A Day We Won't Soon Forget

We were running, running for our lives. Wildly sprinting down the street, our scooters in tow behind us. My shoes didn’t fit. They were two sizes too big, and I was just trying not to fall. How did we get here? Let me explain. It is quite a story.

I was at my friend’s house, just a regular Friday. The sun was shining, bright and cheerful like the half of an orange I had for breakfast. It was a lovely day to go outside and have an adventure. Luckily for us, my friend has woods in her neighborhood. Nice woods that are enclosed enough so you feel like you are having an adventure, but open enough so that you can see far in front of you. In her woods, there is a swing, a super fun swing, built on a hill so you can swing out over the side of the hill, and feel like you are flying. Everyone in her neighborhood went to that swing -- loved that swing -- because it was the best. So we decided that we should go to the swing. I had only worn flip flops to her house, so she let me borrow some sneakers. But my friend has big feet. Size 10 to be exact. I wear a size 8. Her old ones were way too big, so she gave me her mom’s shoes which were still big, but at least they stayed on my feet. We took our scooters, because the entrance to the woods was kind of far away. One of our scooters was broken -- it shimmied when you scooted on it -- so we took turns riding it on the way there. We were talking and laughing having a great time. Then we walked into the woods, and when we came to the juncture in the path, we made a right, and followed the tortuous route to the swing.

Once we were there, we were having a blast, listening to music that our phone was playing. But that is when it all happened.

My friend was about to swing, and it’s a good thing I looked around, because I heard a strange noise. A high-pitched kind of squeaking something that I had never heard before. Something I would not soon forget. It permeated the woods around me. I looked behind me and that is when it came out from behind a tree and started walking towards us. I told my friend “look”, and about half-second after that, I said “run!” It was still coming towards us, moving faster now. We left her phone, turned and sprinted down the hill. The hill was so steep that I was picking up speed, faster and faster, until it felt like my legs weren’t even moving, instead just throwing one leg in front of the other. My friend was behind me, and it was still coming, but now it was running, and it was fast too. All the while we let out little shrieks of terror. At the bottom of the hill, there was no path, a tree had fallen and was blocking it. With a great leap of faith, I jumped because I knew that if I stopped it would catch me. I landed with a hard thud, and all the while I was praying that I would not fall. By some miracle I did not, and I kept running. But then I heard my friend scream and say my name, so I stopped and turned around. She had tripped -- and it was coming right towards her -- but for some reason it did not attack her. I thought it was over. I paused and looked back, but then it kept coming, and it was coming right at me! I jumped into the brush on one side of the path, through cobwebs, and was prepared to keep climbing through the brush, but then for whatever reason, it stopped, and turned the other way, into the other brush. I knew that this was our chance to get away, and so I jumped out of the brush, and my friend and I ran up the hill, grabbed her phone, and picked up a big stick in case it was still following us. Then at full tilt, we ran back down the other side of the hill and out of the woods. Not knowing if it still was following us, we kept running out into the street and a big dog started barking, which startled us. We grabbed our scooters, and just kept running. After we got a ways away, we figured that it wasn’t chasing us anymore, and we stopped to catch our breath. As we started to think about it, we started laughing -- laughing hysterically in fact, because our adrenaline had been pumping. But then it was okay and we just started laughing too. Back at her house, we tried to tell her mom and brother about it, but I started laughing again, probably from sheer shock, and then they started laughing too! What was it, they asked again. When we told them they started to laugh even harder. I don’t know if they believed us, but it didn’t really matter, because we knew, and that was all that mattered. I mean after all, it was only a raccoon.

~ Kelly W.