I don’t know why I’ve never bothered cutting through here before. This isn’t so bad, I thought as I walked down the long, circling driveway towards the ravine, my breath coming out in little puffs of fog against the blue sky. I was technically trespassing on the grounds of a community centre, but no one was around to say anything, and my brother seemed to get away with it all the time.
I wasn’t sure how much time this shortcut would save me. I’d been living at the same house and walking the same route all my life, but Jesse—my little brother—wouldn’t shut up about it, even though hydro fields have always felt uncomfortable to me. Something about the electricity in the air, I guess. But it really was the quickest way home from the bus, and as much as I wanted to murder Jesse sometimes, he was pretty good at finding tricks to make life that tiny bit easier.
I flipped open my cell as I got off the bus. I reread Alex’s last text, sent about an hour ago—
Love you! Phone when you’re off the bus
—and hit the button to call my boyfriend. I wanted to talk to him about the party he’d gone to the week before. I’d heard he was being a bit too friendly with the host—an old flame of his—but we’d been going out for three years, and it was only a rumour. Still, I wanted to make sure. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d planted the rumour to test if I still cared. It kind of felt like something he’d do, as much as I hated to admit it.
“Hey, babe.” I could hear the smile on his face as he answered.
“Hey, hon,”
“What’s up?”
“Well, mostly, I’m just calling to chat. I’m trying a bit of a different route home.” I looked up at the ravine I would be walking through, which came out at the edge of an electrical plant of some sort, just a couple streets down from where I lived. I couldn’t even see the path through the trees but kept going anyway, pretty sure it would appear as I walked, since Jesse used it all the time.
“Oh. Okay. How was your day?”
“It was good. I can’t believe we haven’t gone down this ravine. It’s beautiful!”
“Wait, you’re going through the ravine? That’s the bit of a different way home?”
“Yeah, why?” I scowled at the steep, muddy hill in front of me. I hadn’t expected I’d have to scale something like that, even though it was pretty obvious there would be a bit of an incline. I could see a small clearing on the other side of the hill, and then the slope was much gentler, closer to what I’d expected.
“Holly, it rained yesterday! You’d better not slip and fall. How could I possibly call the police?”
“With your cellphone?” I brushed aside the branches of a bush blocking what seemed to be the entrance to a natural pathway to the right. “The one you’re using right now?” I smiled as I saw the gentle curve upwards.
Holly: 1; Nature: 0.
“And isn’t that ravine where the electrical plant is? Isn’t that the hydro field?”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll suffer for this view.” I turned around, wishing I could describe what it looked like for Alex, although he wouldn’t appreciate the natural beauty. I’d only gotten about twenty feet up the slope, but the dip in the land gave me an amazing view, a panorama of trees shedding their last leaves and a major street on either side.
“No view is worth that much heavy breathing.”
I rolled my eyes. This was why we never went hiking in the natural parts of the city. “So anyway—” I grunted a bit as I hit the steeper part of the hill.
“What’s up?”
“I dunno. You know Lily’s party last week?”
“Yeah, you were…you were sick, right?”
I could hear the suspicion in his voice. Great. “Yeah, you know I had the stomach flu, hon. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I dunno, I—ooh, this hill is steep.”
“I told you, babe…this is definitely not one of your better ideas.”
“I heard you were a bit friendly with Lily.” I breathed between every couple words and nearly tripped at the noise that came out of his mouth.
“What?! When the hell did you start talking to that jerk Scott about me?”
“I— How’d you know it was Scott who told me? And I thought he was your best friend.”
“That son of a…” Alex cut off with a gruff sigh. Oh, boy, a misunderstanding. I loved misunderstandings. “He was my best friend, until someone told him I was fooling around with his girlfriend. I honestly didn’t touch her. Never wanted to and never will. Ugh, she looks like a toad who’s been hit by a frying pan. Anyway, he refused to look at the situation rationally and instead started a fight.”
“Which is why he was at Lily’s party…which you were very openly co-hosting.” I raised my eyebrow, even though he couldn’t see it.
“Yeah, he’s kinda stupid.”
Sure. “It’s a wonder we didn’t see this earlier.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” he asked, completely missing my sarcasm. He paused for a second. “Are you almost home, babe? You sound like you’re breathing easier.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m at hooo…the top.” Or nearly at the top. I stopped for a second and bent over, watching my breath puff little bursts of steam into the November air.
“You are so lame.”
“What?”
“I can hear how hard you’re breathing, Holly.”
I could hear his laughter, too, so I laughed along with him, then looked up to see how much farther I had to go before I was back on flat ground and set off, vowing never to take this route home again.
“Ah, shit.” A droplet of water hit me between the eyes. Another hit my forehead.
“What?” Alex asked.
And another, and another, and suddenly I was caught out in a storm with no real jacket, already freezing my ass off. “Damned cloudburst.”
“Oh, fuck. You should hang up and run home.”
“Well, I could…” I slung my backpack up on top of my head and kept walking at a normal pace. “Or I could just continue talking to my wonderful boyfriend, and the only thing that will get wet is my backpack.”
“No metal rods poking out of your backpack, are there? No lightning transmitters for my gorgeous lady?”
I smiled at his mocking tone. “You really are morbid, you know that? Listen, about the whole thing with Lily. I just—”
I leaped a foot in the air as a loud explosion sounded above my head, and I looked up, the cold, hard raindrops hammering my eyes as I tried to make sense of what I saw.
One: a giant ball of fire about five feet above my head, swinging away from me.
Two: a wire with electricity crackling around the loose end, swinging towards me.
I swore and dropped my phone, and then there was only blinding pain until the world went black.