Glowing Eyes || Adopted by Josh Dun

mending

Josh

The bus was quiet aside from the faint sound of cars whizzing past on the highway and Tyler's soft breathing. I didn't know how late it was. I didn't bother to check. Tyler sat patiently across from me, leaning sleepily back into his chair. His brown hair was disheveled, and his eyes sagged with exhaustion. He only had plaid pajama pants on, and still smelt faintly of shampoo.

I kept replaying last night over and over in my mind. No matter how hard I tried, my brain somehow brought the memory back up to the surface.

We had a show, and it was great, they were always great. But all I seemed to remember was walking off stage. Jenna was there, a wide smile on her giddy face. She hugged Tyler tightly, listing off exclamations about how amazing the show was that I didn't really pay any attention to. I was to focused on the empty, homesick pit in my stomach. Lynn wasn't there. She was always there. She was always there.

I don't know why I was surprised. Lynn hasn't been able to do.. anything for the past few days. She's stayed holed up in her bunk, sleeping, listening to music, or writing in her journal. She won't even play piano. She won't even eat. I couldn't decide if it was just like when her mom died or if it was worse than that.

I didn't blame her, I mean, how do you take that kind of news? How do you handle someone you've known and been friends with your entire life admitting that they killed your mom? How does someone move on from that?
It was bad enough that she died, but to find out she was murdered...

Finally, I couldn't take it any more. I looked up at Tyler. "Why didn't I make her wait for me to get up?"

Tyler cast me a vaguely confused look, so I elaborated.

"When she asked if she could leave to go to the cafe that morning. Why didn't I just make her wait?" I trailed off, staring down at the patterns in the table. "None of this would have happened if I had just taken better care of her."

"Josh tha-" Tyler tried to reason with me, but I cut him off. I was past reasoning.

"Everything that's happened to her. All of these horrible things," I gained speed as I continued, turning more spastic with every inhale. "With Ryan, with Linus. I could've stopped them. I-If I would've just taken better care of her."

"Josh-"

"Maybe I shouldn't have adopted her. M-Maybe I just did that because I was selfish. Because I just couldn't d-detach myself from her and let her go to a family that could actually take care of her and wasn't in their twenties and wasn't single and wasn't completely inexperienced and wasn't in a band that had to take her away from school and wasn't so clueless and wasn't and wasn't and wasn't..." I just kept repeating it, gasping and shaking.

"Josh!" Tyler barked, finally snapping me out of my downwards spiral. I looked up at him through blurred eyes. My hands were shaking and my mind was running so fast that I couldn't keep up with it.

My best friend looked at me with earnest, deep brown eyes. "None of this was your fault," he pleaded. "And it wasn't her fault either. Neither of you deserve what happened, but you can't stop it. Sometimes horrible things happen to amazing people and it's awful but it's life. You can't blame yourself for life, Josh. You can't put that all on your shoulders."

He paused a little, a smile tugging on the edges of his lips. "And just think about all you've done for her. You've given her an amazing family. She's traveling the country, and soon the world. She has the most awesome dad I've ever met-" he laughed lightly "-and you took her out of the horrible situation she was in. You've given her a safe place where she feels at home. You gave her a home, Josh. And sure, some things from her past are still coming to haunt her, but now she finally has a way to stop them. She has people to help her, and you did that. You gave that to her."