I slammed the car door and ran up, waving back at my mom, to ring Clara’s doorbell. I pushed the small, white button, and stared at the ‘Go away, this is Shadowhunter territory, Mundane’ hanging on her door. I smiled. Just then, the door opened, with Clara and Maddie in the middle.
“Hey! My mom is making dinner right now. Come in!” Clara chirped.
“Okay.” I said, slowly coming in.
Her mom was setting the table, and plates of heaping spaghetti settled on top. A giant pitcher of orange juice sat next to it.
“Hi! Do you want to join us for dinner? Sit down!” she commanded.
We walked toward the table and pulled the chairs from under the table and sat down. Man I’m starving I thought as picked up the fork and started twirling the noodles in between the tines. All of us started eating, so I gulped everything down and waited for the others to finish.
“Come on! Let’s go to my room!” Clara said, standing up, with dishes in hand. She pushed her chair back and walked to the kitchen.
Maddie and I scurried on her trail and after setting the dishes down, we ran to her room. Normally, we played with her two parakeets, but they were gone.
“Where are the two ?” I observed, looking at Clara for an answer. Her face became darker, her smile vanishing. Oh no I thought. I had only come last week, and they were still happy.
“They...ya know...left.” She mumbled.
“Oh my god!” exclaimed Maddie. Her hands went around her face.
We all comforted her, but no matter how many times Clara said “It’s okay, I’m fine, really.” we all knew she was still sad.
I looked out the window and realised the sun was setting over the tall suburban hills in the distance already. A brilliant thought popped into my mind. That is, we should play a really important game of Hide & Seek. It was always an important and a competitive game to us, for we had been playing this game since we were little, and it never grew old. It became one of our things that we always did together. We put our feet in, the little kid way, doing blueshoe.
“Blue shoe, blue shoe, who’s it? Not you!” recited Maddie. The finger landing on my shoe.
“Blue shoe, blue shoe, who’s it? Not you!” repeated Clara, her finger landing on her shoe. Maddie’s brand new, maroon high top converse was the only shoe left.
“Madison you’re it! Ha!” Clara teased. She looked happier. Maddie on the other hand, growled.
Her real name was Madison, but for some reason she hated when people called her by her full name. Clara’s name was Clarissa, so I was the only one who went by their real name, Brit. It sounds short for Brittany, but in reality, it’s just Brit. Maddie, being the seeker and all, was counting to 60 (it took us 5 minutes to finally agree on that) while Clara and I swung open the the tall, white door, pulling us into the dark and hot garage. It was fall, but for some absurd reason, the air was still hot and dry. The familiar wave of the californian hot air, which made my mouth thirsty, hit me like a wall. Quickly yanking the door, leading to the front porch, escaping the heat, we dashed down the steep hill, trying to hide from Maddie. The only sound was our heavy breaths and the faint tap tap of our shoes on the hard asphalt.
“Brit! Come over here!” Clara called to me.
Me, running like there’s no tomorrow, decided to ignore her and I kept going. She yanked my arm back, forcing me to stop, meanwhile pointing towards a big clearing out of the road where the only thing I could see were crumbling brown trees and grass everywhere. In the middle of the brown, dry grassy area was a sign: @ThinkDrought. Nowadays everywhere you go in California, the sign appears everywhere.
“Yeah, of course I will go into that place where we have no idea where it leads to, more or less, how many people have died there. Those trees have nasty looking branches and the dirt will get my shoes all dirty and disgusting. Sounds fun.” I replied sarcastically, flashing a smile.
“What? Brit! She’ll find us if we don’t hide! I’m pretty sure she’s done counting!” She stopped and looked at me pleadingly.
“Well I’m going in anyways whether you like it or not…” she said.
I looked at her, and she knew I would have to go in there if she did.
“Ugh, fine. The only reason I am going in there is because I’m a good friend.”
We stepped out of the road and emerged out of a thick blanket of trees.

