Yellow chucks stepped down a hallway flanked on both sides by red lockers and loafers. Poking from them were knee high orange and white striped socks, whereas the other legs in the hallway were wearing modest, white socks folded down neat over their ankles. Farther up showed a khaki skirt with a star sharpied onto the hem and a three layered studded belt threaded through only one belt loop and sagging to the side on the girl's hips. A white button down shirt, untucked of coarse, and two of the top buttons undone against dress code regulations; not enough to show anything but enough to get angry looks from her principal, followed. A loosened, almost half way down to her belly button, navy blue tie with a plastic hair clip holding it's two pieces together folded around her neck. Two textbooks were held by one arm to the girl's hip, large stickers slapped on their fronts, and the other arm holding the strap of a panda bear book bag over her shoulder. And where, on either side of her as she walked to her locker, there were normal hair colors, like blond and brown, hers was dark blue and cut short at the bottoms of her ears. Coraline was approaching a group of the standard girls found at her school, all huddled together into a large ball of girlish... girliness. One of the girls raised her head just as Coraline was about to pass, reminding her of a prairie dog sensing danger, and she whispered something to her friends. They all immediately straightened up and stopped talking, never taking their eyes from her. One of them even had the gall to smile. They watched her progress away from them and the moment they thought she was out of earshot, they all collapsed into barely suppressed laughter.

"Harpies."

Coraline got to her locker but was so frustrated that she messed up the combination three times and had to take a deep breath before getting it right. She tossed her books in and slammed the door angrily before everything could avalanche out. She ripped a stick of gum out of her pocket and began chewing angrily as she stomped her way to the front of the school, tossing the foil wrapper to the ground by a trashcan.

Stupid... retarded, upper lip waxing, stick in her too tight gray skirt, RETARDED, cranky, bitter, old HAG.

She had been one whole minute late to class. ONE! So she had walked in the door and was halfway to her seat when the teacher looked up from his comic book and asked for a pass. She told him that she had no pass. And he told her to go to the principals. Now of coarse, her already being annoyed because Wybie wouldn't answer his phone (which is why she had been late in the first place), she had to tell him in great detail just exactly where he could go. And instead of taking it like a man he had to escalate the problem further and phone for the eighty year old, gray haired, bun wearing, smells like old cats, needs to get la- principal. The situation ended in Coraline slouching in a chair in "the woman's" (because that was the most civil thing she had to call her) office with her arms and legs crossed, her left leg over her right knee twitching up and down and having to listen to "the woman" lecture her on how a proper young lady should act. Coraline had just stared at a spot in the wallpaper and scowled through the entire thing, literally having to bite her tongue to prevent from telling the woman where she could put her soap box. She got after school detention, which could have been avoided had she not tried storming out heroically just to discover that the door had been locked. Well Coraline had news for the hag! She wasn't going! HA!

Coraline reached into her shirt and pulled out a stubby, generic looking little cell phone and began speedily typing numbers with her thumb. One ring, and then another.

"Come on. Pick up, pick up. I know your there you little d-"

"Hey Coral."

"I told you to stop calling me that."

Coraline began staring at the floor, putting one foot slowly in front of the other, toe to heel, as she listened to Wybie stammer on about his day. Riding in the woods. He thought he found a dead body but, dang, it turned out to just be a half buried log and an old football helmet. His bike motor stalled out but he has it fixed now. He's hungry. Again. And he'll be there in a minute. Just hold tight.

Coraline took the door from the girl in front of her and walked out into the sun. Not for the first time she noticed that fresh air is sweetest when your not suppose to be in it. It would take Wybie several minutes to get there, even if he was on his motor bike, which he had stopped bringing with him whenever he came to get her from school. She plopped down beside a trash can. Not with what happened last time.

Freak.

Goth little bitch.

Whats this you have here? Aw. Did baby bring his little bikey?

The biggest of the group picked the bike up over his head while his buddies were pushing Wybie to one another roughly like a toy, Coraline was yanking at their sleeves as hard as she could but it wasn't doing any help.

Stop it!

Aw, gunna get your girlfriend to fight your battles?

There was a teacher standing inside the entrance to the school, watching what was happening but doing nothing about it. When she saw Coraline look desperately her way she just looked around like she hadn't seen anything and walked away. And in a split second Wybie's precious bike went sailing over the blacktop and crashed to the hard surface with a crunch and the sound of shattering glass. The guy who's arm Coraline had been tugging on, so hard that she had her foot on his butt to gain leverage, got tired of her and swiped his arm back and hit her across the face. She had gone flying and hit the sidewalk and slid right into the grass. The things she remembered the most were the pain of the skin on her arm being scraped off and the look on Wybie's face as it happened. It was a look of pure rage. A rage that was foreign on his usually calm face. A rage so pure that she was sure, had he had the chance, he would have ripped all their heads off with his bare hands and peed down their necks. Wybie sprung forward and cocked his fist back and for a split second Coraline thought, yes! This time he's gunna show those guys just exactly who they've been messing with all these years! But just as it was going to make contact the football player's massive hand caught Wybie's small, malnourished one and threw him back into the center of their jackass circle.

