Chapter Nineteen: The Sweet Smell of Polluted Air

The distinct scent of watery pine needles and musky leaves wafted its way into my nostrils, serving as a better wakeup call than an alarm clock. Alas, I wasn’t able to propel myself out of wherever I was sleeping, for my back ached and felt as though it was permanently paralyzed. My shoulders were unmovable and my legs—well, my legs possessed a tension in them like no other. Overall, my body was sore, and due to the blurriness of my mind, I couldn’t quite determine why.

      “Olivia, are you up?” someone called, their voice penetrating through my eardrums.

      “No,” I groaned, “I’m still sleeping.”

      “Liv, the sooner you get your lazy ass off of that cot, the sooner we can get back to civilization!” another voice urged. Something jabbed at my side, causing me to recoil in distaste.

      “Livy, if you don’t get up soon, then all of the granola bars are going to be gone!” a semi-sarcastic threat was made.

      “More of a reason to sleep,” I mumbled.

      “Olivia, we need to go home, like, now! Get up!” Piper undoubtedly whined. There was nothing on earth as annoying as Piper Kent’s morning voice. It was intolerable to the fullest extent that something could be.

      “Piper, stop talking,” I grumbled, feeling my frame being lifted by some unknown force. It felt as thought I was flying or falling, though the more I processed it, the more I realized that I was just being carried by someone or a forklift, for my back and the spaces below my knees were the only areas supported.

      After deducting that I was most likely making quite a bit of contact with a being of the human variety, I then gave the OK to my brain to start freaking out and fully wake up. My eyes finally snapped open and my head was twisted in a way so that instead of instantly seeing nature as the first sight in my morning, I saw a pair of deep gray orbs filled with mystery. I put the puzzle pieces together, and in seconds I had realized what exactly was occurring: Luke Daniels was carrying me (probably to a clearing in the woods uninhabited by the rest of the Ross family and the Kent twins, so that he could murder me in my not-so-awake state).

      “Please let go of me,” I requested in the politest of tones that I could conjure at whatever ungodly hour it was.

      “Uh,” he paused with a smirk, looking over my face, “no.”

      “Luke, put me down,” I demanded more firmly.

      “Nope,” he denied once again.

      “I swear—Luke Daniels, if you do not put me down this instan—AHHHH!” my threat was cut off by the shock of my now actually falling body. I hit the hard ground of February that had yet to thaw and become more yielding like it would in the spring, and let out a shriek of panic and pain. My limbs all felt like they would fall off at any moment, and the earth was killing my back the more time I spent collapsed on it. My sight drifted over to Luke, and I glared at him with all my might, spitting out three rather direct words in a morning fit of rage over what he had just done: “You. Dropped. Me!”

      “You asked me to put you down,” he defended his actions with a boyish grin that was anything but innocent.

      “Mom!” I cried, aware that I hadn’t called her “Elle,” but not thinking too much into it. “Can I sue him for that?”

      “Yes,” she replied back from somewhere off in the distance. “Though, unless you get someone really good to represent you, you’ll lose. The case isn’t a firm one. We’re in the woods, and for all the judge knows, you could be lying, and all the witnesses here aren’t guaranteed to back you up.” And there was that Harvard education of hers, always paying off!

      “You should probably get that checked out by a doctor,” Luke suggested, looking down at me pitifully. He offered me a less than positive thumbs-up and a smile, and then began to walk around me in circles, only to make me—the injured party—dizzy. “You’re dad’s one, right?”

      “Yeah, but he’s a surgeon, so he isn’t good for anything useful,” I muttered.

      “Yo! Dr. Ross, from your professional opinion, do you think that your daughter’s going to be all right?” Luke asked of my dear father who was probably still attempting to attract a signal on his BlackBerry, though he had discovered that there was none the previous evening. My dad wasn’t exactly the type to go out and take charge by collecting timber or whatever those log things were called that helped build a fire. He was much more passive than that—a trait that I had definitely acquired from him.

      “To you, my name is Nick,” my dad began by addressing Luke, “and as long as she’s not bleeding profusely or dead, we should be all good.” And there was my father’s overly expensive Harvard education, being wasted once again on his own stupidity. He should’ve just become a professional skier. Everyone loved skiers. They were so chill and they didn’t need a diploma from The Big “H” to succeed in life. If wasn’t for the whole “skiing” and “being athletic” thing, I would totally consider becoming a pro skier! Alas, I didn’t do “physical activity” or snow, so it wasn’t for me.

      “I told you that he wasn’t good for anything useful,” I expressed to one Luke Daniels.

