"I'm going to kill you!"

Kyle cowered at the look on Mae's face as she said it.

"Okay, Mae. Let's calm down," I tried to get Mae to put down all the knives she had immediately retrieved to go through with her threat.

"Weren't you, like, sleeping?" Matt furrowed his eyebrows. "Where did all the knives come from in your pajamas?"

Mae turned to him with all her knives raised and he quickly changed tune. "I don't wanna know. Knives are cool," he gulped, nodding his head in rapid motions.

"Guys, focus!" Rhea whisper-yelled. She would've shouted but considering that we were near the boys' tents when we were supposed to be asleep, it was good that she didn't. Loud noises would attract teachers and that would attract trouble.

"Okay, Kyle," Owen started in a calm tone. "You say you saw him last before dinner?"

"I had to feed him," Kyle nodded forlornly. "He wasn't there when I got back."

"Why did you come back from dinner so late?" Brittany frowned.

"I-uh," he blushed, "I dropped that huge vessel with the food. So I stayed back to help," he pouted as if disappointed in himself.

"I forgot you were clumsier than Aria," Mason shook his head.

"Hey!" Kyle and I cried simultaneously.

"I hate cats and I love sleep. Why should I help you search for your cat?" Realising that her comment had made Kyle's expression sadder than before, Mae shifted uncomfortably. "Look man," Mae started softly this time. "It's a cat. He'll come back after he's done playing."

"I'll have to find him. Charles is a special cat," Kyle sniffed. "He loses his way easily."

"Hm, loses his way easily, you say? Miller and he will hit it right off then," Torryn muttered under his breath.

Gifting him with an unimpressed look, I turned to face Mae. She looked at me like she wanted me to make the decision for her as well because she was too angry and sleepy to make the right one herself. Then I looked at Kyle's pouting face with his dark curly hair and chocolate-brown eyes, he looked like an adorable disaster waiting to happen.

In a world where vibes were everything, Kyle gave everyone the "protect this fellow from the cruel world" vibes. That was probably why even Mae Jackson had a hard time being rude to him. He gave me the "younger brother" vibes. I didn't want another younger brother. I already had two; Caleb and Mason.

Well, it's not up to you, is it?

I was tired to the bone and sleep was dancing in front of me like a temptress.

Sighing, I smiled. "Of course, we'll help, Kyle."

A genuine smile lit up his face, making me want to pinch his cheeks.

"Do you know that strong urge that you get to squeeze things because they're cute? I read an article about it once. It's called cute aggression. It said that there is nothing to satisfy how you feel about the thing being so cute and, so the natural human urge is to kill it, so it will stop being cute. But at the same time, we also don't mean them any real harm. What paradoxes humans are," I murmured absentmindedly as I thought about a plan to get Charles back.

There was a horrified silence around me. I nodded to myself, satisfied with the plan.

"Alright, guys. Listen up," I clapped my hands. "As Kyle said, Charles is a lazy and confused cat. He may not be nearby but he also may not be very far either. There are ten of us. Let's make groups of two and look in different places. Sneakily. Also, make sure every group has at least one cell phone between them. Try to avoid getting caught, you guys. Cool?"  I looked around expectantly.

"Cool," Ethan said enthusiastically as the others nodded.

"Wait a minute," Mason turned to Kyle. "What did you say Charles looked like again?"

"He's a grey pansy face," Kyle rambled, "A Persian cat."

Everyone nodded, there wouldn't be many grey Persian cats around so that narrowed it. Though, there was a small forest around us.

Just focus on finding Charles, I repeated in my head.

"I'm not going with Aria. I'm sleepy. We'll only end up more lost than Charles," Mae muttered. I huffed but remained silent.

"Oh that's okay," Ethan grinned in a manner that made me uneasy. "Torryn's great with directions. Aria and Torryn should go together," he quickly grabbed Torryn and me by the arms and shoved us in a random direction. "Time's a-wasting," he sang. "Now, shoo," Ethan made giddy hand gestures. Torryn and I instantly walked as far as away from Ethan as possible, as we heard him try to harass Mae and Matt to go together.

"I hope we find Charles soon," I said after looking around in silence for the past 5 minutes. As soon as we entered the forest, Torryn brought out his phone and switched on the flashlight reducing the intensity to the lowest so that other people wouldn't spot us as easily. "But if not, tell me when you get confused about the way. I have candy wrappers in my pocket. We could leave them as traces. Of course, we'll pick them up as we come back," I grinned at him.

He furrowed his brows in confusion. "Why do you have candy wrappers in your pajama— you know what, nevermind. I'll be sure to let you know if I get confused about the direction," he smirked, arrogance lacing his last sentence. I rolled my eyes and we continued walking in silence.

We had been searching for more than 15 minutes now and the cat was nowhere to be found.

"I can't believe Kyle really brought a cat," I shook my head, snickering.

"I can't believe I shared tents with a cat," Torryn grumbled.

"Oh, I would gladly trade places with you," I turned to him with wide, hopeful eyes.

