But Seriously. [o1] I Hope Something Eats You.

"I hate you so much right now, Tucker." I shuffled along tiredly behind him as we tried to find our way back to the camp site. Okay; so, I could never hate Tucker Stryke, after all that had happened so far this summer. But he didn't know that, and really, I was mad at him. I was also not so keen on the idea of spending another night in the woods, if this is what happened on the first night. "Where are we?"

"How the Hell can you expect me to know? I've never been in these woods before, Emma!" He mumbled, ducking under a branch. "Jeez. Maybe we should just go back the other way..."

I rolled my eyes and stopped walking. "We already know what the other way leads to. It leads to a cliff, Tucker!"

"Fine!" He hissed, turning around to look at me in the dark. His flashlight had stopped working about half an hour ago. The moon was higher in the sky now, but it still didn't give us much light to see by. "You think of something then."

"..." I narrowed my eyes and started walking the way we'd just come from. "Fine. We'll go back."

We walked in silence for a while. I kept stumbling over rocks, and Tucker would reach out to grab me before I tripped and fell flat on my face. Once or twice, I even walked into a tree. I think one of the trees had been housing some kind of rodent, or something.

Tucker broke the silence by yelling. His yell was almost a scream, actually. I turned around, my eyes wide, to see his shadowy form flailing it's arms and moving wildly around in the darkness, as he yelled more. "Tucker... Tucker? TUCKER!" I tried getting his attention.

"Holy shit! Holy shit..." He kept mumbling, still moving wildly around. He was brushing at his chest and hair. "Holy fuck."

What the Hell, may I ask, was that? "Are you on drugs, or something?" I walked towards him and grabbed his arm.

He stopped moving, then stared at me, his eyes wide and his breath coming out in short pants. "I walked into a spider web; a spider web, Emma!"

"Um. So?" I raised my eyebrow in question at him. I let go of his arm and started walking again. Jeez. Who needs this, I ask you?

"It probably had a spider living in it!" He hissed incredulously at me as he began following me again. "You know, those blood thirsty, eight-legged-"

Oh. How cute. "You're afraid of spiders?" I asked, managing somehow to keep the laughter out of my voice. Or, at least, I tried to manage it.

"..." He didn't answer me at first. I let out a little giggle before he mumbled, "Yes, I am."

Really. That was cute. Tucker was afraid of spiders! I sighed, still smiling at the though of Tucker being afraid of spiders, as I stopped walking. "Maybe we should just stay here until the sun comes up, and we're able to see."

Tucker seemed to think this over, and he nodded. "You're probably right. The sun should be up in a few hours, anyway. We'll just stay here."

I sat down on a large rock and wrapped my arms around myself. I sighed again, this time tiredly. I really was so tired. My feet hurt from walking around the woods, and I just wanted to crawl into bed. Or, well, I guess I'd be crawling into my sleeping bag when we got back to the camp site.

I'd be crawling into my sleeping bag, which happened to be right next to Tucker Stryke's.

I shivered a little, and Tucker mistook the gesture. "Are you cold?" He asked me.

"What? No. I'm fine." I tried to assure him.

It didn't work, though. He unrolled the sleeves of his shirt; he'd put on a long-sleeved shirt that day, and just kept the sleeves up while we'd hiked. When the sleeves were down, he pulled the shirt up above his head and tossed it to me. "Put that on." He ordered me.

Well, what was I supposed to do? Of course I complied with his demand. The shirt was bigger on me, and the sleeves went past my knuckles. I was glad it was too dark to see, because I'm sure Tucker would have noticed that my cheeks immediately began to heat up, and my mouth twisted up at the ends into this bizarre smile that seems to always want to show itself around Tucker. I mumbled, "Thank you."

I saw him nod in the dark. He stretched, some of his joints popping as he did so, and I watched the muscles of his stomach and chest ripple. May I just say, wow? He sighed contentedly and sat down on a log.

The log, however, was rotted, and it caved in as soon as he sat. He fell backwards, his butt sinking into the huge hole now in the log.

I couldn't help myself. I tried to cover my laughter by covering my mouth with my hand, but I couldn't. My giggles escaped and I clutched my side, gasping from laughing so hard. He just looked so funny, stuck in that log.

Tucker stood up, finally pulling himself out of the log, and he stepped closer to me sitting on my rock. He propped his arms on either side of me and lowered his face to mine, his lips pursed and his shoulders heaving a little, trying to stop his own laughter from escaping. "Okay. Alright. That's enough fun on my behalf."

"I... I'm sorry, Tucker." I tried catching my breath. "I just... Wow. You looked..."

In the end, it was a lost cause. Tucker let his head rest on my shoulder as he ended up laughing, and I threw my head back and didn't even try to conceal my laughter anymore.

However, in the middle of our little... moment, something interrupted us. Something, coming from inside the hollow log, growled.

Is there any need to say that things weren't so funny anymore?



"What the Hell was that?" I whispered, my voice uneven and panicked. You'd be panicked, too, if you were lost in the woods 'til morning, at least, and some strange thing was growling at you.

"I..." Tucker squinted in the dark, his hand suddenly gripping onto mine. Well. Isn't that nice? I'm telling you, it was the fear that made me grip his back. "I'm not completely sure what that was."

I stood up and kept close to Tucker as we saw some furry creature poke it's head out of the hole in the log. I was immediately upset to see that this creature happened to me Uncle Clark's extremely bad-tempered badger. It didn't sound, or look, for that matter, very happy that we were there.

"Oh, no." My voice came out high-pitched now. I pulled on Tucker's hand and began backing up, pulling him along with me.

"What is it?" Tucker looked between me and the badger. It was beginning to climb out of the log. No! "What's wrong, Emma?"

"It's a badger, Tucker!" I groaned, moving quicker than I had been before. "Do you remember what I told you about Uncle Clark? He likes to own these way random pets. The badger happens to be one of them."

Tucker stopped walking. "Ems, it can't be that bad. It's just a badger. It's probably just scared of us."

I started tugging hard on Tucker's hand. "No, no, no. No, Tucker, not this badger. This badger is horribly mean. That's why it lives out here by itself, and not around Uncle Clark. It's very mean, Tucker."

The badger was coming closer to us and growling now. I let go of Tuckers hand. Screw it. "You want to stay here? You want to be an idiot? You can do that by yourself. If you know what's good for you, you'll run, and I mean now, Tucker!"

"Emma..." Tucker attempted to sooth me, but the badger interrupted him with a loud shriek, and Tucker yelled. "Shit! Okay, running now. Let's go." He grabbed my hand again, and we were off, with the badger following closely behind us.