//------------------------------// // Unexpected Encounter // Story: My Little Life: The Beginning // by Kind_Of_A_Rarity //------------------------------// Rarity and I continued our trek through the empty hallway, checking the doors on our left as we passed by. Many of them were locked, but there was the occasional door that pushed open easily, whether because it hadn’t been locked or because it hadn’t been closed all the way before. Either way, we looked inside to see nothing but empty desks. Admittedly, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this scene that took place before me. An empty school with pitch black hallways, only being lighted by Rarity’s phone and the occasional lightning strike, which followed with an unnerving crack of thunder. I had seen far too many scary videos to know where this would go. I should have been used to this place, known my way around, but I could barely see my hand before my face and I wasn’t a fan of the dark. I wasn’t much more calm in this situation than Rarity had proven to be, much less helpful. We continued towards the end of the hall, where we came face to face with the glass doors that led outside. We could have simply left, called Applejack and told her we were losing it in the darkness, but that never even crossed my mind. Besides, I wasn’t the kind of person to just leave a friend. But, then again, were we friends? We had only known each other for two days and many of the girls had only met each other a few hours earlier! We couldn’t have been friends, not yet, anyway. Rarity spoke up, breaking my concentration on my thoughts. “Sky?” “Yeah?” I replied simply, not looking in her direction. My eyes were practically popping out of my head as I scanned the rooms that had been on our right when we first entered the hall, checking the occasional door for movement or noise inside. “What if they left?” She hadn’t made any eye contact with me since we began our adventure. It hurt me a bit, but I blamed it all on her nerves. Too nervous to focus, I thought. But this comment made me look at her. “What makes you say that?” “I mean, what if they are just playing a joke on us? I wouldn’t put that sort of thing past them, would you?” She returned my gaze. “No,” I began, “I think that sounds like something they would do, but I don’t think they left. They said they wanted to look for whatever made that noise, right?” I wanted to believe myself, but this had been something I hadn’t thought about and it did sound like something they would do. “Yes, but what if that was just an excuse for them to leave? Rainbow was in a hurry to leave, after all.” She did rush out of the theater, “But we don’t really know each other yet,” I pulled my thoughts out of my head, trying desperately to convince both her and myself. “Even if she did like to pull pranks, we aren’t really friends. She might be worried that she’ll make us mad or something.” “You don’t think of us as your friends?” The question took me by surprise. It was a mistake to bring up our friendship. “It’s not that. It’s more-so that we don’t really know much about each other yet. Y’know like how we would all react to a prank like this.” She looked towards the ground. “But you said we aren’t really your friends,” She returned her attention to me. “Do you not like us?” “No, I do. But,” I couldn’t believe I was about to tell her this, if only to calm her down. “I’ve had some bad experiences with... friends,” I was still skeptical to call them friends. Rarity continued to look at me, expecting me to tell her. Of course, I was going to. It would be rude to bring something like that up and then speak nothing of it. “One time, when I started going to a different school, I met this guy who was a grade higher than me. He was the only one who was in third grade at our bus stop. Everyone else was in second grade, like me. “Anyway, I looked up to him. We would hang out together outside of school and just goof off, like little kids did. But my idea of fun and his idea of fun were two different things. He wanted to do things that we weren’t allowed to, like go far back into the woods where nobody could see us, play games we weren’t supposed to like Grand Theft Auto, and other things like that. “He was also a chronic liar, lying about anything and everything. So, one day, I got tired of him. We started arguing after he had gotten me into trouble one too many times and I told him that I never wanted to see him again,” I looked straight ahead. I didn’t want her to see my face, even though there wasn’t much to see. “Where is he now?” Rarity asked, her voice seemingly calm despite the situation that we were in. I thought a moment. “The last time I heard, he was on weed and, I’m not entirely sure about this, meth.” “So it was a good thing you didn’t keep in touch with him?” Rarity asked. I detected a hint of