SuperWhoLock: Demons Run [COMPLETED]

Chapter Fifteen

"Come on, dude, climb to the top!  I dare you!"

"No way, man!  That's gotta be like fifty feet tall!"

A group of high school students clustered together into just another tiny park in the middle of the night in Manhattan.  Most parks like this were pathetic, but this one had something that most of the others did not - actual trees.  A boy with pale blonde hair was sitting on a lower branch, his neon Nike shoes dangling down and swinging back and forth.

Another boy, this one Mexican with a shock of straight black hair, cupped one hand around his mouth and shouted up at the blonde one from his place on the ground.  "What, Mitchell, you scared or something?"

"Scared?  No!" Mitchell hollered back.  "You're not the one in the tree, Isaac, so shut up!"

Isaac smirked and raised an illegal can of beer to his mouth.  He took a swig, swallowed, then yelled at the other boy again.  "Prove it then!"

Mitchell scowled down at Isaac on the ground.  For a second he considered just coming down, but there was a whole group of people on the ground.  If he came down now, they'd all think he was some scaredy cat who couldn't climb a tree.  Not to mention there were a few good-looking girls down there, too. 

This thought made up his mind.  He pushed himself up until his feet were on the branch, then stood, wobbling slightly, and reached up to grab another branch above his head.

One of the girls on the ground, with a dirty blonde ponytail and wearing about two pounds too much of makeup, opened her eyes wide.  She grabbed her friend's sleeve with one hand and whipped out her phone with the other.  "Ohmigod, Kariana, he's actually doing it!"

Kariana snorted and flicked her dangling nose ring with one finger.  "What an idiot.  He's going to fall to his death.  Make sure you get it on video, Taylor."

Taylor giggled hysterically, pointing her iPhone's camera up at Mitchell in the tree, tracking his progress.  "I am."

The third girl in their group, Chloe, also had her phone out and was texting rapidly.  "I'm texting Celia.  If she gets here fast she'll be in time to see this."

Mitchell was still climbing.  By now he had reached the part of the tree where the branches were beginning to thin, so that they bent and swayed under his weight.  However, his face was set with determination, and he continued to climb.

Taylor glanced away from her phone's screen for a second.  One eyebrow shot up in surprise.  "Hey, guys, was that statue there before?"

Kariana snapped her fingers and Isaac tossed her a beer.  She popped the top and took a swig.  "What statue?"

"The angel one that's right over there behind Isaac."

Kariana kept her eyes on Mitchell, climbing ever higher in the tree.  "Come on, Tay, focus on the filming.  It's gotta be a good quality video if we want Mitchell's dramatic death by falling to go viral."

"Whatever," Taylor grumbled, looking back at her phone screen and shifting the camera's aim slightly.

Up in the tree, the branches had begun to groan and dip violently under Mitchell's weight.  All common sense told him to stop climbing and go back down now.  But Isaac's mocking voice carried up to him clearly from the ground, and he continued to move upwards, finding thinner and thinner branches to pull himself up by each time.

Down on the ground, Chloe still hadn't looked up from her phone.  She raised her iPhone, took a picture of Mitchell high in the tree, and then tapped out a quick message on the keyboard, which she then sent to everyone she knew on Snapchat.  "Oh my god, this is crazy!  Look at how high he is!"