TheLost Girls

The glade in the woods looked calm and peaceful in the moonlight.
The tall, dark pine trees surrounded it in a guarding manner, as though
they are hiding it from the outside world. The trees cast shadows
across the little dell in stripes. The soft rushing of a nearby stream
could be heard and there was an occasional splash as fish leapt out of
the water for the sheer joy of life itself.
Presently there was a stumbling amongst the trees and a girl almost
fell into the clearing. She looked exhausted, as she sank down on the
thick, soft, inviting grass.
She was about fourteen with short curly, brown hair covered by a navy
cap, and tired, green eyes gazed around the clearing. She was wearing
old, dull green combat trousers and a thick and warm black waterproof
jacket fell open to reveal a light blue t-shirt. Her light brown
walking boots were covered in mud, as were her trousers. She leant
against a tree and shut her eyes.
Four other girls, all about the same age, shortly followed her and all
looked exhausted. The second girl to appear was slightly taller than
the first. She had an open friendly face, with hazel eyes and it was
framed by dyed chestnut hair, the roots of which proved her natural
hair colour was blond. She was wearing walking boots similar to the
first girl, tracksuit trousers, a t-shirt and an old, muddy red fleece.
She sat down next to the first girl, without speaking, as did the third
girl.
The third girl was the smallest in the group. Bundled up in navy
waterproof trousers and a navy waterproof jacket, with green cuffs and
a green collar, the small girl, with her round, chubby, rosy face was
reminiscent of a squirrel. Her dark brown hair, with a slight wave,
tumbled down her back, most of it having fallen out of her hair band.
Her soft brown eyes took her surroundings quickly, as she retied back
her hair.
The last two girls to appear were dressed similarly in muddy trainers,
crop-tops and one had once-white jeans and the other was clad in purple
leggings with pink flowers, which clashed with her pink puffer jacket.
Both girls had a variety of necklaces, around their necks, all with
large, fake jewel-studded crosses attached. Both of them looked
infuriated, as they sat as far away from the others as they could,
talking quietly and snappily. Black eyes and long black hair together
with dusky skin proclaimed one was an Indian. The other girl had grey
eyes and shoulder-length light brown hair, highlighted with
sunny-yellow streaks. Her fingernails were painted with the remains of
bright pink nail varnish.
"What's the time?" The second girl asked after a while, her strong
accent defining her to be Scottish.
The first girl pushed her sleeve up, revealing a waterproof watch on
her right wrist. "Half ten." Her soft, Southern Irish accent informed
the girls.
"Most normal people wear watches on their left wrists." The English
girl called sneeringly from the other side of the glade. The Irish girl
shrugged.
"I like to be different."
The first three girls had pocket compasses slung about their necks and
the small girl had a map clutched tightly in her hand.
"It's your fault we're here, Sinead." The English girl blamed the
curly-haired girl.
"No, it's not." The Scottish girl was furious on her friend's behalf.
The friend in question continued to lean against a tree with her eyes
shut.
"It is." The Indian girl backed up her friend.
"Isn't." The Scottish girl jumped to her feet in anger. The exhaustion
from the three enraged girls had vanished and they began
quarrelling.
Eventually, the Irish girl had had enough and shouted over the noise,
"Shut up!"
In shock, the other girls obeyed. "That's better." Sinead O'Brien
continued in her normal voice. "It's no one's fault that the compasses
are broken. It's no one's fault that the teachers gave us the wrong map
and we didn't realise that until too late. And it's definitely no one's
fault we're lost. If you argue, it just makes everything worse."
The English girl opened her mouth to say something, but Sinead held up
a hand. "No, Kim. If you want to complain, don't, but if you've got a
helpful idea, go ahead and say it."
Kimberly Smith shut her mouth again. Her Indian friend, Ambika Chauhan,
said, "I wish I hadn't done this. I didn't realise Duke of Edinburgh
practise expeditions would be so hard."
"It's only hard, because we've got the wrong map. We'd be fine if the
teachers had given us the right map," Shona McDonald's Scottish accent
rang out.
"Or if we'd checked it, before we left the car park where the teachers
were." The smallest girl spoke for the first time and showed herself to
be Welsh, with a pleasant accent.
"The teachers will come looking for us, because they're meant to meet
us at the checkpoints, right?"
"Yeah, do you know how big this wood is?" Shona squashed Ambika's
hopes.
Looking round at her fellow Duke of Edinburgh participants, Sinead took
charge. "We'll stay here tonight, then we'll walk around tomorrow until
we find our way out of these woods."
"I can't stay here tonight, what if animals come here?" Kimberly looked
terrified.
Sinead stood up, took her cap off and ran her hand through her hair.
"Well, if you're scared, you can stay awake to keep an eye out for
dangerous hedgehogs. I'm going to sleep."
"But we haven't even got a tent." Kimberly ignored the giggles from the
other girls.
"And no food or drink." Ambika stopped giggling and joined her friend
in grousing.
"Tough!" Sinead turned her back on the other teenagers and lay down,
her cap placed carefully beside her and using her arms as a pillow. The
Welsh and Scottish girls, named Megen Evans and Shona respectively
copied her. Ambika and Kimberly looked around, hopelessly and then
Ambika imitated the others.
"Am! What are you doing?" Kimberly exclaimed.
"I'm tired and so I'm going to try and get some sleep while I can."
Ambika stood up for herself for once. Normally, she copied Kimberly in
everyway, but not anymore.
"Goodnight, people." The Welsh accent rose from the tired bodies on the
ground, preventing an argument. A chorus of goodnights answered
her.
Kimberly thought she'd stay awake, so she sat on the grass, leaning
against a tree.
"Ouch!" After pulling a couple of rocks out from under her, Kimberly
made herself as comfortable as she could.

