CHAPTER FOUR

Her parents were too nice but she wasn’t. If she can’t get the pancakes the easy way, she will do it the hard way. 

“It should not be that hard. I will just tell mama a thief ambushed me and took the pancakes from me,” Angela said to herself smiling. “Yes, that is exactly what I will tell them,” she added nodding her head.

She didn’t need to walk far, all she had to do was get somewhere comfortable and begin eating her pancakes. Her mother only made the amazing strawberry pancakes on special occasions like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and celebrations or if something special was happening. 

Those days were always her favorite. There was nothing more amazing than her mother’s pancakes. She could wear pants for the rest of her life if she had to. She hated pants so much. Why wear something uncomfortable and…pinchy. 

Pants were for men. They should be the ones wearing them not women. That was how she felt about them. 

Angela hated wearing pants, she preferred to go naked. She didn’t know why she felt that way about them. People said it was only royal princesses that thought that way because they were too used to wearing expensive ball gowns and lingerie. 

Her mother said she was always a princess but Angela never believed that, even though she’s always dreamed about it.  

Waltzing into castles, dancing at balls, having tea parties with her best royal friends, and falling in love with a charming prince. 

Hmmph. She thought. That was always what she dreamed about and it would always be a dream. She needed to face reality. She wasn’t a princess and would never be.

It would always be a fantasy to her, being a princess was not her destiny. She was a farm girl that lived in the middle of a jungle, wearing rags and milking cows. 

The chickens were her best friends. When she was little she would have pretend tea parties with them and trust me they were always messy. 

Who talks to chickens! Only a crazy person but she had no one else. She was just a lonely girl living in a jungle. She was a lonely girl that needed some friends. 

“Me a princess, pfft, it will be a miracle if I find myself as a maid in a castle.”

Angela brought out her small rusted watch from her hole-filled pocket checking for time. She had been walking for a good hour. 

“Good gracious,” she said to herself.

She had no idea she’d been walking that long. Time to eat. She thought aloud, looking for somewhere nice she could sit. She resorted to sitting down with her back against a tree and the cooler of warm pancakes in her front. 

She wouldn’t want to be in any other position.

She couldn’t be a princess but at least she had the best cook in the world as her mother. She opened the cooler of pancakes with no hesitation. The smell blasted on her face, filling her with immeasurable excitement. 

Nothing could stop her from eating such heavenly goodies, and to think she was meant to give them to some ungrateful neighbors. That was unimaginable. 

 With a smile on her face, she brought out one of the pancakes. The smell spelled her, making her only think about one thing pancakes. 

Nothing could stop her from taking a bite at least, nothing, absolutely nothing. 

That was what she thought anyway. She brought the pancake closer to her mouth but something stopped her from taking a bite. It sounded like a cry for help. 

She heard someone screaming for help. Nah, she was hearing things may be an animal. She didn’t think twice before bringing the pancake closer to her mouth but that same sound stopped her. 

Was something or someone in trouble? In the middle of a jungle, who on earth would be here—oh yeah—her. She shook the thought off her head and brought the pancake closer to her mouth again but that same desperate scream stopped her. 

Someone needed her help. Once is nothing, twice is a coincidence, thrice something’s going on. 

“Help!” The girlish scream was higher and more audible this time.

She dropped the pancake in the cooler, closing it back tightly. She gave it a quick peck before running in the direction of the sound. 

What could be making such a scream, a human of course, what else would it be. Maybe a fairy, or a witch, or a mermaid? She had always wanted to see magical beings. 

She knew they existed but her eyes had never been set on one. The storybooks always talked about them. She heard her parents talking about sprites sometimes. She heard them talking about sprites multiple times but never opened her mouth to ask what sprites were? 

Her questions were answered when she saw a little girl. The girl had freckles all over her. Her hair was short and light red. There was nothing spectacular about her. She wore a sapphire long-sleeved gown. Her eyes were leaf green and beautiful. 

There was no one around except the two of them. The hem of her gown was stuck to a tree and she was struggling with it, trying to free herself from the grip of the tree. 

So this was why I had to leave the best pancakes ever? This was ridiculous. She was annoyed. She ran all the way here to see a girl screaming angrily, stuck to a tree. She would have turned around to go back to her pancakes but she didn’t come all the way here to go back.

Angela sighed annoyingly and walked over to the girl. The girl shone her eyes at her, still struggling with the gown. 

“Please help me.” She had a high toned soft voice, sweet as the nightingale’s song at nighttime. 

“With what exactly?” Angela asked rudely as the girl scoffed.

“I tried being nice but it seems you are just like one of those spoilt forest brats,” she said freeing herself from the grip of the tree.  

She walked over to Angela, spitting. 

What was going on, wasn’t this the girl that needed help a few seconds ago.

Now her voice didn’t sound melodious anymore. It was mean and full of anger. 

“Excuse me?” Angela asked in confusion.

