Guilty Conscience

Chapter 8

Patrick trudged down the hallway to his locker on Monday. He just knew Mikey had to be annoyed with him for not showing up that weekend. With Pete already not talking to him he expected this to be a very lonely week.

He was very surprised to find not only Mikey, but Atticus & Ray waiting by his locker.

"You okay? What happened?" Mikey questioned as soon as he reached them.

Patrick responded while opening his locker "Mom knew I got home late the other night too & said she didn't want it to keep happening."

"That sucks, man, sorry." Mikey responded sympathetically.

"Is Mikey here being a bad influence on you?" Ray asked with a smirk.

"How dare you corrupt this sweet innocent boy!" Atticus sarcastically scolded before the two broke into laughter.

Patrick knew he was blushing at that comment, but didn't realize just how much. "You must be right." Ray comments to Atticus, making the two laugh even more.

Mikey rolled his eyes "Yeah yeah, very funny." He gave Ray a light shove before returning his attention to Patrick. "See you at lunch." he turned with a half wave and the three left for class.

--

Pete hadn't been there in any of their shared classes today and Patrick wondered why. He was also secretly a bit relieved not to have to deal with more argueing or just being ignored by his best friend.

When lunchtime finally rolled around, Patrick went to meet the three at their usual spot. When he turned the corner he saw Gerard and Frank already walking over to them. That was a bit strange, but he went over and sat down with all of them just as Mikey, giving his brother a suspicious look, asked the question they all actually wanted to.

"Why are you guys here? What happened?"

Gerard gave an over exaggerated offended look "I can't decide I just want to have lunch with my little brother?"

Mikey responded "You could, but you wouldn't. So spill, what happened?"

Gerard abandoned the act and shrugged, crossing his arms. "No clue, we just couldn't go chill under the bleachers like we usually do."

"The principal herself is down there chasing people away, so something definitely happened though." Frank added before shoving some chips in his mouth.

They all spent the rest of lunch speculating on what it could have been.

--

By the end of the day Patrick was starting to get concerned over the fact that Pete never showed up that day. He decided he would stop by Pete's house on the way home to check and see if he was okay. He was probably just sick or skipped school or something.

He quickly grabbed his stuff from his locker & left campus. He had only made it a block away before a car pulled up beside him and stopped.

The backseat window rolled down and Mikey yelled over the music "Get in! We'll give you a lift home."

Patrick shook his head yelling back "I'm gonna go check on Pete, he wasn't at school today."

Mikey sighed, knowing not to even ask his brother to take them & grabbed his bag, rolling up the window and jumping out of the car, waving for them to go on. "I'll go with you. I overheard his girlfriends best friend say something about him-" he stopped when he saw Patrick's worried expression " You know what though, she likes to exaggerate, probably isn't even true, hardly worth mentioning, don't even know why I did.... moving on." he cleared his throat awkwardly & stared ahead of them.