Gage Cilleti has just begun his junior year of high school, and is becoming more and more involved in his school's activities, considering he'd been playing baseball since he was just seven-years-old.
Elijah McCay has just dropped out of school, du...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I was lost. I'd tried to find my way around the unfamiliar neighborhood multiple times. But it was no use. I was standing in the middle of a forbidden street with a sign that was by now smudged by—well, I have no idea what what it was smudged by but I could not for the life of me read what street I was on.
I'd stopped trying to figure it out when my cellphones battery finally drained, due to me trying to map myself back to my house. Which does not work when you don't know your current address. I walked past a pizza joint, a sandwich shop, and a shoe store before finally coming across a lonesome bar.
Raising my brows in slight apprehension, I shoved my cell back into the front pocket of my sweatpants, pulling the hood of my sweater back over my head. My plan was to tiptoe into the bar, and not say a single word to anyone there, then quietly sneak up to whoever was tending the bar, and ask them if they had a phone I could borrow.
The plan seemed solid enough—if I just happened to not get kicked out when someone eventually realized that I was under age.
I stalked over to the bulky front door that had the words bar in bright, bright red letter printed above it. I grasped onto the door handle and pulled, coming face-to-face with a quiet bar that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in months.
And the smell was so—tangy. I tried not to let those minor hiccups bother me as I made my way into the bar, watching as curious eyes followed me as I made my way over to the bar. I slid into a stool, keeping my eyes down until the bartender bothered to look my way.
They'd been tending to a burly man with a large jacket surrounding his shoulders. But thankfully, he didn't seem to care that I was occupying the space beside him.
In the middle of making drinks, the bartender turns to me, his eyes narrowing in on my face that I was so desperately trying to keep hidden behind my hoodie. He sets down the short glass and crosses both arms across his broad chest, leaning down so that we're eye-to-eye.
Finally, to avoid any further awkwardness, I lift my eyesight to meet his, my cheeks instantly flaming red. He catches wind of this, coming in closer. "Can I help you with something?"
He startles me with the sudden question, my bottom almost slipping off of the stool. He chuckles at this. And it's in this moment that I finally have enough nerve to openly read his name tag. Joe, it reads.
"Y-Yes, I was wondering if you had a phone I could use?" I ask quietly, reaching into my pocket to grab my cellphone, signaling to it. "Mines dead and I uh—I really need to call someone for a ride."
Joe, the so-called bartender scoffs, and returns to tending to his previous customers drinks. "Really? Stick around, have some fun. You look like you could really use it."