      “Hey! I heard that!” my dad said in reply to my words.

      “Good,” I yelled back, “that means your ears are working.”

      Nick then made a comment to Elle about why they had ended up with such a sarcastically negative daughter, and Elle said something about genetics or skipping a generation. All the while, I just continued to bond with “mother nature,” because I lacked the energy to move and get up. As I wallowed in my own personal issues regarding lethargy, Luke just stared at me blankly, as if waiting for me to jump up and do a double backflip.

      “Hey, Liv—Olivia, why are you on the ground?” Preston questioned, materializing beside Luke as he, too, gazed down at me in a curiosity-filled manner.

      “Because I can’t get up,” I stated, my muscles aching silently just to prove it to myself, though I was already fully knowledgeable.

      “Oh,” he said, taking my answer to heart. “Well, we need to leave. Now. Piper is actually considering eating a granola bar, so that’s definitely a silent cry for help. It’s bad, Liv.”

      “Do you even see me? I can’t move! I know it’s bad, Preston!” I said, wanting to badly get up so that rocks weren’t poking themselves into my covered skin, but not having the ability, stamina, or drive to do so.

      “You’re so cranky in the morning,” my best friend remarked, crouching down so that he was closer to me. I was about to make a snarky comment in response that definitely would’ve qualified as being “cranky,” but didn’t when he did just as Luke had minutes before, lifting me up, though more forcefully. I wasn’t getting out of his grip any time soon—that was for sure.

      “Preston, please put me down—I just went through the same disagreement with Luke,” I pled, wiggling, though it didn’t do any good to my current position.

      “Liv, if you let me carry you for about five minutes, I promise that you’ll love me so much you’ll probably kiss me,” Preston assured me genuinely. I sighed, releasing all the tension that I had built up in my body, and just lay limp in Preston’s secure hold. Out of the two, I felt slightly safer in Preston’s arms than Luke’s, mainly because Luke was practically a stranger, while Preston and I had shared a lifetime together. Then again, the probability of the two dropping me was about equal, for Luke had already displayed that he was willing to do so, and Preston at times could be completely unpredictable and annoying, in addition to being a prick and a jerk. It was a tossup between whose arms I preferred to be in—though, in reality, I favored neither. Arm-less was the way to go.

      “Believe me, Preston Kent, that will never happen,” I told him, regarding the kissing part he had slipped in.

      “It happens every night in my dreams, Liv, every night…” he teased, his feet walking in a steady pace as his athletic biceps supported my average weight.

      “Shut up!” I grumbled with passion. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything, following my command. Unfortunately, he then proceeded to quickly press his lips on my cheek vacantly, leaving them there for a brief few seconds as I squirmed and objected. “Preston!” I scolded, wiping off the nonexistent residue with the use of the back of my hand. “You are so gross!”

      “And you are so cute at seven-thirty in the morning!” he cooed back, winking at me in a way that could only be accomplished by someone in a best friendship of over sixteen years.

      “You look like a scarecrow,” I said to him, relatively honestly. Preston always managed to look good, but currently, with his disheveled straw-colored hair and large bags lining his eyes, he wasn’t exactly the Superman model of Preston Kent that the world generally saw. Hell, he wasn’t even pulling off the Clark Kent look for that matter—last names aside.

      “A sexy scarecrow, I’m sure,” Preston added in his own adjective that didn’t exactly fit.

      “No, just a scarecrow,” I corrected my misinformed best friend.

      “Deny it all you want, Ross, but you know I’m sexy,” Preston sighed with all the ease of a boy who had grown up in a world where everything was within his immediate reach.

      “And you know that I hate being called ‘Ross,’” I returned, leaning the side of my head on his chest so that my aching neck didn’t have to support all of its hallowed out bulk (I was 58.2% sure that I didn’t actually have a brain in there).

      “That I do,” he hummed, stopping abruptly and spontaneously releasing me just like Luke had. This time, though, the drop was more expected because Preston Kent was the one holding me, and my butt didn’t land on frozen grass that had yet to turn green, but rather lots of little rocks bunched together—gravel.

      “Uh, where are we?” I inquired, not bothering to look around or even marginally process our surroundings.

      “In the parking lot,” Preston said.

      “The parking lot?” I reiterated in disbelief.

      “Yep.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      Preston offered me a sympathetic hand in order to aid in my getting up from the gravel, but I declined, for I knew Preston Kent all too well than to give him an opportunity like this one. If I had accepted his hand, he would’ve just let me go, only to drop me yet again. Okay, so maybe there was a brain in that head of mine after all. Anyhow, I just stared at Preston’s hand, not accepting it.

