Hollow Hearts

The door slams shut as I run done the steps, taking off down the street. I just needed time to cool off, I had planned on coming back, no matter how much I hated living with my aunt, I couldn't deny that it was the only place I had to live. I had moved in with her a little over a year ago, at the time I had just started high school and now I was half way through my sophomore year. Before I moved in with her I had been living with my grandmother, but when my grandmother was legally no longer capable of taking care of me, social services said I could either live with my aunt, who thinks everything I do is soley to annoy her, or go into the system. I chose the option that kept me in the same town, meaning I wouldn't have to change schools.

Today we got into an argument over my friends. She doesn't like them, because their not her "brand" of people. Not the perfect, looks like they could be sponsored on Instagram, teachers pet, and star athlete wannabes, kind of "brand." She thinks I shouldn't be hanging out with them and that I should dress prettier, that I should make straight A's and be involved in at least one to two clubs. I just "Urgh" I scream frustratedly as I walk off the cul-de-sac and into the woods near my aunt's house. Sometimes I swear, it's like nothing I do is ever enough for her. She wants me to be perfect, but I'm not perfect. Walking down the dirt path walking trail I use as a short cut to get to the old cabin me and my friends use as a hangout, I start kicking at small rocks on the ground. Sometimes I think she wishes she didn't agree to guardianship of me. Then she wouldn't have had to turn down the big job promotion she got offered last year, the one that would require her traveling for most of the year. Instead she took me in only to be disappointed with everything I do.

I swear all I do is mess up everyone else's life around me. If my mother hadn't gotten pregnant with me, my father would have probably never broke up with her and they would have been high school sweethearts. If I hadn't been born, my mother wouldn't of died at sixteen, from child birth. If my grandmother hadn't had to take care of me, she would have been less stressed and maybe she would have had better health because of it. Then my aunt wouldn't have to take care of me, and we wouldn't have to get into stupid arguments all the time. "Tate, come on!" Oliver shouts from the end of the trail, about fifteen or twenty feet away. I let out one last huff of frustration before deciding to forget about the argument and to just have fun with my friends.

Oliver is one of my friends, we get along only about half of the time, but I know that he'd have my back no matter what if it came down to it. Walking down the rest of the trail, I see the rest of our friends sitting around the small fire pit we made, Aria is drinking something that's probably not legal and Rave, which is what he insists on being called because of his "party like nature", is trying to discreetly switch out what she gave him for soda. Rave just likes to pretend he's a trouble maker, and we let him think that we believe he is. Emmy is walking out of the cabin with a bag of chips, making her way to an empty log. "So do you think Mr. T's replacement is hot?" Emmy asks as she sits down on Raves lap instead of the log she was previously walking toward.

Emmy and Rave have been dating since eighth grade, "oh, do I have competition?' he asks as Aria answers her questions.

"Definitely," she nods and then picks up a cup to hand to me.

"I agree, I'd let him give me Detention any time, if you know what I mean." Layla says with a wink, timing it perfectly for when Rave was taking a drink.

Rave chokes on his soda and begins to cough a bit as I attempt to push the cup aria was handing me away. "my aunt's already mad at me enough."

Oliver rolls his eyes, "chicken," he mumbles under his breath, and I swear if it had been anyone else making fun of me I wouldn't care, but something about him making fun of me always gets under my skin. So I stupidly chug the thing, and like I said Earlier, I had planned on going back when I calmed down, I really did. I just didn't think it would be the next day when I did.

I wake up with a killer headache, my eyelids feeling like sand paper as I struggle to open them, my entire body hurting, what did we do last night? I question my self now looking around to see that I'm in an unrecognizable room, some of my clothes missing and what I was wearing seemed to be ripped. it was in that moment that I realized something was very wrong, and every part of me feels like it was fading away as the question comes back, what happened last night?

My breathing quickens and I stand up on alert, looking around the room once again for a clue. That's when the door opens and I jump, not knowing what to do or what to expect I quickly grab a base ball bat that was near the bed. The guy who opened the door puts his hands out, "whoa, whoa, it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."

I hold the bat still, cautiously, not convinced he's sincere. He steps closer, "who are you, and where am I, what happened?"

"I'm Christopher Oxton, your at my house, I found you last night, and I brought here because you said you couldn't go home, and you didn't want me to call the police." He explains, hands still up. The last name Oxton was familiar, one of our older quarter backs last name was Oxton, but Pretty sure his name was Jacob. Although he's in college now, but I did remember hearing that he had siblings that went to the private school that was in the next town over, so I guess they could be related.

"Wha, what happened to my clothes?" I ask the question I'm not sure I want to know the answer to.