"I don't know about that, Miller. Sleeping beside Mae doesn't seem that tempting to me," he looked pointedly at the bandaid on my nose that I had been sporting after Mae punched me.

I rolled my eyes. "Mae's kind to her friends," I attempted but huffed when I saw both his eyebrows raised. "Okay, fine. That might have been a slight exaggeration," I shrugged as Torryn's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "She won't kill you in your sleep?" I offered weakly, as something flashed in my peripheral vision.

He considered it. "That's more like i—"

"Shh," I placed a hand on his mouth as I looked at the place I had just seen something. I strained my ears, trying to pick up on any sound.

Torryn lowered my hand from his mouth. His body tensed up as if he was preparing himself for a fight. "What happened?" He mumbled.

"Follow me," I whispered, trying to tiptoe in the direction where a scrapping sound had just come from.

After gliding through the trees for a few seconds, we were back in a vaguely familiar place. I spotted a shadow on the opposite side of the clearing. I narrowed my eyes, trying to summon my night vision. "Is that..."

"Charles?" Torryn finished. "I think so. Let's get the dumb cat," he said dryly.

I was about to walk forward but Torryn grabbed my shoulder. "What—"

"Shh." This time Torryn covered my mouth and pulled me away from the clearing and behind a tree. He quickly shut the flashlight off. Looking at the sign stuck on the tree I realised where we were. The Restricted Area.

I shot him a questioning look but he shook his head and tapped his left ear, as if to say, 'listen.'

I bit my lip, trying to listen. At first, I couldn't hear anything but then the voices got much clearer. We were well shielded by the trees and the bushes around us, but as I moved forward I could see three shadows in the dark. They seemed to be laughing about something.

"Let's keep an eye on Charles and see if these guys leave in a few minutes. If not, I'll create a diversion and you can go grab Charles. Okay?" I whispered back to Torryn.

"Okay," he murmured and I tried convincing myself that I shivered only and only because of the cold and definitely not because of Torryn Cole's close proximity to me.

I stared at Charles, who was sitting in one place that was out of sight of the three shadows but could be seen clearly by us. The cat was scratching away at a tree trunk.

Then one of the shadows started talking.

"Hey, man, you satisfied with the supply?"

"As always," another man with a deeper voice replied. "How did you both sneak in so much powder? I heard the Fibbies are getting suspicious."

"Oh, that was easy," the last of the shadows, a man with a squeaky voice replied. "We snuck in as bus drivers for these school kids. Those oblivious dumbfucks didn't even think about suspecting us." The three shared a laugh. "We'll leave tonight though. We have other places to be."

I exchanged a wary glance with Torryn.

What powder?! My eyes screamed. He shrugged, I don't know.

Oh, gods, we were witnessing a drug deal, weren't we?

Only we couldn't see the faces of the drug dealers and we weren't sure if this "powder" was a drug. For all I knew, they could very well mean baking powder.

They could but why would they 'sneak' in baking powder? My subconscious reasoned. And why would they talk about the FBI?

I focused back on their talk. They were now exchanging Game of Thrones theories and I had to admit, they were very interesting.

Then Deep-Voice Dude asked something and Squeaky answered, "Yeah, more than half of the people in that town don't even realise what's going on there..."

I leaned forward so that I could hear them better but in doing so, a twig snapped beneath my foot and everyone froze. 

Torryn and I looked at each other, our eyes wide in alarm.

The sound of footsteps moving in our direction made us panic more. Any moment now the person would find us. Torryn and I tried to move away from our current place as silently as possible but we weren't moving fast enough. And then our hero arrived in the dark of the night.

Charles leapt from his place and ran at full speed towards us.

Two of the men heaved a sigh of relief but the third one, the one Squeaky had called Red, cried out frantically, "Was that a cat?! Holy fuck, dude, you didn't tell me there were cats here!"

"Hey, calm down," Deep-Voice Dude muttered. "It's just a stupid cat and it's gone now."

I made eye contact with Charles as he analysed if I were worthy of his attention or not. Finally, he came to a conclusion and let out a small 'meow'. I opened my arms and Charles jumped into them. "You're a hero, Charles," I grinned at him and he nodded at me, once, as if to say "'sup".

Meanwhile, Red was hyperventilating. "Calm down? Calm down?! I don't fuck with cats, dude. They are downright terrifying, okay? Give me a wild bear any day but not a cat. We're done with the deal, there's no reason to stay. Let's leave, man," Red grabbed Squeaky by the arm and walked away rapidly, all the while muttering about how he wouldn't have taken the job if he'd known about the cat.

Torryn, Charles and I waited with bated breaths for a few more minutes after Deep-Voice Dude had left too.

"They're gone," Torryn murmured and we started our way back to the tents. He sent the others a text letting them know that we'd found Charles. We walked back quickly with only the moon as our source of light because apparently, Torryn the Pigeon had memorised the way. I huffed in envy and Charles curled himself tighter in my arms.

