I don't have a cell phone yet, maybe I’ll be able to buy one next year when I'm sixteen. I do have a beat-up iPod that was lying around my uncle’s old room. Gram said he wouldn’t mind if I kept it. His old collection of music goes from great to random, but it’s my music now, and I’ve found enough to like. I don’t think we have a way to load anything new on it, even if I wanted to. I slip in the wired earphones, put on Coldplay's Don’t Panic, and spin it up to full volume. There might as well be one volume setting on the iPod; I never listened to them quieter. I step over the tracks into the dense red sumac that borders the woods ahead. I wonder if I should have told Gram I’d be out for a while. Will she even notice I’m gone? She’s probably bent over another quilt and will barely look up when I walk back in the door tonight. Later, she’ll give me a monotone re-run scolding of how it’s not respectful to her time or something. As if scolding is the last thread holding together her role of being my guardian.

It’s hard to find a path through, and I’m picking my way over or under fallen trees, tripping over rocks and roots. I know if I start looking over my shoulder, it will be hard to stop, so I try to hold my head back from spinning around. What would I even have to be scared of in here? I sneak a glance back, “Yeah. Nothing.” I haven’t exactly found a path, but I’m pretty sure the creek is somewhere ahead, so I claw through some vines that hang like a curtain between the trees in front of me. It is clearer here, and I start to walk towards rocky ground and a heap of boulders. I check over my shoulder again, and as I continue forward to the rocks, my consciousness holds the image of something wrong about those vines behind me. I look back again. “NOTHING,” I yell to myself. In my headphones, Chris Martin agrees with me, “they can’t touch you no, 'cause they’re just spies…” Then something slams against my side, knocking me flat against the rocky ground.

It is on top of me, and my hands go instinctively to protect my face as the thing lunges to bite me. My earphones are ripped out, and there is only snarling, growling, and teeth ripping at my jacket sleeve, sinking into my right arm. I ball up my left hand and flail at its head. As it pulls back, I see the face of a huge black dog, its eyes crazed with its attack. There is nothing in that brain but to shred me. My arm starts to throb as I pull back and look around wildly for a rock or stick, or any weapon. The dog strikes at me again, and I jerk my head to the side. Its teeth miss my face, tearing at my ear. I keep scrambling backwards towards the shelter of the big rocks, trying to kick at it with my feet, but it clamps onto my shoe and holds fast. Yanking back on it, my shoe falls off, and I’m scrambling back, trying to squeeze myself into the gaps between the boulders for shelter. The dog shakes and drops the torn shoe. It then continues towards me, growling as I inch back further into my gap. Suddenly, the ground below me begins to crumble, and I’m sliding and rolling backwards down into darkness. My arms and legs twist around, looking for anything to grab onto as I fall. I finally come to a stop, my head glancing off a rock. The blackness fades further into unconsciousness.