Free Seeds of Discovery by Breeana Puttroff

her own bed.
    My mom ! She thought suddenly. She needed to be home before her mother called in the morning.
    “I’m not walking anywhere, except back to my car and home.”
    He sighed, studying her face again. When he answered her this time, his tone was resigned, but sincere. “There’s no way back to your home tonight.” He finished storing the pouch back in his bag and stood, hoisting the heavy backpack onto his shoulders. “The gate is closed. You’re just going to have to come with me and we’ll get this sorted out later. Do you think you’re okay to walk?” He offered her a hand.
    Gate? “What? Wait.” An edge of panic was rising in her voice. ”Go with you where? Where are we?” She quickly pulled herself to her feet, refusing his hand. The pain she felt when she first put weight on her leg only served to heighten her anxiety. He had wrapped it very tightly. Wincing, she turned slightly, pretending to look at the river, hiding the sudden moisture at the corners of her eyes.
    “Try taking some deep breaths,” he suggested.
    His calm, almost disinterested demeanor finally got to her. “Oh that helps, William. Like saying ‘don’t panic’ ever helped anyone stay calm.” Ignoring her still-stinging leg, she stormed at the foot of the bridge, looking in every direction as if somewhere amidst the trees she would see the path back to reality. When that yielded no answers, she turned back to William. “You didn’t answer me. Where are we?”
    “My home.” He turned and gestured toward the forest in the distance.
    “Excuse me? Your home ? You live with your uncle on Bray Street.”
    “You were following me there as well?”
    She blushed slightly at the accusation, but she was still angry, and she didn’t relent. “Well, if anything about you made sense – first you run in front of my car, and I almost hit you, then with the accident, and then you just disappearing all the time. What was I supposed to think, William?” What had started as curiosity was quickly becoming something she had never imagined.
    “You weren’t supposed to think anything. You followed me. Where did you think I was going?”
    Quinn paused. William’s questions were too direct. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.
    “Why have you been following me?”
    She shrugged and stammered for a moment, her mind searching for what she hoped would be the least embarrassing response, finally opting for offense as the best defense. “What kind of person walks off into the woods in the middle of nowhere every Friday at sunset?”
    “What exactly were you expecting when you walked off of a broken bridge in the ‘middle of nowhere’?” His unimpressed and unsympathetic retort came quickly and left her unable to respond.
    “You got yourself into this,” he said shortly. He turned and started walking. “This way.” Without checking to see if she was following, he began heading down the narrow slope to a point where the dirt path widened out and curved in the direction of the twinkling lights. Not until he reached the bottom did he stop and turn, raising a questioning eyebrow at her.
    She wondered what if this was what it felt like to go crazy. Briefly, she contemplated just going back up on the bridge, to see if it would take her back home, but dismissed the thought as soon as it came. The same instinctive need to know that had caused her to walk off the end of the bridge soon had her following him.
    William appraised her limping stride as she made her way down the slope. For a split second, it looked as though he was extending his hand toward her again, but she might have imagined it.
    “Would you like some ibuprofen?” he asked.
    “Guana root and ibuprofen?” She snorted. Her irritation still had the best of her. “I’m fine, thanks.”
    She heard him sigh beside her, but he didn’t say anything, just started walking. He led her along the dirt footpath winding downhill from the bridge, in and out of patches of