smile | cth

2- all alone

I wake up with a gasp, drenched in sweat and tears. I reach out for a bottle of water and untangle the bed sheets from around my legs. After gulping down some of the cold water, I grab my iPhone and switch it on, holding back my tears when I see that there's still no messages or calls from Calum. 

He disappeared after leaving my house last night, didn't call anyone, didn't tell me why he left, didn't drop by Michael's house. Then, at 11:30 we had a call from his mum asking where he was, when I said I didn't know, she laughed and said we needed to stop joking around. 

She laughed. 

She laughed when I told her I didn't know where her son was, she laughed when she found out her son had disappeared. 

I had demanded for her to put Mali on the phone, but apparently I needed sleep, not someone to talk to. 

The next morning, he isn't at school. Or if he is, he's avoiding me. Michael is first to sit beside me at lunch, followed by his girlfriend Violet. As my name is Jade, and hers is Violet, Michael and Calum used to always call us the 'purple pair'. It was cringey, but we liked it. 

"So, he's really not here?" Violet asks, taking a bite from her pizza and looking around for Calum. 

I say, "No," without even thinking about it. My plate of pizza sits untouched and cold in front of me, the fries surrounding it greying slightly. Michael has his arm around the back of Violet's chair, but he isn't quite touching her. 

"I'm sure he's okay." He says, but I'm not quite so sure. 

I know a lot more about Calum than either of them do, put together. I know how he struggles at home, I know how he feels he isn't good enough, I know that his obsession with The Fault In Our Stars isn't healthy. Slowly standing up, I grab my lunch tray and dump it all beside the sinks where we're supposed to leave it. 

As I'm leaving the cafeteria, my eyes meet my twin brother's and he stops laughing with his best friends Luke and Ashton, just for a second. 

His name is Shawn, and we couldn't be more different. He's popular, fun and has probably had more sex in the last two years than our parents have had in their entire marriage. 

"Jade- where are you going?" Michael calls after me, but I'm gone. 

My mind is elsewhere, with Calum. He's my best friend, I need to know he's safe. It's like this weird magnetic pull, pulling me towards him, and wanting me to know he's safe. 

I've never skipped class before, but something is telling me to do just that this afternoon and go find Calum. 

It's still lunchtime, which means I can walk straight out of the building without any questions being asked. I'm just about to do that when I hear a few voices behind me. 

"Don't- Shawn-"

"She's my sister." 

I spin around and see Shawn standing with Luke and Ashton, Mikey and Violet running over to him. "If you're going to find Calum, I'm coming too." Shawn says, his eyes locking with mine. We have the same dark brown eyes and brown hair, except on him it looks exciting and well, good. On me, it looks boring. Luke groans from beside my brother and nudges Ashton, neither of these two like Calum or enjoy his company. They might as well be holding signs that read 'we couldn't care less'. 

"Yeah me too." Michael says, stepping away from Violet just enough to be a tiny bit closer to Shawn. I look in between the two boys before nodding. They grin at each other, but I turn around and run. 

Calum 

I hide my eyes in my knees again, the shouting and screaming replaying in my head. The walls were falling in on me again, I could barely breathe. No matter how fast my heart beats, my world will move in slow motion. The room fills with water and I splutter for air, but everything is black. Everything is gone. The heat, the air, the warmth, the easiness, it's all gone. 

This is not a home. 

It may be my house, but there's no way in hell this is my home. 

"Calum!" The shouting up the stairs makes me feel worse, and I grip my hair in my fists, tugging on it. "Calum!" I lose the air in my throat and inhale quickly, pulling at my dark locks of hair harder and harder. 

Jade won't think to look for me here, she'll think I've run. It wouldn't be the first time, I've run before. I didn't make it very far before she caught me. That was on a Saturday, she only noticed I'd left because I was supposed to turn up to a study session - we both had known it was just an excuse for me to read. 

Today we had school, and as the complete nerd she is, she'll hopefully be waiting until the end of the day to try and find me. Even if she does leave early, she'll go looking for me away from school, away from my house, away from it all. 

I know her too well, she won't even think of looking in my own bedroom, in my own house. I'm 100% certain that she'll think I've been running from my house, not hiding inside it. 

"Calum Thomas Hood. You get down here right now." 

"Calum!" 

I don't believe in happily ever afters. I believe that the world is a cruel, horrible place and since we all end up dead anyway, even good, innocent people get life thrown at them with a tonne of bricks. 

"Calum!" 

I don't believe in true love. I barely even believe in love. It's just a made up word for strongly liking someone. It's all in our heads. As humans, we get confused and mixed up between lust, trust and a crush, and eventually we think it's love. We label these feelings as 'love' because it's easier than explaining how we really feel. 

I tell Jade I love her, because there's no way on earth she'd understand my thoughts. 

I barely understand myself. 

The truth is, I don't know what love feels like. My parents don't care, my sister left as soon as she could, Jade says she loves me but she doesn't even know me. 

Nobody knows me. 

I'm so alone in this huge world, and I'm not sure I have anyone to help me. 

Author: I'm back bitches 

I need sleep as well lmao

Anyway, difficult is gonna be updated this morning as well