The realization immediately jolted me back to reality. I looked around me, but nothing was familiar. The forest had been dark enough during the afternoon, the tall, flourishing trees greedily stealing all the light from the ground. In the dim light of evening, the shadows were growing longer and darker. I knew that at night it would be pitch black.

"Alright Serena, don't panic." I muttered, talking to myself again. "I'll just turn around and go the way I came...yeah." I turned around and trudged back over the beaten path I had made. "That'll work."

Apparently the forest springs back to normal quickly, because soon I had lost my path. I kept going straight but ended up nowhere. Everything was still unfamiliar, and the sky was steadily growing darker, the shadows creeping around me like ghosts.

I shrugged off my bag and fumbled around, searching for something that could help me. My map told me nothing. Instead of an outline of the forest it had a big green blob with the name streaked across.

"Real helpful," I muttered, stuffing it back in my bag. I looked for something more useful but only found a granola bar and an empty water bottle. Eventually, I decided to do the only thing I could do. I picked a random direction and walked forward.

"Dang it, if only I didn't have such a big head…" I muttered angrily to myself, floundering through the forest. I caught my feet in so many bushes that I had to stop several times to put my shoes back on, and I lost my red hat somewhere in the foliage. Anxious thoughts started to creep in my mind, but I pushed them away by continuing to speak. "Why am I so wrapped up in myself all the time? How did I even get off the path in the first place? Why is it that on my first day of real Pokemon training, this happens?"

Suddenly, I heard a rustling sound and stopped abruptly, almost tripping over a tree root. The noise was muffled by walls of foliage on all sides, but as it grew louder it sounded like...footsteps? A grin broke over my face. I had found a person! I pushed through the trees towards the sound and burst into a small clearing, only to come face to face with… Calem.

Calem looked at me in bewilderment, and I realized that I must have been the mirror image of him. His skin was streaked with dirt, his hair was littered with leaves, and one of his sleeves were torn. He looked like he had been wandering around the forest for hours.

For a moment neither of us said anything, until his gaze turned suspicious and he asked, "Umm, what exactly are you doing here?"

Suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to be mad at him. I took a step back and crossed my arms, narrowing my gaze into a glare. "And why should I answer that after you laughed at me today, stalker? What are you doing here?"

He glanced at the ground when he replied, something very uncharacteristic for him. "I'm just looking for a Metapod I found earlier."

This time, it was my turn to look at him suspiciously. "You were chasing after a Metapod." I replied dryly. "You. Were actively pursuing a Metapod."

His eyes met mine with an annoyed gaze. "That's right. I was following a Metapod but I lost it. So, uh, if you're going to town then I might as well go with you."

In other words, he was as lost as I was but didn't want to admit it. I spread my hands. "Sorry, I have no idea where I am." I glanced down at my black wrist watch, the time said 7:43. "I've been wandering around in this forest for about an hour." I raised my eyebrows. "You know, if you're lost, you can just admit it."

He sighed and crossed his arms. "Fine, fine, I admit it. I'm lost, and I've been trudging through this idiotic clump of trees for about as long as you have. Do you have any idea how to get back?"

I shook my head no. "We'll just have to keep walking and hope we get lucky." I offered. Calem nodded and turned around, and I quickly followed him.

The forest grew darker with every step. After a while I couldn't see the ground beneath me, and I caught my feet in bushes and tree roots repeatedly. Calem was no help. I couldn't see his face in the dark, and he walked on in silence, his silhouetted hands hanging at his sides.

Normally I would have been fine with the lack of conversation, but I needed a distraction from the endless amount of foliage pulling at my legs. "So...um." I began awkwardly. Suddenly I realized that even though Calem had been my neighbor for a year now, I had never had an actual conversation with him. Sure, I argued with him constantly, but I can remember very few times that we actually had a chat. Dang it, I didn't even know where he was from. I decided to start with that. "Have you lived in Vaniville Town all your life?"

He nodded- or at least I think he did; I couldn't exactly see his head. "Born and raised."

"Um, ok…" I offered awkwardly. The silence grew again, and I quickly started talking to fill it. "I'm from this town out in the country, called Volvei Town. Kind of sounds like Vaniville, doesn't it? Anyway, it was a lot smaller and my mom was a Rhyhorn racer there, but her Rhyhorn Bruce started getting old so she decided to move…I don't know why she decided to move to Vaniville, honestly, it's pretty boring there. I mean, I don't want to diss the town you grew up in, but..." Immediately after I stopped talking, I wanted to punch myself. I was rambling like an idiot. Luckily, Calem didn't seem to notice.

