AMBER'S POV

"What the hell?? How did everyone just disappear?!" Amber shouts, her voice bouncing off of the water, rocks, and the trees that had gradually gotten taller until they're towering a hundred feet above her head. They were mostly pines and their branches started several feet up so the path Amber's walking now is spacious and not so cluttered with debris.

Amber grumbles as she rounds a curved bend. And she nearly bursts out laughing at what she so unexpectedly finds.

MinKi is up ten feet on a branch in a huge sturdy pine, clutching the truck and staring below him in frightened terror. For at the base of the tree stands a black coyote, sniffing at the roots and seemingly oblivious of the human above. Amber, fully amused, mulls over the choices of letting the coyote wander off on its own and leaving MinKi to piss his pants, or to scare it away and possibly get a kiss (knowing MinKi though, Amber knows it won't get that far. And even if he did miraculously did find the balls to kiss her, it would be on the cheek >>).

She sighs mentally. I think I'll be helpful today.

Amber runs out of the bushes, yelling obnoxiously, heading right towards the animal. MinKi starts and nearly falls backwards out of the tree. He shouts in fear and flails around for a branch to hold tightly to. The coyote is also startled and when it sees Amber Steele clomping its way, it whines and scurries the other direction. The bushes rustle as it rushes past and then it's gone. Amber stands under the tree, hands on her hips triumphantly.

She gives MinKi her full attention. "MinKi-ah, what are you doing up there?" she calls upward. Quivering, he tries to shimmy back down the tree but only succeeds in dangling from the branch he was sitting on and falling to the ground. He stands up, still shaking with nerves. Amber hugs him and he hugs her back.

Then she smacks him lightly upside the head. MinKi yells, "Ya-ah! What was that for??"

"For leaving me."

"But the dogs -! I had to -"

"What are you blabbering about? The coyote only found you after you left my side, didn't it?"

MinKi stares at her. He shakes his head in wonder. "You didn't see it, did you? You were busy playing with the bird." Amber asks, "What? What happened? And where did everyone go?"

MinKi shakes his head again and explains that when Amber leaned down to help the fallen bird, Aron and Courtney thought it would be funny if they all hid before Amber looked up again. They snuck into the bushes, but when they rattled the branches, a coyote stepped out a few feet away and MinKi ran, forgetting Amber in his quick fear.

Amber stares at MinKi. "You didn't even scream?" she asks. He shakes his head, blushing. She narrows her eyes, though the situation doesn't bother her, and asks, "And you forgot me and left me behind?" MinKi doesn't answer. Then Amber smiles and kisses his cheek tenderly, gently pinching the other one. "You're so cute~."

STARR

"Don't you remember that rhyme about the colors of the milk king snakes and coral snakes?" I hiss desperately at JR, cowering behind his shoulder. JR shakes his head, eyes wide. "What rhyme?? We don't have these snakes in Seoul or Kangwon-do." The black, yellow, and red snake in front of us slithers and we flinch, taking another step backwards.

"Argh! I can't remember the order of colors on the safe snake." JR asks which snake was the supposed safe one. I freeze. "I forgot the name of it!" I wail. He groans and the snake twitches again and in response, we humans flinch.

The three of us have been dancing the same jerky dance for the past ten minutes, even as JR and I have stood as still as we could, waiting for the snake to hurry up its scaly and cross the path. But, no, it REFUSES to move out of the middle of the trail. We can't just turn around and head back because we've walked too far. I predict that we're less than a mile away from the lake by now.

JR's face all of a sudden lights up and he shrugs off his backpack and rummages through it. "Here!" he yells. "Amber packed all of us an animal guide." He hands the small book to me. "Can you find the snake in there?" he asks. I nod, relieved that I have something useful to do besides having dementia and forgetting the kiddie rhyme that's supposed to help in a situation like this. Total fail that was.

I flip through the glossy pages, determined, until I land on the snake section. After a few seconds, I point out a page that explains the difference between coral and milk snakes. The two of us study the patterns of the snakes on the pages and the one laying in front of us.

My blood runs cold and I see JR's throat bob as he swallows. "So," he whispers, "it's a coral snake?"

"Yes," I squeak, confirming the truth.

He nods slowly, digesting this deadly news. "And it says here that . . . they're poisonous?" I nod wordlessly, staring hatefully and fearfully at the snake. "Great," JR growls. I gently drop the book guide back into his bag and he slips it back on. I instinctively hold onto his bicep and stand behind his shoulder again.

We watch the coral snake for another two minutes.

