“The three of us are always in danger. That’s kind of our thing,” I felt a pang of sadness come over me when I said it, I would never get to feel how a normal kid lives. My world was full of monsters, devils, witches, all of whom were set out to kill me.

As I looked into my mom’s shockingly blue eyes I remembered the first time, the day my world flipped over. I was waiting on my fence for Alex and May to get here. My mom had finally let us go to hills behind our house. The reason she wouldn’t let me go was because the hills were so tall that no one could spot you from anywhere behind them. In fact the hills were probably the true last frontier, not a single soul had ever set foot on them, at least not someone seen again. In this day and age we brushed it off as rumors, but we were stupidly ignorant. We didn’t notice the signs.

I recall the moment Alex and May arrived, it took them 10 minutes to get here, but they walked, so I didn’t blame them. I jumped up in delight. “Alex, May, you came!” “Of course we did,” Alex said. We obviously didn’t waste any time talking, we just shot out toward the hills like our lives depended on it. When we crossed the first small hill nothing happened, it looked like a casual cloudless day, the bare sky stretching on for miles. However when we reached the second hill everything changed. The first thing I noticed was May’s scream, “Noah, your eyes are green, bright green!” Then my sight turned on again. I noticed the clear sky was gone overtaken by huge oak trees, blocking all light. Boulders littered the floor like plastic bottles littered the ocean. The rolling hills replaced by parched ground. Vines hung from the sky, the forest (?) was so overgrown that all I could see was Alex’s tousled, black hair and May’s tremulous, worried eyes.

My hands instinctively reached for my dad’s map, before my brain could register that it couldn’t help, but when I looked down at the map I saw it had changed, barely, but it had. In fact if I hadn’t spent every moment of this year scrutinizing over the map I wouldn’t even have noticed. I noticed another thing that was interesting, every time I moved the lines changed, as if showing me the way.

“Guys look!” “What?” They said in unison. “Look the map!” They looked at me with looks of utter confusion. I then realized that they were genuinely looking, but they couldn’t see anything. *sigh* “umm okay,” I said, “just follow me.” I watched as when I stepped in the right direction the lines opened, as if to let me in. At first sight it looked like a regular topographical map, but if you looked deeper you saw the bold lines, and markings. The map helped me find our way back to the first small hill, and eventually our way out.

“Ok so…” Alex started. “What was that?!” May continued. “Oh yeah your eyes aren’t green anymore.” “Oh… kay” I looked down at the now ordinary map. It was as if when my eyes turned green they turned into lenses that turned the map extraordinary. “Great.”

“Let’s just go back,” May said. “Yeah.” We should.”

When we got to my house my mom sighed in relief. “So how was it?” She asked. “You know normal big hills, rolling down them under a big blue sky,” Alex and I said at the same time. “Mom, can we have a sleepover,” I asked, mainly just to talk about what just happened, but also to have a little fun in summer. “You know what? Sure,” she agreed. “Yes.”

We were huddled together on the floor in our sleeping bags. “I’m bored,” Alex said. “How could you be bored at a time like this?!” May asked. “Yeah dude,” I said. “Are you flippin’ kidding me.” “Nah dude, I’m honestly bored,” he yawned. Then he turned around and fell asleep. “Did he lose his memory or something?” I asked. “No, I didn’t,” Alex piped up. “Then why the heck are you bored, if you didn’t lose your mind then we should’ve had so much to say,” I ranted. I felt an alien burst of rage course through my veins. Then I heard it- a sound like a siren. My blood turned to ice.

(The quote is from Arlo Finch in the Lake of the Moon: The three of us are always in danger. That’s kind of our thing)