"I'm going out!" She called towards the front door as she hurried into town, her green denim messenger bag hanging off her shoulder.
"Hold it!" Her father shouted from the doorway, stopping her in her tracks. "Did you finish your school work?"
"Yes dad,” she said, looking over her shoulder. "It’s in my room if you want to check it." She started trying to leave again, but another question from her father stopped her.
"Where are you going and what time will you be back?" she sighed and looked over her shoulder again.
"I'm going to the cemetery and I'll be back before sundown." She said. "Can I go now?"
Her father smiled and nodded. "Just be careful,"
She nodded, "I will daddy," and she was finally able to leave without anymore interruptions. Her father was always so protective of her and she didn't really understand why, but she didn't want to say anything about it. When she thought about it, it was better to have a protective father than a distant, neglectful father who she couldn't talk to.
Anna Skellington, now seventeen, hurried to the cemetery with a plan to sit under the big tree and read her book. She could've read the exact same book in her bedroom, but there was something calming about reading in the cemetery. She couldn't read in town though, there would be too much going on around her and too many people wanting to talk to her and she'd never be able to get any reading done.
She loved the cemetery, even though it used to scare her to death as a child. It was quiet, and it was the perfect place for her to hide from the limelight of being the Pumpkin king's daughter. Unlike her father, Anna was never quite able to become accustomed to being the center of attention. In fact, she hated every minute she had to stand in front of the whole town and try to act like it wasn't a big deal.
But she was alone now, safe in the solitude of the cemetery with only her book for companionship. She settled into a comfortable spot next to the tree, her back pressed against the trunk. She took her book out of her bag and started reading, making sure to keep an eye on how much longer she had before she needed to get back home. If she was late, her parents would lose their minds and call the whole town together to find her. They always assumed the worst if she was late, so she did her best to be on time.
But then a butterfly landed on her book.
She recognized it from her insect book, and she wanted so badly to check and see what breed it was, but if she did the butterfly might get away. She just slowly moved one hand away from her book and tried to find one of the glass jars she always carries with her so she could catch it. She slid it out, and was able to flip out the big round cork in the lid, but the minute she moved to catch it, it jumped up and flew away.
Anna dropped her book and, after grabbing the cork off the ground, followed the butterfly through the cemetery. She wanted to catch it and add it to her collection; she had one of almost every kind of bug native to Halloween town. But she didn't have the pumpkin butterfly, and now that she had it in her sights, she wouldn't let it go.
But when it flew into a tomb, she stopped outside the door. She looked over her shoulder, and then back down into the cobweb infested darkness. Her mind was telling her to go foreword, but her legs seemed stuck to the ground.
"I'll make this quick," She said to herself out loud. "I'll catch it, and then hurry back outside."
After she called upon all the bravery she had, Anna forced herself down into the deep darkness with her hand clenched around the glass jar tight enough to shatter it. She used the light from behind her to navigate her way through the tomb, her eyes darting all around to try to find the butterfly. She climbed some small steps and, through a hole, saw the butterfly fluttering around outside.
Anna pushed on the wall, and was surprised when it opened up like a cellar door, except heavier. She stepped out of the door's mouth and followed the butterfly, only taking a brief moment to look over her shoulder at the tomb she was leaving behind. She had to make sure not to get lost, if she did she would be in big trouble when it got dark and she wasn't home.
She caught the butterfly while it was sitting on a polished cross-shaped headstone. It fluttered about wildly inside the jar, panicking, trying to find a way to get out. She turned around to go back, but then she heard what sounded to her like someone was in trouble. She wanted to go back, but if there really was someone in trouble she couldn't just leave them.
So, against her better judgment, Anna went in search of the person in trouble.
"I should go back," She told herself, "I'm only getting myself into trouble," But despite knowing this, Anna pressed on until she found the source of the distress. It was a collection of human boys, all of them bigger than her, shouting at and kicking another, smaller human boy. The smaller one was on the ground, shouting as the bigger human boys kicked him and laughed.
Without being entirely aware of it until it was too late to take it back, Anna ran out in front of the smaller human boy to defend him. She had no idea what she planned to do once she was there, so she used one of her dad's tricks to scare them away. She stretched out the corners of her mouth and screamed, scaring the bigger boys so much that the one in front actually peed himself before the whole group ran off.
The smaller boy was behind her, cowering. She turned around and carefully went over to him, trying not to scare him any more than he probably already was. She did, though, manage to notice in that short time that he was cute, despite the trail of blood flowing from his nose and down his chin from his busted lip. He had a messy head of black hair that went to his ears, and he had glasses that were busted on one side.
