but it couldn’t. It was getting later and later by the minute and I didn’t want to lose my way home. I grabbed my bike and pedaled home swiftly, but carefully. My stomach let out a growl startling me somehow, I put my hand on my stomach forgetting about the handlebars and I stumbled over onto my bike. I let out a pain noise and rubbed my head. I look around, so many people looking at me… Man this is embarrassing. I get up and grab my bike about to peddle off when I spot something I’ve never seen before, it has wings, and fluff? I got off my bike and quietly walked over to the strange creature as I made sure not to trip over anything. The creature stops what it's doing and looks at me, I stop dead in my tracks. “Alex?” I hear, most likely from the strange new creature. My eyes widen and the creature takes a step forward.

I stand up straight and look around at all the people in my surroundings. I wonder if anyone else noticed… The creature continues to slowly take steps forward before stopping completely and looking me in the eyes. This is starting to get creepy, I hold my hand out quickly and make a back and forth motion with my hands. The creature doesn't move but instead I do. I get on my bike and leave quickly. Maybe that was just an holutionation from hunger.

Eventually I make it home and unlock my door. “Hey Alex, food’s almost ready.” my mom says and she chops up a potato on the cutting board. “Great. I'm starving.” I joke. “Are you ready for next week?” mom asks “Mom, really three hours of tests for the whole week? Me, excited?” I look at her. “Wow.” she smirks and continues making food.

I go up to my room and close my door and I toss my backpack aside. A sigh leaves my mouth as I plop on my bed. Next week is going to be painfully hard, I always get really high scores out of own competition, but I feel like something is wrong with the score with how hard the questions are I feel stupid. I grab my pillow and put it over my face and roll over to my side facing the wall. I slowly pull down the pillow to look at one of my best paintings on my wall, I look at it, staring off into space. Then something hit me, I shot up from my bed dropping my pillow off to my left, I get closer to the painting. “Huh?” I let out a word, “I was sure I saw something….” I did, really think I saw something on my painting that shouldn't have been there. I use my sleeve to “dust off” my painting. I close my eyes, still standing up and I smile. “Alex! Dinners done!” mom shouts out of nowhere making me lose my balance and fall off the bed onto the floor.

I ran downstairs and to the table of food, “What were you doing in your room Alex?” my little brother asks me as he bites into his potato, chews it, then spits it out “Gross!” he screeches. “Oh boohoo, it's my room, what? I can't be in my own room admiring the perfect being named Alex every once in a while?” I say, biting into my own potato. “Mmm. Mom, this is actually pretty good.” I say. My brother gives me a disgusted look. “Hey mom, have you seen anything unusual today?” I ask, catching my mom off guard. “Like what?” she asks while setting down more plates at the table then sitting down. “Well, on my way home from my afternoon stop, I was biking home when I saw something…” I start then stop myself. “Something like what?” she gives a questionable glance. “Nothing, just hit a wall and thought I saw something.” I joke. If I ever told mom what I saw earlier, she wouldn't believe me. So it was best not to say anything at all

“Are you alright!?” My mom shouts out getting up from her seat. “Mom, I was kidding.” I push aside her help. Most of the dinner went by with a few jokes and annoyed faces from my little brother. “Finished.” I say and rinse off my plate in the sink. “Night.” mom yells out. I hear her mumble to my little brother as I walk up the stairs to my room.

Once again, I'm on my bed with a pillow pressed against my face and my hands on top of my pillow. I check the time for what feels like the thousandth time. I can't sleep, there are no tricks that worked to settle me down. I sit up and move all my blankets around into the corner of my bed. I start forming them into a small dent to allow me to crawl into them and cuddle with nothing but a few blankets and a stuffed animal I’ve had since I was four. I hear a sudden scream from downstairs. My ears ring louder than ever, I drop everything in my possession and run down stairs like my life was on the line.

