Page 81 of Pick Me Up On Tuesdays

We got chaos. Pure, unfiltered, award-winning chaos.

It started with me—of course it did. One second, I was walking through the underbrush, trying to act like I belonged in nature (I didn’t), and the next…crunch. Something long, scaly, and definitely alive slithered under my sneaker.

I looked down.

A snake.

A whole, actual snake.

I screamed like a man being hunted. The sound I made wasn’t human—it was a banshee-choking-on-bubblegum kind of scream. Birds took off. Mia dropped the camera. Joy shrieked in response, even though she was three feet away and nowhere near the snake. Then she tried to run, got her foot caught on a root, and face-planted into the dirt like gravity had a personal vendetta.

Max? Max looked like he’d trained for this moment his entire life. I blinked and he was already halfway up a tree, clutching a branch like a terrified koala.

Meanwhile, Ethan stood a few feet away with his arms crossed, completely unfazed. Classic Ethan. Tall, broad-shouldered, annoyingly good-looking—and apparently incapable of panic.

I stumbled backward, nearly falling into a bush, one shoe missing and dignity bleeding out fast.

And that was it. That was the level of support I got from the team’s golden boy.

Eventually, Shun swooped in like the unsung heroine she is. Calm, collected, and somehow immune to both reptiles and ridiculousness. Or maybe the snake wasn't poisonous, and I had missed that part of the memo. She directed us back into formation. Mia recovered the camera. Joy spat out dirt. Max climbed down with the grace of a traumatized possum. And I… I found my missing shoe in a patch of suspicious wild-flowers.

By the time the sun had properly risen, our chance at filming the rare bird was long gone. It had probably migrated to another continent to escape our nonsense.

The footage? Mediocre at best. Blurry. Shaky. Possibly haunted.

Our budget? Still nonexistent.

Morale? Hanging by a thread made of expired granola bars and Joy’s off-key singing.

But oddly enough, despite everything, my nightmares were starting to fade. Slowly. Gradually. Like fog lifting off a lake at dawn.

Still… sometimes, when the group laughed and I let myself smile—really smile—I’d catch it. That flicker. A glint in the corner of my vision. A flash, too quick to catch. Like the reflection of a camera lens… watching.

Hidden in the dark.

I hadn’t seen my stepdad again. Not since that night.

But sometimes—when the trees whispered just right, or the wind stopped too suddenly—Ifeltit.

That I wasn’t alone.

That something was still watching me.

Day Ten:

We were broke. And by broke, I mean Joy actually suggested selling Max to a local merchant—which, frankly, I was starting to consider.

Our food situation? Laughable. Our documentary? Even more laughable.

At this point, we were just recording anything. A squirrel? Nature. A weird-looking rock? Nature. Max tripping over his own feet? Nature at its finest.

At night, I snuck out with Ethan again.

I tried to avoid him. Really, I did. But somehow, by the end of the night, I was still walking beside him, listening to his stupid jokes, enjoying the quiet moments that I shouldn’t be enjoying.

Chapter 24: Cartographically Screwed

Day Eleven:

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