Scapegoat

One and Only

I was over at a friend's house. It's summer and summer is for vacationing. There were a few chumps, though, that had summer school. Most of them wanted to go but if that's what they wanted then so be it. The same day that we decided to go to a mall not relatively close to our town but further away and more famous, that was the same day that the students taking summer school were going on summer trip there.

Their destination wasn't the mall, of course, but they had time to walk around the town and go to the mall.

It's also worth mentioning that near the end of the school year, a girl had disappeared. She just up and ran away. No one really knows what happened to her. Some people speculate maybe she was kidnapped, but the rumors regarding her eccentric behavior prompted most people to suggest and believe that she ran away on her own accord.

My friends, Nathan, Etta, and Jack, drove to the mall. We hadn't gone there recently, and it was quite terrifying the amount of posters regarding her being missing. Jeez, how far were these people's reach?

Nathan scoffed and tore down the poster. Not that we didn't care about her, and not that we listened to rumors, it just felt kind of wrong. Not that we knew her either, but who was looking for her? Not her parents, not the police (maybe we weren't sure about that either) but people that like the story. People that couldn't care less about her but cared about being apart of her story were looking for her.

The whole situation was just...weird.

Our school was about twenty miles away from this mall anyway. Nathan, Etta, and Jack did not even go to our school nor do they know anything about the missing girl. But all they know is that she's missing, and that I mentioned it once. I mostly mentioned how disgusting the situation was regarding all of these people apart of it.

When we started walking around the mall, I saw the students from my school. "Oh god..." I didn't mean to say aloud, but it's not like they heard me.

"What's up?" Jack asked.

I shrugged, "Students from my school." As I kept staring through the other side of he walkway, I saw him. "And now it's even worse. It wasn't bad before but now it is."

"Okay, what?" He asked again more annoyed.

"Remember the girl? On the poster?" I asked him.

"What was her name again? She was the missing one, right? The weird one?" He asked.

I shrugged again at that last part. "I don't even know her name...anyway, her boyfriend is here."

I saw him keep walking. It was known that his relationship with her was...unconventional. That is a really nice way of putting it. I don't mean to say it was weird as in kinky freaky weird, I mean it was emotionally different. The way they treated each other was different. Did he even love her?

I personally knew him back in the day. His name was Brandon. He was looking uncomfortable. I think he saw the missing person's sign of her, too. They're just everywhere aren't they?

Nathan started chuckling. "That fat ass?" Brandon glanced like he had heard.

"Nathan!" I half shouted.

"I saw on the news they'd been spotting his crazy girl everywhere. Can't seem to catch her though." He sipped some coffee.

"Who can't seem to catch her? Maybe she doesn't want to be found," I said.

He shrugged. "I don't know. And maybe. Maybe he's scared because they think they found her around this town."

"Oh god, who the hell is they?" I sighed.