But I just kept squirming and shoving myself forward and tearing at whatever I could get my hands around until I finally managed to poke my head through the other side of the foliage wall. There was a subtle shift in the world around me as the voices calling my name returned from out of nowhere, now loud enough that they could’ve been right in front of me…
Which they, of course, were. My cousin Kelly was the first to spot me through the treeline and it was her currently shouting my name as she hurried over to help pull me free of the bushes I was still mostly tangled in. I was soon awash in the beams from several different flashlights while my sobbing mother stood there, watching my Uncle Jimmy help Kelly dislodge me.
My mom’s face was puffy and red from what I assumed was at least several hours of intense crying and she was screaming the same question at me over and over. That question was, “Where did you go?!”
Until about a week ago, I didn’t have the slightest clue… Fast forward to last Friday when a longtime friend and his fiancé conspired to trick me into going on a blind date with some girl the fiancé knew from work, because apparently they thought I didn’t know how to operate a phone app.