Im so sorry for taking so long on this chapter! Ive been trying to get my grades up in school and can hardly find time to write. Thank you guys for your support on this story and I hope you enjoy this chapter after such a long wait!
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I woke up in the morning the next day to the strong pounding feeling in my head. I groaned sitting up to get ready for school but ultimately decided against it. My heart rate was faster than usual and the outside light from my window hurt my eyes so I closed them tight.
I heard my mom calling for me to get up from downstairs but I ignored her and continued to lay in my bed as my body ached.
Suddenly my door opened and I creaked open my eyes to see my mom smiling."Sweetheart, you have to get up and get ready for school" She hummed, pulling the blanket off of me.
I groaned and picked up my arms signing to her that I don't feel so good, slowly getting up and trudging towards the bathroom, my mom following behind me, probably to go downstairs thinking I was going to use the bathroom and get ready, however, that was quite the opposite. I didn't close the door and proceeded to throw up into the toilet repetitively, staying there until I finished dry heaving, just like last night.
The pounding un my head only got progressively worse as I sat with my head lying on the edge of the bathtub.
My mom came back upstairs to see my crumpled figure on the linoleum floor."Oh honey... do you need to stay home today?" she asked gingerly. I silently nodded my head, pealing myself off of the floor and falling back onto my bed.
After my mom left for work my brother came upstairs and into my room to see me practically dying on my bed.
"I brought you some water and some aspirin"
I thanked him in ASL, I don't think I've ever gulped down pills faster in my entire life."Just remember, the first one is always the worst, even though they don't ever seem to get better" He chuckled.
I knew he was referring to my hangover and not thinking that I was sick... I definitely drank too much beer.
He was convinced that I had tried to be a normal teenager by going to a party and getting hammered for fun, I was not going to educate him on the real reasons. Bruises had begun to bloom on my skin but that was such a normality at this point nobody would probably notice.I somehow was able to fall back asleep for another two hours, until I was awoken from the buzzing of my phone on my bedside table. my headache had gotten better than before but I could still feel the thumps.
I sat up, and I picked up my phone noticing the many messages and missed calls. Shit, I forgot all about my friends at school. Besides the ones from my mother and Darryn, I had a combination of about fifty notifications asking where I was, the most recent one being a missed call and text from Sebastian that had woken me up.
'Are you at school today? Where are you?'
I would've called him back but there was no use since I wouldn't talk anyway so I texted him telling him that yesterday I left early because I didn't feel good and today I stayed home sick.I walked downstairs to see my brother playing on his PlayStation four on the living room TV. He was playing Rainbow Six, talking to his friends through his headset.
I walked past him on the couch and into the kitchen, pouring a small bowl of Cocoa Puffs since my nausea seemed to have passed.
I sat down next to my brother on the couch, my basketball shorts reserved for home riding up on my thin thighs. I slowly ate my coco puffs and watched him playing, listening to the one-sided conversation since I couldn't hear the people through his headset.
'Oh, that sucks, hope you are feeling better' I read the text that popped up on my phone, smiling and texting back.
I stayed there watching my brother play while texting Seb, up until my brother left for his job, continuing to text with him even after he left.
About twenty minutes after the time school ended there was a knock at my door. I opened it up to reveal my favourite smiling face, inviting him inside as he set down a plastic Walmart bag on the coffee table.
From out of the plastic bag he pulled out a box of ice cream, birthday cake flavour. He went into my kitchen and came back out shortly after, carrying two small plastic bowls and two spoons."Hope you like ice cream," he said in a sort of sing-song voice. I chuckled, nodding. I mean who doesn't like ice cream?
He opened Netflix and started playing an episode of criminal minds, which I wasn't as knowledgable in the characters as he was since he was the one that religiously watches the show. All I remembered is that the character named Morgon is skilled in the art of courting women.
We watched a random episode where an entire mall was put on lockdown to find a girl who had gone missing shortly before. We watched the BAU search the mall and question the family on what they know..
The BAU finally figured out that the girl, Katie, was being molested by her very own uncle who swore he would never kill her. It was revealed that her uncle's ex-wife wanted the girl dead so that maybe her death would make the ex-husband stop. eventually, they got her to tell where she his the girl, in the mall basement, finding her with no pulse but luckily being able to resuscitate her and get her to the hospital.
At the end of the episode, Sebastian turned the TV off of Netflix and onto a random show that was playing, turning the volume down and quickly taking our empty blue bowls into the kitchen and setting them in the sink. He came back and sat back on the couch next to me before saying. "I want you to teach me more sign language"
I smiled at his lovingness. He comes to hang out with me even though he thinks I'm sick, and he wants to learn a new type of language just to communicate with me.So I taught him some of the basic asl signs. I taught him the alphabet, how to sign his name and how to say the numbers one through ten.
I taught him a few common pieces of vocabulary, laughing when he accidentally signed intercourse instead of work since they are for some reason very similar signsHe embarrassedly laughed with me when I revealed to him what he had done. I felt so happy just to spend quiet time with him like this and almost like we were the only two people in the world, although I also felt like I was overreacting a little bit.
I didn't teach him too much just so he could start slow and hopefully retain everything I told him so far. I thought it was cute how when he focused on my moving fingers he would smile slightly with a look of admiration and I relished in it.
