Zenon's Game Chapter 151

Mr Albert was working on a canoe in the shed. We heard the hammer sounds before we closed the windows.

And Zenon had been running for an hour now and still wasn't back.

Jake and I were hanging out on the couch. He was writing lyrics and I was flicking through channels on the TV. Jake is the one Albert who's on the same Sunday-morning-wavelength as me.

I felt relaxed here. At home, either Heidi or my mom would usually be screaming at me for something. I'd probably be thinking about chores, errands, working at the store or studying for my SAT subject tests.

Sometimes, my guilty conscience eats at me when I'm trying to unwind. But not here. For some reason, it felt like relaxing was all one should be doing at the jake house.

The door swung open and Zenon walked in, breathing heavily. Sweat glistened off his body as he took his headphones off and let them hang around his neck.

He exhaled, not wanting his sweat to get on me, "I'll take a shower and come back."

"Have you seen Annika?" Jake asked, putting his arm on the back of the couch to turn and talk to us.

"No. Why?" Zenon asked.

"Because she also went out this morning on the hunting trail. She wanted to explore a bit."

"Hasn't it been a few hours now?" I asked, getting alarmed.

"We haven't heard any g*un shots, so I'm sure she's good," Zenon shrugged, walking towards the stairs.

He wanted his shower.

I pulled him back. He wasn't going anywhere until we figured this out. Being lost in the forest was a nightmare coming to life. Poor Annika.

"Can someone call her?" I asked, staring at Jake since he was the only one who had her number.

"I can't," Jake said, "Cell service is really sh*t out there."

"Well can you try?!"

"Yeah, of course," he nodded, wondering why I was freaking out. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, "I already sent her a couple texts. At worst, she got a little lost, but we can easily find her."

"Candace," Zenon mentioned, "Can you relax your death grip a bit?"

My right hand was squeezing Zenon with all its strength, like a stress ball. I apologized and quickly let go.

"Hello everyone, who's ready for lunch?" Mrs Albert greeted us, walking back into the house with a rolled-up yoga mat over one shoulder.

"I am," Zenon said, "Haven't even had breakfast."

He walked to one of the cupboards and grabbed a protein bar while we waited for the Annika mystery to be resolved.

"Can you chop wood for the fireplace?" his mother asked as she started prepping a salad, "I think we're running low."

"Not right now," he answered casually, "Annika might be dead."

"What do you mean?!"

Jake hung up the phone and looked at all our expecting faces. "OK, bad news. No cell service. I don't know if 'track my iphone' still works out here, but we should probably go find her."

Flying squirrels! This is not good!

I inwardly told myself to calm down. Me in panic mode has never helped anyone. I become a liability. A crazy mad woman, to put things mildly.

"I don't watch many horror movies but a cabin in the woods is a terrifying setting if anything goes wrong," I blurted, "Who knows what's happened to her?"

"It's alright," Mrs Albert said, "We often get a little lost in the forest but it's easy to find the way back. There really aren't any dangerous animals in there-"

"Except for wolves," Zenon said.

"He's joking," Mrs Albert calmed me down, "Look, Zenon, why don't you go after Annika? Help bring her back. She's only been gone a couple hours, so she may not even be lost."

Do the Dawsons bring innocent guests to the cabin as a human sacrifice?

"Are you feeling ok, Candace? You look a bit worried."

All that noise and hammering coming from the shed may not be Mr Albert working on 'a canoe' after all.

"Candy."

I shook out of my crazy thoughts and saw Zenon standing in front of me. For some reason, he led me downstairs to their basement. Again, I tried to calm down the crazy thoughts rising up in my head again.

The only reason I wasn't associating a basement with horror movies is because of Axel's grotto parties.

Everything had gone so wonderfully this weekend and I was paranoid that it was all going to change. As if there needed to be an equilibrium. For all the good, comes the bad to keep things in balance. An unhealthy thought.

I followed Zenon, not quite sure what the plan was.

The basement was pretty cool, I'll admit. There was a pool table, some mountain bikes and arcade games. He led me to a bookshelf that had black boxes on them. He took the lid off one and handed me a-

"Walkie talkie?" I asked, holding the black-and-yellow brick in my hand.

"This will work in the forest. You're freaking out and I don't want you to," he answered, pulling out three more.

"Maybe we should've given Annika one of these before she left," I said.

"Hindsight's 20/20," he commented dryly. "And we weren't the ones babysitting her."

"But I'm not coming with you," I pointed out.

"You're definitely not," Zenon agreed, too enthusiastically, "I'm giving this to you so we can stay in contact."

That's nice.

"So do you know how to use it?" he asked, "Press this button to talk. That'll turn off the receiver and turn on the transmitter. Only one radio can transmit at a time, so you'll be in receive mode unless you press the button."

'Press the button' is all I understood, but that's probably enough.

"Roger that," I said, pressing the wrong button to talk.

Zenon didn't respond. I made him cringe.