As soon as I make it to the bottom of the stairs I scream as I am met with my screaming brother and possibly the biggest spider on the face of the earth. I scream louder than my little brother and latch onto the rail connected to the walls saving anyone stupid enuff to try stummbling to the sides of the stairs. Mom runs in the room where me and my brother are screaming for our lives, “What are you both screaming about?” My mother screamed, you can tell we both were the reason she's grumpy. “Spider!” my brother yelps and runs to mom's side. “You're scared of a spider? It’s probably more scared of you than you are of it.” Mom says and she walks towards the sin of a creature and looks down to get a good look at what kind of spider it is before grabbing something and picking it up. “MOM!” my brother and I scream out. “Oh shush.” mom says. She walks outside with the spider in whatever she grabbed and sets it outside. “There, it wasn't such a big deal. My brother and I look at mom like she’s crazy and just told us to jump off a very high cliff. “Whatever.” my brother shugs and walks down the hall to his room. “I’m going to go do what I was doing before I thought someone was dying.” I sigh and walk back upstairs to my room.

I lay on my bed and look at the ceiling before finishing the small dent and cuddling up to my stuffed animal in the corner of my bed and room. I burrow my head into the back of my stuffed animal and ball up as if to hide from anything and everything in the world. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep, soon to be shaken awake early in the morning thirty minutes before school was to start. “What?” I ask aloud. “Get up, I’ve been tryin to wake you up for the past ten minutes!” Mark (my little brother) said and ran out of my room as I gave him my morning ‘why did you wake me up I was sleeping, get out’ look. I groan as I get up from my very comfortable bed and grab the clothes I had set out the day before in the morning as to save time and sleep in as much as possible.

I look at the clock as I walk into my bathroom to change, “NO!” I scream out and speedrun changing. I ran out of my bathroom to put my shoes on and brush my hair and teeth. As soon as I’m done doing that I grab my backpack depretly shoving things into it and rush downstairs. “Good morning Alex.” my mom says as she folds clothing. “Morning mom, bye.” I say and run outside to grab my bike. I unlocked it from where it was once locked and put the chain into my backpack along with the key going around my neck to substitute a necklace. I pull up the bike from the bent around pole and pedal off to the location of my high school. As I pedal faster and faster in a rush, I pass by the location I did the night before after stopping at my afterschool stop. I stop and look around to see if the strange creature was still there as if waiting for me like a predator waiting for its prey. I turn the corner, dropping my bike as I let it go and run around looking left and right to see if I can see it, nothing… So strange, and yet I was expecting nothing different. I sigh and walk out of the ally to grab my bike when I hear a strange noise. My neck flashes backwards to the moment I was looking behind where I was looking just a second ago.

“Here” the strange voice says. My neck wips all around, left, right, behind, forward. So curious and lost for words to speak. My hands find their way to my head and I topple over, holding my ears and squeezing tightly due to a sharp piercing noise that suddenly creeped into my head. I let out a loud scream, how could this be happening? It's all so strange and unrealistic. Suddenly, the noise stops and I’m left with a deathly silence… I shoot up to my side like a rocket. My eyes shoot from spot to spot like bullets till they land on a clock. I get up and get closer to the clock as my hand seems to rub over the object. “Is it broken?” I ask myself. Suddenly before I can react, a sharp loud scream escapes my mouth as a cold hand is placed swiftly onto my left shoulder. “What are you doing here?” a young human screams out. Gasps evacuating my mouth as I reach for words. “I was just looking for something.” I managed to say. “Looking for something? Like what?” the young human says, there is a hood over it’s head and heavy clothing.

