swing set {joshler}

thirty five - fear in your eyes

Josh is sitting in his English class, listening to the boring lecture.

"Your exam is next week. I hope you all studied your reviews."

Josh's attention returns to her as the bell rang and he remembers his review. He approaches his teacher with great courage and speaks, rather uncertainly.

"Miss, could I get another review. I lost mine."

"I'm sorry, Josh, but you know the rules, only one review is allowed per person. I guess you'll just have to study with someone else."

Josh nods and walks out. Every single person in his class either hates him or doesn't even know he exists. Great. He was going to fail.

"Josh, wait!"

Josh stops in the doorway and gets back inside the classroom where his teacher is waiting for him.

"Did you write this?"

She shows him the English essay he didn't write. Yet, he's nodding.

"It's amazing. The way you described everything is the purest form of poetry. Here."

She hands it to him with a big 100% circled in red at the top. His eyes widen and he thanks her, walking away. He nearly forgot all about this. When Josh gets home, he grabs his bike and heads to the swing set where he pleasantly finds Tyler.

"Good evening."

He takes a seat beside Tyler and he watches the boy smile through his mask. He can feel his cheekbones widen when he smiles, yet he can only see his lips.

"Good evening. How was your day?"

"Shit, yours?"

"What happened?"

"My teacher won't give me another review for my English exam next week. Which means, I'm going to fail. These fucking guys burnt it. I hate them, all of them, I fucking hate them so much."

Tyler is shaking, he can't breathe. He's one of those guys, one of the guys Josh hates so fucking much. He's also responsible for him failing.

"Hey, you okay?"

"What? Yeah, just, I have to go. My mom wants me back by 8. Bye."

When Tyler leaves, Josh has no chance to protest nor speak. He does, however, stay a little longer on the swing set, swinging and then he's glancing at his watch. It's barely 6 o'clock. There's no way this kid's walking two hours every day to get here and another 2 to get back. He just lied to him, but why?