Quarantine Bae

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Tivonte's POV

"Are you OK?" I ask Jared.

"I'm fine. How long do I have to be in here?"

"Just until we know that you don't have it..."

He stays quiet. The longer he doesn't respond the worse I feel about it. I hate just hearing my friend's low distant depressed tone in his voice.

After a few seconds I knock on the door again, "Jared? Jared can you hear me..."

"It's fine. Just...leave me alone. I just want to be left alone..."

I feel guilty when he tells me that. I don't know if he blames me and the scary thing is that I'm scared to ask. I just sit there at the door for a second and put my hand on the door wanting so much to open it and go in but I couldn't.

Now that we had found him...he was under quarantine.

So I walk away going back in the living room where the others are gathered around in this weird complete silence as though they were waiting on me to come back into the room.

"Well?" Ken asks when I don't say something immediately.

"Well what?"

"What did he say?"

I shrug, "Nothing. He just wants to be left alone. I think he's upset."

It's Saint who nods and says, "Understandable. With what he just went through."

What he went through. That was the thing. I had no idea what Jared had been through.

"How'd you find him?" I ask him.

We are all in the living room. Soul, Ken, Saint, and me. Even Saint's son Squeak was sitting quietly in the corner. Not Jared though. We'd found Jared (or should I say Saint found Jared) but Jared could have been sick for all we knew. He was trapped in the basement with a sick homeless guy.

"I just heard some stuff when I was on the staircase and remembered we had a basement, I went down there and Jared was locked in there..."

"How the fuck is that possible?"

It's Ken who shakes his head, "Someone locked him in there...."

"Who?"

The more I think about the fact that Jared was attacked the more I get pissed off. Who the fuck would do that to Jared. Everyone in the house loved him. Even Squeak, who just so happened to be one of the meanest little boys I'd met in my life. The thing about Squeak is that we all knew that he and Jared had a connection and it was clear the kid was missing his best friend.

Saint shrugs, "That's the thing. No one knows..."

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone by how calm everyone is acting about this. Ken has his arms crossed like a kid who just had his lunch stolen. Saint didn't have much better of a reaction. His face had this pale lost look. Neither of them had anything on Soul though. Soul was just looking out. He'd been rather silent for a while and today was no different. It had gone even further. He was barely present.

I am pacing back and forth, feeling this heaviness on my heart, "Someone pushed him in there..."

"That's what Jared thinks," Saint corrects me, "He could have been mistaken."

"My friend wouldn't mistake being assaulted," I assure him, "Someone fucking pushed him in there!"

"Not if he was in his right mind," Ken adds in out of nowhere, "But I heard the Dark Fever eats at your brain."