New Beginnings

Chapter 1 : "Don't touch me!"

Chapter 1

Later...

Alex POV

Jeff was crying quietly as we walked with him back up to our dorm room. It was still hurting him to walk a little bit, but the doctor said it would go away in a few days.

Jeff got into bed, and crawled all the way down to the bottom of the bed under the covers. All I saw was a lump at the end of the bed.

I got into bed too, exhausted. It was almost time to get up, but my uncle said we could be excused from classes tomorrow since we were up like... all night long.

Nick shut off the lamp, and then climbed up to his bunk.

"Night, Alex."

"Night, Nick. Night, Jeff."

I got quiet screeches from Jeff. I fell asleep almost immediately.

Morning...

Alex POV

It was so weird. I wasn't expecting Jeff to be this affected by what happened. But he was.

He didn't want anyone near him. Not even me or Nick. He just stayed curled up under the blankets, not moving.

Nick and I had to drag him out of bed just to get him to use the bathroom. And we tried to get him to eat, but he ended up throwing up. He's too worked up.

"Jeff, how about you go take a shower? Maybe you'd feel better," Nick said.

He shook his head no.

"Jeff, come on. Please try," I said.

Nick tried to get him out of bed, but he struggled away.

"Don't touch me!"

He pulled the blankets over himself. I could see the lump under the covers shaking. I pulled the covers back slowly. Jeff looked up at me, and I saw fear in his eyes.

"Hey. We're not going to hurt you. We just think a shower might make you feel better."

I slowly reached my hand out, and put my hand on his shoulder.

"Come on. You'll feel better after a nice warm shower."

I got him to get out of bed. I lightly put my hand on his back, but he jumped away from me.

"Please don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Don't touch me!"

He grabbed his clothes, and locked himself in the bathroom quickly.

I sighed. I feel like he's worse than he was before.

"What are we going to do with him?" Nick asked.

"I honestly have no idea."

"We should've let him get put in foster care."

"No, we shouldn't have. The other kids would probably judge him, and make fun of him, and do bad things! He needs us right now."

"He won't even let us go near him!"

"I know. But we can't send him to foster care. He's too in his head right now. And my uncle adopted him anyways. I know that if we sent him to foster care, he would've ended up killing himself. He's very sensitive, and he can't handle things well. We need to make this as easy as possible for him. Things easily set him off, and I don't want anything bad to happen to him. He probably has some psychological damage."