The hard life
Charlie was a young girl at the age of 18 who lived with her over protective parents. Neither parent would let her outside the house on any given day. Well that is…. She was allowed out for her horse riding lessons and her occasional soccer games. At her age, though, she had learned many things and had learned how to care for more than just herself. She had decided at the beginning of this dumb divorce that she would one day find a way to get out of the life she now lived.
On the other side of the state, lived a boy at the age of 18 who acted very foolishly in daily activities. He had, since his 10th birthday, been spending way too much time with his friends, or rather his cousins. He was always trying something new with them any chance he got. Until one day, his family had been invited to as luncheon with a new family that had a daughter that would be attending their school the following fall. Of course neither the boy nor any of his cousins wanted to go, but in the end they went anyways just to meet the daughter of the family and try to make friends.
Johnny was the name of this young boy. He had never liked his parents very much and his parents didn't care that much for him either. His parents were rich as was he, but he didn't like the fact that he was so rich and couldn't spend a single moment alone with his parents to do things normal families would do.
After getting ready to go meet the girl and her family at the luncheon, he had decided to speak with his parents.
"Hey mom….?" Johnny asked.
"Yes what is it sweetie?" she said.
"Why can't we spend time together like normal families and sit down and play games like they do?" he had asked.
"That's because we aren't normal like the other families that live in the same state or around us. We are rich while they are very poor." She said.
Johnny hated it when his mother spoke to him like this and turned heel and stormed out of the house and to the awaiting car. He sat in the car for what seemed like hours until his cousins and parents had come out.
"Driver take us to meet the Hendricks." His father said.
The driver nodded and drove the family to the luncheon to which they were meeting the new family and new girl that would be attending their school next fall.
Upon arrival, Johnny and his cousins darted out of the automobile and straight inside to meet the new family.
However, once Johnny saw the girl he stopped in his tracks. He looked at her and sort of stared at her for a while.
Charlie Hendricks stood there in her best clothes next to her father who was a business man. He had brought her here on account of she was to attend a new school in the fall and he had chosen the perfect school for her to attend and was waiting for the papers to be finalized.
"You must be Mr. Hendricks." Johnny's father said.
"Yes sir. This is my daughter Charlie Hendricks." Mr. Hendricks said.
"It is nice to meet you, Charlie Hendricks." Mr. Davidson replied.
Charlie bowed respectfully and stood straight again.
"I am guessing you are the Davidson's?" Mr. Hendricks asked.
Mr. Davidson nodded.
"We are. This is my wife, Mrs. Davidson and that there is our son Johnny Davidson. The other boys are his cousins." Mr. Davidson replied.
Mr. Hendricks nodded saying hello to each of the boys. He looked at Johnny and was about to say hello when he saw that the boy had been staring at his daughter for a while now.
Charlie noticed and blushed.
"My dad has noticed you are staring at me Johnny Davidson." Charlie replied giggling.
Johnny shook his head to clear it and blushed brightly at the thought of having stared at this girl for the past ten to twelve minutes.
His cousins laughed and teased him about it for the rest of the night.
"That's enough boys." Mr. Davidson replied.
The cousins shut their mouths and continued their chatting with each other.
"It's a wonderful night tonight." Charlie said to Johnny.
"Hunh? Oh yeah… It is a lovely night." Johnny said just realizing what she had said to him.
Charlie giggled listening to him.
"Daddy may me and Johnny go play on the playground?" Charlie asked shyly.
"Of course not." Mr. Hendricks said.
Charlie sighed sitting there bored out of her mind.
"Momma may I go play?" Johnny asked.
His mother sighed, "fine…."
Johnny got up and went to play.
"May I go for a short walk outside now daddy?" Charlie asked hopefully.
Mr. Hendricks sighed nodding.
Charlie smiled and left to go play with Johnny.
She and Johnny played for a while and had tons of fun.
Sadly, she had to go home with her father and go back to living in a home where she was never allowed outside.
Johnny was the same way and could not stop thinking about Charlie all night. He soon fell asleep and started dreaming about her.
In the dream
Johnny and his cousins were walking down the road and eating ice cream like good children, but then they saw a girl who was so beautiful to them that they couldn't resist speaking to her and trying to ask her out. Johnny of course was the one to ask her out first. He had been immediately rejected, but none the less he still tried to ask her over and over again. He promised himself that he would not stop until he had gotten a 'yes' from this girl to go on a date with him.