      “When you were still sleeping, all of the men—” Preston began, but I had to cut him off, for he mentioned a term that exhibited just how terribly mistaken he truly was.

      “I’m going to assume that you mean a man and two boys,” I said.

      He just rolled his blue eyes at me, not taking well to my interjection. “When your lazy ass was still sleeping, Nick, Luke, and I went exploring,” he paused, giving me an opportunity for questions or to speak. I elected the latter.

      “Two city kids and a city doctor went ‘exploring.’ Interesting,” was all I said.

      Preston nodded, continued with his cautionary tale. “Anyways, on our expedition, we went off in the opposite direction that we came…and then we found out that the cabin was only two minutes away from the parking lot—Elle had taken us the long way and gotten us lost on the way here.”

      “Wait…” I mumbled, processing the information as I slowly urged myself to get up, though didn’t, “so are you telling me that the parking lot was here the entire time?”

      “Yeah,” he shrugged. “Gotta love Elle’s sense of direction, right?”

      “Nope,” I said, finally willing myself to stand up. I felt as though a professional boxer had beaten me up as I extended my legs in a locked position, fearing that I would collapse at any second.

      “Stop, drop, and roll! I repeat: stop, drop, and roll!” a sprinting Piper shrieked, heading our way at top speed. Not even caring about the gravel, she then did as she had instructed, stopping right in front of us, dropping to the ground, and then rolling around from side to side on the earth for a few seconds. It was quite the spectacle, and Preston must have thought so to, for I noticed that he had resorted to taking his signal-less phone out and shooting a video of his twin. It wasn’t exactly Oscar worthy, though I could see it blowing up on YouTube in a matter of hours. Piper would hate him for about two days if he did end up posting the video to some social media site, but it wouldn’t exactly be the end of the world for her.

      “Why?” her cameraman brother asked, observing through his phone’s lens as she continued to roll in manner so that she didn’t completely turn over.

      “Because Nick was playing with a box of matches and set a piece of wood on fire!” Piper exclaimed. “Aren’t you supposed to stop, drop, and roll when you see a fire?”

      “Sure,” Preston said helpfully, then whispering to me, “this is so going on Facebook later!”

      “Not YouTube?” I questioned.

      He shook his head. “Having a million strangers see this would be funny, but having a thousand people that have ever come in contact with Piper see this would be hysterical.”

      I couldn’t argue with his logic, so didn’t. Instead, I heard a, “Luke, you are such a nice young man—I wish Preston was as considerate as you,” from an adoring Elle Ross. Oh. Shit.

      Preston looked over to me, his eyes wide as the remaining three parties marched over to where we were watching Piper roll around on the ground. Nick just stared at the teenaged girl, shaking his head and letting out a deep sigh. “You really take after your mother, you know that, Piper?” my dad said.

      “Thanks,” Piper muttered, taking what he had said as a compliment, though I wasn’t so sure that it actually was one.

      “Piper, dear, would you mind getting up?” Elle requested in a dainty tone that she pulled out when she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the situation at hand.

      “If I get up then I’m going to catch on fire!” Piper explained the rationalization (or lack thereof) for her actions.

      “Piper, get up, and go get in the car so that we can get the hell out of this place and to somewhere with reception…and a Starbucks,” Nick directed with a very strong argument. And with his compelling words, Piper jumped up from her fire spasm and rushed over to the large SUV we had been in only hours before. She opened the door, and then dove in, as if in a James Bond movie. Everyone else followed in suit, slowly loading into the vehicle. In the driver and passenger’s seats were Nick and Elle, Piper and her brother took up the second row, and then I was stuck in the back—with Luke Daniels.

      Elle backed up out of the New Hampshire “nature,” and pressed on the gas like she was in a race with the cops. It had been a rough night. Barely any “food” (aka granola bars) had been eaten, thus leaving a rather grouchy group of teens and Elle and Nick. Everyone had been complaining essentially the entire time, and Piper and I had been subjected to sharing a cot. In the middle of the night, Piper fell off of the cot because she was Piper Kent and happened to move a lot in her sleep, and then everyone woke up after hearing the loud bang of her body.

      At about four in the morning, another noise had awoken everyone and Elle assured us that it was nothing. Being the “toughest” out of all of us (which was basically like choosing the smartest out of a room of idiots), Luke then went to check what was making the noise, earning himself the title of “Elle’s Favorite” for the duration of the trip. The sound was just a raccoon, in the end, which wasn’t nearly as scary as we had thought. Nonetheless, after Luke’s “courageous” act, Elle and he had practically been inseparable, bonding an unhealthy amount for any two. It was beginning to scare just about everyone, mainly due to the fact that Elle had been so opposed to him at first and was now treating him like another Preston. It was just…out of character for her, really.

