The Pretenders (ON HOLD)

Chapter 19

Sorry that i haven't uploaded a chapter in a while, i have been a bit busy :) ill try and be a bit more frquents now. This is one of the longer chapters, although i think you should know that in my official copy of th book on Word, each chapter is over 15 pages long. I'm just uploading little bits at a time. Stick with me guys! i appreciate it :) There's a picture of Rick on the side!

The next day, Peter waited nervously outside Wendy's house. Ever since the incident at the hospital on Friday, he'd been constantly paranoid that someone was watching him. He hadn't slept that night, afraid of having another nightmare. Last night, while he had been lying awake in bed, it occurred to him that Wendy would be walking to school alone. Simon was still to weak to go to school so Wendy would be walking with no one to protect her. Not that Simon would have done a good job anyhow. Immediately he decided that he would accompany her to school until whatever danger there was disappeared.

A slam of a door snapped him out of his train of thought. To his surprise he saw Rick emerging from the house next to Wendy's. Rick looked shocked to see him. There was a hint of guilt in his eyes. 



"Hey rick," greeted Peter, slightly confused, "You live here?" 



"Do you live here?" Rick asked back, "Or are you just a creepy stalker?"



Peter was taken aback by Rick's unusually defensive attitude. Usually he was laid back, carefree and, most prominently, a flirt. But there was something about the way rick answered Peter's question that made him suspicious. 



"No," Peter said, "I'm just walking Wendy to school today."



"You do know that there's a bus that goes from her house to school, right?" Rick asked, slightly annoyed. 



"Really?" Peter realised that it would be even safer for Wendy to catch a bus than to be walked to school. Sure, he'd only known her for a week but he was strangely attached to her. The thought of her being hurt made him shiver with a mix of anger and guilt. Every time he remembered the dirty looks on those teenagers' faces as they reached out to touch her, he grimaced. He tried not to think about what could have happened if he hadn't intervened.

Looking back at Rick he asked, "What's up with you today, huh?"



Boys can be quite insensitive by nature in how they approached delicate matters such as feelings. Had a girl seen Rick, she would have been gentle a caring whereas a boy, like Peter, would just ask what was wrong with him and get it over and done with. Often it's better that way. It helps to avoid dragging out the consolation process.

Rick sighed embarrassedly when he replied. "Wendy doesn't know I live next to her."

Peter frowned, taking a moment to process what he had said. How was that possible? How did Wendy not know who her own neighbour was? Surely she'd seen Rick around a lot and put two and two together.

After a few seconds of silence Peter looked like he had finally wrapped his head around what Rick said. He opened his mouth decidedly but at the last second his expression changed back to being completely confused and he said, "What? How do you-? How does-? Doesn't she-? But how come?...What?"

"Whoa dude, calm down! Just let me explain, ok?" Rick said hastily. He sighed, defeated, before continuing. "It's just that....never mind."

"No tell me!" Peter urged. He was the kind of person that didn't like to be confused so when he was confronted with something completely absurd such as this, he absolutely had to get an explanation. He put on a cute puppy dogface, which, unfortunately for him, only works on females.

"Don't do that face. It's creeping me out," Rick said. He was really just straight out like that. There was no being tactful or ay of that kind of stuff. If Rick had an opinion, you heard it as it was. It was one of only things people didn't like about him because everybody likes to be complimented and not everything that Rick said was a flattering. Although he did know how to be awfully charming when he felt like it. It was that side of him that all the girls loved him for. Almost all the girls.