if you look at him, he'll kill you!

5: some sort of crazy stalker

joshua felt bad.

he didn't know anything about that kid. and he caused him to run out of the room.

but he had good reasoning as to why he did what he did. he left his last school because he was an outcast. he was teased and abused and yelled at and called names and pushed down in hallways and separated and- oh.

so was tyler.

josh felt like utter shit when he realized. he was no better than jack, or alex, or daniel, or tristan, or any of the kids he had befriended on his first day.

or chris.

no. fuck that. he was better than chris in every way.

chris was an asshole, josh was just surviving.

yeah. he was just trying to make it through junior year in one piece.

survival.

it's a scary thing, isn't it? the strong and the powerful and the rich come out on top, they thrive while the weak and the poor are stuck, crying for help at the bottom. but that's just how the world was.

it wasn't like josh meant to hurt tyler.

he just wanted to not be associated with the boy. obviously there was something that happened to make everyone in the school treat him like that, right? maybe it was just best if he stayed away from tyler altogether.

yeah, he decided, stay away.

and he kept telling himself that, on the entire duration of his walk home from school. he was going to avoid tyler at all costs.

he enjoyed walking, that's why he turned down his mom's offer to drive him home.

he didn't exactly know his way back but he'd figure it out.

josh knew he just needed to clear his head, get tyler out of his thoughts.

he needed a distraction.

he thought about his old school, how he was sad to leave his few friends but now he has an abundance of people who seem to care so it wasn't that bad. he'd call ashley and frank when he got home, see how they're doing. he knew that frank recently started dating someone. he decided to think about that for the remainder of his walk.

about five minutes later he realized he wasn't alone on the path he was walking.

he turned around to see someone about ten feet behind him in a black hoodie with the hood pulled tightly over their head, concealing their face.

joshua knew where he was at this point, he was about ten minutes from his house and he decided that maybe if he just forgot about the quick walking stranger behind him then maybe he'd just get home and go play video games with his brother.

he turned down a road that lead to his, scowling when a couple of seconds later, the stranger also turned.

coincidence. they probably live on this street.

josh remembered that there should be three more turns before he should arrive home so if this person follows him down those streets then he'll know something is wrong. right?

he continued walking, wringing his hands to disc tract him self.

first turn.

and there was the person.

josh didn't want to admit it but his heart was definitely pounding a few beats faster than normal. okay, maybe more than a few.

second turn.

and there they go, turning down that street as well.

what the fuck.

josh picked up his pace a big, signing in relief when he saw that he person didn't seem to speed up.

third turn.

and they followed.

josh was done.

"why the fuck are you following me?" he demanded, clenching his fists in what he'd say was anger but was actually more fear related.

the person reached up, pulling their hood off of their head.

"tyler? what the fuck! they were right! you are a fucking psy-"

"no," tyler responded, looking up at josh with a surprisingly non-psychotic look in his eyes.

"no? what? the fuck do you mean, no? you were following me like some sort of crazy stalker."

"actually, i wasn't," tyler replied quietly, looking down and digging the toe of his vans into the sand below his feet. "i wasn't following you. i was simply walking home. i live right there."

josh's face dropped. he followed tyler's hand to the house next to his.

fuck.

"oh. um."

"yeah. i'm gonna go now."

josh sighed as tyler walked away, climbing the steps to his house.

and as josh climbed the steps of his own, he heard yelling coming from tyler's, followed by a slam of a door.

he knew that he had royally fucked up this time.

-

773 words

published on june 22, 2019