teasing in her voice. It made me smile. “Yeah, I guess so.” “Well, it certainly a good thing,” Rarity began, “Otherwise we would never have met.” I thought about it a moment and came to realize that she was probably right. I couldn’t see her making acquaintance with a person like that. The thought turned into a smile as I figured that I wouldn’t have met any of the girls if I had continued to talk to that kid. By that time, we had found our way out of the hallway. We debated a moment on which hall we should look down next, but our talk was cut short as Applejack emerged from her hallway. “Y’all find’em?” A sigh and shake of the head was her answer. She sighed in return. “Well, I’ll check down the way we came from,” she said, tipping her hat in the direction of the hallway. “Maybe they went back to the CA room.” I nodded. “Then we’ll check down in the gym. If we find them, we’ll call you.” She nodded, assured she would do the same, and left, leaving Rarity and me alone. “Did we really have to volunteer to look in the gym?” Rarity sighed as we began towards the hall. “Well this hall is bigger and there are two of us, so it’ll be faster.” I assured her. Rarity mumbled something under her breath or, at least, I thought she did. We continued the way in silence, peeking into any open door we came across. This hallway seemed to be longer than the last had been. I knew it was’t, but it was difficult to be sure of that fact when everything is hidden in the dark. We then came to the doors of the gym and I could hear noise from the inside. “Do you hear that?” I asked Rarity. “Yes, I do,” I replied as we pulled open the doors only to find darkness and laughter inside. I cupped my hands around my mouth, although it wasn’t needed, but my quiet voice deemed it be done, and shouted. “Pinkie! Rainbow! You guys here?” “Hey guys!” Pinkie shouted after turning on her phone and waving it about in the air. “Did you miss us?” Rainbow added from her spot beside her. I sighed a sigh more of relief than aggravation. “We just thought that it would be better for all of us to stick together, so we came to find you guys.” “If you thought we should all stay together,” Rainbow began, “then why did you let us leave in the first place?” “You darted out before we had a chance to say anything!” Rarity nearly shouted. She must have figured out that they were the reason she was wandering around in the dark. “But look what we found!” Pinkie yelled as she bounced across the gym floor towards us. She held something in her hand, but we were too far away and it was too dark to see what it was. “What is it?” I asked as she came to a sudden halt just in front of us. She held the object in front of my face and it dangled from her hand. “It’s a necklace!” I took the pendant and let the string fall from my hand. It was very pretty. It was deep blue and shaped to form what looked like a teardrop. I didn’t understand why it looked like a tear, but it was still beautiful, especially under the light of Rarity’s phone as she shone it on the object to get a better look at it herself. “We found it in the hallway,” Rainbow added from beside Pinkie. I noted that she moved quickly. Even though I was also distracted by the pendant, I knew it didn’t take her very long to get across the room. “I didn’t want it, so I let Pinkie hold onto it.” I nodded before a thought burst into my head and I handed the necklace back to Pinkie. “Oh, right. We have to tell Applejack that we found you guys. She’s off on her own looking for you.” Rarity looked into her phone and squinted a bit against the light as she searched for the contact. Pressing the dial key, she placed the phone up to her ear. The light illuminated her face from the perfect angle. It was at that point that I realized just how beautiful she truly was. Her violet hair swayed delicately in the dark and her sapphire eyes shone under the beam of light her phone emitted. I found myself longing to be alone with her once more. I hadn’t even realized she ever spoke before she hung up. “She wants us to meet her back at the cafeteria. We’ll leave if the storm has passed.” It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t really want to go and began wishing that the storm hadn’t passed yet. I was having fun with the girls. In addition, I didn’t want to return home alone. I didn’t like to be lonely and being home alone was the loneliest thing I could think of at that moment. Despite my wishes, I agreed to go back to the cafeteria with the others. I couldn’t exactly refuse, right? We began our walk back towards the cafeteria. It would have been a quiet one, if not for Pinkie recalling her and Rainbow’s journey through the “deep, dark bowels of the school,” as she called it. She continued on for about a third of the way down the hall, when she was interrupted by a less than enthusiastic