Muttering and cursing the bright sun, partly shielded by the tall pine
trees, woke the girls up. Kimberly jumped, as she changed from sleeping
mode to wakeful. She hadn't realised she had fallen asleep. Sinead got
up from the grass and stretched.
"Ouch!"
"That ground's hard!" Shona agreed with Sinead's oath at the pain of
having a stiff body. The girls dusted the excess leaves and earth off
themselves.
Megen sat up, gathered her bearings and then listened a moment or two.
"There's a stream near here!" She announced after a while, blushing as
everyone looked at her.
Sinead nodded. "I heard it last night, before you lot caught me
up."
"I'm hungry!"
"I'm thirsty!" Ambika and Kimberly decided to renew their
complaints.
"I'm cold!" The girls shivered in the early morning chill.
"Megen, come with me. The rest of you, look for some firewood." Sinead
disappeared through the trees, tracking the sound of the rushing water,
closely followed by a faithful Megen.

"There it is, look!" Megen saw it first. The pair of girls gazed a
short time at the sparkling sunlit water, surrounded by seemingly
endless and untamed fields.
"I read once how some people caught fish in a book." Megen said, as the
girls left the cover of the wood and approached the stream.
"What, without a fishing line?" Sinead sounded interested. Megen
nodded. "How?"
Megen explained. She had a very good memory for books. When Megen had
finished, Sinead nodded. "I'll try that. That lot back there said they
were hungry."
"You need a dark place. That's where the trout go."
"Are there any fish in there?" As Sinead asked, a silver fish leapt out
of the water and hit the water with a splash, flopping back into the
stream. The girls laughed.
"I guess that answered my question." Sinead chuckled.
"You try now. There's a dark bit over there." Megen pointed and then
followed Sinead down to where she'd indicated.
After about half an hour, Sinead had caught a medium-sized, shiningly
wet fish. Megen was squeamish over killing the flapping creature, so
Sinead knocked it over the head with a stone.
"Sinead!"
"We can't let it suffer." The practical girl replied, picking up the
slippery fish. Megen rejoined the others and told them to bring the
firewood to the stream. The four girls each carried a pile of logs to
Sinead, who was waiting by the stream, gutting the fish, with her
penknife.
"Yuck" was Kimberly's comment, when she saw the fish.
"What are you doing to it?" Shona asked.
"Gutting it. You can't eat fish guts." Sinead stated.
"You caught fish before, haven't you, Sinead?" Ambika said.
Sinead nodded. "Dad used to take me and Liam fishing. He taught how to
cook them too."
"Who's Liam?" Shona sat on the bank of the stream, snuggling into her
fleece, trying to warm up.
""My brother."
"Why can't we have a fire in the clearing?" Kimberly asked.
"We'll need to put the fire out with the stream water and it'll be
easier to have the fire here. Plus there's more room here for the fire
and not so many trees. I don't really want to set the entire forest on
fire."
Sinead picked up a stick and gave everyone jobs. Kimberly and Ambika
had to break the firewood into manageable sticks and Shona and Megen
had to clear a space for the fire. They had to dig the grass away and
put stones around the edge of the improvised fireplace.
"What about you?" Shona asked Sinead.
"I'm doing the fish" was the reply.
Everyone set to work and shortly everything as ready. Megen made the
fire and Sinead reappeared from the wood, with some strong sticks. She
stuck one either side of the fireplace and picked up the fish, stuck a
stick through it and balanced the fish's stick across the fire, propped
up on the other two sticks.
"What if the fish falls in the fire?"
Sinead pointed to grooves in the top of the sticks to hold the fish's
stick steady, then she dug in her combat pockets, producing a box of
matches. Crouching by the fire, she lit it and chucked the used match
into the fire, shoving the box of matches back in her pocket.
"You have the most random things in your pockets, Sinead." Ambika told
her.
"Dad always taught me to take stuff like that, when I go on a walk.
Habit, I guess."
"What's your dad? A poacher?" Kimberly was in a bad mood and decided to
take it out on Sinead.
"No, a farmer." Sinead said simply, not rising to the teasing.
Kimberly turned away in disgust. The girls shivered again and huddled
around the fire. Ambika was thirsty and cold and made that clear to
everyone in a whining voice. Sinead passed her jacket to Ambika to
everyone's surprise and scampered off into the wood again.
"Where's she gone now? Deserted us again" Kimberly complained.
Shona scowled and said, "Shut up, Kimberly. Sinead's trying to help.
She's doing more than your lazy bones will ever do."
All of them tired, hungry, thirsty and cold, they began arguing, all
except Megen who stared into the flames and daydreamed about
home.
When Sinead came out of the woods, the girls broke off their argument
and resumed their sitting positions around the fire. Sinead joined them
and produced some stones. The stones were round, small and very clean.
Sinead had clearly rubbed them clean on the cleanest part of her
trousers, which were now muddy than the night before.
"What are they for?" Shona asked, breaking the silence around the
flickering fire.
"If you suck them, it makes the saliva flow and makes you think you're
getting a drink. Right, Sinead?" Megen emerged from her dreamland.
Sinead nodded and grinned at Kimberly and Ambika's expressions of
repulsion. Megen chose one of the stones, that were nestled in Sinead's
hand and popped it in her mouth, sucking it like a delicious sweet.
Shona and Sinead mimicked her. Then Sinead held the remaining two
stones out to the other girls, a mischievous glint in her green,
cat-like eyes.
After thinking about it, Ambika took one and sucked it as Sinead
dropped the last stone into Kimberly's lap, leaving the choice up to
her.

