Wish You Were Here

30

If I hadn't slowed down, I would've walked right into Grant. Instead, I watched him lead me along and then suddenly stop, his body flinging back and landing on the ground.

"Grant!" I screamed and bent down by his side.

He looked bewildered and rubbed his forehead.

"What happened?" I cried.

Grant sat up and shook his head. He stood up and slowly took a few steps forward. I stood near him cautiously. He placed his hands flat out in front of himself.

"What are you doing?" I asked nervously.

He took another step and his hands looked like they had hit a wall. He reminded me of a mime doing an act when they feel an invisible box.

"Look at this," he whispered as his hands moved up and down in front of himself.

I furrowed my brow in confusion. Taking a few steps, I did as he did and put my hands up in front of myself. He turned to look at me and then grabbed my hand.

"Here," Grant said and moved my hand forward.

My palm hit a flat surface and I gasped. I felt up and down with both hands and couldn't believe it. It was clearly a wall of some kind, disguised to look exactly like the woods. Grant had smacked right into it; that's how realistic it looked up close.

My eyes widened and I looked at Grant.

"I don't get it," I told him. "Why would this even be here? Did Dean and Gina do this?"

Grant shook his head. "I don't know. Why would they go through the trouble of creating this in the first place?"

"I wonder how far down it goes," I muttered as I looked through the trees.

Grant shrugged. "I don't know, but we have to go left or right anyway since going straight ahead is obviously not an option anymore."

We chose to go left since it should lead us to the stream. As we walked, Grant kept his eye on the wall, glancing over to it every few minutes. He didn't say anything but I could tell he was just as confused as I was about this. It didn't make sense. Grant ran his hand across the wall as he walked until finally his hand shot out. He had hit the end of the wall.

"Whoa," he whispered and looked at me. "The wall...it's like a corner or something."

We both peered past it and sure enough, it turned a corner. Grant stared it in confusion and then looked at me.

"We could walk straight ahead now, if we want to," he suggested.

"It's just so weird. Someone could totally smack right into it not realizing it's a wall. How far could this thing actually go?" I asked.

"Who knows?" Grant sounded concerned. "Let's just keep going the way we are. We'll get to the stream and cross over."

I was concerned about the giant wall that seemed to be growing out of the ground in the middle of an island, but I agreed to keep going. Maybe we'd be able to get a full view of it from a higher elevation anyway.

It took us a little while of walking through nothing but trees until we finally heard the sound of the water. The stream wasn't as wide as it had been the first time we crossed it, much to my relief. After Grant took a quick look all around us and determined we were safe, I followed him into the water. We crossed rather quickly, stopping to refill our water bottles and cool off a bit before we kept going.