Chapter 3
Seth was now officially on the case. Ryan was hiding something and he was going to get to the bottom of it.
He had accidentally 'overheard' his parents discussing Ryan and heard the words 'withdrawn' 'coping' and 'therapy'. To that, he had added his own concerns.
It had taken him a while to realise that something was up. Ryan was always good at hiding things, and Seth had been a little self-absorbed recently. Hey… he would hold his had up and admit it.
At first he just thought Ryan and Lindsay's so called study evenings were just an excuse to spend time together. Seth had joked with Alex that he'd doubted that much studying was going on. But a few times when Ryan had said that he was with Lindsay. He and Alex had seen Lindsay on her own…. No evidence of Ryan.
Seth had casually asked Ryan when he had arrived back home on one of these occasions, how his evening had gone? Only to have Ryan mutter about Lindsey helping him with AP math. Then he had declined a game of ninja and retired to the pool house.
The second occurrence had been about two weeks ago, Seth was sure he had seen Ryan getting into a van outside Harbour, He hadn't recognised the driver…but it certainly hadn't been Lindsay.
Again when he had questioned Ryan about it, Ryan had just shrugged his shoulders and said Seth must have been mistaken. When Seth had continued to press the issue Ryan had told him that the subject was closed and stalked off.
Seth was more than a little hurt that Ryan felt that he had to lie to him, but Seth knew you could only push Ryan so far. So Seth had taken the stealth approach and tried to follow Ryan.
He'd discovered that a skateboard was no match for a bike, Damn, Ryan could peddle fast when he wanted to and he'd lost him. He had even contemplated going through his stuff, but he knew Ryan would definitely not forgive him that.
O.K…so now Seth was getting freaked out. As time had gone on Ryan had seemed to vanish from their home life, Always gone in the mornings and back late at night. It was at that point that his 'Rents had got involved but he knew that they had had as much luck as he had when questioning Ryan. The famous Ryan stonewall was in place.
They had finally resorted to grounding him.
Except Seth knew that Ryan was now staying out all night.
Seth had seen Ryan leave the pool house after all the lights had gone off on the main house and not return till the early hours of the morning.
A few days after the grounding they had been having lunch at school. Seth had been discussing whether Wolverine could whoop Superman's butt with Lindsay. He'd looked over at Ryan to get some backup to his argument to find him sound asleep, head cupped in hand. Lindsey had nudged him and he had woken up with a start.
It was then that Seth really looked at Ryan and saw quite frankly, He looked like shit. It was whilst they were walking back to lessons that Seth had heard a piece of snatched conversation. It scared the hell out of him.
"Ryan, You can't go on like this, You've got to get help" Lindsay pleaded
TBC