The Lies We Tell

8 - "Definitely not friends"

"Holy shit," Ryan said as he saw Colby and Alex emerging from the forest. His comment caught the attention of some others and in a flurry, the tired and slightly damp pair were being surrounded by a whole host of people.

Their teammates, the coaches, medical personnel, and a couple cops had been waiting anxiously to find the boys who were immediately torn away from each other to be examined by paramedics. Colby lazily followed a man who was leading him to one of the ambulances and sat patiently as he checked for any injuries. Coach stopped over during the examination and the middle-aged man was nearly unrecognizable. Dark bags highlighted his eyes while his usually clean-shaven face was sprouting with stubble. His iconic baseball cap was nowhere to be seen.

"God damn it, Smith, what the hell happened out there?" Coach crossed his arms.

"We just got a bit lost."

"A bit lost," Coach muttered in exasperation and then spoke normally, "well I'm glad you guys aren't dead. That would've been a hell of a lot of paperwork." The ragged man left Colby to be tended to and puttered off towards the other lost boy.

As soon as Coach was gone, Ian and Ryan appeared to greet their friend.

"Dude, what the fuck," Ryan gasped, "we were scared shitless!"

"No, we weren't," Ian said.

"We thought the bear ate you!"

"No, we didn't."

"I spent all night searching for you!"

"You didn't even know he was missing until this morning," Ian rolled his eyes.

A lopsided grin appeared on Colby's face while his friends bickered.

"I'm just glad we finally made it back." Colby hopped up from the back of the ambulance where he was sitting and walked with his two friends over towards where Alex was being checked out. "Everything good?" he asked the paramedic who was taking care of younger boy.

"Yup. Just had to clean out this scrape on his ankle."

Colby and Alex shared a look, not willing to mention that the injury was from jumping off of the waterfall.

"It's not going to be a problem, is it?" Ian asked and the medic just shook her head.

"Nothing serious, it just needed to be cleaned and bandaged."

"How much did you guys check off the list?" Dayton, who was standing near Alex, tilted his head.

Colby shuffled his bag around and pulled out their scavenger hunt list as well as the bag with their found collection.

"Oh shit!" Ryan's eyes widened, "I'm kind of glad you got lost! You would've been in first place for sure!"

"You've got to be shitting me," Alex grumbled as he stood up from his spot on the ambulance.

"How did you guys even get lost?" Dayton asked curiously as they moved towards the rest of the team and the cops started to leave.

"We were looking for a blooming flower."

"Did you not see the field?"

".... what field..."

"The field right over there," Dayton pointed off towards their right and the two boys looked over to see an open field full of brightly colored flowers.

Their jaws dropped at the unfortunate circumstance and while Alex was upset, Colby couldn't help but laugh.

He threw his head back in a fit of deep laughter, clutching his stomach in an attempt to catch his breath. Colby's laugh was contagious; Ryan and Ian soon joined in with a small laugh escaping Dayton's lips as well.