MUST READ THE PREVIOUS POST BEFORE CONTINUING

A continuation fo the previous post. If you haven't read it, I urge you to do so.

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Once at the cabin, I immediately felt better. He stopped at the front door to let me down.

"Hey, you got a phone number I can ring you up at?" I asked, ready to whip out the old pen and notepad in my bag.

Lanoo shook his head. "I'll be out here tomorrow if you like," he offered.

I was a little disappointed. I fully expected him to want to trade numbers, like any normal person. But he wasn't normal. Maybe his family didn't like in the twenty-first century, let alone the twentieth. I nodded. "Sure. I'll see you tomorrow." I turned around and went inside.

My mother attacked me first. "Who was that boy?" she snapped, "And why was he carrying you? You're a mess--what happened?"

I tried to play it off. "That boy? That's Lanoo. He lives around here."

My dad looked at us from around the corner. "Are we going to eat or not?"

Mother dropped the subject for the sake of food. Once washed up and at the table, my dad brought it back up.

"So who is this Lanoo boy?" he inquired.

"Some kid who lives around here," I began, but my mother interrupted.

"Honey, He's not just any kid," she said. Her tone was deep, as if warning us all. "He's super handsome. And he's got the hippie look. Does he do drugs?"

I shrugged and swallowed a piece of bread. "I dunno. I thought he might, but he doesn't seem like that bad of a kid. But yeah, he's SUPER cute."

"So what did you two do?" Dad asked.

I improvised a quick cover-up story. "Well, when he found me he saw that I was drawing one of the bluejays so he sat there and drew some pictures with me. He talked about the forest alot, not much about himself. I asked him for a phone number but he says he doesn't have one."

"Planning a second date?" Mom asked before shoveling a forkful into her mouth.

"Pshh. That wasn't even the first! But he said he'd be out there tomorrow, so I can meet him again."

Dad spoke up. "I want to meet this boy before you two get into anything serious."

I laughed. "Don't worry. We'll probably just stay freinds." I knocked on the chair a couple times. Mom noticed and grinned.

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I didn't even have to avoid one spider home before I found Lanoo. He wasn't looking in my direction and seemed to be concentrating on something in the sky. I approached slowly and quietly.

"Hi," he said without even turning to look.

"Hi," I said, taking a seat next to him. "So, are you on drugs or something?"

He looked at me, incredulous. "Of course not!"

"Do you do drugs?"

"No!"

"Oh, okay. Just making sure, cuz you dress like a hippie and hippies do drugs."

Lanoo looked at himself, assessing the clothing. "These old things? I just picked them up off some dead guy stuck in a tree."

I gave hima curious look, not quite sure whether he was joking or not. He grinned and laughed.

"I'm just kidding. The dead guy was floating down the river."

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Lanoo was classic.