Sewn {QuickEmmett}

I Found You

//Emmmett's Perspective//

The muggy March evening wasn't going well to begin with.

My mom and dad were already furious with me for taking a break from studying for senior finals. Just one day, I had begged. One fucking day of relaxation, a carefree one where I wouldn't have to cram countless algorithms and scientific theorems into my nearly unconscious head. I hadn't slept in days, not that I ever did, anyway. I couldn't help but stay up and listen to their arguing, silently promising myself that I'd never put the person I'd belong to one day through that.

By the fifty-first note I was scribbling down into my science notebook, I was ready to cry. I let myself lean back in my computer chair and ran my hands through my hair, whimpering quietly out of frustration. Couldn't do it anymore.

School-infused panic attacks were the worst. I'd known this from past experiences. So I threw on my maroon hoodie with my black skinny jeans and skipped the last three stairs on my way down, yelling to mom that I'd be gone for a while.

"Did you finish your homework? What about finals, Emmett? You can't just--"

"I am going out," I said through clenched teeth, throwing open the front door and shutting it politely behind me. She'd kill me when I got back for walking away like that, but at this rate, I didn't care. Better to be screamed at while calm than screamed at while sobbing from another panic attack.

I bent down and pulled up the old garage door, finding my great grandpa's bike and sighing at the sight of it. The old thing was rusted from me carelessly leaving it out, but I rode it around anyway, just for the sake of escaping from myself.

It was at least seven in the afternoon. This was a guess, since I hadn't cared to check on anything but the lessons in my textbooks for four hours. I climbed onto the rickety bike and put up my hood, then rode off, the empty roads and gray sky above suddenly feeling much more happy than my bedroom.

My eyes drifted over the trees as I passed them, some of them with their leaves beginning to be reborn again. Squirrels seemed to sprout out of the woodwork as well, scampering after each other up the tall oak's branches and hopping about.

I'd been alone for months now. All of my friends from last year were still there, sure, but I still felt... I don't know. It's hard to explain it... Like I'd served my purpose with them. That purpose was, and had always been, to help them. It was my thing to be the one to reassure and hug the girl who's asshole boyfriend had just decided to walk out on her with her best friend, or the guy who spent a whole night up texting a friend to convince them out of suicide.

Yes, that was... That was me.

They all had seemed to figure themselves out after that, branching out to other people like the squirrels I was seeing to scattered trees. I was done for. With nobody to really connect to now, I holed myself up in my house, reading countless books and returning to the library up the street every now and then to get a new stack of classics to cover just for the hell of it. Besides that, I just felt...

...Kind of alone.

The brakes screeched the tires to a halt once I got to the park just up the road from my house, and I hopped off, walking my bike next to me up to the nearest tree. I let down the rusted kickstand and propped it up against the tree, then stuck my hands in my pockets and strolled to the bench I always sat on to think. Nobody really came to this place, unless it was to get some pot or smooch around with their fake lovers. I was into neither of those things. I was just here to think.