Opposites • Cake

5

Luke entered his own house, hating the feeling he got in his stomach each time he pushed open the creaky door to step into the hallway. He couldn't hear a sound except for a quiet dripping noise coming from the kitchen.

Luke had made the mistake before of getting too comfortable at home before realising that there had been someone with him the whole time. He remembered that time every time he stood in the shower, seeking solitude in a house filled with hate, and he caught sight of the short, jagged scar that lay at the base of his back. 

The boy scurried up the stairs, careful to stand on the right places of each step, his feet dancing between the floorboards in order to make as little sound as possible, just in case the house wasn't as empty as it seemed. 

Luke made it to his bedroom, his happy place and he shut the door behind him, gently clicking it into place before letting out a breath that he hadn't realised he was holding. 

As the boy's eyes drifted around the room, he felt sad when he caught sight of the polaroids sticking to the walls of his room. His gaze scanned all of the memories blu-tacked to the walls, or hanging from the long strands of fairy lights that draped his room.

Luke has always loved art, and he used to photograph, sketch and paint everything that he saw. His shelves were crammed full of small, black sketchbooks, cover to cover stuffed with drawings, tickets, pressed flowers, leaves, anything Luke found that he held worth to, he would shove into his sketchbooks. 

The boxes residing underneath his bed were filled with pieces of sugar paper, bad drawings of his 'happy family' done by a small, 5 year old Luke when he first joined school. They contained macaroni art work, tiny canvases with delicate etchings of oil paints blooming across the scratchy surface and necklaces that Luke had spent hours painstakingly threading each bead onto a thin piece of thread and tied together with a bow.

Each part of Luke's room was filled with his own memories and his own possessions, and although none of it was new, or worth a lot of money, it meant the world to Luke. 

As he looked around the small space that he called his room, his eyes landed on a red box tucked in the corner, the vinyl sleeves collecting dust from disuse. Luke couldn't bear to get his records out anymore. Seeing them all cracked and smashed up was too much to bear, so he would leave them in the cases, make believing that they were all still intact, and that his parents hadn't snapped them all, throwing his record player out of the window one night that he had forgotten to turn it off before he went to sleep, and Elvis had been quietly playing all night. 

It was one of Luke's lowest moments, when he had to pick the pieces of his prized possession, his 16th birthday present from Rosie that she had saved for months to buy him, out of the scrubby, uncared-for grass at the back of his house. 

Derailing that train of thoughts before he could think any further, Luke shook his head, turning to lock his door and settle his stuff down for the night when his phone chimed from his bag. 

Frowning, Luke stared at the source of the noise. It wasn't often that anyone texted him, Rosie never had a phone as she always seemed to smash it every time she got annoyed at something, and, well, Luke didn't really have any other friends to text him. 

So when he fished his phone out of the front pocket of his rucksack, Luke was pleasantly surprised to see a text from an unknown number lighting up the small screen. 

hey luke its ashton i got your number from your friend rosie and i was wondering if i could ask for your advice?

Luke smiled as he typed out a reply, then deleting it quickly, his heart beating with the thought of someone actually wanting his advice about something. He didn't know what to reply, what do people normally text back to their friends? He typed another message, and then held down the backspace again to erase it. He did this a few mores times, trying for various levels of nonchalance.