TRAITOR || the music freaks

CHAPTER ONE: lost

It had taken all the battery on Jake's phone to find the old park leading into a forest. The boy shoved through the trees in an attempt to find what he was looking for.

Eventually, he found it. A tree house in the beginning of the woods, beaten by the wind from all its years standing, but still somehow there.

It wasn't the best place to sleep but it would make do until he could find a way to contact his mom.

Granted, she'd probably of called the police right now. She was quick to notice that Milo was missing when he left him at the grocery store that one time so she'd probably realise her eldest was missing and not responding to her calls.

He climbed inside the house that was the centre of his childhood. When he was younger, he used to come here with Milo and they'd mess for a bit.

Jake saw writing on the wall reading 'Jenna & Milo'. This caused a sense of unease within' the boy making him uncomfortable. Then again it was the only place he could stay so he'd have to suck up the wall dead-naming him.

☆★☆★☆★☆

Hailey sat in the music room that lunch time. Sure they weren't going to arrive for rehearsals for another couple of minutes, but that would just give her enough time to sit in peace.

Of-course the teal haired girl usually sat with the music club in the cafeteria. Unlucky for her, they were all rambling in the cafeteria over Jake's 'obvious' betrayal and listening to their ranting was the last thing she wanted to do at this moment in time.

She reached for her airpod case and quickly put them on, turning on a random album for the sake of comforting background noise.

One notification from a groupchat that hadn't been active in over a month went off. Hailey brushed it off, she'd check it later.

But then more and more came through. Class group chats were pinging and the noise was becoming a temptation she could no longer ignore.

The first couple of messages she read were kinda the basics. Things you always expect to see when you open these kind of chats such as follow my TikTok and some argument.

But then it started to darken. The group chat became like a memorial but not in a jokingly way. Something had happened to someone.

These message began with:

< Unknown [ Did you hear about what happened? ]

< ?? [ Was this abt that boy? Been getting dmd by my mom all day. ]

< Maybe S? [ He's definitely dead ]

It was quite anonymous at first. An incident had taken place and everyone - or more accurately everybody's parents - were freaking out about it. Hailey knew nothing more but nothing less.

And quite frankly it never stopped being that subtle. If anything it got worse the more the messages went on.

So Hailey took matters into her own hands. Matters meaning finding out what the situation was.

She recalled a girl in her class mentioning how it was on the news so she decided that'd be the first place she searched and boy did it take her hardly any time because before the teal haired girl could scroll once, she saw what everyone was talking about.

The headline read Teen Boy goes Missing. The article went on to mention how he didn't make it back from school yesterday evening and hadn't returned home.

The name was immediately mentioned.

The name being: Jake Sterling

Hailey started to go into a panic. Had it been her fault he went missing?

She'd just kicked him out of the club the other day. Surely that couldn't be the reason. Right? Right?

The club will be arriving now, she thought to herself. Hailey gave herself a bit of a prep talk in her head, took a couple of breaths and stood up.

She walked over to the desk in-front of her and got out her note book filled with concepts and music sheets for the competition. Maybe she could get some work done before the others arrived. But she knew for a fact part of her was only doing this to keep her mind off the incident. After all, ignorance is bliss.

☆★☆★☆★☆

Jake had gone back and forth on whether to ask someone if he could use their phone. Every time he saw someone enter the forest half of the park he'd debate jumping down until the voice in his head just started screaming at him not to.

Why exactly? Well cause he might look like a creep. Or hell a robber or a criminal. He didn't want to be suspected of criminal activity at a time like now.

So he just settled at making life out of the tree-house for the time being. Tomorrow, he would leave and find home if home didn't find him. Granted, home probably wasn't expecting him here of all places.

Food had also been another issue for the boy. Of course, missing one meal yesterday was fine but after missing four whole meals it began to catch him of guard whenever he'd suddenly feel like being sick or start biting his nails.

Biting nails was something that Jake never really did. When he got stressed, he'd find any way to get around it but biting his nails was never one. Now, they were all practically gone out of hunger. Although, maybe some of them had to do with the day prior.

Despite all this though, Jake couldn't take his eyes of the text scrapped into the wall. "Jenna and Milo." Seeing his deadname after years just caught him off guard.

He'd changed his name in the last year of middle school after a long debate. But here he was being reminded of what most and he himself had forgotten.

☆★☆★☆★☆

She hadn't managed to take her head of it all day. Even during sixth and seventh period the reminder that her ex-friend had gone missing haunted her.

The reminder of it from gossip didn't help here. People in her class kept complaining that it was his fault their parents were forcing them to come straight home. Constant mockery of his runaway were made and on several occasions Hailey nearly started yelling.

Nearly. She would always realise at some point that it happened right after she kicked him out the club and until further notice she was the one to blame.

On a non-personal level though, Hailey found this quite irritating and disrespectful. One of their classmates was fucking missing but all they could care about was whether they got to hang out after school.

And even as she walked out of school she saw everyone messaging each other complaining. Well okay — maybe it was only 4 or 5 people, but it was still enough to anger the teen.

But that was when an idea struck her.

Hailey opened up her phone and got onto Snapchat. If there was anything she geniunely found weird about this app;

It was the fact she could track her friends phones.

And that was something that could really help her right now.

☆★☆★☆★☆

jj xz