Creek Path

In order to understand my story, you have to have a little bit of background info, so here goes:

My neighborhood is a series of blocks kind of shoved together. It's in a curvy sort of grid shape, like there's multiple ways to get to every house in our neighborhood. About three streets east of my house is a street that has an opening into a popular biking trail that runs by a little irrigation creek. The creek runs from the nearby canyon into a park called Heritage Park and then flows into and joins with a canal.

Now you know the essence of my neighborhood.

The story begins on a fall morning some four years ago. My little sister was turning three. I grew up with five brothers, so she was kind of an amusing novelty to my friends and I. We would dress her up, take her on walks, and invite her to play minor rolls in our imaginary games, such as the family pet or the baby sister.

So on this particular morning, my friend Kassi and I were feeling particularly restless. We were thirteen-year-old girls at the time, and we were too old to be playing dress up or pretend anymore, and too young to give each other makeovers and talk about boys, so we didn't quite know what to do with ourselves. We decided it would be fun to take my little sister on a walk along the creek path.

She was too young to walk very fast, so Kassi and I decided to use her stroller. We settled her inside it just as the storm clouds began to gather overhead. Neither of us were unnerved by the storm; we lived next to a mountain and rainfall was common. But I felt something different about the air that day. I didn't mention it because Kassi was one of those volatile friends we all have as children, and if I said something to deter her from our walk, she would have stomped away and refused to speak to me anymore.

You also should understand that I was kind of a timid child. I was a people-pleaser and couldn't stand to see anyone upset, but along with that, I was especially sensitive to fear-invoking situations. I sort of made myself more scared of things than I should have been on a regular basis. My feeling of foreboding was something that occurred often and due to varying, harmless situations. Nothing bad had ever come of those feelings. So I shrugged it off and we began our walk.

We made it to the creek before the wind started blowing. The branches of the trees lining the creek were swaying and leaves and pebbles were hitting us in the face and eyes. Only my sister Gwen, safe in her baby carriage, stayed untouched by the gust.

When Kassi shouted to me that we should head home, I was fairly relieved. I will not lie to you, I was terrified. We were already more than halfway to where the creek trail led off back into my neighborhood, so we continued on.

Kassi began looking over her shoulder as we pushed forward. Once I asked her what was wrong and she said nothing, but I could tell she felt uncomfortable. We finally made it to the end of the creek trail and back into the neighborhood, and I turned to tell Kassi how glad I was, when I noticed two things. One, the wind had abruptly stopped, and two, that Kassi was staring back at the trail, her eyes wide, her face pale.

She spoke one word, and that one word communicated everything I needed to make me obey. She had told me to run. Still pushing Gwen's stroller with one hand, I grabbed Kassi and ran. As we were running away I heard a massive snapping noise, and briefly looked behind us to see a huge branch fall right off a tree, where we'd been standing only moments before.

I'll update this later. It probably doesn't sound that scary but reliving it is a little hard for me.