He looks down, finally dropping his hands, "I don't know, I found you like that, I was driving home from a friend's house last night when you ran out of the woods and Into the road, you looked like you were running for your life, I asked if you needed me to call the police and you said no, and when I asked if you needed a ride home all you said was you couldn't go home, and then you passed out. So I took you here, I really don't know what happened before that."

I drop the bat and practly crumble to the ground, wrapping my arms around my legs, crying. I didn't want to be crying in front of this stranger, but here I was. He seems to panic not sure on how to comfort me so he ends up grabbing his blanket from the bed and wrapping it around me. Before sitting down in front of me, careful not to be too close. "Hey, it's okay, I'm gonna find you some clothes, and then we can do what ever you want to do, if you want to go to the police, we can, or if you want to go home I can take you, what ever it is, I'll make it happen." I look up at him, his brown eyes holding sympathy and warmth, and it only makes it worse, because I don't need sympathy and warmth, I need the truth, and he can't give that too me.

After a moment passes I stop crying and I look back at him again, "can you take me home?"

He nods, quickly standing up and going over to a closet, coming back out a minute later with blue basketball shorts and a black Kanefeild Prep Baseball hoodie and a very old looking pare of sneakers. I put the clothes on and he turns around, despite the fact that he's already seen me in my shredded clothes, and I was just putting these on over top of them. "Where do you live?" He asks, as he leads me down stairs. Family photos line the walls, Jacob, him and a girl who looks around my age, maybe a year younger, are in most of them, apart from a few that seem to be just their parents, or a singular photo of a child.

"We're still in Oakdale, right?" He shakes his head, and looks at me once we get to the bottom of the stairs.

I stop next to him, my hands pulled up into the sleeves of his hoodie, "Kanefeild, or well five miles out from Kanefeild. I found you on one of the old dirt roads. Coppers trail," he elaborates more.

My aunt lives on the edge of Oakdale, right where the woods that separate Oakdale and Kanefeild begin. It's about fifteen miles of forest in between the towns, and coppers trail is the only road other then the highway that intersects through the woods. It's about eight miles from where my aunt lives though. The cuts on my feet seem to make more sense now, I had ran Miles through the woods, with no shoes. I fight back the urge to cry again and give him my aunt's address, he doesn't say anything, but I can tell he's wondering how I got that far out too.

The car ride is silent for the first minute or two, when he decide to break the silence. Almost as if he could sense where my mind was going, and wanted to distract me for the time being. "So my family is out of town, if you were wondering why no one noticed you were there. They went to visit my brother at college, I stayed home because I had to "study." Really I just didn't feel like visiting my brother, my parents always act like he's a gift given from God to the world, it gets exhausting, you know?" I look over at him "like I love the guy, but he's an idiot, he thinks a sheep dog is a made up creature, that is both a sheep and a dog. Why my parents worship him is beyond me."

I think he was trying to make my laugh, but I just continue to look at him, so he tries another route, "so uh do you like music?" He turns the radio on and some alternative rock song starts to play, "this is imagine by "without Air," it's one of my favorites, I'm basically obsessed with them" he tells me before he starts drumming on the steering wheel with his fingers and singing along.

"Your a bad singer," I say emotionlessly, and he stops singing and looks over at me.

He puts one hand on his chest, "that really hurts you know," he feigns hurt. "I have dreams of being the best singer in the world and now my dreams are crushed," he fake pouts. This time I give him a small smile, and he smiles too, "so what kind of music do you like?"

I shrug, not really feeling like this is the moment to be having a conversation about music with a guy that apparently rescued me last night from what ever I was running from. "It doesn't matter," I say as I look back out the window, nothing feels like it matters anymore. As if I was now missing a huge part of me, Hollowing out my insides. The rest of the drive goes on in silence, him finally getting the point that I didn't want to talk.

When we get to my aunt's house, he parks in front of it. "Hey, if you ever need to talk-"

"Thank you for the ride," I say quickly cutting him off and rushing out of his truck and into the house. Not even paying attention to the cop car that was outside.

The second I walk in, my aunt comes around the corner of the living room, hugging me the second she sees me, and it throws me off. I thought she would be pissed with me. Then a police officer walks into the room. "Thank God your alive." The amount of relief on her face when she pulls away from me is confusing.

The police officer clears his throat, turning our attention to him. "We should get her to the hospital to be checked out, and we can talk to her there."

My aunt nods, "I'll take her." Then she turns back to me, and there's still a slight look of worry and fear mixed in with the relief on her face. It's obvious this has something to do with what happened last night, and I'm afraid of what I'm going to learn once I get to the hospital.