“Yeah…” I sputter. “What were you looking for?” the human began to come closer towards me. “Nothing, I don’t know you anyway so it shouldn't be important. Why are you here if it’s so important that I’m here?” I say a bit sassier than I intended. “I’m meeting up with someone.” shockingly the human says. “Well, I should be going..” I say as I turn to leave. As before a cold hand is placed onto my shoulder. “I’m also looking for someone… Do you know anyone named Maggy?” the human says. “There are a lot of Maggy’s in this world, most likely, you have to be more specific.” my heart races, this is getting way to cuwencidental. “Maggy Jones.” the human’s voice seems to be shaky. “N-no.” I say in a shocked tone as I shake its hand off my shoulder and run out of the death-like-vibe ally. I grab my bike and speed over to my school which isn't so far away. What would he want with Maggy? Could she be in danger? Maggy…

Thoughts bounce around in my mind, the cold breathable air doesn't make it any better. I race down to school. As soon as I get there I don't even lock my bike up, I just jump off it and run into the building hoping for the best and not the worst to happen. “Alex!” Maggy screams out as she wraps her hands around my neck for a hug. I nudge her off as a small blush spreads onto my cheeks. I need to act like my everyday self till the end of the day. “Are you still having the sleepover this weekend?” Maggy asks as she opens up her locker. “Probably, there's a slim chance we can't.” I sigh, Maggy whips her head to look at me “How come?” she asks. “Well, I was late this morning so my mom may or may not ground me.” I open up my locker as I talk. “You’re still getting grounded? You’re like what, seventeen?” Maggy softly punches me. “Yeah, but still I live there.” I roll my eyes. “But still, sleepover?” Maggy seems to bring back the joy that was just lost in her voice. “Yeah, most likely.” I say and pat her head with my hand. “Hey!” she giggles out and grabs my hand to push away. I join her in a short laugh.

“Have you gotten your classes changed yet?” I ask Maggy when we’ve finished laughing. “Yeah, hasn’t everyone?” she sighs. Maggy hands me a piece of paper which is most likely her new schedule. “Let's see here.” I say as I hand her a different folded up paper with my new classes on it. We both open up the papers and read along the lines to see if any of our classes lineup. I scream as I point to a spot on the paper. “What did you find!” Maggy screamed out. “We have cooking class, math, and science together!” I smile. Maggy smiles with me then sighs. “What's up?” I question. “I hate math.” Maggy states. “I know, but hey, at least we have the class together. When do we even have it?” I ask. “Umm, lets see, Social studies first period, art second, English third, math fourth, cooking fifth, keyboarding sith, Debate seventh, and science eighth.” Maggy agredly says when she reaches the time for science. “Why world? Why! I love science and you let me go to it last.” Maggy wines. “Hey, the world is doing you a favor, you get to finish off the day in relife with your favorite class and I’m in it with you.” I shoot a smile in Maggy’s direction. Maggy goes to talk but before she can speak the bell for third period rang loud. “Ugh. See you in forty some minutes.” I say. Maggy waves her hand lazely and walks off to her class. I sigh as the thought of something happening to her appears back in my head. I'm soon calmed by a thought that this could all be a prank.

I walk down to my first class which is debate. I open the door to my new classroom to see that there is no teacher and just a bunch of wild teenagers throwing trash around the room. I step in and close the door behind me, my presence in the room seems to go unnoticed by the class. I sit at an empty seat toward the back next to the window. The room becomes more chaotic by the minute. I lean back in my seat when a pen comes flying and hits me in the face, I don't get up and yell but I just pick up the pen, I get ready to gently throw it when a girl walks over to me and reaches her hand out “I’m sorry for that.” she says with a calming smile. “Oh, is this your pen?” I ask, the girl nods. “Yeah, I was trying to hit someone with it but they obviously dodged it.” The girl sits at the desk next to me. “My name’s Mell. I just moved here this year to start fresh, or at least my parents are starting fresh. I just moved with them because I have nowhere to go.” she lets out a sigh. I give her the pen she claims is her’s. She thanks me but shockingly, doesn’t leave, instead we have a nice conversation as if nothing else in the classroom was going on.

