The Tutor | 2016 ✓

19

|| Ryland's POV ||

Every dying, waking moment I decide to keep on living is a battle. A battle that I am very well losing terribly. Without her, life just seams the way it did when she was just another oblivious face at school. Without her, my life is so unorganized and collapsing.

She worries me. I wonder where she is. If she's okay, if she's hurt. Oh boy, do I wonder. Too much, indeed.

She said she be fine. She told me not to worry. She said she'd be back soon. But I want her here now.

I'm not sure what I did, but whatever it is, I'm willing to do whatever I must do to fix it. I will do it. To bring her back. To bring Everly back. The light to my life. She makes this sad, depressed good-for-nothing boy the happiest man in the world. She has some sort of power over me that I plead for.

Please come back. I just want to feel your touch again. I want so badly to hear your sweet voice once more. I'd do anything.

"I would do anything-" I whisper to myself involuntarily.

Yeah, I talk to myself sometimes, don't judge a man when he's feeling dramatically depressed, okay? Okay.

"Anything, you say? You would do... anything?" A voice whispers from behind me.

Am I hearing shit too? Oh my, I need a therapist.

"Just to have that little scum bag back? C'mon, boy, you can do better than that!" It says a little louder.

I can feel harsh pounds of breath softly smacking the back of my neck, stabbing me with such foul words.

This isn't a voice. This is a person.

I swiftly turn around nearly tripping over the untied laces of my old, beat up converse.

"What did you just call her?" I sternly question.

I turn around to this boy about a year or two older than me. He wasn't any competition and boy was I preparing to beat the shit out of this guy. His body pierced in strange places with jet black hair. Tattoos marked his body, green ink staining his skin.

"Scum bag? I've got plenty others. She's related to the biggest fucktard in all the city." He remarks. Not giving me any chance to speak to it, though, he continues. "I'm going to make a deal with you, kid. You tell me where the girl is and I'll let you go unharmed. Along with 10k."

"So, basically, sell her out for 10k or be killed?"

"Well, kid when you put it that way it sounds wrong." He makes a fake pouty lip. "Tell me where she is."

"I don't know." I say.

"Tell. Me. Now."

"I don't fucking know!"

The large guy walks closer to me, cracking his knuckles. "Alright, kid, I tried doing this the easy way. You asked for this."

He takes a swing at my head with his fist but I duck down and dodge it. I grab his arm, still extended, and yank him down, his face landing straight into the concrete.

I stand there and look at the motionless body for a few seconds. Did I kill him? Or is he just unconscious?

Just then, I am grabbed by the neck and held high in the hair. I beg of oxygen through struggling gulps of air. Hand cuffs are put among my wrists as my lungs give up on trying to breath.

My body goes limp and my surroundings disappear into a pit of black.

~

Everything is blurry as I try to take it all in. It's fairly dim in this unfamiliar room. My back is against a cold surface, jagged and impaling my back.