Watching the fish intently, Sinead presently concluded it was cooked
and plucked her jacket off Ambika's shoulder and laid it out on the
soil. She picked up the stick the fish was attached to at both ends not
touching the fish and laid it on her jacket. The other girls watched
the skilled hands chop the fish up with the ever-useful penknife. Megen
and Shona dug a small hole with sticks and rocks, burying the fish's
head, tail and guts.
"Don't fill in the hole yet. We'll need to bury the bones too." Sinead
instructed.
"Why does it need to be buried anyway?" Kimberly asked,
disdainfully.
"It smells and isn't very nice to leave lying around." Shona explained.
Megen and Sinead nodded in agreement.
"It's not very nice at all." Ambika muttered to Kimberly.
"Do we have to eat that by hand?" Kimberly asked, looking at the
dissected fish with loathing.
"Can you see any cutlery around here?" Sinead grinned.
Kimberly scowled and watched Shona pick up a piece of fish. She pulled
the pale pink flesh carefully off the bones, blowing on it to cool it
and then she ate it.
"We're going to get food poisoning after this." Ambika
criticized.
"Well, I'm hungry and I can cope with that." Shona retorted, swallowing
more fish. More fish disappeared down the gullets of Megen and Sinead.
Ambika soon copied them, her empty stomach insisting on the food.
Kimberly quickly gobbled her portion down and joined the other girls in
sucking their stones again.
"Come on, we'd better go." Sinead got up and using a stick, dug a large
chunk of grass, dipped it in the stream to damp it and put it on the
dying fire, to put it out. Shona and Megen helped her, as Ambika smelt
Sinead's jacket.
"Your jacket smells of fish now." She called to Sinead.
"Surprise, surprise." Sinead's sarcastic tone infuriated Ambika and
Kimberly.
Kimberly glared and said, "Where are we going anyway?"
Sinead dropped the remaining bones and fish into the hole and filled it
in, before answering. "We'll walk until we find a road, then we'll
stick to the road, until we meet someone who can help us."
The girls looked round them. The fire was nearly out and all they could
see was the stream as it bubbled its busy way past them and in all
directions was the endless wild fields and the thick wood. They were
lost and could see any sign of civilisation. Looking round at the
others' faces, Sinead gritted her teeth and spat out her stone.
"Let's go." She said, determined to get the other girls back to
civilisation before dark. She knew Kimberly and Ambika would not be
able to cope with one more night sleeping outside. If they'd have had
tents, food and drink, they could cope for longer, but on practise
expeditions they didn't take stuff like that, relying on the fact they
would get home before dark.

