'Wow! You said that to her?' Brendan and Simon were walking home together and Brendan had told him about what had happened in the corridor with Samantha. 'You know she deserved it, don't you?' Simon assured him.
'But don't you think I was a bit harsh on her?'
'Harsh?' he asked him half shouting. 'Harsh is that girl's middle name, or maybe have you forgotten about "Orphan boy" and "My mama's on weed"? Think of the hell we went through because of her.'
'I know she dragged us through hell and made our lives seem worse but don't you think I took it too far by regarding her brother as good as dead?'
'No, no, no; don't tell me you felt remorseful after you said it?' he waved his hands in objection. He was starting to get annoyed with Brendan.
'Of course I did. I still do. Come on, Simon, I hate her as much as you do but I think she felt sorry for me when I told her about Howard.'
'Don't tell me you're going soft on her, and…when did you tell her about your father's death?' Simon was beginning to sound like an innocent man who had just been betrayed.
'Just after he died,' he answered.
'So she was the first person you told and not me, your best friend? That's it; you're going soft on her!' He was now backing away from him slowly as if he had a contagious disease.
'You're missing the point here, Simon. I think she does have a heart.'
Simon began running home, leaving Brendan standing alone.
'The plan's still going ahead right?'
Simon did not even respond or even look back at him. Brendan was not even sure if he had heard him. He was obviously upset or even angry at him.
Brendan had been thinking of how to find a snake for Thomas as he walked home alone. He knew that he could not find any snake at his home because there was barely tall grass there. He then thought of Bradwield Forest but he dismissed the thought immediately. He had never been afraid of anything since childhood. When he was growing up, Howard had told him that a beast or a monster were as scary as one imagined them to be.
After some serious thought, he changed his mind and decided to search for a snake in Bradwield Forest.
He walked for at least an hour and a half before he got there. The trees were tall and thick, reaching heights of at least a minimum of two hundred feet tall.
He began his search.
The grass was almost as tall as he was and he was as tall as any average sixteen year old boy.
He searched for a long time, looking under rocks, poking sticks in holes and looking up trees. He started feeling like giving up when he heard a rustling in the bushes. Something or someone was coming towards him. He prayed it was a snake; a big one too! The sound was getting closer and closer, then out of the bushes popped a deer's head. As soon as it saw him it twitched its ears and sprang back with great speed in the direction it had come from.
Brendan pursued it with great speed. It immediately came to him that the fridge was out of meat and this deer, he thought, would sustain him for at least a month or two. Since he had failed to find a snake for his revenge against Thomas, he decided to settle for the deer as Mother Nature's compensation instead.
The deer was too fast for him but he did not give up. As he ran, he made sure he maintained a straight line track, watching the deer appear and disappear within the bushes ahead but still pursuing the chase. He ran the risk of the deer catching onto his plot and deciding to veer deeper into the thick brush to either the left or right, but as though magnetized by a force ahead, the plump, brown stupid little animal continued straight, zigzagging but in jerks of hesitation.
For Brendan, it was like watching a fish swimming in a barrel, swishing and plopping but with nowhere else to go. But the fish was still slippery. And running in a straight line made it easier for Brendan to retrace his steps when he had to leave because the forest was actually big enough to get lost in, and to die in too.
After a 150 meter race, it was not long before Brendan began to succumb to fatigue. But the deer was doing the opposite. He ran up a small cliff but still maintaining his pursuit. The panicking creature continued to zoom in a zigzag pattern, trying to shake off its enemy, but Brendan was as stubborn as a blunt knife.
It finally ran into a clear opening with ankle high grass, now beginning to gather momentum, like every runner in a marathon, salvaging and scraping up the last of their energy when the finish line came in sight. The deer was speeding towards a pine tree a hundred meters away.
Brendan tried to summon every bit of strength inside him, the visual scene of roasted deer in his head driving him on.
The distance between the deer and the pine tree was quickly decreasing, then something out of the ordinary happened. The deer vanished inside the tree!