It had seemed like years since he and his cousins had first met the young lady, but in reality it was only mere minutes.
Johnny and his cousins were in his parents' car when they ran smack into something. They were all sent flying forward.
End dream
Johnny shot forward from his dream which had quickly turned into a nightmare and sat on his bed sweating like crazy. He sat there on his bed wondering why his dream had gone so wrong and what had caused it to become like that. After having a dream like that he knew he could not sleep much longer. So, he got up and tried getting outside only to find all the doors and windows locked and glued shut.
Johnny sighed and finally just laid down in bed again and lay there till morning.
The next morning
At the Hendricks house,Charlie was awake and eating breakfast with her parents. That morning was one of those mornings where anything could go wrong and for Charlie that unlucky thing would happen that very day. She had been allowed outside that day for the simple reason of that she had horse riding and caring lessons that day and she had to attend or else her teacher would be very upset with her. She finished her meal and then went upstairs to change into her riding outfit that her mother had bought her a while back when she had first started riding lessons.
She quickly made her way to the stables where her trainer and horses were at. She smiled as they began the lesson for the day and quickly mounted her horse with ease.
"Is it possible for me to enter one of the races this year?" Charlie asked her trainer.
"Maybe madam, but that requires a lot of training and skill to win those things." the trainer said.
"I have the skill. Just not the time and money to participate right?" Charlie asked sadly.
The trainer nodded sadly as she helped walk the horse to the ring where the lesson would begin.
As her lessons continued, Charlie kept getting distracted by a rustling in the wooded area close to her house. She had long since been back there and explored the area, but not once had she thought to set up any traps there so nothing could get in to hurt her or her family. She watched the trees and saw that it was only a tiny bunny rabbit.
"Awe how cute." Charlie said looking at the bunny.
Her horse however reacted in the opposite way to the bunny that had come out from the wooded area and started backing up.
The trainer noticed and tried to calm the horse down only to be knocked back.
Charlie saw this and became scared to which her horse replied with the flight response. She was taken away from her home as she rode on her horse not in much control of the situation itself and only knowing that her horse was trying to protect her from whatever was in the area.
The horse galloped on going to a destination where Charlie was unknown and where the dangers were less.
Charlie grew tired as the day dragged on and soon the duo of horse and rider had become lost somewhere in the countryside. She didn't know how long they had been gone, but one thing was for sure. She had to get home so she could see Johnny again. With that in her head she began to lead the horse back the way they had came and back home.
Several days passed, as she rode back home home getting even more lost occasionally on the way. She had finally reached her house when to her surprise she saw it had been destroyed.
Wondering what had caused such a large amount of damage to her home, she set out looking for the person who did this to her home. She had been riding for another good hour or so when she had decided to stop for a quick drink of water and something to eat. She knew vaguely how to hunt from watching her father on one of his gaming days. She quickly made a spear using sturdy wood she had gotten from a tree and a sharp rock. She tied the rock to the wood with a piece of cloth from her shirt.
It won't work for long... but this cloth will hold this spear together long enough for me to hunt me and my horse down some food. Charlie thought as she told the horse to stay and went hunting.
She left her horse and went in search of food. She was now forced to survive on her own. This thought scared her at first, but she soon got over it and accepted it as a fact of life. She knew she couldn't play around anymore and be the little girl she once was that played on the swing set with her daddy. She knew that since she had seen her parents dead bodies laying there on the floor of their destroyed house that she would have to survive on her own. She had yet to meet the thing that destroyed her home, but knew one day she would find it and make it pay for taking away her parents. She had decided that she would live in the wilderness to try and see if any of the creatures out here could have destroyed her house, but sadly none of the animals she had met were fierce enough and big enough to tear down her home.
She had thought that maybe it was the bears that lived in a cave not far from her house that had torn up her house, but she dismissed that idea as the bears she had met seemed only worried about their cubs that were close by.
She even considered that it might have been wolves at one point, but for some odd reason she just couldn't believe that statement. She had found and learned about many creatures in the wilderness. She had come to good terms with most of them. Of course, she couldn't understand a word they were saying; she came to feel like she wouldn't be bothered by any of the wildlife that lived in the area as long as she didn't do anything to make them want to attack her or do harm to her as well.
Unfortunately, she couldn't survive off of river water and uncooked animal meat for the rest of her life. So she decided it was time to return to a normal life in the city and become human again instead of living as if she were some wild beast in the forest. She went to a grave site where she had buried her horse who had died from snake bites. She paid her respects and headed to the market to try and scrounge up money for some food and drink.
