Sleeping on Sidewalks // Ashton Irwin

week 3

On Monday I looked through the scrapbook again without The Boy. He was still at school, doing some extra studying for upcoming exams. As I was flicking through, I found that the back two pages were kind of stuck together. I carefully prised them apart, and I found what I assumed was his place to vent. Words and phrases were scrawled angrily in deep reds and hard blacks. I'm perfectly fine with giving out shitty cliched advice until I need some myself and it's all I get back. I don't need to stay strong, I need to be strong, I need somebody to make me strong. There were red splatters all over the page, and it made me feel sick that I was touching blood. His blood.

On Tuesday we found out something else. The Boy was amazing at music. We were rehearsing for an assessment, and my group's drummer was off sick. The Boy offered to fill in for him, just for today, but he turned out to be amazingly talented. Even he seemed surprised at the discovery, but his smile was huge as everyone was praising him.

On Wednesday he disappeared. My parents had finally given in to letting him to stay, presumably because they felt bad about what happened the first night. But when I woke up at seven o'clock sharp on Wednesday morning, the sofa bed in my room was empty. The backpack was gone too, but all the things we were using to try and find out who he was remained in a pile. he didn't show up to school either, and I spent my whole afternoon searching the town for that curly hair, listening out for that stupid giggle. But The Boy was nowhere.

On Thursday he still wasnt in school. I was starting to worry, remembering what he told me about the bridge. I remembered how broken his old self was, and how broken he is now. I wouldn't put it past him to make the final jump. That afternoon, I went and checked. There was no tanned body laying in the water, but I still had that tight feeling in my chest. he could be anywhere, and he could have done anything. I relied on the Boy, and The Boy relied on me. We both needed each other to stay sane.

On Thursday my father suggested calling the police. But I don't see the point- we don't know who he is. Nobody knows who he is. No matter what we do or how hard we try we can't track him down. It's pointless. It is all compeletely pointless. We are never going to find The Boy.

On Friday school started to ask questions. I was called into the Head Teacher's office, because I was his only known friend. The teacher wanted to know his adress since they didnt have one on record. I told her that he didn't have one. I then had to explain everything I knew of the story. I felt awful aftrrwards, having given away all the information he'd given me in confidence. I knew it was supposed to help in the search for him, but it didnt stop me feeling like a horrinle person.

On Saturday I didn't leave the house at all. I stayed in my room all day just thinking about The Boy. For all I knew, he was dead. I'd already seen what he was capable of doing to himself. I didn't want to think about it, but it seems anything else was not of interest to my brain. He was the only thing on my mind.

On Sunday I began to give up hope. I knew the boy was never coming back. I looked through his scrapbook again, wondering about how happy he managed to look in all those photos when he was obviously so miserable. He seemed to be the king of faking smiles.

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Hey guys. Having kind of a shit time right now so updates may be less regular. I don't know, I'm just trapped back in the pit of self hatred I was in a few months ago, just as I was crawling out. I wrote this chapter at various points when I was really upset or angry and on reading it back I think that's obvious. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this. I'll hopefully update soon.