I smiled, "Like what?"
"Um... which seventeen year old doesn't know how to put on mascara. God, even some of those dark, dressed -in -black guys do mascara and eyeliner better than you. Adam Lambert does mascara better than you!"
"Who's that? Is he at our school?"
McKenzie froze. "Oh my God, this is worse than I thought. We need chick flicks all night," She looked down at my hands, "A fucking manicure which is about ten years overdue too and some lessons in hair styling."
I laughed and we walked arm in arm to the door. But when I got there it was my turn to freeze. An envelope was taped to the door. It was in Mike's hand writing.
"Shit!" I took a step back, too frightened to approach it and certainly way to frightened to open it and read it.
My mother walked up to the door and ripped it off, "This is a polished mahogany door, not a street pole to put pamphlets on," She tisked and put the thing in my hands and then walked off. I was forced to confront it now.
I opened the envelope with shaky hands and gestured for McKenzie to read it with. me.
Maria,
For the last ten years you've taken me on the adventure of my life. Now it's your turn, and since I know how much you enjoy a good one....
. The Halloween dare that I was too shit scared to do.
Love,
Mike X
I turned the note over to see if anything else was written on it that could explain what it meant. I held it up to McKenzie in a questioning manner.
"It's the big romantic gesture." She said with a knowing smile. Clearly this was another one of those 'girl-things' I wasn't au fait with.
"What should I do?"
"You should go!" She said and gave me a reassuring hug.
I read it one more time and clicked. This was a treasure hunt and this was the first clue. I couldn't help smiling, and it felt like all my insides exploded. I stared at the last few words and almost forgot for a moment that I had booked my trip. And no doubt Mike had been offered some huge, fancy scholarship.
I stopped smiling as the realization started hitting me again – we would not be together next year.
The clue was easy to figure out. On Halloween, about five years ago, we'd dared each other to knock on the wooden witches house and wait for her to answer the door. We all called her the Wooden witch because apparently she had a wooden leg. She had long grey hair (although no one had ever seen her long enough to confirm this) and was as scary as hell. She lived alone in the only crappy house in our area and had five black cats that everyone said were a clear sign of being a witch. She also never opened her curtains so you couldn't see inside and had never mowed her lawn. There was a story going around that she had killed her husband and buried him under the lawn and that's why she never mowed it.
Wow! The things we used to believe when we were younger. We lived in this kind of magical world where everything was possible, and then you get older and reality kind of comes crashing in and crushes all of that.
I walked off in the direction of the house. The Wooden witch had moved years ago and some developers had come in and demolished the place and built fancy townhouses that all looked the same with a row on neat Lollypop trees outside. But my steady walking soon became faster as I started wondering what he'd left for me there. The anticipation grew as I reached the grey walled complex.
I looked around but couldn't find anything. Clearly he wasn't going to make this easy for me. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and pulled myself up onto the wall. And there it was. He'd stuck another red envelope onto a door, this time it was a stranger's door and the strangers in question, were all siting around their dinner table eating in front of a large window that looked over the garden and onto said door.
Crap! I climbed the wall as quietly as I possibly could, hoping to hell that these people did not have a Doberman and ducked into a bush. Now what?
The door was only a few meters away, but it would mean walking in front of the window and being spotted in a second. I was litrally breaking and entering! The only way to do this was on the ground. I got down and started leopard crawling across the freshly watered grass. Double crap.
I finally got the envelope, leopard crawled back and stealthily scaled their wall... manly thighs are good fore some things!
Maria,
A lot of things have changed over the last ten years...especially us. Because I'm ready to be more than just your 'best friend'. And if you'll let me, I'll show you how much I love you everyday.
My heart fucking stopped and I was incapable of reading further for a few moments while I gathered my organs and lungs off the floor and popped them back into my body. Holy Fuck!
I took a deep breath and continued to read the next clue.
. Remember the moment we met?
Love,
Mike XX
Of course I remember the moment we met. How could I forget it? It changed my life forever. There was a thin strip of open land running along the boarder of our gated community and I often went there when I was younger and imagined that I was some explorer in a far off land. It had felt so wild and big there, like a far off forest or jungle.
