"I wish I never went on that airplane" Nicole signed, her motions displaying how defeated she felt in this hellish moment.
Nicole Wilson was one of the best players on her soccer team. She was also one of the happiest. That was until on the way to...
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June, 1996: The Cabin
Nicole ended up putting the magazine in her bag, tucked away inside an unknown pocket so she knew it would be safe away from anyone who would open her bag randomly. She wasn't sure why she wouldn't throw it out but the contents of the thin collection of pictures intrigued her, maybe what she was feeling was envy. Every woman on those pages were beautiful.
Nicole walked out of the cabin and to the fire pit where Shauna, Laura Lee, Mari, and Van were seated in silence. She almost tripped on Travis' leg as she was about to go down the steps, the obstacle that stuck out quickly snaked in lazily as Travis got back to inspecting the shotgun they found.
Nicole sat beside Mari, across from Van. Everyone was sort of just sitting, enjoying the silence apart from the sounds of nature occurring around them. Nicole pondered, as she did exclusively nowadays, about the fact that just because every single one of the people who is around this area's lives were put on hold, the rest of the world carried on like it was no big deal. The birds kept chirping, the water kept waving, the sun kept shining as well as the moon, the world kept spinning. Nicole didn't feel one ounce of hopelessness at these thoughts and images running through her mind every second like a movie on a film roll, she felt peace, her mind wasn't as loud about the dread of what could happen to them, her mind was at ease at the thought of everything still in motion even if she wasn't.
Nicole wasn't always a deep thinker, if she was at home right now, she would probably be reading and listening to music, drowning out her thoughts for a second. But now, there's nothing but silence, the occasional conversation would be held, laughter even, but most of the time, it was silent. A time for everyone to reflect. Maybe that brought out Nicole's inner existential philosopher as she would constantly consider things deeper than she could ever have imagined before the crash. She wasn't completely sure if this was a blessing or a curse, but that didn't matter, it couldn't be stopped.
"Hey!" Nicole got out of her head and back into her body with the help of Van. The redhead stood up quickly and stormed off in the direction of the cabin.
Nicole followed her with her eyes, normally they would be jumpier but her eye line was smooth as she followed her friend.
"You don't know what the hell you're doing with that!" Van snipped at Travis, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun and aiming it straight to the sky.
"He's being fucking stupid.-"
"No, what's stupid is the fact that we have a gun and we're not fucking using it." Travis interrupted Jackie's comment with his own rebuttal, taking the gun away from Van's hands and eventually punctuating it with a gunshot towards a squirrel in the tree he was aimed at. Nicole flinched hard, the loud sound reminiscent of the explosion she heard just a couple days ago. The others flinched too. Nicole looked back at the altercation and saw Van with her hands up defensively, taken aback at the sudden noise as well.
