I couldn’t go ahead and risk to get even more lost. I tried to go back to Bette’s shelter but it was too dark it seemed I had walked hundreds of miles. Fear was clouding my thoughts; I thought about my father and the others looking for me in fear. A fear that became stronger when I imagined them finding me with Bette. I could already hear my father complains, telling me how mindless I had been.

Then I saw her, she came looking for me.

“Tina” Bette said, sounding worried.

“I don’t know how to go back to my friends”

“Dark! Dangerous!” she uttered, widening her arms, making me understand that the forest was too dark and that by that time lots of dangers lied in wait, waiting for the best time to attack the both of us. She knew those woods like the back of her hand, and noticing she was afraid as well, I imagined that she wasn’t so willed to let me go or even take me to the camp. She didn’t want to risk it. But how was I going to explain everything to the others? They were surely searching for me, and my poor father this close to having a heart attack. I wanted to cry.

My eyes filled with tears, “I can’t stay”

“Yes! Dangerous” she kept telling me. “Stay, please”

I pressed my hands against my eyes. That was the first time I was going to do something crazy. I remember my friends at school telling me how they used to leave their rooms to go see their boyfriends; I felt like a teenager. And you know what? I didn’t care. I had lived all my life blocked by morality, this time it was going to change.

I didn’t need to say a word, we looked at each other in the eyes and she let me go ahead, following right behind me. I felt her warm hand on my lower back and I knew I was safe. I would have explained that to my father, I knew he would have understood.

We went back without talking, enjoying the silence slightly disturbed by the wind in the leaves. I could also hear the sound of the river in the distance; I could live like that forever.