Rarity. “How did you do all of that in such a short amount of time?” Pinkie began giggling. “Oopsie. I think I got confused with the other time I got lost in school!” Rarity sighed. I couldn’t help but smile. “Wait, this isn’t the first time you got lost in a school?” “Of course not, Silly!” Pinkie laughed it off as if she couldn’t believe that nobody else had ever gotten stuck inside of a school before. We didn’t have time to respond before we heard a shout coming from ahead in the hall. I couldn’t make out what it said, but it was clearly, “Applejack!” Rainbow reacted before I did, rushing ahead in a sprint towards the cafeteria. I followed in suit after her, leaving the other two behind without turning around to see if they followed or not. We quickly made it to the cafeteria to see Applejack being grabbed by some guy, attempting to wrestle her to the floor. I dared not think for what reason. I realized that there was another guy standing off to one side, holding the side of his face and shouting unintelligible orders at the other goon. “Applejack!” Rainbow shouted, causing both guys to stop what they were doing and turn towards us. She didn’t hesitate before charging the man who had been rubbing his face in a failed attempt to comfort it. I turned my attention to the guy who still had his arms wrapped around Applejack. I rushed towards him and shoved my palm into his shoulder, forcing him to release his grip and fall back, but keeping his balance. The first thing I noticed was that he wore a black mask over his face, concealing his idea. He retaliated by throwing his fist into my cheek. I stumbled back a step, but quickly regained my composure and connected my shoulder to his stomach and brought him to the floor. I brought my fist into his face once, then twice, then for a third time. I’m sure I would’ve continued, if not for his fist, once again, hitting my cheek. I fell off and expected him to drive his fist into my face as I did to him, but instead, he rose to his feet. I attempted to grab his collar and drag him back to the ground, but he managed to evade my grasp... mostly. I missed his collar, but grabbed something of more importance: his mask. I ripped the thing from over his head and was greeted by short, blonde hair. “Henry?” He panicked and glanced back towards his accomplice, who I assumed was still battling Rainbow Dash. He took one final glance at me and darted out of the front door of the building. I was far too stunned to try and stop him. I watched the door a moment after he left. It may have been dark, but my eyes had adjusted enough to know Henry when I saw him. I was brought back to reality by the shouting of what sounded like the other man. I turned around to see the man’s hand across his face once more as he shoved past me and darted out the same door Henry had left from. “I don’t wanna see your faces ever again!” Rainbow shouted after them despite not having seen either of their faces. “You alright, Applejack?” She turned her attention to Applejack, who appeared to be slouching a bit and holding her side. “Yeah,” she replied easily enough. “One of’em got me in the side, but I don’t think it’s too bad.” By that time, Rarity and Pinkie Pie had emerged from the hallway, their faces full of worry. “Is everyone alright?” Rarity asked after having made her way towards the three of us. “I think so,” Rainbow said after a moment. “They didn’t get me too bad. What about you, Sky?” I thought about it a moment. Should I tell them what I saw? Who I saw? Pinkie needed to know, but would she just think I was jealous? Would Applejack think badly of me for “making it all up?” “Hey, Sky!” Rainbow said a bit louder than before. My attention was suddenly jerked back to reality. “Uh... Yeah... yeah, I’m fine. He hit me in the cheek a couple of times, but it’s not bad,” I reached my hand up and began scanning my cheek for any bruises. They were beginning to form. Everyone was silent for a few moments, reflecting on the events that just took place, possibly even thinking about what might have happened if we weren’t around to hear Applejack’s shouting. “What’s that, Sky?” Applejack pointed her now free hand at the mask I was still holding. “Did you get his mask?” “Uh... yeah, but I didn’t see his face,” I hated lying. If they bought this, I would hate myself. “It was too dark.” Applejack stared at me for a moment, but the others went back to what they were doing previously, which wasn’t much. She still watched me as Rainbow spoke up. “We should probably leave. Y’know... in case they come back.” Nobody objected. We all walked back towards the Culinary Arts room where I had propped open the door. My mind buzzed with the image of Henry’s face even as I took one last look into the blackened school. The white spectre seemed to mock me from afar, watching us leave with unmistakable