Meanwhile, at Johnny's mansion, Johnny was worrying about Charlie. From what he heard of the news reports his father listened to, she was missing and had last been seen by her trainer on her horse. Johnny had heard the trainer say himself that the horse had sensed danger and had backed away and galloped into the distance. Upon further investigation, the cops gave up looking for charlie and declared her gone for good. This did nothing to help Johnny get any happier. If anything this only served to enrage him even more.
"What had that horse seen in the woods that Charlie couldn't?" Johnny asked himself as he looked out the window of his room.
He missed Charlie so much, yet as he searched everywhere he could think she would go eh couldn't find a trace of her having been there in a while. As he made his way home he sadly thought about her and when they had first met. He remembered how much he had been blushing that day. He couldn't stop thinking about her even when he lay in bed.
Sadly, his dreams were no longer ones filled with happiness. They were now filled with fear and worrying over if Charlie was alright and if she was surviving.
Johnny sat in his room after arriving home and sat there solemnly as he tried to think of where she could possibly be at and when she would be back.
No one knew the pain Johnny was feeling. Not even his cousins knew. His parents of course found the fact that he loved a girl of lower stature and class to be insulting to their family.
Thus, Johnny was kicked out of his parents' house and forced to live on his own. Johnny left the property in search of a home of his own. As he was searching he got some jobs and started accumulating money in a bank account. He had a small bank fund, used it to purchase a small house, and get material to build the furnishings that he had learned to make at some of the many jobs he now worked.
He had taken on numerous jobs in different fields of work. One such job was as a carpenter where he scraped his fingers on all sorts of wooded flooring that the people had requested him to put in the room.
Another job he had was working as a farmer in the afternoons. He would work from the time he got done with carpeting till late at night.
These two jobs alone were not much of a start so he decided to go out and try to find some more jobs in the lumber industry. He found one such job that paid good money and was able to start work that very day. In this job he learned how to make chairs and tables to furnish his kitchen. Later on through this same job he had learned to make many of the furnishings in his home. He had been saving all the money he could from the jobs he had and purchased a small fridge that sat on the counter of his kitchen. He was looking at his money one day and his fridge and saw that he needed some more food.
So he went out on a food run when he ran into this girl who had just gotten some food and looked homeless. He went to her worried that he had hurt her in some way.
"Hello there miss. I am Johnny Davidson. May I be so kind as to ask your name?" Johnny said.
The girl looked at him worried and started backing away scared and frightened.
"I-I am Charlie... I forgot my last name..." the young girl stated.
Johnny gasped and back up dropping his tool kit that he had been carrying on his shoulder. He dropped his tools and stared at the girl. Had this been the same girl he had met so many years ago at the luncheon with her parents. And the very same girl that had been missing for months and no one knew where she was or anything? He stood there looking at her and could only smile as he pictured her face as a young woman and to picture her face now. He though of how car for it would look and completely forgot the fact she had been missing.
"Are you the daughter of Mr. Hendricks?" Johnny asked.
The girl before him slowly nodded her head.
"Yeah... I had come home after my horse had carried me away only to find the place destroyed and my parents dead... I ended up having to grow up and care for myself in the wilderness." She said.
"I have been living on my own as well. I was kicked out of the house since my parents thought liking you was a bad idea." johnny said.
"So you are... Johnny... the boy I met at the luncheon!?" she said excitedly.
Johnny nodded happily.
"Its so good to see you again after four years." Johnny said.
"I was gone missing for four years!?" Charlie asked shocked.
Johnny nodded and explained to her everything that had happened since she had been declared missing.
After explaining everything, Johnny smiled upon hearing how she survived in the wilderness. He was amazed and fascinated that the young shy woman he had met four years ago had become such a well oiled wild child. She had been living in a life all her own and now she had him.
"Why not come stay with me Charlie?" Johnny asked.
"I would love that Johnny." she said.
Johnny led her to his new house and smiled and chuckled watching her sniff everything to see if it was safe or not. He was surprised to see her sniffing the toilet though and helped her learn the ropes to living a normal life once more. He smiled at the thought of this new challenge and helped her live a normal life for years to come.
Charlie was now a 22 year old woman living with the man she had fallen in love with four years ago. She had learned to be a normal woman once more, partially that is. But nonetheless she had made significant progress in getting back to the normal life of a woman and cared for the house while her boyfriend worked day and night shifts to pay for the bills.