"Marrrrrrrrrrcusssssssssssss!!!" My cry echoed in the distant hills as the sun beat down apon my exposed head. At least I was getting a tan. I had walked for hours, and still, no sign of Marc. I was worried. I was afraid. Hell, I was terrified. I was alone again, and Marcus was the one with the lighter and the stale popcorn, which had been my only source of food.

I sat down on a large rock and prepared for the inevitable. I was going to have to think. Really think. I'd never had to do that before; answers came naturally to me. I was a very gifted child. Whatever my teachers might have said.

I put my head in my hands. I thought, and thought, and thought. My mind kept drifting to other things, though, like the party I was supposed to be at that night, or my new C.D player waiting for me at home, or my english paper for school that was late now, or that really cute guy that sat next to me in Geography, or - "Marcus!"

I was so surprised, I leapt up from the boulder and nearly lost my balance. After rocking unsteadily for a few moments, I composed myself. "Who's that you've got with you?"

There was a girl standing next to him, looking pissed. She was younger than me, maybe fourteen or fifteen, and certainly didn't rival me in looks or fashion. She wore a blue, grey and white school uniform, knee high socks and black dress shoes. She had straight blond hair held up at the back in a high pony tail. She glared at me.

"I have no idea," Marcus replied. "She dragged me off in the night, and tried to interrogate me in French. I followed your trail here, and she followed me."

"Great," I said sarcastically. "Look, stop glaring at me. Don't you understand any English? No? Well at least you're not a dwarf. All right, here. Je - suis - Colleen," I pointed to myself. "And you?" I pointed to her. I'm very good at these sort of things.

"She looked mildly disgusted, but replied in a heavy french accent, "Je suis Angelique." She stuck up her nose.

"Angelique? That's a pretty stupid name. I'll just call you Ange, oui oui?"

I don't think she understood me, but she shrugged and said, "Oui."

The three of us began walking. I asked Marcus if he thought she was a native of the area. He said he didn't think so. Her uniform looked like his girlfriend's, and she went to a French Catholic all girl's school in Montreal.

I laughed. This was all very comical. "A French Catholic all girl's school? Hell, that's the top of the food chain in snootyness."

Marc didn't seem too pleased with me after that, as his girlfriend went to the same school. Well that was just another point against his girlfriend for me.

That day Marcus ran out of stale popcorn. Angelique had some imported chocolate, water, and some gross looking diet food in her backpack, and she reluctantly shared with us. She kept the chocolate to herself, though. I was beginning to like her less and less.

~

"It's a conspiracy," I said the next morning, as we headed out. "How do three teenagers from Quebec end up in some remote wasteland, populated with French, or Swedish, or Finnish, or whatever dwarves and old men in bathrobes and ugly guys in medieval towns, for no good reason?"

"Why are you asking me?" Marc replied. "I'm in the same position as you."

"Not exactly the same. You didn't miss the biggest party of the year last night, and I did."

"You should be more worried about important things!" Marc exclaimed. "Like food and water, and safety, and where the hell we are, and whether or not they're planning our funerals already!"

I glared at him. "I have other priorities too, you know. My life isn't as simple as yours."

He rolled his eyes and lit a cigarette.

Up ahead Ange was jabbering away excitedly in French. The morning was still relatively early, and a thick fog hung over everything, so I could barely make out her figure in the dark gloom.

"Hey Ange, what're you jabbering about up there?" I called. She was saying the same thing now, over and over again in French. I sighed. This was just great.

"I think she sees something," Marcus squinted ahead in her direction. "Look, she's pointing and waving her arm. Let's go see was it is."

We quickened our pace and came up to stand beside Angelique. She was still jabbering and pointing like a mad person. I tried to calm her down. "Ange, calm the hell down!" I took her by the shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her.

She yelled what must have been a string of French curses, and shoved me violently to the ground. Just as I was picking myself up, and cursing a good deal in my own language, I saw what had excited her so much.

There, directly ahead of us, were mountains. A whole lot of mountains. Their forms were barely visible in the fog, but they were there. Marc was staring at them, transfixed. Ange had calmed down a little, but was still muttering to herself and shaking her head.

That's when a really bad feeling welled up in the pit of my stomach. There were hills around Montreal. There were even some really BIG hills. But there certainly weren't any mountains of this size.

"There're so many..." Marc said slowly, as if coming out of a dream.

"Hey Marc," I said, my voice wavering a little.

"Don't call me Marc," he responded absently.

"Marcus?"

"Yeah?"

"We're a hell of a long way from home."

Thanks," he replied sarcastically. "Because I hadn't noticed already."

I glared at him. "You don't have to be so cynical all the time. You're really a very difficult person to be around, you know?"

"Oh, good for you, Colleen, what big words you're using now!"

I was just about to kill him, when I noticed Ange heading off in the direction of the mountains. I stared at her. "Why the hell is she going towards them?"

"No idea," Marc sighed. "We better follow her, though."

"Why? Can't we just turn around and hope she looses us in the fog?"

"As much as I'd like to, no," Marcus sighed again. "She's got the food."