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John's POV

I felt as if something was off as I was walking down the street with my two friends Hercules Mulligan and Marquis de Lafayette. They were arguing god knows what. I wasn't really paying attention. 

"John, mon ami. Please help me out. Michael should be with Jeremy, right?" Laf said to me. 

"No. Jeremy should be with Christine. Michael should get with Rich." Hercules argued. Oh god. They were talking about the musical Be More Chill again. They never shut up about it. 

"I don't care about who Michael is with. He just deserves to be happy." I reply. They go back to arguing about it. Something still didn't seem right. It was quite late out and in Brooklyn, the chances of us being robbed or something is very high. 

"Do you hear that?" Hercules says. We all stop. "It sounded like an injured animal." He walks into an alleyway. "follow me."

"Herc, we can't just wander into an alleyway. Especially not at ten at night. In Brooklyn." I say. Hercules is going to get us killed.  Lafayette grabs my arm and follows Hercules. I swear if we die, I will beat the shit out their ghosts. As he gets closer we can hear a sound. it doesn't sound like an animal but more a person. 

"Hello? Is someone there?" Hercules says. Oh my god. I am going to die. 

"He-hello?" A voice replies. Hercules and Lafayette try to find where the hello came from. I help look around. I find him behind a trash can laying on garbage bags. 

"Hey, guys I found him," I yell to Lafayette and Hercules. "Hey, are you okay? What's your name?" I say to him. There was blood on his head. "Hey? Do you know what I'm saying?" 

"Ye-yes. It's just that I don't know anything." He says. Lafayette and Hercules pull him out from behind the trash can. He looked about the same age as us.

"What's your name kid?" Hercules asks. 

"I don't know." He replies. Well, this is helpful. 

"Are you hurt?" Lafayette asks. 

"No. Other than my head stings a little." Reasonable. it did look like he had been bleeding.

"Let's take him back to my house, my parents aren't home," Lafayette says. We go back to his house apartment. The guy took a shower and Lafayette let him borrow some of his clothes. This guy was very short. Lafayette's clothes were way too big on him. 

"What do you remember about yourself?" I ask as I hand him a cup of tea. 

"Nothing. I don't remember my name, my age, or how I ended up behind that trash can. I just remember waking up there and I couldn't move." He said. 

"How long were you awake before we found you?" Hercules asked. 

"Not sure. Maybe a couple of minutes." 

"Whatever happened couldn't have happened too long ago, the wound on your head was still bleeding when we found you," Lafayette says. The man took a sip of his tea. I noticed some dots lined up his arm. Kind of like a tattoo.  

"What's on your arm? Do you know?" I ask. He looks at it for a second. 

"16 dots." He says. 

"What does it mean?" He looks at me for a second. 

"My age. I'm 16. I remember getting a tattoo of a black dot every birthday." He was the same age as us.

"Even when you were like, a child?" Hercules asked.

"Yeah. Since I was 4. Hurt like hell. I don't know who was doing it though. Or when my birthday is."

"We should get some sleep. Mystery guy, I'll get some blankets, you can sleep on the couch." Lafayette says. 

"He needs a name. We can't just call him Mystery guy." Hercules said. He had a very good point.

"Okay. Let's call him sixteen." Lafayette says.

"No way. Too Stranger Things-y." Hercules said. "Give him a human name. He looks like an Alex." 

"Alex is a cool name." The guy who I guess we're now calling Alex, says. 

"Cool. Hi Alex. By the way if you haven't heard, I'm Hercules, The tall French guy is Lafayette and the guy with a shit ton of freckles is John." Hercules said. Everyone goes to sleep but me. My mind races thinking about who this guy could be. He could be a killer. Or a psychopath. Or even worse, a homophobe. In the morning we get ready and go back to the place in which we found Alex.

"Remembering anything Alex?" Hercules asked. 

"No. I'm sorry," Alex says. 

"It's not your fault. We'll figure this out." Lafayette pulls me aside. 

"My parents would never let me just let some random kid live with me. What do we do with him?" He asks me.

"He can come live with me. My dad won't care." 

"Good." After about an hour, we give up and go to Starbucks. 

"What do you nerds want, I'll pay?" Laf says.

"I'll have a coffee two milk, one sugar," Hercules says. 

"I'll have a green tea iced tea,"  I say. 

"Alex? What do you want mon ami?" Laf asked

"I'll have whatever jane gave to me last night." He said. Did he mean me? 

"Jane? Do you mean John?" Hercules asked 

"Um, yeah." 

"John, what did you give him?" Lafayette asked me. 

"Green tea. With just milk." 

"Okay." The three of us go sit down while Lafayette orders our drinks. He also buys us all cookies. 

"What are those?" Alex asked pointing to the cookies.

"Umm, cookies?" Lafayette replied. 

"Whats a cookie?" He has got to be kidding, right? Hercules looked at me with an expression of what the fuck. I relate.

"You don't know what a cookie is?" 

"No. Sorry." 

"Well, its something you eat. They're really good." 

"Laf, that was a horrible description of a cookie," Hercules says 

"Do you have a better one?" 

"No." We eat the cookies and finish our drinks.

"Well, I should be getting back home, my parents should be back from their business trip soon and I wasn't supposed to go out anywhere. Au revoir mon amis." Lafayette says as he gets up and leaves. 

"You guys want to go play some Mario Kart back at my house?" I ask Alex and Hercules. 

"What's Mario Kart?" Alex asked. Should have seen that coming.

"It's a video game. I'll show you how to play at my house." I show Alex how to play Mario Kart and after a few rounds, he got the hang of it. He actually ended up beating Herc and me. 

"I  should be getting home. It's going to get dark soon." Hercules says. 

"Bye Hercules," I say.

"Bye," Alex says. Alex and I play Mario Kart for another like, 3 hours. He beat me almost everytime. 

"We should be getting to bed. I'll give you some Pyjamas. I'll show you where the guest bedroom is." I say. I get him the pyjamas and show him where his room is. "My room is down the hall if you need anything. 

"Hey, Jack," 

"John," 

Sorry, John. Why are you helping me?" 

"I dunno. You know nothing about yourself. Other than that your sixteen. We couldn't just let you live on the street." He hugs me. His hug wasnice and warm. It felt nice.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

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