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December rolled around quicker than expected, as did the cold, I mean it has been cold last month but now it was really setting in. It had only been about a week since I started teaching Sebastian ASL.
I was happy when the snow started falling down regularly. First being that I loved the snow, how it clothed the world in beautiful white, and second, because now I had even more of an excuse to 'borrow' Sebastian's hoodies. My very favourite being the classic maroon hoodie that he often wore, well before I stole it from him, but that's beside the point.
As we walked inside the school building I rubbed my cheeks and nose with my hands, attempting to warm them up quickly, it was about seventeen degrees Fahrenheit outside, now that's something I didn't like about the winter months.
We walked past all of the winter dance posters plastered around the school by the sophomore student council, talking about things that didn't pertain to the seniors.
Nathan and I had exchanged our Snapchats and he sent me pictures a lot, trying to catch up on four years of lost time. He texted A lot too, asking about things you'd ask about your cousin after not seeing them for a while, but I felt like he had questions that he really wanted to ask, like what happened in that basement, and why I moved away after I escaped without telling anyone at all.
He sent me a selfie of him and my old friends and I felt the guilt seep into my veins like heroin. They all looked practically the same as I remembered, just older now. I didn't send a picture back, just shut my phone off before heading down to class.
A week went by and I was being asked to join a video call with them when they were having a sleepover. The guilt ran through my bloodstream once again and I decided to join it. I wasn't doing anything this Saturday anyway.
When I answered the video call started off of Nathans discord account I saw they had their camera set up so I could see all of them where they were sitting.
They had to turn the text to speech setting on discord so it would read my texts since none of them knew sign language and it'd just be easier on us all.
The call started awkwardly enough with me giving a sheepish wave and smile, receiving greetings back.
There was four of my old closer friends, Julia, a cute girl on the chubbier side with short dark brown hair in a bob cut. She had a round face and almond-shaped dark blue eyes, she was one of the nicest, weirdest girls I had ever met, she was also the epitome of a weeaboo.
There was also Josiah, or Jo, he was a tall, lanky pale boy with who was allergic to practically every food on the face of the earth, like pickles. He was very snarky and blunt but he was also funny and understanding. He also had the cutest little brother.
There was also Daniel, a short boy with skin dark as coffee beans, he had some of the straightest, whitest teeth I had ever seen and his eyes always made him look angry. He was a relatively quiet dude, but pretty outgoing in a group of friends.
Lastly, there was another girl named Sunhee, she was Filipino and Korean. She had a skinny face and a wider nose and plump lips along with very smooth skin. She was the one who introduced me to Adobo, a chicken dish from the Philippines served with rice, one of my personal favourites.
They all looked practically the same as the last day I saw them when we were hanging out. Daniel though, who was usually baby faced, had the beginning of a stubbly beard growing in."Talon... You look so different!" Julia said breaking an awkward silence. She was right, I used to have my hair very short but I've been letting it grow, I'm also much more skinnier and I've got faded bruises and a healing split lip.
I felt like they were mainly referring to the thick scar on my cheek, the one that made me look kind of like some sort of anime protagonist. That definitely wasn't there before.
"Speaking of different, what's with all the bruises and the lip?" Josiah asked. Julia slapped him lightly on the arm saying his name very quietly in an accosting way
I was hoping they wouldn't notice. I sighed and typed that it was from complications at school, hearing it being echoed out through the text to speech on their side, hoping that they wouldn't ask any further questions.
"So... How is your new school?" Sun asked changing the subject. She was sitting criss-cross on the floor closest to the camera, somewhat controlling the direction it was facing.
'It's pretty good, I've got some good friends and good teachers. How's my old school now?' I responded, not mentioning Mitch or my creepy texts.
"Well, it's been kind of crazy down here... Mr. Ketner, you know, the math teacher? He got arrested for larceny." Daniel Said in a laughing manner.
'Larceny??' i typed in disbelief, the rest of us laughing. That math teacher was always shady, we knew he was doing something behind the scenes.
"Did you know that there is a mural of you at our school?" Nathan piped up from the couch in the background. A mural? Of me?
'There's a mural of me at your school?" I typed back quickly. Now I'm curious.
"Yeah, its right in the main entrance, a painting on that middle pill, it says 'bring him home' underneath. They put it up about four months after you disappeared... It's really good" He said bringing his phone out, "I've got a picture somewhere"
'Who did it?' I asked. I remember I was recently popular or at least well known back then, I didn't know it was enough to have a mural in the school when I went missing. I was one of the fastest kids on the track team, and I was friends with pretty much everyone I met, but times have changed and things are different.
"School paid a good artist off of Instagram to do it, its been up ever since in honour of you," Julia informed. I nodded slowly, still in disbelief. this is probably just a little joke they're playing on me.
"Found it!" Nathan proclaimed and I saw the image pop up in the chat section. They weren't lying, well unless someone was really good at Photoshop.
In my old school the layout was as such; the main entrance led into a large area that contained the door to the front office, counselling office and the nurses office and then it split off into two hallways which later connected, in between them though was a large pillar, and that is where this photo was taken.
My face was planted on the pillow and my four main friends were standing next to each other in front of it with small smiles, probably not over my disappearance at that point.
'That's crazy' I typed, still looking at the picture. My face is in the front room of that building.We stayed in the call for a while longer before I decided to get off and go to bed.
Part of me wished I hadn't.