✔︎ Simple Beginnings || Zach Herron

<17>

P: JACK PLEASE

Still, no response, what is going on right now? I decided to go outside for a walk; maybe they were all just at Starbucks or something... I plugged in my headphones and put my music on shuffle; the first sone go come up was 'perfect,' jsut great. I didn't want to shuffle the music, so I let it play out. As I reached Starbucks, I looked inside and saw none of them, but since I walked this far, I decided to get a caramel frappe anyways. After sitting down in the coffee shop for about twenty minutes my phone buzzed.

J: hey Haven,

J: so basically we left...

H: what?

J: while you were sleeping we booked tickets back to LA...

H: you're kidding me right

J: no
read 1:12 pm

I stood up immediately and rushed out of Starbucks, running home. The wind was hard on me, but I was able to get home in ten minutes while trying to hold back even more tears than before. I unlocked the front door to see mom and were playing in the kitchen.

"mom, when did they leave?"

"Oh honey, you're awake!"

"mom."

She took a deep breath and explained everything. How Zach felt so sorry for cheating and wanted never to see me again. How Jack yelled at him after I went to bed and how the band didn't and wasn't going to come back here again. All because of me. I took the hood of Zach's hoodie and wrapped it around my face and went to lay on the couch. Isla went upstairs to play with her dolls and mom went with her leaving me sobbing in the living room.

The next day I was forced out of bed by Suhani at six am to get ready for school. Since the boys were gone, I guess it was back to my ordinary life. While we were walking to school, there was awkward silence the entire way there. As I stepped through the front doors of the building, there were eyes every which way all on me. I stepped through the people watching me and made my way to my locker. 

The day felt like it was dragging on for years. And once the final bell rang for the school day I was dragging myself out the doors completely ignoring everyone around me. As I got home, I foul=nd my mom sitting on her computer watching some video of a cooking channel.

"hey mom," I started. "do you think it would be okay if I did online schooling?"

"really?"

"well, yeah, Jack does it, and he's pretty smart, and I don't want to go back to that hell hole."

It took me thirty minutes of convincing my mom until she signed me up for the schooling sight. I gave her the biggest hug and ran back up to my room and had to tell Suhani about what I was doing. After my phone call with her, the back and forth screams and disagreeing I had lost my only friend. There was a hint of sadness after I got off the phone with her, mostly was because she had been with me since I was eight, making me laugh and cry all at the same time. But in these past few months of our friendship became something different.

Suhani would bail me hours before out pre-planned pizza parties started, in school, she found her new group of friends and at times just ghosted me. Yes, there was a tad bit of relief after the call, but now, I was truly alone. Jack and the boys were gone, my mom is more interested in my sister's doll obsession than my actual life. Now for the rest of my life, I could lay in my bed, do school and be the most anti-social child ever.

J: Paige

J: Paige

J: mom said you enrolled in online school.

J: is this accurate?
read - 4:56 pm

I didn't want to answer jack or any of the guys at the moment; he left me without saying a thing now it's my turn I guess. I threw my phone across the room and flopped onto my bed, still wearing zach's sweatshirt and fell asleep crying once again.