when the party's over ~fransykes~

Chapter 22

Oliver's POV

Rage. All that consumed me was rage. It burnt threw my veins, setting alight my entire body.

This entire situation felt like a maze of dead ends, a never ending cycle, and I was seriously over it. All I wanted was to crawl up into a ball and give up but I couldn't, my brain will not rest until I find him.

I want answers. I want to know where he's been all this time, what he's been doing, if he's okay and why this all happened in the first place.

Angrily, I stormed down the rode, kicking every stone in my path and punching the walls of every house I passed. Ugh, I was so fucking frustrated! I needed to go somewhere to let off all this pent up steam, and i knew just the place.

Like a puppet on a string, my body carried itself to the one place I always come when I'm angry. I couldn't even feel my legs moving as my body worked on auto-pilot to get me to where I needed to be.

And just like that I found myself in the forest surrounded by a vase landscape of nothing but trees. This is where I always go when I'm angry, no one will ever find me here and I'm so far away from society that no one will be able to hear me scream out my emotions.

I use to come to this place a lot when I was in my early teens, I'd stand in the middle of a clearing and scream my lungs out until my entire body hurt. I would kick the tree stumps until my shoes broke and stamp on twigs until my legs caved in.

This time though, it seemed my body wanted to get my emotions out another way, as as soon as I inhaled my first breath of the clean forest air, I broke down into tears.

They ran down my face in red, angry lines, dripping onto my clothing and soaking the shoulders of my blue hoodie. This felt different to all the other times I've cried in the past few weeks somehow, as I felt free to let my emotions entirely take over.

I never get a chance to let my emotions out quite like this at home, as my family are always around poking their noses into my business and trying to figure out my every thought. As soon as I cry at home someone comes running into my room to reassure me that everything was fine but that's not what I wanted to hear right now.

I didn't want sugarcoated-optimistic bullshit, I wanted the cold, hard truth. And the truth of the matter was that it was not fine, I was not fine.

I walked slowly through the forest, focussing deeply on the sound of my trainers crunching down on the leaves below me and the smell of pine in the air. I focused on the sound of the river flowing through the creek that became more and more prominent as I approached it.

The river was crystal clear, the water leaving behind nothing but moisture on my hand as I ran my fingers though it slowly. I drew back, staring at the river as if it were the first one I had ever seen.

Then I heard it, the sound of leaves crinkling in the distance and the most defiantly human cough that came with it. Someone else was here.

I sighed, knowing my peaceful moment would have to come to an end as the reality of my situation came crashing back to me like a wave. Something about that cough seemed oddly familiar.

Does that seem crazy? Recognising a cough? Probably. Do I care? No.

My legs carried me towards the sound and before I knew it I was standing in front of something I though I'd never seen again. Or more precisely, someone I thought I'd never see again.

"Josh?" I whispered looking down at the boy covered in dirt in front of me.

He looked very different to the last time I had seen him; usually pale skin made brown by a layer of dirt, hair greasy and flat against his forehead, body skinnier then his usual slightly-chubby-cute self.