"Hey...Its okay, they're gone. My name is Anna, Are you o-?" She asked, but he cut her off right before she asked if he was okay.
"Get away from me! Skeleton freak!" And he jumped up and ran before she could stop him. With a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach, she turned and ran back to the cemetery after picking her glass jar up off the ground. She ran until she found a good place in the cemetery to hide, and when she did she hid behind a headstone with an angel carved into the top.
The boy ran until everything caught up with him in his mind. When he thought of how he treated that girl, that
skeleton girl, he felt terrible. He, of all people, had no right to be calling anyone a freak. Especially someone who went out of their way to save him like she did. What'd she say her name was?
He looked over his shoulder, part of him hoping that maybe she'd followed after him for some reason, but then he wondered why he thought that. He couldn't expect someone he'd insulted to follow him, but he needed to apologize to her. So then he got to thinking, where would he be if he was a skeleton?
Skeleton freak...She'd never thought of it like that. Then again, she didn't have a reason. Being a skeleton was just as normal in her town as being a werewolf or a mummy. If anything, it was the second most normal thing in Halloween town, what with the behemoth, the swamp monster, the corpse family, and the hanging tree being among the top few she could think of.
She hugged her legs to her chest and cried into her knees. She didn't have any eyes, which subsequently meant she couldn't cry tears, but she was crying none the less. Oh, why was she crying over something a stranger told her? Maybe being a skeleton was freakish in the human world, but not in the world she belonged to. Why did that bother her so much?
"Um...excuse me? Anna, was it?" A voice said from in front of her. Anna threw her head up and saw the boy from before, bloody nose and all. She jumped up and darted away, stopping when she realized she left her glass jar sitting by the headstone. "Wait!" He called from behind her, watching as she looked over her shoulder at him. "I just-- I wanted to say-- sorry. About...you know. Before."
She didn't know what to do, so she just turned around to get her glass jar. Why a butterfly was more important to her than getting back to the world where she was considered normal was beyond her. She didn't say a word to him; all she did was pick up her glass jar and turn around to go back. But he grabbed her wrist, stopping and scaring her.
"Let me go," She said, trying to sound braver than she was. But in the end it just wound up coming out shaky and sounding just as scared as she was.
"Just let me say I'm sorry," He said, gently. "I was scared and...Well...I guess that’s no excuse. But I
am sorry."
Anna stopped, her eyes flickering between his hand on her wrist and his face. Despite how much he was scaring her, she couldn't get over how cute he was. For a human.
Suddenly, he added, "My name is Ryan, by the way." And let her wrist go. She let her arm drop to her side as she tried to decide what to do. She wanted to stay mad, she wanted to go home and do everything in her power to forget Ryan ever existed. But she couldn't do it, she could only stand there thinking about the millions of things she could do instead of just looking like an idiot.
Finally, she decided to smile. "Nice to meet you, Ryan, and I forgive you."
He looked relieved. "Good, and I want to thank you for saving me back there. I really do appreciate it."
"I'm glad. But I need to get home; it'll drive my parents crazy if I don't get back."
He was surprised to hear that a skeleton had parents, but he decided not to ask about it. Instead, he just nodded. "Alright. Thanks again."
"No problem," and she quickly hurried back to the tomb she'd come from. Just before she went into the darkness, she looked back at him, but he was already gone. She bit her lower lip to try and control a smile that wanted to grow on her face. He was so cute.
By the time she got back to where she left her things, the sun was already starting to disappear behind the outline of spiral hill. She wouldn't be able to make it home before dark like she thought she would, but if she hurried she would be able to get back before her parents caused a panic.
She made it home maybe twenty minutes after sunset, and saw her parents standing in the middle of town. Her pretty ragdoll mother and her confident skeleton father were standing beside the green fountain asking the swamp thing that lived in it if they'd seen her.
"I'm back!" she shouted, getting her parents' attention. "I'm sorry about being so late. I fell asleep while I was reading and when I woke up it was sunset."
And, because she was neither very good nor very frequent with her lying, her parents believed her.
"Let’s just go get some dinner," Her father said with a smile, "Your mom's making us something good. Like always."
And so she went home with them, careful not to let on to her little trip to the human world, that was her little secret.
----
A/N below:
So yay! Anna's finally seventeen, and we've met Ryan! woo 
go us!
