A Walk Down Nature Lane

Gabby checked her phone again and cursed. There was still no reply. She’d only been gone five minutes—why hadn’t they waited for her?

As she whirled around, scanning the area, some shaggy-looking grownup with a backpack bumped her shoulder.

“Watch it!” they said harshly as they passed.

“You watch it, creep!” is what Gabby wanted to say, but didn’t. For all she knew the guy was crazy and she didn’t want to chance it.

Luckily, Scruffy-Man didn’t knock her cotton candy askew. Gabby took a bite from it and checked her phone again. The last message, the one she’d sent after coming back from the snack stand, stared at her mockingly.

“whered u guys go?”

It was a group text, one Gabby had set up that morning for their trip to the Rainhaven fair. She’d made it so she and her friends could get in touch if they got separated, but she hadn’t expected to need it so soon.

Squinting, Gabby turned the brightness up on her screen to fight against the glare of the afternoon sun. Her hat, a frilly, wide-brimmed thing her mom had loaned her, couldn’t stop the beads of sweat running down her neck. She should’ve gotten something to drink when she got the cotton candy, but she didn’t want to make everyone wait too long. 

How ironic.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, with no reply. There were four other people in that group text—how had not one of them seen her message yet?

She glared at her cotton candy, now half-eaten, bitterly. If Gabby had known it would cost her her friends, she never would’ve stopped for it.

Should she send another message? No. They already complained that she was too needy sometimes, so she didn’t want to make it worse. 

A group of kids, none of which Gabby knew, walked past, eying her suspiciously. One of them them smirked at her as if to say, “You have no friends and it’s obvious! You must be a total loser!”

Gabby stomped the hard cement ground. It was just like that time at the mall when her friends left while she was in the bathroom. She’d messaged each of them and came up empty. The next day at school, all of them said they didn’t get her message. 

They’d apologized, blaming Gabby’s phone for the issue, but they couldn’t make that excuse this time; this was a new phone, and she had full bars! The only way they couldn’t see her text was if—

She gasped, a million thoughts suddenly zipping through her mind like intersecting rollercoasters. What if they’d gone to the ferris wheel and got stuck? What if the Flinganator had come apart mid-swing and crushed them to death? What if—

The sudden buzz in her hand made Gabby flinch. She checked the screen. Finally, a message from the group!

“at the ponds come find us”

The ponds? That was all the way across the fairgrounds. Why’d they gone all that way without her?

It didn’t matter. If that’s where they were that’s where Gabby had to go. 

She sent a quick, “okay plz wait 4 me” before tossing the remains of her cotton candy into a nearby bin and heading off.

To get to the ponds, Gabby had to cross Nature Lane, a fake forest designed to teach little kids about the environment. Gabby used to love it as a kid, but had since grown out of it. She knew it would look dorky for a twelve-year-old to be caught in there, but at least it was shaded.

The arched sign, barely readable due to its old age, hung across two plastic trees. Gabby stepped between them, dodging a mother and her screaming toddler coming from the other side. The path was narrow and made of rickety old resin, probably so it wouldn’t rot. It seemed wider as a kid, but now it felt like a one-lane bridge.

As Gabby made her way through Nature Lane, she marveled at how detailed everything was, how life-like. The bark on the trees was layered and disorderly, chipped and faded by the beams of sunlight streaming thought the branches. It even smelled real, the mossy odor bringing her back to when she used to play in the woods behind her house. 

That was back before middle school, before her friend group had gone from two to five, before Gabby had to practically scream for attention.

Some time passed and an eerie silence fell over the attraction, a stillness Gabby couldn’t explain. She was surprised to find her legs growing wobbly, her breath turbulent. How long had she been walking? 

She pulled out her phone to check the time and balked at the “no service” message on the screen. How could that be? She was in the middle of town!

Gabby turned around to gauge how far she was from the entrance, but all she could see was fog. Thick, viscus fog that floated between the trees and up from the planks below. When she turned back, it was there too, settled in place like it’d been there all along. 

It wasn’t real. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She’d spent too much time waiting in the hot sun with only a ginormous ball of sugar to hydrate her. Gabby’s mother had reminded her to have water on her at all times, but she was planning on going to the fair, not wandering though a stupid forest all day like some jerk in a fantasy novel!

Swearing, Gabby pocketed her phone and sat on the hard resin path. She wanted to rest, but the others wouldn’t wait forever. If only she could let them know she was okay…

Caw!

That sound—was that a crow? 

Ca-caw!

It came again, the impossible call of a real-life bird. Why would a crow be hanging out in a fake forest? Weren’t they supposed to be smart? 

Maybe it was a kid messing with her? No. She hadn’t seen anyone else for awhile. Besides, she’d watched enough videos about birds to know what they sounded like—this guy was the real McCaw!

