My 'One and Only' : Matthew Espinosa

Chapter 6: The Hanging Trees

My eyes flutter open to the sight of a plain white room. What happened? I try to get up but realize I have tubes connected to my arms. I scratch my head to reveal a searing pain. Grabbing a small hand mirror at my bedside, I see that I have a big bandage on the middle of my forehead.

At that moment the nurse walks in with my mother and Dustin. "Glad to see that you're finally up. How are you feeling?" The nurse asks me. "Wait finally up? What do you mean?" I say confused. "Thalia you've been asleep for three days," says my mom. "What?! Three days?! What happened?" I start to get up. "You heard something from your phone and passed out, hitting your head on part of the table," my mom says while the nurse starts unplugging the aching tubes.

"Oh. Dustin is he really gone?" I ask with my eyes welling up with tears. I see him slowly nod his head "I'm sorry T..." The doctor bursts into the room "Miss Summers you may go home now." She states. I take my things and head home.

Arriving at home, I sprint straight up to my room and cry for hours. I finally settle down enough for me to process this. How did this happen? Why did this happen? Who and why did they do this? And wait...he...loved me?

"Hey honey, is there anything you need?" My mom asks standing in my doorframe. "Nash. I need Nash." She nods and walks away. I open up my phone to call him and see I have over 1,000 notifications. 64 calls and messages and the rest is from Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.
Checking the messages, I see that Sammy sent me a message:

Sammy: Hey T. Your mom told me what happened and I was wondering if you're ok? :(

I decide to reply.

Me: Hey Sam. Sorry about missing the dinner :( I'm...surviving if that counts as anything?

Next, I go to Nash and ask him to come over ASAP. At this point Sammy replies.

Sammy: Hey it's ok! Some other time? Will figure it out later. I'll let you get some rest. See ya <3

In less than a minute, Nash is at my door. "Come on let's go" he says grabbing my hand and pulling met towards the car. "Where are we going?" I ask. "I dont know somewhere special" he says attaching our hands.

We end up at this small little park that looks abandoned. All the trees around the area are all dead except for one. He leads me over to it and we sit down. I glance around to see that the tree has leaves that are a bright shade of green with several other oranges and yellows.

"What's with this place?" I question. "Well it's a park..." He starts. "Haha no duh but why did we come here?" I ask. "Well it's my hideout that I come to whenever I need a break and I wanted to show it to you." "Oh. This is a really pretty tree" I say looking up once again. "Yeah it is. This place was covered with trees like this." "What happened to it?" I ask.

He sighs, "It all started out being a group hangout with my friends and I to get away from outside life, like school. We all wanted to do great in life, but peer pressure got in the way and some of us couldn't take it. Friends of mine kept disappearing day after day after day and I always wondered what happened to them, that was until I came back to my hiding spot. Here, I found each one of them, hanging from the trees with ropes around their necks." By now he has tears streaming down his face.

"All the trees were filled with the hanging bodies, except for this one." We both look up at the beautiful collaboration of colors mixed together. "What about it? Has it been used?" He shakes his head.

"Not yet. This one's mine."

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Hey guys! Sorry I haven't updated in awhile! I've been really busy lately but I'll try to update more!
~Xoxo Thalia