concern. “The rain didn’t last as long as I thought it would,” Rarity said through the heavy silence. I hadn’t even noticed that the rain was gone. The storm was still there, but it was off in the distance, still visible over the horizon. “Do you need a ride, Rainbow? Rarity?” Applejack said, having released the grip on her side. “Nah,” Rainbow said, pointing towards the parking lot, “I’ve got my car over there.” “I suppose I could call my mother,” Rarity said, “She may still be awake.” “I could give you a ride back,” Rainbow said. “Oh, that’s quite alright. I wouldn’t want to impose.” I stopped listening, my thoughts having traveled to Applejack’s face after I said that I didn’t see Henry’s face. She knew I was lying. It wasn’t difficult to tell. But what if I turned out to be telling the truth? It was dark and I was in the middle of a fight. Could I have been seeing things? “Sky,” I heard Applejack’s voice over the ramblings of my thoughts. “Huh?” “You sure you’re alright? You’re actin’ a little... funny,” She squinted her eyes at me. “Yeah. I’m sure,” But I wasn’t sure. My hand shot up to my cheek as soon as there were no eyes on me. It was beginning to swell. We arrived at the car before I noticed, having said our goodbyes to Rainbow and Rarity, who had, apparently, decided to pool together while I was lost amidst my thoughts. The ride home was mostly quiet. Every so often one of the girls would say something purely to break the silence. I only spoke words in response if something was directed towards me. Applejack had, apparently, caught on to my act not long after we had left the school. “Sky,” she said as I reclaimed my seat in her car after having let Pinkie out at her house. “Hmm?” was all I gave in the way of a response. “What’s wrong?” She didn’t move. The car didn’t move. We only sat there in Pinkie’s yard. “Nothing,” As if she would believe that. “You’re lyin’,” She turned a bit in her seat to be able to face me better. I knew she wouldn’t let it slip by, but, for some reason, I still felt the need to try. “Yeah. I am.” “We ain’t movin’ ‘til you at least give me somethin’,” I didn’t doubt it. “Fine,” I turned in my seat to be able to face her. Instead of the stoic expression I was expecting, she met my gaze with an unusual amount of compassion and worry. It was new to me. The only way people had ever tried to make me feel better is by forcing me to talk about the problem. Applejack did it too, but she actually cared. “I did see who it was when I pulled off that guy’s mask, but you’ll never believe who it was,” I laughed at my self-deprication. “Try me,” she said simply. I began to wonder about her methods. I sighed and drew a breath. “It was Henry.” She didn’t say anything for a moment, only shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. We drove down the road and found our way to my house, where I was to get out alone. “You ain’t lyin’,” She turned to face me once more. “Are you?” I shook my head and my eyes landed upon my feet by pure coincidence. “I wish I was,” But why was I? He was awful... to me, to his friends, to everyone. Why shouldn’t I wish I was fibbing? “Well?” Applejack said, interrupting my train of thought. I was so shocked that I had torn away my eyes from my shoes and locked eyes with her. “What?” “What’re you gonna do about it?” Again, she was actually concerned for me. I couldn’t say why. This wasn’t her problem. “I... I don’t know. What should I do?” I wanted to be sure my plan of action was a good idea before I followed through. She looked ahead, in thought I presumed, before turning back to me once more. “Tell Pinkie now, before she gets too attached,” She seemed to have read my thoughts. She knew my first thoughts weren’t on what Henry was doing or why he was doing it, but of how Pinkie would respond. “Yeah,” I pulled the handle on the door and clambered out of the car before shuffling my way towards my front door. “Sky!” Applejack called from behind over the roar of her car. I turned and waited. She seemed to hesitate, but it was difficult to tell in the dark. “You might wanna put some ice on that!” She pointed to the side of my face and smiled. I reached up and clasped it onto my face. It had swollen quite a bit on the ride home. I couldn’t help but smile in return. “Thanks! I will!” We waved and went on our separate ways. Inside was darker than outside. I corrected this by flicking on one of the nearby lights and headed towards my room, but not before noticing the clock that hung on the wall. It was nearly midnight. I hoped that none of the girls would get into any trouble for being out so late. I climbed into my bed without changing out of my clothes. I was far too exhausted from the day’s activities. I was on my side, so I had a perfect view of the white envelope that sat so delicately on my desk before I fell into a soft slumber.