The Boy 3 Doors Down

Chapter Three: Dora The Explorer - EDITED

The rest of the my Monday went fairly well. Despite having Austin in my last two periods it seemed to go smoothly. He didn't wink or smile at me again, my health insurance thanks him, he was just simply there a great distance between us given the fact that when I entered both classes he was already seated so I made a beeline for the first seat as far away from him as possible. No interaction whatsoever, I was getting good at this avoiding thing, now I could get back to my house safe and sound, Austin free. I highly doubt he's the type of kid to sit outside helping his mom water the garden so I didn't have to see much of him at home either.

I set my left foot onto the gravel driveway first, halfway out of the car, before I yanked the key out of the ignition. I pushed the car door a little further in order for me to exit fully, and pushed it shut once I was out. I clicked the button to lock it and hiked the bag on my shoulder a little higher and turned in the direction of my back gate.

It started when I was in eighth grade, when I had lost almost all of my friends, I would come outside in my backyard and sit under the miniature willow tree by the back fence and just write everyday after school. The details were irrelevant of why I started doing it, and why I still do it, I'm not sure. It comforts me in a way no other being could ever possibly do in a million years, so I just kept at it. No one ever came out here during this time, not even my mom so, when she would ask where I had been for the past couple of hours I would tell her I was at a friends house or Ashley's more recently. And she didn't question, no one ever did, so it became a secret I had with myself.

I shuffled my feet through the layer of leaves that never seemed to dissapear no matter how many times mom would rake out here in the morning. When I made my way to my little spot under the tree I layed my bag down beside me and just breathed in the musky air, feeling my lungs with fresh, fresh oxygen and then I sat and pulled out a sheet of paper.

No, I didn't have some fancy notebook or journal or diary that I'd write,

        Dear diary,

      Today a cute boy winked at me...

Far, far from that. I would just take out a sheet of paper and write down my biggest fears at the moment, who I missed, what I thought of random things and random people who I barely knew. It was sort of my therapy of the day, my relief of all the things being jammed into the tiny space of my head.

I gripped the pen in my hands and started writing,

Austin Clasin, you need to leave. You cannot infiltrate the precious space of my thoughts and feelings. You don't deserve-

*snip*

I stopped writing and snapped my head upwards, my pen still pressed to the paper. I narrowed my eyes scanning every inch of the backyard, from the grass patch by the gate, to the hammock between the two shaggy trees, to the patio chairs, nothing. My patio was screened in but you could see straight through it, my mom was still inside and Justin wasn't home from school yet, so I was all alone. Or so I thought.

*snap*

It sounded like a foot crushing a twig, a human foot, but it wasn't coming from my backyard. I stood up brushing the dry leaves from my jeans looking in every direction, even over the burgundy wooden fence that separated my yard and the shallow woods.

"Is anyone there?" I shouted.

If anyone was out there it definitely was not my neighbors. The one on the right was a single elderly lady that I rarely, and I mean rarely, saw actually step foot out her house. She didn't even have a car in her driveway, I really don't understand how she got food in the house. And the one on the left which was a atleast a half an acre away was vacant at the moment. The middle aged couple had apparently gone on a vacation, according to my mom, the neighborhood stalker. So there shouldn't have been anyone around, unless there was some creeper in the woods which in that case I should've started sprinting inside.