Soon the bell rings and everyone in the room slowly stops what they’re doing and leaves. I grab my bag and help Mell find her things that were scattered around the room due to the war that broke out in the class. We both walk out of the class together while we go on with our conversation in the halls quieter than how we were speaking in the classroom. We make our way over to the lockers and I stop right next to mine. “Wow, our lockers aren't actually that far apart!” Mell squeals. “Wow, really? Which one’s yours?” I ask and Mell points across the hall, her locker is directly in front of mine. “That's cool.” I say and look around the room. “Are you waiting for someone?” Mell asks. “Yeah, I'm waiting for a friend, her locker is right next to mine.” I say and pat the locker to my right. Mell hums and skips along to her locker to put up her books and grab new ones she will need for the next class. I’m about to shut my locker, when someone pats me on the back quickly, I get startled and punch the unknown figure. “Ow Alex!” Maggy wines. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! Don’t scare me like that!” I laugh. “It’s not funny Alex, that hurts.” Maggy gets up and dusts herself off, “Yeah, I know, that's why it's funny.” I look at her face and laugh uncontrollably. “Hey, I’m back, did your friend come by?” Mell asks while zipping her backpack. “Yeah, this is Maggy.” I laugh out. Maggy looks up and over to Mell. “Hi.” you can hear the friendly smile in her voice. “Hi Maggy, I’m Mell.” Mell shakes Maggy’s hand returning the smile in her own voice.

We talk for a while and soon school is done. We all meet up at the front of the school in the parking lot. As soon as Maggy runs up to where I’m standing with my bike, I reconnect the second seat that's in the basket in front of the first seat like every other day. “Hurry up!” I yell out which stops Maggy from running and makes her jog. Mell is leaning up against the wall to the building with crossed arms. “Are you sure you want to walk with us? We do pass by a few weirded out places.” I say looking at Mell. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I can fight, and I can keep up, you have nothing to worry about.” Mell walks away from the wall and puts a hand on my shoulder. She pulls her hand away when Maggy finally reaches us. “Sorry ‘bout that.” Maggy pants as she tries to catch her breath. “Is Mell still coming with us?” Maggy asks as she walks closer to her spot on the bike. “Yeah, I’ve warned her and everything, she’s comin’.” I say and pat Maggy’s seat and hold the bike up straight for her to sit down.

Maggy sits up on the bike and I follow. “You ready?” I ask Mell. “I go really fast.” Mell nods. She gets into a ready position to run and I pedal off, slow at first but then I start to pick up speed. Shockingly Mell is right behind me as if she was only in a walking position. I started slowing down to take a turn into one of the neighborhoods I told Mell about. I soon come to a stop after biking down a few more streets. “You are pretty fast.” I say and get off the bike after Maggy. “Why did you stop?” Mell asks. “We always stop here.” I say. Mell nods. I hold my bike and we walk down the street. Suddenly I stop and look around. “Why are you stopping now?” Mell asks. “We're going to take a little detore.” I joke and grab Maggy’s hand and walk toward the alley from this morning and the night before, leaving my bike in a dark green bush. “Really?” Mell says. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back at the time I said we would be.” I say. Mell follows us down into the alley.

I look around making sure Maggy is close to me or Mell as to assure her safety. We walk down deeper into the alley when Maggy makes a whining noise. “What?” Mell comforts. “Nothing, can we go?” Maggy whimpers. I let go of her hand and walk around the corner, nothing’s there. I turn back over to where Maggy and Mell are standing, “Yeah we can go.” I rub the back of my neck in defeat as a smile stretches onto Maggy’s face. “Yes! Finally!” She punches the air. We start walking out of the alley and back to my bike that's surprisingly still in the same dark green bush. I hold the bike upright after Mell helps me grab and break off anything that got onto the bike as we pulled it out of the bush. Maggy gets onto the bike and I follow, Mell starts running down the sidewalk beside my moving bike as we take more turns and stop at stop signs.

