WHERE THE LOST ONES WILL GO

five

I will not wake up from the nightmare I live in.

My mind has to remind me every so often that this is not as bad as prison and rehab. Nothing will be worse than the lousy meals, loneliness, hard bed and glaring eyes of every other person around me. Nothing will be worse than staring at the ceiling for days until I have counted the 238 tiles above my head.

I suppose it is just different. Not a worse different, but a bad different. I stay in my room after Parker and I's conversation, and I do not leave to join the busy voices in the living room. I hear Kieran laugh and Parker and Dylan's senseless chatter, but I can't urge myself to join them. I don't think it would be a particularly good idea either. They live in their small world in this small town and I do not reckon I can make myself fit.

I will be gone, I remind myself. In a few months, I will never have to see this place again.

Then I come to the realisation that to do so, I'll have to have money. To move back to Chicago I'll need a shit ton of it. So I'll need a job. No one will hire an ex-juvie with a bad criminal record. I'll have to talk to Dylan about it. He reminds me countlessly that no one will know about my past but it is inevitable.

Speaking about Dylan, I suppose that is another reason why I have not bothered to leave this room, which I have to admit, is really, really nice. He has not left me out of his eyesight since I stepped out of the centre, and he's kept an even closer reign on me since we had that conversation at the diner. He's scared I'll run. Dylan is scared of a lot of things I'll do.

So now, I do not have the eyes of anyone on me. I suppose I did at juvie, but there had been cameras everywhere. Now, I am alone. You would not think that after battling the loneliness of two years, I would trap myself in its hold again. But I have, willingly.

There is suddenly a knock on my door. My silence is broken.

"Get lost, Dylan," I call.

The door opens. It's Kieran. I had not realised the chatter in the living room had stopped.

"I'm not Dylan," he informs me, his eyes travelling around the room slowly.

"I can see that."

"He wanted to talk to you," he then explains.

I laugh. "Nah."

"Okay then." Kieran's eyes still do not stay on me.

I sigh and sit up. "What do you want to know?"

His eyes snap at me. "Uh, nothing?"

"Your face tells me enough. Spit it out."

"Why were you in juvie?" he blurts out. "Sorry. Parker won't tell us and Dylan usually isn't this secretive."

"Is that so?" I hum.

We move back into the silence I was just in. Only now it is laced with apprehension and tenseness.

"I'll tell you," I eventually admit, and Kieran's eyes widen. Then, I add, "Later."

"Later?" Kieran blinks. "When?"

"Later," I do not clarify. "Why do you want to know anyway?"

"You were gone for two years," he explains as if I do not know myself. "At least, that's what Dylan's said. He showed up one day, you know, and didn't bother leaving. I wanted to know why he came here."

'Here,' Kieran says with a sudden pause. He says it in such a way with a meaning that I can identify a little too well. Because no one comes to this small town — village —- in the middle of nowhere, for no good reason. They come here for an escape. Dylan isn't the only one here trying to outrun his past.