Another full, rich day
So, yesterday was L's birthday party.
God, I'm sore.
L is new to the school anime gang. He really only found us this year. But he's sweet, and friendly, and really cool, so everyone's really taken to him. Including me. Especially me. He's a great kid.
It's not his fault that his birthday just happened to fall on one of the hottest, most humid days in the last two months, or that he invited too many people for it to be at his house and his parents had it moved to Sawgrass Park. For those of you unfamiliar with local geography, Sawgrass Park backs onto marshland. It was an uncomfortable day, for the first few hours.
T, H, D, and N were there, along with two friends of N that I knew in passing, a friend of L's that I'd never met, and A (who is not the same A from that one entry about the drama. Just...forget that A. We don't talk about her anymore). A few other kids from the anime club were there. So was X. If X hadn't been there, I could even have ignored the heat! But I played nice. Not like there weren't plenty of other pople to talk to.
The main food was pizza, so I subsisted on potato chips, peanuts, and some (really frickin' good) brownies. L had brought soda instead of water, proving that he's probably not a native, but there was water to be had. N's friend (who was a truly scrawny little grl that henceforth shall be called Orange Shirt) couldn't take it, but L's parents agreed to turn on their car and let her sit in the air conditioning until she recovered.
After the group (unintentionally) left us behind when they ventured into the marsh to play Manhunt, N got payback by hiding most of the party supplies. I had to dig my own present out of a bush! Fortunately, I'd played a quest suspiciously similar to that in Legend of Mana the night before, so I knew where to look. L loved my gift, and T took pity on me enough to organize a second game once everyone had hydrated.
The actual chosen site of the game was deep in the marshes. I mean, we were still on the path, but we went far enough in that the boardwalk became dirt road. It was ridiculously hot, and it was still cooler than it had been at the start of the party.
I quickly had second thoughts, because in my experience Manhunt involves running and intensity and chasing and I'm not good with any of that. But T had organized this second game pretty much because of my sulking, so I resolved to give it my best shot.
Once we got to the chosen site, it was decided that the game would be divided into two groups of three runners each, and two hunters. I found myself paired with L and Orange Shirt. I had bonded with Orange Shirt by this point - she was really friendly, with just enough black humor to make talking to her interesting. We had a five minute headstart, with the eventual goal being to get back to the starting pavilian. Fortunately, the path we were on naturally curved in on itself, so either way we would get back. It was just a matter of whether it would be as winners or losers.
We walked. And it was intense. Dead quiet. No birds, no squirrels, no snakes, no nothing. Just the three of us, trying not to make too much noise. I was quietly freaking out two minutes in. Originally, I wanted to hide, but Orange Shirt made a convincing case for moving on. We had a headstart, anyway. L insisted that we go ahead - in his words "that way, if any of the hunters find us, you guys can run ahead. I'll try to distract them, give you more time to get away."
Kid you not. Boy's got a serious White Knight Complex.
After a while, I really got into it. There was a real sense of urgency, a real sense of danger. We were looking out for flashes of color, footsteps that weren't ours'...it really felt like we were escaping! Honestly, it was cool. We doubled back and scouted ahead. At one point, we had to reatreat, because there were other people up ahead and we had no way of knowing whether they had been turned into Hunters or not. I had the bright idea to cut through the undergrowth to the pavilian on the other side, which was fairly close to our goal point.
Of course, that just happened to be where we met one of the Hunters.
He stared at us.
We stared at him.
L actually planted himself in front of us, yelling "Run, run! I'll hold him off!" Orange Shirt and I needed no further prompting - we ran back the way we'd come like two bats out of hell. No one follows us. We both suspected that L had gotten captured, but nobody followed us.
On we went. Just me and Orange Shirt. I tried to scout ahead for Orange Shirt, figuring that she'd have a better chance of escaping if any of the Hunters found us. But, honestly, we were both exhausted by then. We heard screaming on the other side of the bushes, and tried to take a side path. Eventually, Orange Shirt started cutting through the undergrowth. Yes, we could have been bitten by snakes. We were panicking and freaked out.
Eventually, we reach the wooden platform that led us to the pavilian in the first place. From out of my sight, X starts screaming "Run! Hurry! They're looking for you! Get to the safe spot!" Naturally, we both freaked out even further and made a mad dash for it. Fortunately, it happened to be two feet away.
You had to be there.
It turned out that we were the last two back. L had escaped, and had actually agreed to be a hunter so he could help find us "because we were getting worried about you." Our feet were sore, our shoulders ached, our hearts were pounding, and I was giggling like a maniac from adrenaline overdose. Mom was waiting for us when we got back, but she wouldn't leave until I'd gotten some water and she'd finished giving her standard pep talk to L's parents.
I'm thinking of keeping in touch with Orange Shirt. Girl doesn't look like much, but she's a deadpan snarker and a frickin' ninja to boot. We did really well together. It's midnight now and I'm still sore, but I'd do all of it again in a heartbeat.