🏆Featured on TeenFiction | Head Over Heels
To Leroy 'Lee' Hiew, home's never felt like home. He has a huge mansion, a big car, and more money than he could ever spend. And yet, the idea of home always seems to elude him.
Armed with his dog, Socks...
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On bad days, Lee likes to see what Jack Sang's up to. It always makes him feel a little better to see his whatever---his occasional friend, his no shit, you're really annoying, his oh my gosh, I hate you but I also kind of really want to kiss you like, sometimes, when you're not being so annoying---with his nose in the dirt, especially since he spends most of his free time turning it up at Lee.
So because the four-hundredth---he's been counting---message he'd left on his mother's phone had been finally met with a robotic, Sorry, this number is no longer in service, and Yumeko Mori---who he likes to consider his only real friend in the world---is being kind of a bitch, Lee heads over to the space behind the school that's been long whitewashed by the imprint of Jack's twice-broken nose. The memory of blood against cement, cracked shards of ruined dignity glittering in the sunlight like exposed bone, is far too fresh in Lee's mind, a ballpoint-inked tattoo that won't come off no matter how many times he scrubs.
The sunset paints the shell of Lee's ears a flushed, rosy pink, echoing the light hemmings of fake ecstasy shimmering over his heated cheeks. Lee knows he doesn't need to try to be happy---not when he's gotten the indirect confirmation that his mother no longer wants him---but old habits tend to die like new morals. Slow and hard.
The crinkle of the brown paper bag between his snow-bleached knuckles fades into a murmur of background noise, a funnelled choir against the panorama of the world's orange-yellow backdrop. Lee kicks his sneaker forward, watching pebbles fly into gales of dust and long-dried rain. His gait's a little looser today, and as always, he's not sure whether it's because of the falsified joy, or because he needs to be loose around Jack Sang to hold on to whatever fragments of sanity remain in his pea-sized brain.
As expected, Jack's slumped over in the brown-tinted dirt, looking only a fraction of the five-foot-eleven he is. As if he's shorter than Lee, not nearly three inches taller---a fact Jack likes to literally lord over Lee's head a bit too much for his liking. All height and no bark, Lee thinks gleefully, watching Jack roll over with an agonised groan.
"Hi," Lee greets cheerfully, dropping both himself and the paper bag into the soil next to his something something---the best name for Jack that he can come up with.
His chest burns---unforgiving, rust-smeared, heart long scorched, long crashed.
Jack lifts his head, just a centimeter, pure distaste scrawled over his face in neon-pink crayon. Maybe it's just the bruises. Or maybe it's the way the sunset is a perfect melody over his pin-straight features, daubing his honey-brown eyes in ebbing, tangerine dreams.
He's not happy to see Lee. He never is---or rarely, at least, because there are times when Lee's able to shoot his heart-tipped darts through the impenetrable shell that is Jack Sang. But today, he's angry, bitter as black coffee, humiliation sparking off his defined edges like wet fingers to a light switch.
