"Today's the start of a brand new adventure!" Lee said, slinging his backpack over his slim shoulders. Gwen looked up from her book as she walked out of the school parking lot.
"What the hell are you doing here?" She asked. Lee rolled his eyes and slung an arm over Gwen's shoulder. He jostled her playfully.
"Colleges get a Spring break too." He said with a wide smile. The faintest tinge of his Indian accent coming into his voice. It happened when he wasn't paying attention.
Gwen could hear just the faintest of a twinge of an accent on some rare occasions. It was when Lee's accent grew thick, that people knew he was upset about something.
Gwen sighed and put her book into her messenger bag.
"You shouldn't try to read when you're walking, you know." Lee chided with a chuckle. Gwen sighed and ran her fingers through her dyed burgundy bangs.
"Stressed." She muttered quickly. She often spoke to Lee with single words, he could always understand her no matter the circumstance. They had known each other so long that often times, they didn't need words to communicate.
"Aw jeez," Lee groaned, "Which of those morons assigned break work?"
Gwen quickened her pace towards her house, almost stomping in disgruntlement.
"Home Ec." She said, "That lady wants all her students to document how many calories we eat a day for the whole week, I have to make a chart for it."
Lee didn't hesitate with laughing loudly.
"That woman has always been crazy." He said, "I remember when she tried to convince all the girls in class that pregnancy wasn't avoidable and contraceptives only work on your period, or something crazy like that. I wasn't really listening to her crap."
The two of them complained as they walked home to the house they shared.
In a small suburban town like theirs, everything was in walking distance. The local college was only a block away from the high school, which was a block away from the park, the roller rink, the dairy freeze.
Everything.

In between the park and Gwen's house was a small clump of unclaimed land. Only about an acre of a grassy clearing. A tall stump stood in the middle of the clearing, it's bark stained black from the lightning that brought the tree down years ago.
The spot was familiar to Gwen in a way that not many knew. Every so often she and a handful of friends would sneak out to that clearing and stargaze.
Lee would always try to come up with new constellations and to name them things like Adidas shoes, The Ear that Mike Tyson bit off that other guy, and the tentacle monster that lives in the DeathStar's trash.
While Lee rambled on, Gwen would often find herself imagining new stories. She'd write a few lines down but never get far. She'd stare up at the stars and dream about everything and nothing all at once.
Some friends of Lee's would sometimes show up with booze or on rare occasion a zip lock baggie half full of illegal herbs.
That place was theirs.
Nothing ever mattered there.

"Mommas not home?" Lee asked as he unlocked the front door.
"Nah," Gwen replied, "They cut out early for their 'romantic vacation'. "
Lee tossed his bag on the couch, as Gwen hung hers up, and Lee was already moving on towards the fridge.
"You're hungry already?"
"It must be the testosterone." Lee muttered with a piece of cold leftover pizza being shoved into his mouth.
"By the way, my uncle is gonna be coming over either tomorrow or Sunday to check on us," Gwen said as she slumped down on the sofa. "So don't invite any of your boyfriends."
She closed her eyes as she heard Lee laugh loudly.
"I'm gonna go for a run then take a shower, okay?" Lee mumbled, his mouth full of pizza.
Gwen smiled to him and waved him off with a dismissive gesture.
"I'm in no need of your services right now." She sighed, taking on the temporary role of Queen. She draped her self dramatically over the couch in her hammy performance.
Lee bowed low, one arm over his chest, the other in the air holding his pizza safely above him.
"Yes, my lady."

"See ya, in a bit." Gwen said. Lee took another bite and waved as he walked out the door.
She watched him make his way down the street, lined with modern suburban houses. Lee's next stop would be at the convenience store a few blocks East. He'd get a drink and then start his run.

Gwen did her best to relax. In her mind she could still see the smug grin painted across Mrs. Barringer's dark colored lips as she pulled up a PowerPoint up on the board with the cruel words across the top in an over dramatic calligraphy font.

"Spring Break Calorie Intake Assignment!"

Mrs. Barringer was always coming up with ways to try and make nasty assignments fun. They were never fun. Just nasty assignments of tedious work, given a childish fun! Overtone.
The dreaded home economics teacher always had a way of making her high school students feel like Kindergartners.
She had a savagely fake attitude that could just barely mask her condescending true nature, that is if you were naive enough to buy it. Any of her students could tell you that it wasn't just her treating them like children that made them feel small.

Gwen closed her eyes. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Senior year was almost over, Prom was just ahead. After that, graduation. The end of her highschool career. Wasn't the end supposed to feel different? A relief?
Gwen didn't feel it. She felt the same as she always had in school, overworked and underappreciated.
The only teacher that Gwen really enjoyed was Mr. Southgate. The English teacher and drama club leader.
If there was one thing that Gwen would miss about high school it was Mr. Southgate.

Stress and fatigue pulled heavily at Gwen's eyelids, coaxing her into sleep.

Gwen woke to rustling and thumping. She groaned and stretched before deciding to actually go to her bed. She tried to remember what she had dreamt about. An owl?
She yawned and made her way up the stairs.
Whatever Lee was doing could wait. It wasn't as if she had expected him to be on his best behavior.
Lee was a wildcard, always looking for new adventures and exploring curiosities. Gwen more often than not joined him in his antics but she would need an appropriate amount of good sleep first.
Gwen entered her room and tugged off her boots and her tall Gryffindor socks. She didn't even bother getting into pajamas but remained in her quarter sleeve blue shirt and khaki shorts.
I got dresscoded for these shorts, she thought bitterly before flopping down on her four poster bed.
She had just begun to drift off again when Lee walked in without knocking just as he normally did.

"Oh good lord. Lee, what if I had been changing?" Gwen demanded.
Lee shrugged his slim shoulders.
"It's not like it's something I haven't seen before."
Gwen rolled her eyes and tried to cover her face with a pillow, Lee yanked it away. He held up a little red book for her to see.
"Look what I found in Mom's room."
"You're not supposed to touch their stuff!" Gwen hissed at him. Lee held his hands up in surrender.
"I knocked it over by accident. Just a coincidence that I thought to look at it."
Gwen glared at him. Her eyes could cut just about anyone to the bone, but not Lee. He had known Gwen for most of his life and he wasn't really intimidated by the girl who's bullies he used to beat up in the sandbox.
"Just look." He tossed the book at her. It was a simple leather bound book with lined paper inside, just the kind of thing her mother would buy.
She read the first page slowly.
'Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the goblin city, to take back the child you have stolen' Gwen snapped the book shut.
"So what, it's probably just another story idea she has that she jot down." She thrust the book at him, "put it back and go take your injection."
"Why would she write something like that?" Lee asked, ignored her completely.
Gwen sassed back,
"Oh I don't know, maybe because she's a writer."
Lee laughed loudly.
" Don't be like that Gwen! The goblins take mean little girls away! " he mocked. She drew back and hit him with a pillow.
"I wish they'd come take you away." She laughed.
Lee stuck his tongue out at her.
"I wish the goblins would come and take both of us away," he said.
Gwen sighed dreamily at the thought of adventure.
"What to make us take up some magical quest?" She asked.
Lee nodded and said quietly,
"Right now."
They heard thunder crash in the distance and for a moment they thought nothing of it.