Rodwood Academy

Chapter 20: Foolish

"Excuse me." Alex said deeply as the four friends foolishly stared off into the nearby forest attached to their beautiful park, leaving their backsides completely unaware of his presence.

Shrieking together for a brief moment of panic, the four teens frantically turned around seeing a man much older than them in leather with a bag over his back. Despite not being able to smell the forest's scent on Alex's back, the four teens still felt their stomachs turning inside out.

It was safe to say Zander and Alia were no longer looking forwards to food anymore.

"Woah now." Alex casually chuckled as he gently tried to comfort the scared teens. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to frighten you all."

Gasping as they held onto their chests, the group of friends were struggling to recover their lost breathe. As Rosy clung on tightly to Alia's arm for dear life, Kaila and Zander were struggling to keep their legs from shaking beneath them.

"Are you all alright?" The man asked with his scruffy voice.

"Uh yeah. Sorry about that I guess we were all just on edge." Alia scratched the back of her head as she managed to calm her fast beating heart enough that her breathing returned to normal.

"I can see that." As Alex spoke he noticed the four teens kept turning their heads back in the direction of the dark corner of the park. Gulping as he cleared his throat loudly and clasped his hands together, the man wanted to quickly steal the kids attention away from the area.

As he took several steps in their direction, the friends couldn't help but feel frightened. After all it was extremely late at night, and now they had a grown man who looked to be one lost with time approaching them. The way his shaggy hair fell in front of his eyes, his brown eyes that kept glancing back to the mysterious corner of the park, made them all the more uneasy.

"Can we help you with something?" The boy of the group asked as the friends all took several steps backwards together—unknowingly trapping themselves even closer to the gate that divided the boundaries of the park from the nearby streets.

But Alex said nothing. His harsh breathing became more apparent as his large steps overweighted their tiny footsteps back.

"Hey!" Alia tried to get some kind of response but the man just kept closing in on them. "Dude!"

Before they knew it, Alex had them right where he wanted them.

Only stopping when their backs finally hit the stone wall behind them, the group looked at the older man approaching them with fear in their eyes.

"What do you want from us?!" Rosy begged.

"I'm lost you see," the man finally began to speak again as he showed his crooked smile. "I'm new to well—city life—as you'd say. I'm looking for a good place to stay for the night, you wouldn't know a place now would you?" He made conversation until he was only a mere foot away from them.

"Look dude, we're more than happy to help you out here, but you've got to take a few steps back. We like our personal space." Zander said as he puffed his chest. Trying to conceal the tremble to his voice, despite his scrawny build, he did his best to protect his friends.

Shaking his head as he cleared his throat Alex took two steps away from the kids as he chuckled awkwardly. "I'm sorry about that. I guess I've been away from people for too long now. Those types of boundaries don't strike me anymore."

"Yeah well they exist." Alia sassily remarked as she rolled her eyes as their moment of anxiety faded away. "If you took a step closer I would've called the police on you."