'At least this will be a memorable expedition.' Sinead thought to
herself.
'No one must ever know I ate fish cooked by a fire and sucked a stone.'
Kimberly reflected.
'I really need a change of clothes and a shower.' Ambika felt dirtier
than she'd ever felt before.
'It's just like a book.' Megen considered. 'Maybe I could write a story
about it when I get back.'
Shona looked around again and thought, 'at least I can show off to my
sister when I get back. She's never done anything like this
before.'

"Come on people. Let's go." Sinead tried to eject a bit of cheer into
the gloomy company. It didn't work. However the girls got up and set
off following Sinead, as she tied her jacket around her waist.
They walked in silence for the main part. At around two o'clock, or so
Sinead's watch said, the girls came to a road. Too tired to do much
more than smile, they stated off down the road.

At around three o'clock that afternoon, Samuel Burdock was driving his
car along pleasant country roads, on his weekly visit to his mum's
house. Turning a corner, he saw about five girls walking slowly,
tiredly along the road. They were all covered in mud and one had a
waterproof jacket tied around her waist. There was one coloured child,
but the rest were white. As they saw the car, the one in front, who had
short hair like a boy, put her thumb out to him.
He pulled up beside them and asked them what they were doing.
"We're lost. Please help us." The girl begged. The other four girls
crowded around the car window, looking hopefully at his face. It
crossed his mind that they were thieves.
"No, I'm sorry. I can't help you." Samuel revved up his car again and
drove off. After driving for about half a mile, he stopped and
telephoned for the police.
"That's it. We're done for." Ambika sat on the side of the road. The
other girls did the same, all except Sinead.
"We can't give up now. There'll be another car along soon." Sinead
tried to persuade them.
"We've been on this road for hours and we've seen one car."
"There'll be others." Sinead begged them to believe her.
"There won't be or if there are, they won't help us." Kimberly agreed
with Ambika and Shona.
Megen got up, seeing the despair on Sinead's face. "We can carry on. We
won't let you down, Sinead."
"Thanks Megen," Sinead said, gratefully. "But the others have already
given up."
Sinead started off down the road.
"Where're you going?" Megen called after her.
"I'm going to find a house or people to help us. You guys stay here.
I'll be back soon."
Shona scrambled to her feet. "We should stick together." She said,
worriedly, starting off down the road after Sinead. Megen hurried after
them.
"Come on Kim. We might as well." Ambika said. The four girls soon
caught Sinead up and they walked for ages before?

"There's a car coming." Sinead shouted, happily.
The girls stopped and the two cars did too. They were police
cars.
"Oh God, cops!" Sinead muttered to Shona.
"Hi kids. You meant to be out here?" A cheerful policeman called,
leaning on his car's roof, watching the dishevelled children.
"What do you think?" Sinead grinned back at him.
"So what are you lot doing here?" The other policeman asked.
The other girls left Sinead to do the explaining, as they collapsed
onto the grass at the roadside. Sinead was quick in her
clarification.
"Oh, so you're the missing girls?" The second policeman, P.C. Elliot,
realised.
"You've heard of us?" Shona looked puzzled.
The first policeman nodded. "We've been looking for you, but you've
walked about twenty miles from where you were meant to be. I thought I
recognised you and your pictures were in the paper."
"Cool, we're famous." Kimberly clapped her hands.
Sinead rolled her eyes at Megen, making her sman.
"Come on, let's get you lot home." P.C. Elliot organised everyone.
Kimberly and Ambika headed for his car, as the other three piled into
the other police car.
"Why two cars anyway?" Shona asked, Megen too shy to speak.
The policeman started the car up and said, "The guy who phoned us, said
there were five of you and that's too many to fit in one car."
"He must have been the guy who drove off." Sinead said. The other girls
nodded.
"So what happened anyway? How did you manage to get lost so well?" The
policeman asked, following P.C. Elliot's car.
Shona and Sinead began to explain and soon Megen's shyness wore off and
she was chattering away as much as the other two. They soon found out
the policeman's name was Terry Spenser.
"We're taking you to the police station and your parents will pick you
up from there."
"I can't wait to see my mum." Megen smiled.
"I can't wait to see my dad." Shona agreed.
"What about you, Sinead?" Terry asked the quiet girl.
"Me? I can't wait to see my cat. I missed her purring!"