Gabby looked up into the tree line, searching for the bird. At some point the trees had become so dense that they blocked out the sun overhead, but she quickly spotted it, a black dot way up high. It shifted in place, a quick and rapid motion, before crowing again. It must’ve gotten stuck when the fair workers were putting everything together. Hopefully it would find its way out before it got too hungry!

With its loudest crow yet, the black bird leapt and glided down to a branch at Gabby’s eye level. She watched with slack-jawed fascination as it poked its beak into a tiny knothole and pulled out a long, plump worm. It threw its head back, gobbling up the bug in two quick gulps. 

That didn’t happen. Worms didn’t live in fake trees—it’s impossible! 

Slowly, Gabby reached reached for the branch and pulled free a large, green maple leaf. She examined it closely: the detailed veins, the thin-yet-rigid body, and the smooth texture were all dead giveaways. It was a real leaf, which meant she was in a real forest!

But she couldn’t be! She’d been on the same path from the start. Sure, the sign for Nature Lane was borderline-unreadable, but it was still the same sign, wasn’t it?

Before Gabby could think on it further, the crow snapped its beak at her, grabbing hold of the brim of her mom’s hat. With one quick jerk, it pulled it from Gabby’s head and took off into the air with its prize.

“Hey!” Gabby screamed. “Give that back!”

She chased the bird down the path, her flip-flops slapping against the planks with an echoey clap. If she went home without that hat her mom would kill her!

The feathery thief raced ahead, just out of Gabby’s reach, until they came to a dark tunnel. Gabby skidded to a halt and watched as the crow dropped the hat at the tunnel’s mouth and flew away with a mocking titter.

Slowly, Gabby inched her way closer to the tunnel. It was huge, big enough to drive a car through. The darkness within was overwhelming, a blackness as thick as ink. 

Gabby felt disoriented just looking at the tunnel, but what choice did she have? She had to go in. She had to get her hat back.

She crouched low, inched forward, and reached for the wide-brimmed hat, trying to say as far away from the tunnel as possible. Just as her fingers were about to touch the brim, the hat disappeared, pulled away by some unseen force. 

Gabby yelped and tumbled backward as a figure, bathed in shadow, lurched out of the tunnel. She shielded her face, waiting for it to devour her like a ravenous wolf. Instead, it stepped toward Gabby with her mom’s hat in its outstretched hands.

Gabby gasped, not believing what she was seeing. The figure before her was not some hideous forest ghoul as she expected, but a boy from her homeroom at school. His glasses were askew and smudged, and his checkered t-shirt was covered in mud, but it was him.

“M—Marvin? Marvin Banks?” 

“Hey, Gabby,” Marvin said. “I didn’t think you recognized me.”

She took the hat from him, dusted it off, and set it atop her head. “Thanks. What are you doing in here anyway?”

“I was checking out Nature Lane when some bigger kids chased me,” Marvin said. “I was hiding until I was sure they were gone.”

“Oh,” Gabby said. “That sucks.”

Marvin shrugged. “It’s okay, I’m used to it. What about you? You’re always hanging out with a big group, right? Where are they?”

“Oh, uh.” Gabby hesitated. “I went to get some cotton candy and they left to go to the ponds, I guess.”

Marvin frowned. “They didn’t wait for you?”

Gabby was about to reply, but was distracted by a buzzing in her pocket. She pulled out her phone which miraculously had a full set of bars.

“Is that them?” Marvin asked. “They must be worried, huh?”

The buzz was a social media alert, a new photo added by one of her friends. It was group shot of everyone, except Gabby of course, on the ferris wheel. The caption below it read, “An amazing day at the fair with the most important people in my life!”

A odd feeling came over Gabby. The realization that her friends had ditched her—and had been ditching her all along—should’ve broken her heart, but it didn’t. Somehow, all she felt was relief, like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. 

She shoved the phone into her pocket and looked at Marvin. “Sorry, I was just checking the time.” She put her arms behind her back. “So, you like nature, huh?”

“Yeah,” Marvin replied. “I used to play in the woods a lot when I was a kid.”

Gabby’s eyes widened. “Meet too!”

“That’s cool.” Marvin straightened his glasses and sighed. “Most kids our age think Forest Lane is for babies, but I still like it.”

As the two of them talked, the fog begin to clear. Shafts of light shot through the trees, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel, and clear image of the fair appeared on the other side, just as Gabby had left it.

Turning to Marvin, she said, “Hey, you wanna go on the Flinganator with me?”

“Sure,” he replied, “But don’t you want to find your friends?”

Gabby shook her head. “If they want me they can text me.”

Cordially, she tipped her hat and offered her elbow to Marvin. He took it with a grin and they turned toward the tunnel together. Just as they were about to step inside, Gabby reached out and touched the edge of a still-beautiful-but-clearly fake leaf.

Marvin beamed. “It looks real, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Gabby said, a broad, knowing smile across her face. “It really does.”

~The End~