      “Elle Ross!” Piper screamed, though she was only sitting about two feet away her. “Stop the car right now!”

      “Why, sweetie?” Elle asked, slowing down a considerable amount per Piper’s outburst.

      “Because unless I’m hallucinating—which I might be, I’m pretty sure that that sign is a Starbucks one!” she eagerly cried, pressing her face up to the tinted window to get a better view. I glanced out the glass pain on my side, and sure enough, there was a Starbucks…well, sort of. It was actually a rest stop that just so happened to have a Starbucks in it, but that was good enough for Piper, and clearly also good enough for Elle, for the car then sped into the paved parking lot of the rest stop, coming to an abrupt stop.

      “Piper, let’s go!” Elle said, unbuckling her seatbelt like her life depended on it. Piper copied my mother’s frantic actions, following her out of the car. They didn’t even question the cleanliness of the highway Starbucks for even a second—they just ran over to the building like two addicts who just spotted a drug convention. It was bad. Really bad.

      “I need a mocha Frappuccino. Does anyone else feel coffee-dependent at the moment, or should I just follow them alone?” Nick sighed, opening his door of the car, and inching his way out.

      “I need sugar or I’ll probably pass out. And bacon. Do you think they’ll have bacon in there?” Preston asked, also edging his way out of the car.

      “Yeah, totally,” Nick assured him. “Liv, Luke, are you two coming?”

      “I think that I’m just going to take some time to inhale the sweet smell of polluted air, if that’s all right,” I articulated to him, climbing out of the very back with Luke following right behind me.

      “Do what you gotta do, Livy,” my dad told me. I nodded, making my way over to an aged sidewalk right by the car and sitting down, despite the rejection of my body. Preston and my dad passed by me, each patting me on the head for reasons that I would never understand, and then Luke plopped down right next to me, extracting something from one of his pockets.

      In Luke’s hand, he held a small rectangular box, and opened the top, taking out a single object that would eventually lead to his ultimate demise. I studied him, wondering if he was actually going to “do the deed” with the object and surprise me a considerable amount. He then took out another article of a rather battered state from his pocket, setting fire to the edge of the first tubular object. Putting the unlit side up to his mouth, he took a long drag and then exhaled poisonous smoke. Well, he was certainly more of an idiot than I had thought.

      “Are you trying to contract lung cancer and kill yourself, or that just an added benefit?” I questioned, breaking the silent trance and watching as he handled the compact cylinder of death with the delicacy of his fingers.

      “Oh, please don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who likes to protest everything good in life,” he groaned, holding the roll between his forefinger and thumb, just watching the rim burn away.

      “I’m not,” I said evenly, “I just don’t like cigarettes.”

      “And why not?” he questioned, drawing his cigarette up to his mouth, inhaling, and then blowing a puff of smoke in my face, causing me to cough, and cover my mouth in order to not inhale the deadly fumes of secondhand smoke.

      “Because they’re bad.”

      “So am I, but you still like me,” he countered with a smug expression, as if thinking he had one the mini battle of ethics we were having.

      “You’re not bad,” I expressed.

      “Yes I am,” he said, as if being “bad” was a good thing. 

      “See, but you’re not,” I contradicted, audaciously snatching the cigarette out of his grasp and throwing it to the ground. Like I had seen so many others do before, I stomped the ball of my shoe-covered foot on it, the flame extinguishing in the process.

      “Why am I not?” he asked, reaching to his pocket to obtain what I assumed to be yet another way to die faster. I placed my hand on his, preventing him from acquiring what he wanted.

      “You shouldn’t smoke,” I said, “it’s bad for you.”

      “And you still haven’t told me why I’m not bad, so the way that I see it, cigarettes and me just go to together because we’re both bad for you,” he attempted to justify.

      “Luke Daniels, you are not bad,” I declared, propping my elbow on his shoulder.

      “I’m not?”

      “Nope,” I confirmed. “You just want people to think that you are.”

      “And why would I want that?”

      “Because you’re hiding something,” I said logically. “You are a poser, after all.”

      “Fine,” he humored my theory, “so then if I’m not ‘bad’ then what am I?”

      I smirked, knowing the exact word that fit who he was. “Trouble,” I determined. “You’re just trouble, Luke Daniels. Just trouble.”