lost [muke af]

4.0 - michael

4.0 - michael

He likes boys.

Michael likes boys and he's thirteen. He stands in the gym locker room and his friends are calling their friends 'fags' as a joke. They think it's a joke, they laugh. How is a boy supposed to come out of his dark closet if his sexuality is a joke? "Learn to tell a new joke!" He wants to scream at all of them.

But, he doesn't. He slides on his regular jeans and sweater, keeping his mouth closed. Michael doesn't like his friends anymore.

It's March, the fourth of March to be specific. New York is warming up but the snow on the ground is still piling up towards the grey skies. He slips on ice and feels like he broke his bone.
Mike stays on the ground, his legs under his body as he lets a tear slip from his face. He doesn't know why he's crying, maybe he's stressed. Seventh graders aren't supposed to feel like this, they're supposed to be talking about crushes and how much they hate their parents. They're supposed to be complaining about school even though they have no idea what's right around the corner.

Michael knows what's around the corner. He may be an only child, but he sees the high schoolers. They have heavy bags and heavier heads. Their shoulders are slumped as they watch the ground pass below their feet.

The dirty blonde fringe-tastic thirteen year old is observant. His green eyes watch the black ice as it reflects ever so slightly off of the ground. He starts to get up, his muddy white Converse are untied but he doesn't want to fix it. He knows if he bends down, he'll fall, and he won't want to get up.

He turns onto his street, their corner house is white with navy blue shutters. It's faded and his mother always complains, but never does anything about it.

Their garage is closed, and he doesn't think his parents are home. The neighbors are out, though, they wave to him with a large smile as if today was the best day in their entire life.

Michael smiles back, waving a sweater-pawed hand back at their direction.

He starts to step through the eight inches of dirty snow and up to the-once bright, now faded-red door. The keys in his pockets jingle as he slides it out, flipping through the few pairs with cold, red hands.

He breathes out a puff of air, smoke filling from his warm mouth and into the cold world.

The door unlocks as he steps inside, kicking off his dirty shoes onto the navy blue rug. His mother constantly gets mad at him when there is dirt on the tile floors. Half of the time, Mike is positive it wasn't even him. But, his father would never fess up when his mother is those moods.

He looks up at the chandelier hanging above him wondering the chance of it falling and crushing him.

At dinner, he brushes his plain pasta around his plate, his mother sits across from him. It's just the two of them as his father works another late night. Michael doesn't think he works anymore, just leaves the house and comes home tipsy.

"Are you feeling okay?" His mother breaks the silence. She thought that when she had a child that the house would never be quiet. That's what everyone told her, they told her that she wouldn't have time to think for herself.

But even as a baby, Michael didn't make sound. His green eyes were constantly scanning the room, observing everything in his surroundings.

"Yeah," he lied, stabbing his fork a few more times at the sound. "Would you still love me if I liked boys?"

"Oh," she was taken back at his blunt words. As said before, Michel was never the one to talk. "I mean, it would be different-."

"No, it wouldn't," he interrupted, "I'd be the same person as I am right now. I'd be the same person as I was last year, I just have an attraction to a different gender."

"Do you think your soulmate is a... boy?" She said the word like it was the worst thing in the world. Like, simply thinking of her son with another man would send her straight to the pits of hell.

Michael rolled up his left sleeve, showing the many tattoos he's started to gain. He pointed out the mars symbol (otherwise known as the male symbol) that was fresh and still sore. "I think that's what this means."

His father came home forty minutes after midnight. His mother told him that she sent Michael to his room straight after dinner (it's not like he does anything besides that). He asked why, his voice was booming like he had no decency that his child was supposed to be asleep only one floor away.

Mike was wide awake, staring at the white ceiling. He could only hear a high pitched murmur as his mother said something below a whisper.

"He's what?" His father asked.

Michael could practically hear the teeth of the forty-some year old man grinding as he stomped up the carpet stairs.

"Honey, leave him alone. He's asleep," his mother called from the bottom of the stairs.

But, it was too late. Just like his mother, his father has moods, but his are always worse.

When he was seven years old, his eyes started to lose the color he once loved. They were empty, resembling the only thing he felt: nothing. When he was seven, he wanted to die, he didn't know what dying really was.

When he was nine years old, he watched a cartoon sad face appear on his left wrist. He was asleep while still being awake. Even knowing that there was someone out there for him, he still wished he wasn't ever born.

At eleven, he wondered if happiness was real, or maybe it was a figure of everyone's imagination.

Thirteen years old, he almost got his wish of death.