Wings

Desperate

~"Have the courage to live. Anyone can die." ~Robert Cody~~

I awoke in the middle of the night, sitting straight up in my bed. Reflexively my eyes glanced out the door of my balcony and, once again, I saw the mysterious shadow boy. I knew that as soon as I got up and opened the door, he would disappear, but I was desperate. I needed answers.

Carefully, I climbed out from under my warm covers and walked over to my balcony door and opened it. As I had assumed, he vanished before I even stepped onto the cold concrete.

"I know you're out here!" I hollered out into the dark night. When he didn't reappear, I added, "Please? I just want to talk. I need to know what's going on."

It was a strange feeling, talking to no one. I waited another minute or two before I gave up and returned back to the warmth of my bedroom. Though I climbed in bed and closed my eyes, I did not fall asleep automatically. I lied awake for a while knowing that I needed to talk to this mysterious boy or I would go crazy.

Eventually when I reawakened, the sun was dimly shining behind a gray cloud of cold. After changing into warm clothing, I decided to take a brief walk outside to wake myself up. However, before I left, my stomach grumbled and I grabbed a cereal bar to snack on during my walk.

I closed the front door behind me and walked down the frosted streets, leaving a trail of footprints behind me.

After a while the tingling sensation of being followed came over me and I quickly thought my actions through. Before the sensation would have a chance to leave, I turned around on my heels and saw the figure of the hooded mystery boy, standing with his hands in his pockets. He vanished as soon as my mind registered that it was him.

I ran over to where he had just been standing and gave an exasperated sigh when I failed to spot him within the area. "Come on!" I shouted with frustration. "I just want to talk to you!" Self consciously, I looked around to see if anyone was near me to have heard my sudden outburst of insanity. Luckily the streets were empty.

Being even more frustrated than when I had left my house, I decided my walk was over. When I stepped back into the house, Jack was finally up and eating breakfast.

"Where were you?" he asked, semi-curiously.

"Walking," I answered, whizzing by him and hurrying up to my room before he tried to make more conversation. I wasn't in the mood to talk to anybody, not even Jack. I was too frustrated and angry at the disappearing boy.

Who was he? And why did he keep appearing and then disappearing?

I took a on my desk chair and picked up a pencil, deciding to attack this matter logically. I tore out a piece of paper from my notebook and tapped my pencil on my desk as I struggled to think of what to write down about this boy that would help me.

For starters, I wrote how often I had seen him...everyday. He was always behind me though, never in front, as if he were following me for some reason. 

Next I jotted down that all of my encounters with him had been outside. I quickly scratched out the word, all, as I realized that he had also been in my English class one day.

Once again I tapped my pencil, waiting for more ideas. I wrote down what I had last seen him wearing: dark jeans and a gray hooded shirt under a black jacket.

Nothing else seemed to come to mind so I studied what I had written down. I still didn't understand why I kept seeing him or who he was. None of this made sense!

Then I remembered how he had saved me last night from that thug. If he hadn't come in and beat the thug up, I honestly didn't know what would've happened but I knew it wouldn't have been good. This made me remember how he had also saved me from getting smashed by an oncoming car.