With You (Fransykes)

Chapter 1

Hey, so this is my first Fransykes...

Dedicated to SUCKAPUNCH, a UK No. 1 album! Also to Post Human: Survival Horror, another UK No.1 album! We're winning. 

I don't own any characters and the title of this story comes from the Linkin Park song.

Explicit language, suicide mention, drugs, alcohol etc., and Oli had OCD. Don't read if it will make you upset.

Also, let me know if there are words/phrases you don't get and I can translate the British. Just so you know, a lot of this book is kind of built up around the North/South divide, which is basically just how everyone in this country hates each other.

Chapter 1- Josh

"Are we nearly there yet?" Josh asked, for what felt like the billionth time.

"For the last time, yes," Josh's mum responded, looking up from her phone. "Your father just thought it would be nice to take the more, ah, scenic route."

Josh scowled.

For miles around, there was nothing but English countryside. Hills, hedges, wheat fields. Boring.

"Come on, Joshua, you don't really want to spend the whole trip on the motorway, do you?"

"Dad, this is literally the most boring day of my life. We've been in here for five hours!"

"Nearly there," Josh's mum smiled, trying to keep the peace.

Elissa sighed and moved her legs, eating into Josh's space. She was such a nuisance.

"Do you mind?" Josh seethed. "Mum, Elissa's being annoying again!"

"How old are you, five?" Elissa retorted.

Josh thumped her.

"Mum!!!!" Elissa cried.

//

Despite being 'nearly there,' Josh counted a whole other hour spent in the car before they arrived in Sheffield. Sheffield looked grimy, miserable. Nothing like the pretty county of Surrey.

The Franceschi family were moving house, after Josh's father had got a new job in the city. Sheffield was far away, colder and rainier than Surrey. Josh had done some research and the kids all seemed harder, meaner and infinitely poorer than back home. He had already decided he would hate it.

Josh switched off his iPod as the car pulled up in the driveway of a semi-detached house in Sheffield's inner suburbs. The brickwork looked faded, paint on the windowsill was peeling. That's home?

"Finally," Josh's mum sighed. "Right, before you start fighting, Josh has the room on the top floor. Elissa, you're on the first with us. You both have your own bathrooms, so there really shouldn't be anything to fight about. Understood?"

Josh and Elissa exchanged glances before nodding.

The downside of having a room on the top floor meant that Josh had an extra staircase to drag his luggage up. His school books weighed more than his clothes, which was mildly upsetting considering children in Sheffield always did worse in school than those in Surrey, at least, according to Google. He'd kind of assumed that there wouldn't be any sort of schooling, just lots of smoking pot in the toilets and trying to avoid people with knives.

"Hey, mate," Josh called his friend, Dan Flint, the second he'd finished unpacking. "Wanna play Among Us?"

"Sure," Dan replied, and so Josh huddled under his duvet with his phone, laughing at Dan's silly jokes and at how shit of an Imposter he was.

It was a welcome distraction, an opportunity to remember the good times he'd had in Surrey with his friends, to forget that he was in a completely new environment with nobody he knew, with a new school to start Sixth Form at, with a funny, posh accent that the Northern lads would be sure to make fun of.

Josh tried so hard to stop worrying.

But he couldn't.