I have felt the need to tell this story for a while. It was a cold Friday afternoon, just after school, and me and the boys wanted to have some fun; as any 17 year olds would. And you know what, we had fun. Beers for all, loud music the whole shebang; any late teens Friday night dream. That is until the newest to our friend group, a quiet, skittish young lad named Daniel decided to do something completely unprecedented that would leave us with more questions than answers.

Our small town of around 5000 people in the far north of England has never been known for anything out of the ordinary. You have rows of middle class houses with middle class people living in them. You have the corner shop where we wait, in patience, for someone to go inside and buy us booze. And then you have our school. An ugly, grey 2 storey building which sadly fit in with the rest of the town. The rest of the town. Well it just consisted of terraced red-bricked houses that all had the exact same inside layout. I actually enjoyed our town being ordinary. It meant everyone minded their own business and you never had to worry about weird kids. Well I thought that. Before Daniel came along our friend group consisted of 4 of us. Me, obviously. You have Gareth – a weirdo but a good lad overall. Then you have Bob – Bob is a special one. He’s the sort of guy that only has to hear “do it for the boys” and he will now do whatever preceded those five words at your command. An example of this is one time Bob jumped off of a 30m high bridge simply because he was told to do it for the boys. He had to be rushed off to hospital shortly after with 2 broken ribs. Lastly you have Jon. Jon is just Jon. He doesn’t really have anything special about him. I’m pretty sure his only hobby is hanging with his friends. Now that I’ve covered the original lads I’ll talk about Daniel. Daniel came to our town a couple months ago and seemed to settle with our group of friends when Jon invited him to one of our gatherings.

At first Daniel seemed like an ordinary kid. He liked playing video games. He played football and was quite good at it too. None of us actually knew where he came from because whenever we asked him he would say “down South” and just avoid the question when asked to explain further. That was the first unusual thing we noticed about Daniel. The second weird thing was just the way he acted in general. He was a good lad, not very chatty, but never annoying or an arse. Thing is he never seemed fully present. It was always as if he was thinking about something else; like his mind was occupied. There were times where you would have to say his name multiple times before he even realised you were talking to him. We once brought it up and asked if he was ok but he just seemed confused as to what we were talking about. The third thing that was the weirdest of all was that we suspected he didn’t even have a home. Now that may seem like an out there accusation but it sure seemed like it. After school he would just disappear, never say where he was going and would always be a minute away from where we would meet. This just didn’t make sense in our heads. We actually didn’t question him about it until that one fateful night. We wished we didn’t.

The bad thing about alcohol is that it gives you that boost in confidence that could be all it takes for you to splurt out something you were supposed to keep secret. Well this was the case for Daniel. Bob had confronted Daniel in a very passive-aggressive manner and had practically demanded that Daniel tell us where he lived; sounds quite creepy in retrospect. Daniel took this as a direct attack and wasn’t having any of it. He got right up in Bob’s face and said “or what you creep”. Gareth, Jon and I were taken aback by his overreaction. Why on earth was Daniel so secretive about where he lived. Bob at this moment had 2 options; say it doesn’t matter and sit back down or call Daniel a homeless weirdo. Bob picked the second option. You could tell that this really hit home for Daniel as he pushed Bob right into the fire. After a minute or two of Bob rolling around on the floor in pain and a bucket full of water the cops arrived. We were at Bob’s house and Bob’s parents had a clear view into the back garden and had called the cops once they saw how Daniel had reacted. He was taken home by the cops. And thats where it all went wrong. 

You see Daniel’s home wasn’t somewhere you would like the cops to visit. Later on we found out that the police had found needles filled with ‘narcotic substances’ through the grapevine. Sadly we never saw Daniel again after that night. We were also never told what happened to him. Maybe he got sent to a new home or maybe his family had to move away. Whatever happened to him we all knew that if Bob had not been so confrontational Daniel would still be here. But maybe if Daniel had thought about the situation before reacting his life would not have had to change like it did.