The breeze was fresh against the skin. If only it was a more fitting event for a warmer jacket. If only someone was able to help him keep warm. If only he actually felt the need to keep warm. The cold was the only thing keeping him awake at the moment. The jacket he wore wasn't anywhere near good enough for this weather. He had forgotten how cold it got around this time. He never thought how much he'd hate this place now. His love for the small town had finally passed. The only reason he stayed for so long was to feel some kind of warmth from his friend. But it was too far gone by now.
He walked out the door leaving his now empty home. Nothing could have prepared him for this longing feeling to go back to private school. He dragged his feet to the car with his suitcase being dragged behind him. He finally got to the car and opened the trunk. His hands were shaking as he shoved the suitcase in. He stared back at the house before finally getting into the back seat of the car. His journal was still where he had left it when he had come back home last week. His chest tightened and he could feel the lump in the back of his throat. It felt as if someone was sitting on his chest, and he had no way of pushing them off. No matter how hard he could push or how much he pleaded, the feeling never went away. His mind couldn't even process what had happened. His words can't even come close to explaining the feelings he had. The words were still stuck in his head. "He's gone. I'm so sorry sweetheart." He had just lost his best friend to a heart condition and now he was going back to school across the country. He still felt the pain in his heart, the feeling of his heart dropping when he got the call, or even the feeling of holding his friend's hand before he passed. It felt like not so long ago he had faced his tormentors in school but now it felt like nothing ever happened. Like everything before, this week was a blur, and no memories would come back to him.
His friend who convinced him to even talk back had just passed away, but another was waiting for him to come back. A friend who was ready to hold him and comfort him in any way he needed. But he couldn't even think about that now, all he could think about was the house they had just passed by. The house of his once lively friend. The house that once was filled with laughter, smiles, and him. But now it looked so neglected and abandoned. Flowers on the doorstep that were never picked up. That now looked so wilted and pitiful. No one had seen anyone leave or even enter the house since the funeral. He couldn't bear to even look at the house for so long. It felt like he was suffocating, and he couldn't find a way to calm down. He quickly looked away from the house and picked up the tattered leather journal. He leaned back in his seat and untied the journal. He flipped through it and looked at his handwriting on the pages. He couldn't even remember how he even got to write in it. His therapist must have been very convincing to get him to even look at it at the time. He flipped back to the first page and stared at the smudged ink on the pages. He began to read the first entry.
"Dear Friend, it's not easy to move to a new school so quickly. Maybe I should have paid more attention to my teachers. Maybe then I wouldn't have needed to change schools. If only I actually did my work and kept my grades up. Maybe then my parents wouldn't have argued. And maybe then he wouldn't have cheated on mom. Then they wouldn't have gotten a divorce. But who knows if that would have changed anything in the first place. But let's just say that this new school isn't any better than my old one. The boys still pick on me and I'll still be looked at like some alien. But we'll end up moving again because of mom's work so what's there to expect."
He closed his eyes and tried his best to remember that day. His first day of school. His day started late like always with him barely waking up to his last alarm. To him barely acknowledging his own mother when she asked him to eat breakfast, He didn't have any expectations for today. He knew where to go and what the school looked like. Because of course his mother had him take a tour of the school before the first day of school. He kept quiet as he walked to the school. He watched as the kids in front of him were talking about the latest games or even how they hated the teachers. The group in front of him were watching the guys playing around together. The group seemed to already know each other and had already established who they liked or even disliked. It made him smile at the fact that even some of the guys tried to join them but were swiftly rejected.
