Hopeless (byler)

Ch 12: Mike

Mikes hair is in his face, water dripping into his eyes, but he doesn't stop until he gets home. Mikes feet are peddling faster than he thought was humanly possible, he was determined to bike away his thoughts.

Once he finally gets home, he immediately sees his mom standing in the hallway holding a laundry basket. He walks up to her while saying nothing, and wraps his arms around her.

Karen seems shocked, puts down the basket and says, "Honey, what's going on, are you ok?", Mike doesn't give a response for a minute, then says "El just broke up with me." Mike wasn't actually sure about what he was so shocked about, but it must have been that, right?

Mikes pov~

I walk to my room and shut the door harshly and walk over to my bed. My head is spinning right now. I'm thinking about everything and nothing all at the same time. I mean, I don't know what happened; me and El talked, we broke up, and I didn't feel that bad about it. Then I walked up to Will, saw his painting, and then I felt a weird shift. My stomach turned into knots and my head felt light.

Maybe I was just hungry, who knows. I look over at my clock and it reads 10 pm, and I figure that I should go to sleep.

After changing and brushing my teeth, I hit the lights and fall onto my bed, pull the covers over my body and close my eyes. I lie there for about 5 minutes before thinking It's no use. I can't sleep and for what, a breakup that I wanted to happen as well?

I lie awake, staring at the ceiling while trying to become sleepy, and then the tiredness hits me like a train. My eyelids become 100 pounds heavy and I fall asleep in a matter of seconds.

Back to 3rd person~

The next morning, Mike jolts awake in a cold sweat, seeing that it's 2 am. He sighs as he tries to go back to sleep, but it doesn't work. He sighs and he pull off the blanket and gets up to grab a glass of water.

He makes his way to the kitchen to grab a glass, and in the reflection of the cabinet window, for only a second, he see's Will. Mikes heart rate increases as he gasps, petrified about what he had just seen. Mike closes his eyes, opens them to see nothing there, just his mind playing tricks on him.

Mike briskly fills his glass, and rushes back to his room. He chugs the water, and stares into the abyss of his dark room. Mike stays awake, switching between wandering his house and trying to sleep, for a few hours, until finally at 5 am, he becomes tired again.

Mike wakes up again at 2 pm, and decides to read a comic book. A little while into this and his mom opens the door. "Honey, are you ok? You haven't been out of your room all day," she concernedly expressed. Mike looks up to her with sleep in his eyes and blurts "I'm fine. Just overslept," Karen glares at him with slight confusion, then announces "ok, well you need to clean out your closet, it's a mess.", and then swiftly exists the room.

Mike turns to his closet, thinking he'll do it to pass the time. He starts by picking up any garbage, and throwing it out. Then he moved onto clothes; he starts to pick up the clothes and puts them in two piles, keep and give away. After a few minutes of scrambling up the shirts and pants, and then he see's something else, his clothes from the snowball, just over 2 years back.

Mike starts to reminisce about that night, and how much fun it was to dance with El, and then he remembered how Will got asked to dance by that girl, and how Mike urged Will to comply. After he had done that, Mike regretted it, thinking it was because he was then left alone, but as he was watching Will awkwardly dance, he felt empty and stressed about Will not being there, by his side.

All of the sudden, a familiar ringing noise springs from the telephone outside of Mikes room. No one seemed to hear it except for him, so Mike gets up from the old memories and pick up the phone. "Wheelers residence," Mikes voice is tired and groggy, "Mike? Hey it's Will,". No, not him, not now! Why does he have to call me now, of all times. "Oh! Um, h-hi Will," Mikes voice is perked and more alert at the sound of Wills voice over the telephone line. "I was just- er, wondering if you're ok? You seemed kinda off the other night..." he knows, he has to, Mikes brain is full of thoughts and worries, chasing each other in some type of race of stress. "Yeah, yeah I'm fine," ok now I really have to get off this call "Will my moms calling me I gotta go bye,". Mike hangs up the phone before he can even finish saying goodbye. Why did I lie to him? I never lie to Will, especially Will, friends don't lie. It was a stupid rule, 'friends don't lie' but it was the party's rule, the most important one.