It was weeks since he hung out with any of them. Since he talked with Becky. Every so often she would try to come up to him, and he would be friendly enough, but then... He would think back to everything, and he just couldn't talk.
Weeks since Huck had kissed him, and it was as if it had never happenedâHuck never came up to him, afterâwhy would he?
Weeks since the fight between him and Huck, and it was still always on his mind.
Tom was so alone.
He spent a lot of his time in the woods. Thinking. Feeling the air around him, warm and cold, every shade of it on his skin reminding him of how things used to be.
He sat on the ground, surrounded by trees, and eventually his mind would clear enough to stop the anxious feeling and the churning set in his chest.
Being there and being so alone in that space... It let Tom think, for just a few moments, that he had run away. That he was in some foreign space in the country, taking solace in the forests that would always be calm and familiar.
Tom thought more and more about running away.
No matter what he had said to Huck that night, he really was scared. He had never wanted things to change. And he had grown scared of adventuring alone.
But he didn't want to be scared. It would probably stay, that feeling in him that pulled him back from the things he would otherwise do, but he wanted to be free. He wanted to try.
Some days, he would pretend he was going to school and just beeline for the woods. And he would think how he could leave. Right now. What was stopping him? He couldn't marry Becky, and if he wasn't ready before, he wasn't ready now.
Other days, he would wait and wait for the final bell and then he would leave before everyone else, hoping no one saw him go to the forest.
Huck never went there. If he did, Tom never saw him. He was alone in those trees.