Blocked Away | A TMF Fan-Fiction

Chapter Six

Luke's P.O.V.

Luke was sitting in the English classroom, still upset from what just happened. He had started to drift into this blurry, fuzzy state of thought, where he wasn't even really thinking about anything. His faze was broken when a voice spoke to him.

"Uh, Luke? The rest of the class left, and you didn't sign up for after school tutoring." Luke looked up to see Ms. Jones standing in front of his desk.

"Oh! Sorry Ms. Jones, I'll get going. Guess I was just lost in thought."

"That's fine, dear. Sorry to bother."

"No, not all! You're fine," Luke reassured. With that, Luke grabbed his things, and exited from the English classroom, and headed to his locker. As Luke was putting his things into his backpack, he thought about how he would get home. He had been in the English classroom for a couple of minutes, maybe five or so, so the bus had already left. Out of respect for Zander, he didn't want to accidentally bump into him on the way home, so he decided he could just take the slightly longer path home. It was only an extra couple of minutes anyway.

Luke slung his backpack around his shoulders, and onto his back, and started to head home. The whole walk home was...the best word Luke could think of to describe it was stale. It felt like he was thinking of everything, and nothing, all at the same time. The air was sharp too, and only contributed to the tone. Luke finally got to his house, and opened the door.

"Is that you Luke?" Luke heard his dad call out from another room, presumably his office. When Luke's parents first had him, Luke's dad switched to doing his job at home, so he could keep watch of Luke, and in general just help out more. After Luke started growing up, his dad had just found himself enjoying working from home more, so he stuck with it.

"Yeah, dad. It's me!" Luke replied.

Luke's dad then popped out of his office, and into the hallway, "Hey, how was school?"

"It was..." part of Luke really just wanted to spill out everything that had happened; talk about how he made Zander mad, he had accidentally invested himself in an elaborate lie, and just vent. But Luke had chemistry homework to do, and he would rather just get it out of the way, "School was fine."

Luke's dad may have sensed something was wrong, because he cocked his head and asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

Luke was pretty sure by his dad's vibe, that he could tell Luke was lying, but his dad let it go, "Okay. I still have some work to finish up, but your mom should be back here in an hour or two."

"Got it. I'm going to go do my homework," Luke gestured up to his room with his hand.

"Good. Hope the work isn't too hard."

"Yours either." It had become a thing between Luke and his dad, where they wished each other easy work.

Luke's dad went back into his office, and Luke headed up to his room. He tossed his backpack to the ground, and got out his chemistry textbook, and work packet. He then sat at his desk, and started working. Well, he tried to start working. He couldn't properly focus on what the assignment even was. He was still too bothered by what had happened. Ugh, why is this bothering me so much. Friends fight. It happens. It's normal. I'm just not used to it... Despite Zander being quite short tempered, he almost never got mad at Luke, except for the couple times Luke would tease him. But there was a difference between that, and him being legitimately hurt, and upset. Luke kept on looking at his phone, and a couple of times picked it up, and almost started to text Zander, but put it down. It wasn't that Luke didn't want to apologize; it was more about Zander. Even though Zander and Hailey were close, they still squabbled a good bit, and Luke had learned from watching their fights over the years, that whenever Hailey made Zander mad, and tried to go apologize, that would usually only make things worse. It was best to let Zander come to you. It didn't mean Luke didn't want to text Zander though. He would walk over to his house right now if it made things better. But he knew it wouldn't.

Luke looked down at his packet. God, I really do have to work on this. He wrote his name at the top of the paper, and started working, but that wasn't to say he wasn't still thinking about it.

~

Zander's P.O.V.

After Zander and Hailey got home, both of them quickly went up to their respective rooms to do their work. Neither of their parents were home yet. Usually Zander's mother would be home by now, but she texted them that she went out to get groceries after work.

Zander had been doing his math work in his room for about half an hour, until he looked down at his worksheet to see it was done. That took a lot less time than usual. It's not like the worksheet is smaller than usual... He then realized that Hailey hadn't come into his room a single time when he was doing his work. Hailey had developed a habit of whenever she had a somewhat notable thought, she would come into Zander's room, and talk about it. They usually related to the band, even more specifically the band competition. Ever since Jake joined the band, she had been getting more stressed about the competition, and would come in Zander's room about every ten minutes, with some kind of thought about how they needed to practice more, and weren't getting enough done. But she hadn't come in once today. She has to know something. That's the only way to explain why she's being so weird. Maybe there's something going on that doesn't even involve Luke. Or maybe she's just in a mood. Maybe tomorrow she'll just be back to normal. Zander contemplated for a second, going into Hailey's room to ask her about her behavior. He decided against it though, because if there was something, she probably wouldn't say anything, and he didn't want to distract her from her schoolwork. It would be better to just enjoy the extra time he had.

Nothing came into mind immediately, for what he wanted to do, but he looked out of the window near his desk, and saw the tree, with now orange leaves, in their front yard. The sereneness to the tree made him realize he felt way less mad about the whole Luke situation. He really did just need some time to calm down. He still wanted an apology from Luke, since he did just ditch him with no explanation other than "I forgot," but he was ready to talk to Luke. He contemplated calling Luke to talk to him, but decided he would rather talk to him in school tomorrow.

He continued to look out of his window, when he saw a purple bird fly onto the tree in the front yard. The bird was called a purple martin, but Zander only knew that because his mom had gotten really into bird watching, and Zander learned the names of a couple different birds from listening to her. Another bird fell onto the tree, which was brown. He wasn't sure what type of bird it was. He watched them sit on the branch together, until the purple suddenly flew away. Something about it struck a chord with Zander, and he felt his heart drop. He wasn't sure why, but he felt shaken from it.

"Zander! Hailey! I'm home! Do you think you could help me unpack the groceries?" Zander heard his mom call from the house entrance.

"Coming!" He heard Hailey call out.

"Coming," Zander tried to call out. He was much quieter than he meant to be. He wasn't sure he was even loud enough for his mom to hear. But he got up from his desk, and headed out of his room.

As he walked down the stairs, all he could seem to think of was that purple bird flying away.

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading chapter six of Blocked Away!  Gah!  Over five-hundred reads, thank you so much!  I know these author note's are starting to get repetitive, but thank you so much for reading, voting, and commenting on my work.  It means so much!  I know this chapter in a tad shorter than usual, and not a tone happens, so sorry about that.  I've been spending a lot of time planning out the future chapters, and I think there are some pretty fun ones coming up!  On another note, do people have any really good Lander fanfics to recommend?  Or music freak fanfics in general; I'm just looking for some to read (also feel totally free to recommend your own).  Well, once again, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!