Its a wonder why Billy dropped out of school. He was no valedictorian, thats for sure, but he
had a fair future ahead of him, already a junior at 16 years old. Everything
was going fine and dandy in the little Texas town, grades were good, he
wasnt in trouble a lot, a fairly quiet boy. He would go to the local high
school, teachers liked him, not a single problem - then one day in October
he just failed to show up. His girlfriend Samantha found him back on his
fathers cattle ranch, acting as if nothing had happened.
So what if I haven't been to school in three days?
I can make it up.
We dont get this work done -
We dont pay our bills over winter.
Billy's family wasnt in dire straights, but sure enough they needed whatever they could get so as to not have to cut too many corners. David Knox, Billy's father, owned a beef cattle ranch, which brought in the money when the year was good, but it wasnt large enough to fully depend on. Billy and his younger brother Micheal sometimes worked odd jobs just to help out in the off months. By looking at him, you could tell that he worked on the ranch all his life. Sunbleached blond hair thick as a horses mane flopping over calf brown eyes, 6 foot 2 and 180 pounds of solid muscle. Mom would love to have her daughter bring home an honest and hardworking boy like that.
He never went back to school, stayed on the ranch for a couple more weeks then up and left town. Not a word of notice, he simply vanished. Didnt steal the truck, didnt steal any money, left with a backpack and the clothes he was wearing. Samantha was killed in a car wreck two weeks later.
That was a couple years ago. No one has heard any word from him since, and his family wont speak a word of it. Every once in a while rumors pass through town. No one is sure how old he is anymore. He hitch hiked around the state if not country. Lived in California for a few months, but disappeared from there without any notice too. Maybe he left in order to help out his family, or maybe he left because of something else. He really had no reason to that anyone can think of. No one is even sure if hes alive anymore.
He moved on.