The Secrets of the West Side Forest

We Never Know The Things We Do

Xander's POV:

I can still hear the whispering ringing in my ears. The stares would burn a hole in my back until I couldn't take it anymore. They would call me names, laugh at me like I was invisible.

But they didn't know me, they didn't know my story. No one did, no one knew who I was, but to them it didn't matter. They had their kid to pick on, and single him out. I could disapear and no one would care... and that's just what I did.

I remember those voices so loudly, mocking my intelligence, haunting my thoughts. There is nothing worse then feeling trapped, and you knew the only way to free yourself from being trapped is to break free.

I turned, grabbing his head and smashing it against the lockers. He struggled to get up, but I wouldn't have known because I never looked back. I walked out of the school like any other kid in the middle of the day and kept going. School was the last thing on my mind from that day forward.

No one would care if I was gone right? I packed food, clothes, and my camera before heading out the same way I came in. 

Two months had gone by and no one cared. I had learned to make a tent and hunt for what ever I needed. I wasn't exactly all gone because I did go into town for food, and certain survival techniques. 

How I paid was my little secret; It wasn't until I met her that everything I thought I believed in had changed.

Her voice was like velvet, wrapping around the dark woods of the West Side Forest.

"I'm sick of all these girls obsessing over themselves and the latest trends. It's just stupid and useless."

The voice grew closer, too close... What was someone doing on this side of town, let alone a girl. My name... Why was she saying my name. I tried to listen harder... was she talking to someone or herself.

"I wish I could run off like that kid. I mean the whole bashing kids heads into lockers is completely unnecessary but I have no right to judge. Luck. That's what it was... to get away with something like that. To escape into a new world."

Isabella's POV:

That day was not one that I wanted to remember. Moving day as my dad liked to call it. School at WestSide was not like anywhere else I had been. They had those stupid high school cliques that you only saw in movies.

Lunch was the one time I got to be alone. I took my seat on the bathroom counter and listened into any kind of gossip that I could grasp. 

There were these girls giggling about some boy named Xander. 

"I still can't believe they can't find him, it's been two months."

"I still can't believe the way he smashed that kid's head into the locker and just walked away like nothing was wrong."

"Guys, who cares... we lost one of the hottest guys in our school..."

I rolled my eyes at that girls comment, but I wanted to know more about this kid Xander... what exactly happened. I wanted to ask, but they would probably just laugh, and that was one more thing I didn't want to start  off with.