What? Daddy never teach you to fight? Woops. Forgot! Daddy's not here! Where's Daddy Why-were-you-born?

The steam seemed to escape him all at once and he fell in on himself to the ground, his fingers tangled in his hair and his face to the ground in despair. All the fight had been beaten out of him.

Come on. Leave the baby to cry.

And she remembered the dejected look on his face as she helped him up by his elbows. One of the knees on his jeans was torn open, blood was collecting on the fabric, and a large bruise colored the spot below his left eye.

They're right you know, he had said before dragging his feet over to where his bike lay beaten and broken.

"Jonesy? Jonesy?! CORALINE!"

She looked up with a start into the brown, puppy eyes of her best friend.

"What? Oh, sorry. Hey Wybourne."

"You okay?"

"Yea. I'm fine." she said while she grabbed his outstretched hand and he helped her to her feet.

"You ready to get out of here?"

"I was ready three and a half hours ago. Thanks for breaking me out by the way."

"Heh." He rubbed the back of his hunched neck and grinned at her guiltily. "Sorry about that Jonesy. I couldn't hear my phone over the motor and by the time I was able to check my messages I was afraid that you'd already be in class and I didn't want to take the chance of calling you back cuz I didn't want to get you in trouble and-"

"-Wybie! Calm down! It's fine. I survived." she laughed at him.

"So all is forgiven?"

"All was never... not forgiven."

"Ha ha. Nicely done."

"Oh leave me alone." she said nudging him over a little bit with her elbow.

A silence fell over them as they made their way side by side down the walkway leading to the front of the school. The entire area was a sea of uniforms, pony tails, and buzz cuts. And Coraline couldn't shake the feeling that her and Wybie were a unique island in a sea of gray water. A short blond girl almost walked headlong into poor Wybie, who had to step onto the grass to avoid collision. She didn't even turn around to see who it was she almost slammed into, like he wasn't even there, and it caused a deep hollowness to stir in the pit of Coraline's stomach, making her want to vomit.

"People are so rude. If you or I had pulled that on one of them there would have been a scene."

"Just forget about it. It's no big deal. I mean, that girl was like, what, eight?"

"Seventeen!"

For some strange reason this was incredibly funny to her. She was glad to see she wasn't the only one losing her mind because Wybourne was beside her, digging into his stomach with his fingertips and his head thrown back with laughter. Coraline was laughing so hard that it escaped up through her nose. She slapped both hands uselessly over the lower half of her face and looked at Wybie out of the corner of her eye, seeing that he had stopped laughing too. The cease fire was short lived because with just one stray giggle escaping through her entwined fingers they were both doubled over with honking laughter again. Someone shouldered her, hard, and almost caused her to drop her bag. She could just barely hear him say something that sounded like freak under his breath and the two of them immediately sobered up. They were once again walking in silence. The people walking near them were staring and there was a bubble of space around them as they became the untouchables. God! They all acted like they couldn't hear them! They were the reason Wybie stopped going to school. There was only so many times you can be stuffed in your locker and be beaten on and have your book bag emptied out in the middle of the hallway before you just can't take it anymore! Only so much ridicule and jokes! Only so much viscousness and the teachers acting like they couldn't see! Hell! There were times that he had had enough and tried fighting back, only for a teacher to miraculously regain their sight and send Wybie to the office! She could hear their whispering, they almost acted like they wanted them to hear.

Crazy.

Weird!

Schizophrenic.

Stay away.

No one likes you.

And only so many times someone can hear that a day before they bail out. She caught his gaze and no words were spoken all the way to the parking lot, but in that one glance everything that needed to be said was said. The shaded parking lot was still jam packed, and cars and students were filtering out onto the road. All going in one direction- to the right towards town. Like Coraline and Wybie, the woods going towards the left were a virtual no man's land. And also like Coraline and Wybie, it was an area that most only ventured towards on a dare. People avoid things they don't want to understand. And people in small towns like to gossip. There had even been a rumor going on for a while that Wybie had gotten Coraline pregnant. Imagine the look on her mother's face when she heard that little number while she was buying vegetables in town. Rumors eventually die, as did that one. But legends, on the other hand, stick around for generations. Like the legend of La Bande Morte, which was a large area near the school that no one went near. It was cursed. It was evil. It was haunted. It was just plain creepy. Almost everyone in Ashland had an opinion on La Bande Morte. Coraline wasn't exactly sure about the details but the story had something to do with a Native American burial ground (typical). From what she could remember of it, the legend said that an entire tribe was slaughtered by a unit of French soldiers. From Canada... or something. The last time a student went in there, and the only reason Coraline knew this was because there had been an announcement at school the next day saying not to go into the woods because of snakes and wild animals (blah blah blah), and because of (wait for it) all the rumors flying around, the guy had come running out of the woods with a large piss stain on his pants and jumped in the back of his friend's, by then moving, pickup, tripped on the exhaust pipe, and nearly fell back out. And, she took great pleasure in saying this, and did every chance she got, the guy was the same mister Josh Morgan of the Maple Leaf varsity football team who liked to trash people's motor bikes. Coraline could see a group of girls, in the shade of some trees talking, from where her and Wybie stood side by side on the opposite end of the parking lot. One of the girls was watching them. She slowly turned her head, keeping her eyes on them for as long as possible, and said something to her friends. They all looked up and then back down at their friend, giving her a weird look because the spot that the girl had indicated was now empty.

