To love you | Malum

Ch. 8 - Jokes + Tears

Michael + Ch. 8 - Jokes + Tears

I began to avoid going to school for the next week in a half. Daryl would drop by every morning, telling everyone that I was in the hospital and excused from all classes for the next two weeks, and he'd bring me home my school work and homework. It was times like these when I appreciated and needed him the most. But due to time measures, I was cursed with boredom. The static coming from the television screen wasn't enough to keep me entertained for five hours until dad came home, neither was my cell phone, surprisingly. What would have made this little vacation of mine better would be if I had actual friends; not just people who talk to me because they feel sympathetic that I'm in a wheelchair.

Sometimes, I feel like Calum isn't entirely all he's made out to be, either. I get that he's the most popular guy in school, his boyfriend coming third and his best friend coming second, but I feel like our encounters and conversations resemble suicide in a way. It's something you want to do, because you can't take feeling sympathetic for yourself any longer and you want to stop, but once you start, it's over. There's no turning back.

Now that every person with a heartbeat inside of Pleine High School knows my secret, I can't show my face. It's one of the many reasons why I sobbed into my pillow at three forty seven in the morning, in hopes that it'd give my dad a big enough message that I didn't want to return to the place that made me feel miserable.

I was piled with tons of work to get done, but I still continued to procrastinate and think about where I went wrong. I didn't get the reaction I was hoping for, but then again, I didn't get a reaction at all. It was just stupid Calum smoking with his stupid vapor and hanging with his stupid friends, who really weren't that bad, after all. It was just Luke that I had a problem with. Stupid fucking Luke.

"Michael, bud, I'm home," Daryl said softly as he locked the front door, and I only wheeled myself around to face him. It was times like these where I wished I could stand and run up and hug him and tell him how much I missed him while yelling at him in the process because he left me alone for so long. He had a plastic bag in his hands, and I could smell something, which only meant one thing. Daryl brought food.

"What's that?"

"It's a couple of bean and cheese burritos from Santiago's with extra sour cream on the side, just how you like it," Daryl smiled, and I felt incredibly happy over the fact that he still managed to feed me, despite hardly having enough money for anything at all. At some point in time, he's going to have to start paying for me to train my foot, and I'm not ready for that at all.

"Roll yourself into the bathroom and wash up while I set the table."

I only nodded, placing my hands on the wheels and moving my way towards the bathroom as quickly as possible, even if it wasn't fast at all. From the moment I turned on the light switch in the bathroom and glanced in the full length mirror, I cringed. It was no wonder why Calum wasn't interested in me. My stomach slightly hung over my sweatpants, and it was a bit pudgy, just like my hands. My hair was beginning to fall out from the amount of times I've dyed it, and my eyes were starting to grow dull. The bright green may have just been a phase, just like my hopes for discovering what it truly means to be happy.

"How was work?" I muttered, wheeling myself underneath the table and placing my elbows on top. The burritos looked awfully good, but maybe eating three was too many. It'd be smart for me to go on a diet at some point. "It was okay, ran into a lot of issues at the department, but you know me, always finding my way out of it."

"Yeah," I chuckled dryly, finding no humor in what my father was saying. In fact, I wasn't even paying much attention to him, when I should have been. All that I could think about was the way Calum acted when Luke was accusing me of trying to steal his boyfriend, and all he did was vape his problems away. He didn't smile, he didn't look sad, he was just there. It was like he was a ghost that haunted people's dreams. In this case, it was my dreams.