the quiet ⭑ joshler

六

the lessons past quickly on that monday morning, josh didn't find the lessons particularly hard because he had already learnt most of the stuff at his old school.

by the time lunch rolled around, he'd became quite good friends with ryan-he had good music taste.

josh sat with ashley, brendon, ryan and bill at lunch, on a table that was second to last of the corner of the room.

the table that was in the corner of the room was occupied by the boy from the forest, that he had seen in the office this morning. the boy had his ear plugs in, and josh noticed that nobody sat near him.

"who's that?" josh asked brendon, nodding at the pale boy.

"that's tyler. he doesn't talk much-well, at all, really." brendon says.

"he's a mute." ashley chips in.

"has he always been like that?" josh asks.

ashley looks at brendon nervously, like there's something she doesn't know whether she's supposed to say or not.

"no." she says finally. "you actually used to not really get him to shut up." ashley smiles. "but he was always talking to an 'imaginary friend', and he got bullied for it. one time the bullying got so bad he had to go to hospital."

"why didn't anyone try to stop the bully?"

there was a long pause this time, with more awkward glances from ashley to brendon.

ashley breathed in. "because his imaginary friend was the bully."

"bull shit!" brendon half shouted.

"well who was it then?" asked ashley defensively. "no one in their right mind would've touched him! you know how delicate he is!"

"oh, stop trying to defend him! his parents were abusing him!" brendon tried not to be so loud because we were still in the canteen.

"you've got to be joking! his parents wouldn't hurt a fly-"

"stop." josh said calmly, brendon and ashley both tilting their heads down to look at josh. "whatever happened, has happened, so stop arguing."

"we weren't-" brendon was going to finish but the look ryan gave brendon told him to just let it go.

the rest of lunch was pretty awkward and when ryan and josh were walking to last lesson, ryan kept having to tell him that it wasn't his fault and that he should probably not bring up the "tyler" thing again.

when the last bell rang for the end of the day, josh was about to get up from his seat when someone tripped over his chair and fell over.

"sorry," josh quickly stood up, realising that the boy who had tripped was tyler.

josh offered tyler his hand and pulled him back up to a standing position.

are you ok?, josh signed.

tylers eyes widened, like he was in mixed shock to how this boy knew he didn't speak and how he knew sign at the same time.

tyler nodded, quickly picking up his bag and walking out of the classroom.

great, he hates me, josh thought, as he gathered his stuff together and was about to leave when he noticed a notebook lying on the floor.

it was right by where tyler had fell, so he assumed it must have fell out of tylers bag or something.

josh ran out of the school quickly with the notebook in his hand, but he couldn't see tyler anywhere, he must've gone already.

josh sighed and put the notebook in his rucksack, deciding that he should just give it to him tomorrow.

-

i kinda wanna make a shrek fic but would that be too weird ++ everyone seems to hate shrek atm