Speechless

Chapter 5

Dan

Dan woke up that morning feeling more tired than he when he had finally been able to get to sleep last night. He rolled over and picked up his phone before groaning "Fuck..."
Somehow he had managed to sleep through his first alarm, along with his two emergency alarms and now he had missed the bus 'Day's off to a good start then...'

He slid out from beneath the warmth of his covers and was about to put on a shirt when he remembered the reason why he couldn't get any sleep last night. "Oh...Right..." he felt his stomach drop again, just as he could now remembering it doing the night before. After looking at the simple black top in his hands for a moment, he decided to find one with sleeves, on the off chance that his parents would still be home, he figured it would be easier to lie and say that he was cold, rather than having to explain that his speech mark never bloody showed up.

After pulling on some grey sweatpants he headed down stairs. Luckily, it seemed that everybody had already left the house. Dan chose to just take his morning slow by having breakfast and getting showered and get dressed in his own time, because if he had learned anything from school, it's that if you're going to be late, you may as well be really late, because the teachers will react the exact same way anyway.

***

After avoiding everybody more than usual when he finally arrived at school that day, Dan decided to take a walk, slinging his back pack over his shoulder. He really didn't have any idea where he was walking to; he just wanted something to clear his head from all of this soulmate mark nonsense.

The only thing that made him stop walking was when he found himself at a corner of a road after nearly getting hit by a car after being completely oblivious to the large 'stop walking' signal flashing on the other side of the road. Dan gestured a 'sorry' to the driver before properly taking notice of his surroundings and realising that the sky was starting to darken and he had no idea where the hell he was. 'How long have I been walking for?' He took out his phone out from the back pocket of his school trousers before realising that it was completely flat. 'Perfect...'

***

Dan was able to return home roughly one hour later after walking around a bit and realising that he recognised a street name that is about two blocks away from his school and four from his house.

Once he walked through the door, he could hear some voices coming from the dining room and decided to try and sneak past them so he wouldn't be ask any questions about the damn soul mate mark on his wrist, or rather, not on his wrist. His main reason of not wanting his family to find out was because of his younger brother. If he found out, he has almost no doubt the school would find out pretty quickly. Unlike him, his brother actually has a lot of friends... though having any friends is still more than he has, Dan supposes.

He was about to start carefully climbing up the stairs, when he managed to trip over his own school bag that he had just put down, resulting in him tripping into the banister, hitting his elbow and cursing a few times as quietly as possible. But yet...

"Dan, why are you home so late?" His mother called out from the dining room.

'Damn it...' "Umm, I just went for a walk."

"Alright, well come in here and have some dinner before it gets cold!"

'Crap.' Dan reluctantly walked into the dining room and sat down at his spot on the table next to his brother.

***

"So Dan, what does your mark say, I never got a chance to ask you yesterday?" His dad questioned him from across the table as he finished off his dinner.

Dan felt his body tense all of a sudden as all eyes went on him. He let out and awkward cough trying to give himself a tiny bit more time to think of an excuse, though the whole time he was on his walk he couldn't think of one, so he doesn't know why he thinks he can think of one within two seconds. "Umm. It doesn't matter."

"Come on Dan, you can tell us" His mum said as she looked at her son sitting straight across from her.

"It's nothing...Just boring I guess..." Dan stumbled over his words, how the hell was he supposed to get out of this for the rest of his life? Yet another question he wasn't able to solve while on his walk.

Next to him, his younger brother scoffed next to him before saying "What, don't ya have a mark or something?"

He couldn't take it anymore. Dan suddenly stood up, the sound from his chair making a horrible noise as it scratched across the floor from being pushed back so fast. "You know what? I don't have to deal with this!"

And with that, Dan rushed up the stairs, before the sound of a slamming door echoed throughout the house.