Once we finally make it to my house Mell and I catch our breath and Maggy locks up my bike to the bent over pole next to my house. I take out the key to my home from around my neck and unlock the door as I take a few steps to the side and let Maggy and Mell inside before I walk in and lock the door behind me. We all wipe our shoes on the rug and set them aside. “Hey mom, my friends and I are here.” I call out across the house. “Alright Alex, food is almost ready.” mom shouts out, you can hear the food boiling and popping. I nod and we all semi-run upstairs. I open up my door and plop onto my bed, Maggy sits on the corner and Mell sits on my chair. “So… What we gonna do?” Maggy breaks the silence. “I have video games?” I say in a questionable tone. “For what?” Mell questions. “I have Minecraft on my phone and XBox1.” I don't try to name anything other than my favorite game. “Wow, I love Minecraft! Could you hook it up?” Maggy jolts out. “Yeah, Mell, do you want to play too?” I ask, followed by a ‘sure’ from Mell. I hook up the XBox1 and connect it to my phone so I can play along with them.

A good portion of the time we spent together over the next few weeks consisted of Minecraft, chatting, sending memes to one another, eating, playing and exploring the nearby forest. A breath of fresh air goes into my lungs, how I love the outside. I hammer down a nail to a new project we all started on a couple days ago, “How’s your side common’ along Alex?” Mell shouts out from behind our project. “Doin’ good, can you pass the nails and a few more planks?” I ask. A wood plank or two are thrown my way and the book of nails gets shoved to my side. I hammer down and connect more wood to our current project and back up to look at the masterpiece, knowingly it isn't finished yet. I look behind myself as I’m backing away from the project to sit in a homemade wooden chair. “Shouldn’t we take a break now?” I sigh. “No! We're almost done with this one!” Maggy shouts out as she reaches for the box of nails and looks at me. “But this is our second treehouse.” I complain. “We can just go camp out in the first one as we wait, that's why we made it.” Mell backs me up. Maggy slumps onto the ground and pouts in defeat. “Lisen, we can continue working on this after we take a break, we have been working on it for the past couple hours, it's not good to stress out like this and not take breaks.” I rub Magg’s back and help her get up.

We walk down to one of the first finished projects we all made together. We help each other get up and Mell lets out a sigh of relief when we finally reach the top to rest. “Now what?” Maggy asks and puffs up a pillow in her corner. “Well, we can… I don't really know…” I say. Mell opens up a small cabinet and grabs a few snacks, she closes the cabinet and plops on the carpet in the middle of the treehouse “Mmm, gimme one!” I call out and attack the pile of treats. Mell screeches out in shock and slides onto her back trying to save her treat that she already had opened. Maggy sighs as she watches me and Mell snack on the scattered treats, laughing.

After a while of hanging out in the treehouse and telling experiences that we’ve been through, we head down the ladder of our first treehouse, it’s dark and we all decide it’s best to call it a day and head out. Leaves crunch below our feet as we carelessly step over anything that stands before us, twigs, roots, leaves, and so on so forth. Maggy plays around happily in the leaves not caring that she’s falling behind “Man, I knew we shouldn't have given her that much sugar.” Mell says tiredly. I nod in agreement and wave a hand out to Maggy and call out to her to grab her attention. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” Maggy yells out, she stands up and dusts off the leaves and first off her clothes and rushes to us. Mell firmly grabs Maggys rist to keep her with us, the “solution” didn’t fix the problem, Maggy would just keep bouncing up and down non-stop, still kicking at leaves. “Never again.” Mell mumbles. I try my best to hold back any trace of laughing at how angy Mell sounded, obviously failing and bursting out with loud laughter and wheezing as I dropped to the ground. “It’s not that funny.” Mell sounds more annoyed and picks me up rolling her eyes at me.