"Wait, your mom was a Rhyhorn racer?" he asked, his voice bordering on disbelief. "Your mom? Grace?"

I made a conscious effort not to take offense from this. "Yeah, she was really good, too. She won two championships, one before I was born, but I remember watching the second one." I chuckled at the memory of my mom clutching the back of her Rhydon for dear life, weaving through a mob of other racers towards the finish line while dust kicked up in her face and hair. "It was pretty crazy, watching her sweep the competition like that."

For a moment, we were silent, with only the sound of our feet crunching underbrush to keep us company. "I used to watch Rhyhorn racing on TV when I was a kid." Calem finally said. "I guess I just liked watching the way they moved, it seemed amazing how powerful they were."

I nodded, a wistful smile appearing on my face as I remembered my days at the racetrack. The constant noise, the scorching sun, the thundering of the Rhyhorn's feet coupled with the yells of the racers. "Yeah, I used to watch the Rhyhorns a lot too. I loved watching all kinds of Pokemon when I was little, even the bug types. I once had a whole colony of Caterpie living in a cage in my room, but my mom made me-"

All of a sudden, Calem stopped and clamped a hand over my mouth. I made a noise of defiance but he shushed me and pointed to his ear as if he were saying, Listen.

I zoned in on my hearing, and in the distance I heard… music. It sounded like an orchestra, but a small one, with only strings. I looked at Calem quizzically as he lowered his hand from my mouth and jerked his head in the direction of the music, starting to walk towards it. I followed without hesitation.

Soon we had found the source, an outdoor concert on the edge of Santalune City. On a low wooden stage in front of about twenty rows of chairs, a string quartet played a light, cheerful melody, while a whole array of people listened with blissful looks on their faces. The concert area was covered with a yellow canopy and surrounded by pristine white fences on three sides, with ticket collectors guarding each entrance. Strings of chinese lanterns hung above the audience, washing the area in a bright, cheerful glow.

Calem and I decided to be courteous and wait until the performers were finished to come out of hiding. When they finally finished and the audience rose from their seats and began to mill around, we scrambled out of the brush, hastily brushing off the leaves covering our hair and dirt streaking our clothes. We received many appalled looks from the audience but escaped through one of the exits before we could attract too much attention.

As we hurried towards the Pokemon Center, I couldn't believe our luck. Of all the directions we could have picked, we chose the right one, and there we were. Funny, I thought, just an hour ago I was thinking about how bad my luck was. I glanced sideways at Calem, but his face, as always, was like a closed door.

The automatic doors to the Pokemon Center slid smoothly open when we approached, the cool, pristine interior almost ushering us inside. The nurse behind the counter glanced at our dirty, tattered appearances in bewilderment, an unspoken question on her face. I opened my mouth to reply but was bombarded by my friends, who were sitting at a table waiting for us.

"What happened to you two?" Shauna asked, absentmindedly pulling a leaf out of my hair. "We waited for you here but you took too long, so we were going to go out and look for you…"

"We got lost." I stated simply, not in the mood to explain furthur. I eyed the empty food plates that littered their tables, and my mouth watered. I suddenly realized I was ferociously hungry. "Um, where'd you get the food from?"

"We bought sandwiches from the store here." Shauna said, pulling two sandwiches and two bags of chips from her bag. "Here, we got you two some too. They might be a little warm, but they've only been out for half an hour so they should be fine."

I sat down, unwrapped my sandwich, and eagerly bit into it. The savory taste of ham, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise hit my taste buds. It was delicious. I devoured my dinner while Shauna yammered on about her day, with the occasional comment from Tierno. Trevor sat in silence and fidgeted with a Rubix cube, while Calem ate his share next to me. Soon my food was gone and I was sitting satisfied on my chair, my mouth parting in a yawn.

"It is getting pretty late, isn't it?" Shauna stated, standing up from her chair. "Let's turn in for the night, we can all meet up and talk again in the morning before we start up again."

Everyone nodded their agreement, and with a few mumbled "Good nights," we separated to the boys' and girls' barracks at either end of the Pokemon Center.

As I headed into the room filled with rows of bunk beds, my eyes drooped and I noticed that my ankles and feet were aching. I just wanted to crawl into a nice, warm bed…

"Well, g'night, Serena." Shauna said with a grin, thankfully wasting no time chatting. She slipped into a bed and pulled the covers over her, not bothering to change into her pajamas. After taking my shoes off, I rolled into the bed next her and nestled against the mattress, falling asleep as soon as I closed my eyes.