The sound of clumsy Clara tripping over twigs broke the silence, and I winced every time, thinking the noise was way too loud. She has a talent for being loud in the wrong situations I said silently to myself. The setting sun peeked out through the trees, dyeing the sky a beautiful pink-purple, and we knew it was getting dark. This was a new and foreign place.
“How come I’ve never come here before?” She looked around.
“I’m pretty sure we should go this way.” Clara said.
We came upon this little hill with big stone gutters in the ground, leading to a sewer drain at the bottom of the hill. We walked down the leafy place.
“Ah!” Clara exclaimed. I looked behind me and saw a terrified Clara sliding on her butt down the gutter, coming my way.
“Clara! Watch out!” She hit me hard and we tumbled down the hill.
We finally hit the bottom, exhausted and scraped.
“Clara! I think I broke at least 10 bones! Ouch! I blame you for all this, after all, it was your idea in the first place!” I scolded.
Clara turned towards me and smirked her signature smirk while she stood up and brushed the dirt off.
“You know what we should do, right?” Clara asked.
“NUH-HUH Clara. Last time I remembered listening to you, we ended up here, at the bottom of a hill.” I replied.
“You know we could make this like a secret hideout place to use after we sweep up all these leaves.” She suggested.
That’s a really good idea I thought. Before I could reply, she ran back from where we came from, up the roads, leaving Maddie with a surprised look on her face in the dirt.
“I guess you found us…” I said.

“What’s going on?” Maddie asked. Clara had run off to go get some brooms back home, leaving us walking back to her house together.
“Clara has some crazy idea of sweeping leaves out of a stupid gutter.” I said.
“Why is your hair messed up like that?” she observed.
“Eh. Clara just tripped and she ran into me, pulling each other down. We just slid down the hill with a bunch of leaves poking at us and almost we almost died. Nothing much.” I said.
“Omg are you okay?” Maddie grabbed my left arm and turned it over, checking my elbows. There were some leaves and dirt stuck, maybe a few scrapes, but Maddie didn’t seem to notice. She did the same for my right arm, and I turned out to be fine.
“Well on the bright side you didn’t die, and I’m happy” She blazed a bright, white smile. The 4-story white and bland house peeked over the little hill. We picked up the pace, and started jogging. Now by this time we were already at the house, greeted by a way too excited Clara carrying three brooms running out the house, scramble down the white wood steps, the screen slamming shut behind her. She stumbled clumsily over the front porch stone steps and looked at us.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” she said hurriedly.
“Okay!” Maddie and I replied in unison.
“Calm down!” Maddie said.

Maddie and I stayed behind, watching Clara run down the road. She finally stopped near the entrance of the new place. As we approached her, she started leading us into the place carrying the 3 brooms like a fool.
“This is so cool! I love this!” Maddie said, looking around the nature and scared squirrels in awe and tripping over the @ThinkDrought sign.
Finding the flat area Clara and I saw earlier, Clara dropped the brooms down on the floor, creating a big pile of dust floating in the air.
“Well? Let’s get to work!” Clara said, looking expectantly at us. She wasn’t sad anymore.
I inhaled the leafy air and looked around, realising how pretty the place was. We ended up sweeping up the whole place like servants. I was tired and by the looks of Maddie, anyone could tell she was tired too. But my eyes went to Clara, the big ball of energy, creating huge piles of leaves, and looked back at the unenthusiastically swept little piles Maddie and I created. Though I can’t say everything was horrid, because we did have fun. I’ll definitely remember this I thought as we flicked leaves at each other in the air. We did end up making that hide out, and we still use it to this day, which has been 2 years after. Buried water bottles and chips lay under the thin layer of dirt, which we usually restock every month after everything was used. Maybe I’ll start listening to Clara now I thought. I changed my mind, though, when Clara came up to me and asked “It’s about time we start remodeling our place. Doing some math in my head, we only need about $100 to do what I have in mind.”