We finally got to my home, and say ‘bye’ to each other. I close my door and run upstairs, falling onto my bed as I let out a sigh knowing the next few days will most likely consist of Mell, Maggy and I continuing on our second treehouse since our school has closed for break the following week. I close my eyes, when I open them I see bright light coming from my slightly opened curtain. A low growl leaves my mouth and I try my best to fix the curtain and stop all light from coming into my room, as I attempt to do so my phone randomly vibrates, a loud thud noise occurs a few moments after the vibrating started, it probably fell onto the floor. I stop playing with the curtain and hop off my bed to grab my phone, Maggy’s calling. That’s new, she hasn’t called me in a while, we usually just message each other or we chat during school. I pick up and I’m met with heavy breathing for a few moments. “Maggy? Is this a prank, man, you suck at this.” I chuckle, but the reply I’m given is more heavy breathing. “Maggy?” I ask, drained of laughter. After more heavy breathing, someone gives out an evil-like laugh, then hangs up.

I stand there on my floor, just, speechless. I sit down on my bed and call Mell, she picks up after a few attempts to wake her up. “What Alex, it’s like 4 in the morning.” Mell complains, yeah, definitely woke her up. “Actually, it’s 8:17, but ok. Did you ever get a call from Maggy?” I ask out. “Maggy?” Mell asks curiously. “Yeah, did she call you or anything?” this was getting weirder by the second. “Who’s Maggy?” Mell sounds a bit more concerned. I lower the phone “Never mind.” I whisper, and hang up. I set my phone onto my bed and rummage through my pile of clothes I still haven't picked up. I find something random that should be comfortable to wear outside in the chill weather and I go to put it on.

After a bit of searching for the key to the lock that keeps my bike connected to a pole, and a few other assechels, I run down the stairs and jolt out of the house to grab my bike. As soon as I get outside to my bike, I unlock it, through the key back around my neck and bike-off. The wind blows against me, I look down at my watch for the slightest of seconds before somehow I’m on the ground and my legs are giving out a throbbing pain. “Ow!” Someone yelps. “Oh my goodness I am so sorry.” I get up unsteadily and help the human up. “It-It’s fine. Sorry.” The voice shakes. “Why are you apologizing? I’m the one who crashed into you. I should’ve been paying more attention.” I help get leaves off the human and I shake off my hoodie. “Hi.” she says, holding out her hand. “Hi?” I say in a questioning tone. “Garionna, and you are?” the human speaks out her name, followed by a question. “Alex. Nice to meet you.” I give a warm smile, the human copies my smile. “Nice to meet you too Alex.” we drop the hand shake and we just stand in a weird-ish silence.

“So…” I say, Garionna copies. “Well, I’ll be on my way then…” I grab my bike off the ground and get on it. “Could I maybe tag along, my boyfriend is off doing who knows what.” Garionna says. “I mean, sure!” I scoot forward on the bike and pat the back of the seat. Garionna sits and wraps her arms around me skittishly so she won't fall back and off the seat of the bike. “Ready?” I quickly ask, putting my left foot on the higher left pedal. I feel a nuzzle on my back followed by a small ‘yeah’. “Ok, here we go!” I push off the ground and start pedalling down the street, making a few turns here and there along with a few stops.

I let my feet drop off the pedals slowly and stop the bike from moving. Garionna, who I forgot was there, took her hands off from around me and I get off the bike once free from the grasp. It feels weird, letting some random stranger get on my bike and follow me. Garionna gets off the bike and looks at me, you can tell she sees the discomfort in my eyes. Her breathing peaks and she speaks up, “I’m Maggy’s sister, did she not tell you she had a sister?” Garionna helps settle my bike somewhere. That makes sense that Maggy would have a sister, she has mentioned having siblings, but anytime we hang out it would either be at my house, school, or the woods so I’ve never seen any of them.

“Really?” I ask. Garionna nods up and down in place of saying ‘yes’ . I nod along with her for a second.

Author Notes: RawR! *Author yYDa_RockPotato has appeared! OK, so anyone who likes my writing, so sorry for abandoning yall, my grades were falling behind and I will not accept that. I didnt proof read, kinda in the middle of science and the bell is about to ring... Leave a comment :D

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