Painting Flowers

Chapter 10

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'll come," I said. "When?"

  "Seven," Danny said down the line. He'd called me as soon as I'd got in the house, asking me if I wanted to come to his party next Saturday; apparently there was going to be loads of hot girls there, to which I was slightly unenthusiastic about. No idea why. "'s in mine, since my mom and dad are away on this business trip thing. Bring a friend if you want."

  "Alright," I said, nodding and stepping up the stairs to my bedroom, taking the steps two at a time and shrugging my bag off my shoulder on to the hall carpet as I reached the top landing. "Yeah. Cool. Will there be drinks and stuff?"

  Danny laughed. "'Course there'll be, bro! I mean, what's a party with some girls and booze, right?" I nodded (even though he couldn't see me). "Right, so you definitely coming?"

  "Yeah, sure," I said, pushing my door open and stepping inside. I smirked to myself as I saw that Alex's window was already open next door, almost inviting me to come in (we had this almost unspoken rule that I'd always go over to his after school, and we'd play the xBox and talk until I had to go home for dinner. It was an easy friendship).

  "'Kay, dude, I'll see you tomorrow then?" Danny asked.

  "Yeah, bye," I murmured down the line, ending the call and tossing my cell phone carelessly down on my mattress. I stared at it for a few seconds, before my gaze swung around to Alex's open bedroom window, the curtains dancing in the gentle afternoon breeze outside. I strode over to the wall of my room, sliding the glass pane upwards and sticking my head out into the air. I looked around for a little while, taking in the light blue sky and the pearly clouds peppering it above me, before managing to squeeze my legs out onto the ledge of the window, my hands grasping tightly onto the branch of Alex and I's tree so that I didn't fall into the garden (I was lucky that that hadn't happened to me yet).

  Carefully, I began to step from branch to branch over the tree, biting my lower lip as the Amelie poster in his room came into focus once I'd managed to work my way around the tree trunk and began to tightrope my way across to his window. To my surprise, however, when I reached Alex's window ledge, I peered inside his empty room. There was no sign of him; no lazily-kicked-off shoes, no bag abandoned by the doorway, no Alex lying on his bed with his nose stuck in between pages of another classic novel. Worry seeped through my body, turning my blood cold. 

  Had he been stopped by some dickheads in school? No, 'cause I saw him starting to walk home from school when I was on the bus- he waved to me. Did he get lost? Maybe. That was the highest probability. But why was the bedroom window open?

  I looked around Alex's room, the inanimate posters smiling at me through the silence. "Alex?" I called, just so that there was some sound. It felt weird to have a ringing nothing in return. "Hey, 'Lex, you in?" I wandered over to his double bed, lifting up the two pillows lying atop the duvet as though Alex was just going to pop up from behind one of them. 

  I suddenly noticed that the tape I'd leant him a few days ago (Never Coming Home by JFK) was lying at the foot of his bed, a small slip of paper sticking out from underneath it. Leaning forwards, I shoved the cassette out of the way and snatched the piece of paper up, holding it to my face and reading the words that were scrawled on it.

  "Jack,

        I have an adventure for you! You have to promise not to read ahead at these instructions, though, or else it will ruin everything!"

  I raised my eyebrows at this, smirking as the letter continued, 

  "1) Go back over to your house and get a towel/blanket out. Bring it back over (LEAVE THE BIT OF PAPER HERE, YOU ASSHOLE)."