The Garden (Discontinued)

Passage 6

  "Ms. Hail is mean. She acts like a nice teacher, but sometimes, whenever we do something bad, she'll swear at us!" Thomas said. Sean told Mei, "Once, I put a whoopee cushion on her chair, and when she found out it was me, she said she'd take my cockroach collection!" Meisha shuddered, hoping Sean didn't bring his cockroach collection on this trip.

  "How about the other kids? Do you think they'll want to help, too?" she asked the boys. "Um, Rosie and Ali might want to do it, but Matt is a goody two shoes. But he did get in trouble with Ms. Hail once, when he got a B," Thomas informed her. "What about Anna?" she asked. They looked at her with a confused look. "Whose Anna? Are you a crazy lady?" Meisha furrowed her brow, but before she could say anything, there was a knock on the door.

  "Boys? Boys! Come out of there this instant!" came Eva's call. Alexander backed away from the door as both Sean and Thomas turned to Meisha with wide eyes. Bang! The door swung open, with a red faced Eva. Meisha had never been a very handy person, so it easily understandable if she could break the lock... It still made Mei angry though. She'd spent months building that door!

  "Boys! What did I tell you about wandering off! Not to mention that you came here out of all places. You know that this woman can... can curse you!" Eva shouted, her eyebrows furrowed when she saw how scared the boys looked. "Now, come over here and get away from that woman," Eva commanded.

   "Why do you keep saying such bad things about me?" Meisha suddenly retorted. "What have I done to deserve such harsh treatment?" Meisha knew the answer to this. She always had. At least, she'd always thought she had. She was sure that it was the Garden's power that made the other adults think that she was terrible person, but Mei never knew why the Garden had done so.

She kept looking for Eva glared at her, pulling the boys back with her by their shirt collars. They looked like they wanted to complain, but kept their mouths shut.

  Suddenly, something dropped onto Eva's head... "Argh! What is this?" she screeched as she patted her hair, making a face. While she was distracted, a familiar green eyed girl came rushing through, though this time, there was fear and not mischief. "Come on! Please! One of the girls are in danger!" Anna tugged on Meisha as Eva screeched again for the boys to come back, but by that time, Anna, Meisha, and the pranksters were gone.

  "Anna! What's going on?" Meisha asked her as they ran through the forest. Sean gasped, as though figuring out a hard math problem. "So this is Anna?" he asked. Thomas rolled his eyes, as much as one could while running through a thick forest. Anna shook her head, and gestured to them to follow her up a hill. On it, there was a small cave. They headed there. While they were running, Anna told them what she knew.

  "The... The Garden wants to eat Rosie!"