Free Taking Risks by Cassie Allee

way.”
                  “You don’t know anything about Risk. If you knew about him, or his past, you would be spitting on him instead of trying to stick your tongue down his throat. He’s a bastard and he’ll never be anything different.” She stomped away leaving me there temporarily frozen in shock.
                  I worked the rest of my shift avoiding Risk as much as I could. I didn’t even wave goodbye to him as I practically ran out of Rocktop. I was conflicted with what to believe about him. I was hearing so many bad things but my gut was telling me that they were wrong. Risk was a good person, that much I could see, but I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to deal with his baggage. I already had plenty of my own.
                  When I got home Gray was there and I noticed that he looked anxious, but I shrugged it off. I wasn’t used to being away from him for so long and I had missed seeing him at several moments throughout the day.
                  “Hey! Was your day super boring? Mine definitely wasn’t…” Gray interrupted me to drop a bomb.
                  “I think that you should go somewhere else to stay for a while. There’s something going on around here and I think it’s going to get dangerous.”
                  “What are you talking about?” I said. It wasn’t like Gray to freak out about things, and he knew I had nowhere else to go.
                  “I went looking for the boy today, but when I went to the old town square to look around I found something really scary. A bunch of the angry ones are gathering there, and none of the other Lost Ones seem to know why. I went back again this afternoon and the number of them had already doubled. Something bad is going to happen around here. Those things don’t just get together to have parties.”
                  “They all know I can see ghosts, don’t they?” I said and silently hoped that they didn’t. I didn’t want red eyed crazies following me around.
                  “I don’t know about all of them, but I can’t imagine that ghosts gossip any less than the living do and one of them is bound to know about you.”
                  I said a few curse words before calming down and very firmly telling Gray, “I can’t leave now. My life is just now starting to feel normal for the first time ever . Besides, I would have absolutely no place to go. I’m stuck here and I don’t want to leave anyway so I suggest that we hang around and see how this plays out. It may be nothing.”
                  “Promise me that you’ll stay away from there Marlee.” Gray knew that if he could get me to make the promise that I would keep it, and he looked desperate. “I’m really scared for you, Spud.”
                  “I’ll stay away from the old square, I promise, but I’m still going to look for Little Dirty Boy. It’s not fair that we give up on him just because we’re scared.”
                  Gray nodded in agreement and then I went upstairs to get ready for bed. The sheets seemed softer beneath me than normal, and I was feeling like I needed to take a mental break. My mind felt tired from all of the anxious situations I had been in lately. I fell asleep next to Gray while he sang the New Kids on the Block song “I’ll be Loving You (Forever). I often thought about how Gray must have loved the eighties. He had the eighties hair style and musical preferences and his dance moves were definitely something from that generation.
                  The next day I actually made it to school on time…with Grays help. When I got to my English class the first thing that I noticed was that Risks seat was empty. I really wanted to talk to him about what the rumors I had been hearing about him and sort out fact and fiction, but it was going to have to wait. I caught the Mean