Witness

“Frank, you’ve known him for about a day!” My mum laughed, hitting my in the face with a pillow.

“Yeah?”

“And you’re like practically in love with him!”

“I never said that,” I laughed back.

“The amount you’re talking about this boy is almost shocking Frankie,”

“I’m- I’m not talking about him much, there’s not too much to talk about anyway, like you said, I’ve only known him a day and a bit,”

“You went into a lot of detail about how cute his smile is,”

“Well sorry, it’s true!”

“You’re so in love,”

“I’m not in love,”

“You so are,”

I rolled my eyes at my mother’s childish ways, she really was such a teenager at heart. In some ways that’s another reason that it was so disappointing that we had to leave California. When her and her friends got together, it was like some teenager girl sleepover; they’d all be doing their hair and nails, gossiping about the other girls at work and reading all these fashion magazines. It was like a monthly thing, and they took it in turns as to whose house it was at. Whenever it was at ours, Dad and I would leave the house so quickly it was insane. We’d normally go get pizza, then go to the cinema and watch anything as long as it got us out of the house for a little while, and then go home and hide in our rooms.

I smiled fondly at the memory, picking up the bowl of ice-cream mum had been sorting for me and making my way upstairs and into my room. I was beginning to learn my way about this place now.

I moved over to my desk, and turned on the lamp next to my laptop before starting up my laptop and finally getting around to making a new e-mail address. I wasn’t allowed to use my other one in case people tracked me down using it.

Curiosity got the better of me as I got to the hotmail homepage and saw the log-in. I remembered my e-mail address, and the password; obviously since it'd only been less than a week since I last used it. It wouldn’t hurt me to just; find out if anyone actually realized I was gone.

I was re-directed into my inbox where there were a lot of e-mails sitting unread. Most were spam and advertising, but some were from recognizable accounts, mostly those of my friends. Shakily, I clicked on the oldest e-mail that wasn’t spam, from Monday; the day that I left.

To; A_Thomas@hotmail.com
From; wiLliamControl@hotmail.com
Subject; ‘English’
Dude! Where were you today? I’ve I’d have known you weren’t going to be in English class today, I’d have skipped! Why didn’t you let me know? Everyone was asking about you today. You’ll be back tomorrow, right?
WiL

I laughed at my friends stupid ways, and remembered how me and Will would always plan when we’d bother turning up to class, and since we were the only ones in that class, if one of us was ill, the other one would skip out. We couldn’t go to a class as boring as English alone, could we? The next e-mail was from the next day.

To; A_Thomasjr@hotmail.com
From; M_Shdws112@hotmail.com
Subject; ‘Where are you?’
Yo, Anthony! I read in the newspaper (Yeah, me, reading a newspaper!) and I heard about what happened to your Dad. I guess I get why you would’ve cooped yourself up in your house, because that’s a really hard thing to go through, but you need to make contact with the outside world some time, man! We’re all so worried about you!
Matt x

Sighing, I avoided the ‘reply’ button, and went back to my inbox, clicking on the next e-mail.

To; A_Thomasjr@hotmail.com
From; H4YL3Y@hotmail.com
Subject; ‘You left?’
So, we were all pretty shocked to hear about what happened to your Dad, I mean, we all know that it’s not something that you can just get over. We all, and I mean all of us, came to your house today to see you, so were pretty shocked when some man answered the door and told us you were gone. What the hell?! Fine, you want to start a new life, leave the past or some shit, but to just pack up and leave without telling us? That’s not cool.
Where are you?
Hayley x

That e-mail was from yesterday. My eyes filled up, I felt terrible for just leaving without a trace, but I had no choice. All my friends must hate me, but the depressing thing is that they’re not really my friends any more. I’m not Anthony Thomas anymore, as far as anyone knows, I no-longer exist.

I logged out of my old account before making a new one. Sitting at my computer for over ten minutes, flicking my fingers over the keys of my computer, I thought and thought about a new an interesting e-mail address. My Dad had made my last one, hence why it wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world.
This one wasn’t all that exciting either, but it was all I could think of that wouldn’t give too much away about who I really was, and wouldn’t be anything too weird for people who I may befriend now.

Finally deciding on an email address, I activated it coming up with a new password, and realizing that I had no-one to add to the contact list. The tears came back to my eyes, as I once again thought about how much my life was over. I wasn’t Anthony Thomas anymore. Anthony Thomas was dead and buried. No friends, no family, no life. He couldn't exist anymore if I wanted to stay alive.

My friends needed to know where I was, but I couldn’t tell them, so I added one address to my contact list, sending her one e-mail. It was a slightly cryptic message, she wouldn’t understand, but at least I’d know in my heart that I’d kind of told them where I was.

To: H4YL3Y@hotmail.com
From: eye-ear-oh@hotmail.com
Subject; ‘No Subject’
NJ.
x