the babysitter ; muke

four

After Luke left, Michael was more bored than he had ever thought he could feel. It was as if Luke made everything more fun; Michael didn't even care to check his phone and see who had texted him, looking for any parties he could easily sneak out to this cloudy night. A party didn't seem fun enough for him tonight, being full of mindless people who cared nothing about him, people who only wanted to see him do crazy things whilst being out of his sober mind.

Luke seemed to like sober Michael, though. He couldn't even really say that much about his 'friends'.

"Michael, you're awfully quiet. Planning your next escape, are you?" Michael's mother chuckled, nudging his arm with her elbow as she sat next to him on the couch, reaching for the remote with her other arm.

"No, I'm tired. I love you guys, good night," Michael stood up from the couch, leaning down and pressing a kiss to his mother's forehead before excusing himself from the living room. 

Michael's mother and father exchanged worried glances, seeing as something was off about their son. Maybe he was only rushing to go up to his room to sneak out, leaving Michael's mother giving herself a mental note to check on him in about 10 minutes.

Michael hopped the steps to his room two at a time, desperately trying to get to his room and catch some sleep before his phone could have a chance to go off. He successfully made it into his room, stripping out of his jeans and t-shirt, carelessly throwing them onto the floor somewhere that he didn't care to think about where.

He could hear his phone begin to go off from wherever it lie on the floor in his jeans, but he couldn't care less as he closed his eyes and caught some sleep for school the next day.

As Mrs. Clifford had noted to herself, she was upstairs in 10 minutes, popping her head into the door of Michael's room.

Mr. Clifford had followed shortly after, them both being surprised at what they saw in Michael's room. It wasn't as much of the mess in there that was surprising, but the fact that Michael lay sound asleep, his regular snores being the only thing heard.

"What do you thinks wrong with him?" Mrs. Clifford whispered as low as she could to her husband.

"Maybe he's pretending?"

"Let's try again in an hour, then."

And when they checked on the boy in an hour as they had planned, he still lie in his bed sound asleep. Nothing could begin to describe the shock in Michael's parents' minds. Was their boy finally deciding to be good for a change? Did this have something to do with Luke?