Then, thankfully, it gets tired of our lack of performance and slowly, ever so slowly, finishes its journey across the trail and its red and black tail disappears into the grass. JR and I stand frozen for another fifteen seconds before we sprint past where the snake had exited and we don't stop running until the trees are tall and the path clear and wide. We round a turn and then bend over at the waist, panting and sweating. We laugh dizzily at how our nerves reacted. I retrieve a water bottle from my pack and down half of it in three swallows. JR hasn't moved to get one himself so I offer him the rest of mine. He accepts it and tosses the empty bottle into his bag.

We continue to walk. Once our breathing has returned to normal, JR reaches shyly for my hand again. I try not to look as stupidly happy as I feel and I squeeze his hand before relaxing my fingers.

We hear someone scream ahead of us. Baffled, JR and I pick up our pace until we turn a corner a few minutes later and come out of the bushes to see Ren and Amber hugging twenty feet away under a tree and everyone else coming out up over a small ditch to the right and across from us. We've entered a small clearing, but it's also another three-way. God, I'm really starting to hate these things.

"Amber!" Courtney screams. "Where the hell did you go?!"

"Unni!" Rosie shrieks as she sees me and JR. She begins to run towards us but then her eyes dart down between me and JR. She widens her eyes and stops. I don't really notice though because I'm staring at Amber with such anger that I'm shaking. I march right up to her, JR tagging along, and wait for Ren to realize that I mean business. He loosens his hold on Amber.

I grip her shoulder and pinch hard. "Amber, how could you do that to us?" I yell. Lord, I'm so pissed. "We could've gotten lost, Amber! And what's worse? You didn't tell us that there were POISONOUS SNAKES in these damn woods!"

"Coyotes, too," Aron adds helpfully. I throw up my available arm in disbelief. "Coyotes, Amber?? What the hell were you thinking? God, I'm so mad at you right now; don't talk to me for the rest of the day." And with that, I seal my lips into a tight line and walk away fuming.

Aron starts to reach towards me as I pass him. His seemingly comforting gesture does not equate to what comes out of his mouth:

"Starr, just chill a minute, okay?"

I smack Aron's hand away so fast that I didn't even know I was going to do the action until I feel the sting of the hit on the back of my hand. I lean in on my tiptoes until I'm inches away from Aron's nose. I say in a low, menacing voice, "Don't ever tell me to effing 'CHILL' again." I stalk off without waiting for his response.

JR had stayed silent, letting me rant on our friends. When I glance over at him I get even more aggravated. He's biting the insides of both of his cheeks.

"Oh, really, are you serious?? It's so not funny!" I scold. JR coughs to hide his chuckles that he couldn't contain anymore and chokes out, "I'm sorry, but you got so mad . . ."

"Oh, like you weren't worried that snake either, Junior?"

His forehead burrows. "'Junior'??"

"Yes! 'Junior'."

"Whoa, hey," BaekHo coos, throwing an arm around both of us, "are you two fighting already? After you just got everything figured out and settled?" He jerks his chin in the direction of our hands. JR and I quickly let go and my face – which is already flushed from anger – gets even blotchier with embarrassment. "Whatever," I mumble. "Let's just get out of here." I stumble away from them, shrugging out from under BaekHo's playful arm, to walk besides MinHyun, who I know will let me seethe until I'm ready to talk. Amber has taken up the front again and is guiding us down one of the paths. Which one exactly, I'm not sure, because I'm staring back down at my feet in humiliation.

When I get mad, it's usually for a totally normal reason – like being abandoned in the middle of woods unknown to me by my best friend. But it's the aftereffects of my anger and yelling that make me seem like a child. The original situation got me pissed; that's completely understandable. But what usually makes me seem unstable to other people is when I blowup about what anyone says afterward. If someone tells me it was 'no big deal', I go back to raging, just for the fact that this person doesn't see the fault in the situation and understand why I'm so upset. Then it looks like I'm over exaggerating and dragging out the problem a lot longer than it needs to be (and this is where my most hated word is used) – but you can't poke a stick into blown glass before it's cooled, or blow raspberry at a tiger that's hungry.

And then there the issue with what Aron said.

"Chill out."

"Take a chill pill, dude."

"Girl, I think you need to chill."

"Would you just calm down and chill?"

Lord Almighty, please present me with the that came up with that word.

I haaate people telling me to 'CHILL'.

What right do you have to say that to me when I have every reason to be angry? I don't need to 'chill'; I need you to get out of my face. I need you to expand your tiny, idiotic brain and understand that the situation was in need of some yelling and letting off steam. Amber knows this. So does Courtney and Rosie. You don't ever tell me to 'take a chill pill' 'cause you know what? Imma spit that damned pill right up your nose into your primitive brain, probably IMPROVING whatever mush you had in there in the first place.

Just don't ever tell me to 'chill'.