And they were running.

Shafts of light streamed to the lightly wet earth in large ribbons, making the dust in the air shimmer and glow. They were sprinting and weaving between the trees and over large boulders half buried in the ground, laughing and smiling and showing no signs of stopping. Her lungs filled to the brim with the scent of wet leaves and mud and watched as tree trunks whipped past her in slim blurs. They both automatically turned left and after a few minutes her lungs began to burn but she never slowed down. Not while she could still see the back of Wybie's head a bit a head of her. The border into the forbidden place was like a tangible line, and passing through it was like being tossed into a vat of ice cold, viscous water. The sounds of the animals died down, becoming nothing more than soft tweets and the rustling of leaves. It was like all the animals were in mourning. The essence of the forest filled her and she could feel the force behind the legends. Running through the woods like that, surrounded by ancient land, if you opened your mind you could feel where those legends had come from. It was easy to imagine seeing figures darting through the trees with you, there but never getting close, just out of reach. And if you let your imagination wander you could almost see their pelts and ceremonial hair feathers out of the corners of your eyes, their familiars running at their feet and the haunted, grief filled howls of a pack of wolves in your ears. The sun was in just the right spot to cause a halo of light to soften and light up the tree trunks and Wybie's silhouette, who was still running ahead of her. Coraline looked to her right and saw a deer, staring at her unmoving like it was caught in a car's headlights, and when she turned back around Wybie was gone. In a split second the earth dipped out beneath her feet and she was free falling. Shock waves rippled up her legs and into her spine as she hit the tree stump, which she managed not to miss only by shear practice. Wybie was sitting in the leaves in front of her with his head leaned into one of his hands.

"What took you so long?" He grinned at her.

To most, as far as she knew all in Ashland, it was a place of great fear and superstition. But to Coraline Jones, La Bande Morte was magic. She towered over Wybie, and he grinned again.

"Come on. Dork." She laughed as she reached down and he grabbed her hands. He was about halfway up, with his feet firmly on the ground, before he unceremoniously released her fingers and let her fall back on her butt.

"Hey!" And he was laughing again as he reached down and picked a twig out of her hair. He leaned back on his heals and offered her his hand, still grinning.

"Oh no. You must think I'm stupid." And she got up by herself and brushed the dirt off the back of her skirt and knees.

In the center of the clearing, strewn with leaves and overgrown with vines and wild lavender, was a stone and cement well, covered with a simple piece of rotting ply wood. And under a tree, covered in vines and half hidden behind wild flowers and cat's tails, was an old robin's egg blue ford pickup rusting away. It's tires gone and it's body being held up only by four cement blocks, which were nearly invisible behind the tall grasses. The board was soggy and had a mushroom growing in one of its corners but with a swift push from her foot it slid off and into the grass. The only fog that she saw nowadays was the natural, light fog that you get everywhere. The thick, spooky stuff that seemed to have a mind of it's own and covered everything in sight that she had seen when she first moved to town, was all but gone. It had disappeared the same night that she locked one of man's greatest nightmares away. For good. The only place that you could find that fog now was at the bottom of the well. Her and Wybie discovered three days after it happened that the well from which they had banished the key and severed hand led underground to another well further up hill. The same well that the two of them were now looking down. The hand had somehow managed to crawl all the way to this sister well where they had found it, twitching and spasming. Coraline remembered the horrible shrieking it had made when they blew that horrible hand to pieces with cherry bombs. But the fog stayed. It was one of the only things that scared her. The fear that as long as the fog existed somewhere, so did it's master. Coraline continued to stare down at the slowly churning white fog only for a few moments before joining Wybie in the grass. She realized that it must have scared Wybie too because somehow, every thursday, the same day that it had happened, they came here to celebrate a not so swift victory.

"How much do you keep in that thing?" Wybie asked, balancing his celebration, between his lips as he watched Coraline take a small, rectangular package out of her shirt.

"Wouldn't you like to know." She said as she lit up and offered the lighter to Wybie, just to see that his was already lit and smoldering away. "Well, fine then."

Wybie fell lazily over and put his head on her shoulder, where she could feel his hair tickle the bottom of her ear.

"You're my best friend, you know that Coral?"

"I told you to stop calling me that. And yea, I know." She reached over and plucked the cancer from his lips, flicking the ash over the well and putting it back before doing the same to her own. "And that's the way it's gunna stay. Forever."