“Are you that dumb?”

“Again excuse me?”

The girl rolled her eyes and eyed Angela like she was spoilt milk that needed to be poured away. Angela was confused. She didn’t know what was going on.

She didn’t believe she stopped eating her pancakes to be insulted. Angela shook her head in anger and wanted to walk away. There was no use staying there anyways. 

What was she thinking? Did she think she would see someone else besides her that was normal in the forest?

“You really are an idiot.”

Angela’s anger flared up as she turned around to face the small brat. 

“What is going on?”

“Your pancakes are what is going on? They are gone. This is a whole setup to get you away from them,” the girl said with her eyes on her fingernails. 

She was trimming them off and acting like what she said was nothing. 

“My…no, no,” Angela said running over to where her pancakes should be. 

How could she be so stupid? The moment she saw that girl struggling to free herself from a tree that was barely holding her gown, she should have known something was wrong. 

With full speed, she ran to where her pancakes were. The only thing in her mind was finding and munching on them for the rest of the day. 

She finally got to the tree, breathing heavily. She looked up as she found herself on the ground due to tiredness from the running and found her cooler still there. 

“Phew I made it,” she said with hope as she drew the cooler closer to her, opening it.

She waited for the smell of deliciousness to fill the whole place but there was none, that wasn’t right. 

She looked into the cooler to see nothing. Complete emptiness! 

The cooler was empty. There was absolutely nothing inside, only warm air and a few crumbs of the pancakes. 

How could she be so stupid? The mean redhead was right, she was dumb. Angela held the cooler closer to her and started shedding tears. 

She wasn’t crying because of the glamorous pancakes she had lost or the mean insulting words the brat said to her but it was because of how her day started. 

She was served with bread and butter, her parents had forgotten it was her birthday and now she had lost the only thing that could lighten up her day. 

She didn’t want to cry. She wanted to be tough and strong but she couldn’t help it. She had nothing to live for now. She had no life and now she realized it. 

The day can only get worse. She stood up sniffing but something changed her mood from sad, to sad and anxious. She heard muffled bickering but it was audible. 

Angela looked around her but saw no one. She realized that those that were fighting were not around her but up. 

She moved back from the tree and looked up. She opened her mouth agape to see two boys on a tree with a nylon bag dripping milk up from the tree, pink milk. Strawberries! They were with her pancakes. 

They must have been the ones that took it from her while the mean girl lured her away from her treasure. 

“We should give her the pancakes, the girl is crying,” the blonde boy among them said.

He had freckles on his face too but they were few. He looked about sixteen and he was very good looking. His hair was made to a side parting. Angela would have fallen for him immediately but anyone that took her mother’s special strawberry pancakes was an enemy of Angela.

Her day was already bad and she was going to transfer all her anger to them. 

“So what? I should not have called you on this mission, you are too soft.”

The other one had red hair and green eyes. He looked so much like the little mean girl. There was a unique resemblance, the pointy nose, the shape of their eyes. She would have said they were twins but he looked much older, around seventeen to eighteen. 

He sounded mean like his sister. They were definitely relatives if not immediate family members. 

“I am not soft. I do not like seeing girls crying.”

“So you rather starve to death. This is the only good meal we will have for months,” the redhead boy said meanly. 

“She needs it more than us.”

She was debating in her mind whether to say something, throw stones at them so they’ll fall off the tree, or continue watching them until they see her. She chose what she thought was best. 

“You can have it,” Angela said as the two boys looked down at her. 

The redhead fell off the tree out of fear while the blonde one continued staring at her with a smile on his face. 

The more he stared at her, the more the bag of pancakes slipped from his hand little by little and alas the bag fell from his hand landing on the floor as he snapped back to reality. 

The redhead stood up massaging his own back while the blonde boy climbed down from the tree. It might be stupid for any girl in the world to say it but she had never seen a boy of her age in her life. All the males she had seen in her life were the neighbor’s little boy and her father.

Her parents hid her away from the real world like she was precious and they didn’t want anyone to steal her or she was despised and rejected and needed to stay away from the reach of people. 

“I said you can have it,” Angela added as the redhead walked over to her meanly.

He had this creepy expression on his face that made Angela want to think he wanted to snap her neck off. 

“Do not lay a finger on her Justin.”

So that is the red head’s name…Justin. She thought as another figure appeared on the scene. It was the little brat. 

Only the Lord knows how this world works. She was planning to eat the pancakes and lie to her parents that thieves took them from her and what do you know, thieves did take them from her. What goes around comes around. 

“Why, because you like her?” Justin said as the blonde’s cheeks became red.

“Shut up!”

“Why should I, Miles likes…the pretty girl! Miles likes the pretty girl!”

“Shut up Justin!” Miles said blowing his shoulder as Justin shrugged.

Angela was beginning to blush at his statement. She had never been around boys before so she didn’t know how to act around them. She stood at slant akimbo looking down to the floor.