                       -×-×-×-×-×-

"Charles, I was so worried! Why did you run off like that?" Kyle chastised the chubby cat gently. "It's a good thing my friends helped or I would've never found you. Now, thank them," he patted Charles on the head. The cat lifted his head and gave us a lazy meow. "Great, here you go," Kyle let Charles into their tent and zipped up the door.

Mae, Rhea, Brittany, Matt, Owen and Mason had gone back to their tents after we texted them that we'd found Charles. Ethan, Kyle, Torryn and I stood outside their tent.

"Seriously, guys, thank you," Kyle smiled genuinely, his eyes lighting up, a few bruises on his face faintly visible in the light. His clumsiness must have acted up, I thought. "I don't know how to repay you."

I shook my head, grinning. "You don't have to—"

"Change tents with someone," Torryn was quick to demand. "I'm not sharing tents with a ca—ow." Torryn stared wide-eyed at his left arm, the same arm I had just punched.

"He didn't mean that, Kyle," I said when I saw that Kyle looked troubled. Then, a thought struck me and I frowned at Torryn. "You're usually pretty good at observing. How did you guys not notice Charles before?" I directed the last part at Ethan as well.

"I saw something furry yesterday but I figured that was Kyle's teddy bear or something," Torryn grumbled.

Ethan coughed. "You did? You didn't stay in the tent for long periods so, I thought..." He mumbled something under his breath.

"You wanna be louder, buddy?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"I—uh, I knew that Torryn didn't like cats so I helped Kyle hide Charles better. I also may or may not have helped him feed Charles," he muttered quickly. That explains all the food he stole at lunch, I nodded to myself. Then Ethan looked up and noticed that Torryn was mentally throwing him off cliffs, or at least that was what I could make out from his expression. "Hey, man. I didn't wanna lie to you but you also really don't like cats. What was I supposed to do?"

"So you let your knife gently touch my back?" Torryn deadpanned.

I rolled my eyes. "Stop being such a big baby, Cole," I nudged his shoulder with mine. "Charles is amazing. I'm sure you guys will bond soon enough," I smiled encouragingly. "I mean, you did spend like, 20 minutes in his presence without grumbling while we walked back from that place."

Then Torryn glanced at me warily and for some reason, I understood that he was thinking back to the three men in the woods. I shrugged, we'd have to postpone that talk till everyone was present. He nodded in agreement.

"Anyways, I should get going. I don't wanna be caught leaving the kitchen after I have already eaten the cookies," I grinned as they stared back at me.

"Wait, I'll see you to your tent," Torryn mumbled.

I gave Torryn another eye-roll. "I can go back alone. There no bears around, trust me. I've been searching for them since yesterday."

"I'm not worried about bears eating you, Miller," Torryn rolled his eyes.

If only you exercised your entire body as much as you exercise your eyes, you would be so much healthier, my subconscious sneered.

I was about to roll my eyes at myself but stopped just in time.

"But I'm pretty sure that you will get lost on your way there," he folded his arms in a 'you-aren't-changing-my-opinion-on-this' manner.

"Seriously? My tent is just there," I pointed behind Kyle and Ethan, who were facing Torryn and me.

"Um, actually," Kyle, who had never been to my tent, scratched his head. "I'm pretty sure the girls' tents are there," he pointed behind me.

Torryn raised an eyebrow at me. I scowled.

"They must've changed the location of the tents while we were gone," I grumbled.

Everyone raised their eyebrows at me.

"All these stupid tents look the same, okay?" I growled defensively.

"Okay, Miller," Torryn shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips. He grabbed my arm that was still hanging in the air, pointing in the direction where I had thought my tent was.

Warmth tingled in my stomach as I bid Ethan and Kyle good night. My cheeks were blushing in the dark as Torryn and I walked back to my tent hand-in-hand. Though, this didn't stop me from grumbling about my extraordinary navigational skills.

When we reached my tent, Torryn noticed the pout on my face. He swiftly removed his hand from mine and I pouted some more. Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that my stupid hand missed the warmth. Definitely not.

"I'm, uh," Torryn cleared his throat and I gave him a curious look. "I'm Face-Timing my mom tomorrow before breakfast. You could say hi to Milo if you'd like," he offered.

My mood did a one-eighty as I nodded rapidly.

"Oh, gods, yes," I grinned enthusiastically.

He smiled back softly at me, looking absolutely beautiful in the moonlight.

Before either of us knew what was happening, I stood up on the tip of my toes and kissed him on the cheek. Both of us stilled for a moment.

Since I became awkward after impromptu kisses on the cheek, I squeaked out a "good night, Cole" and rushed inside my tent. I took one last look at Torryn as I zipped up my tent door. He seemed to be in a state of shock as he touched the place I'd pecked him on.

That night, I went to sleep with the biggest smile on my face.

********************************

Eeeeeeeep! She kissed him on the cheek! Our ship is moving forward, you guys! Btw, my favourite ship name for Aria and Torryn is COLLER! Tell what your favourite ship names are!!!

I hope you guys are doing well! Stay safe and amazing y'all!

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Charles: *meow*

Pengy: He means, vote if you like cats!
*whispers* Please vote if you don't like them either, I'll understand!