This is the 10th installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
The teens wondered what was kept in the red shed on the far edge of the school grounds. They could see it from the soccer field, and it mocked them.
Jaime, in particular, had questions. Was it even part of the school grounds, or was it some other property? Who paints a shed red and then sticks it in the middle of the woods? The creek must’ve been just beyond it. Who walks all the way out there just to get a lawnmower? There aren’t even any lawns that far out.
He got hit in the face with a soccer ball more than once because he was too busy staring at the shed to attend to the goal. After the third time, he’d had enough. He ditched soccer practice the next day and began the trek.
He sloshed around in the autumn leaves—which no one had raked because, again, no one went out this way. He’d walked about hundred yards when he realized the birds’ songs had stopped, abruptly, as if someone had turned off a radio. He paused and scanned the trees around him.
He’d startled them, he decided. He’d snapped a twig in just the wrong way, and so they went quiet.
He’d walked another hundred yards when he realized the shed appeared no closer to him than when he’d started. Had it gotten farther away? His ankles ached from getting poked over and over by twigs. He stopped again.
He could turn back—but how could he? He pressed on.
Another 50 yards, and he met a group of mushrooms, grown in a line, and thought nothing of stepping over them. The shed—though it appeared no closer—transformed between his eyes into a great manor with gold trim, and the trees cleared away.
A meadow lay between him and the former shed. He kept walking.
Miles Away 