Breaking

A Metallic Taste

A few days later, Leo woke up, something felt off that day. Leo had slowly been getting better, and he began to speak with the group more once again. His life without his father had been a bit freer; however, he realized that that would soon end in three days- Leo tried not to dwell on that for too long.

Leo looked at himself in the mirror, he hadn't noticed how his complexion was improving, day by day: his skin became less pale and wane, his eyes brighter, his hair, though still covering his eyes, was neater and silkier, and his clothes less crumpled. Leo's small smile appeared more often. Leo scanned himself, making sure that he looked alright. His dark eyes reflected his smile as he thought about seeing the group at school.

Once he arrived, Nicholas spotted him and ran over, giving a huge wave as greeting, Leo gave his own small one in reply.

"Ready to keep working on our contest performance?" Nicholas asked, obviously excited himself at the thought. Leo nodded, creating a larger beam from Nicholas. "I hoped you would say that." Soon the others joined up with the two boys.

"Hey what's up?" Hadrian asked.

"We were just starting to talk about the performance. We need to decide a style soon." The boys all began to argue on what it should be. None of them could agree, and each thought that they should have their way; well, almost all of them: Leo stayed silent throughout argument, keeping his preference to himself. This silence, however, did not last long, soon the boys, wishing to prove that their idea was best called upon him:

"Come on Leo, you decide, which of our ideas is best for the performance?" Leo shifted, his eyes on the floor, his fingers twiddling in nervousness. He was not quite sure how he wanted to phrase his thoughts. Finally, Leo found the right words to use.

"Well, uuh, I was kind of hoping that we could do a ballad. Those seem to be coming back into fashion recently, and if done well it could leave a good impression on people. We don't have to though, it was just a thought." Leo quickly added on, mistaking the shocked looks of the others to be indignance.

"Actually, I kind of like that idea Leo. Not just kind of, I really like that idea. I think it would work very well with what our voice ranges, capabilities, and skill sets are." Chase reassured. A few still had some questions:

"The problem about that one though is that even if there aren't as many doing that particular style, ballad songs generally sound fairly similar in both lyrics and melody. Would we be able to create a song that is unique enough to catch Mr. Young's attention?" Leo unconsciously flinched at the name, hearing that name only served to remind him of his return in three days. The boys were too engrossed in the topic to notice.

After the style of how they could uniquely write a ballad had been established and had been decided to indeed choose a ballad for a song, the boys began to focus on lyrics. This conversation was less heated than the first. However, they soon found that their brains needed a rest. At least they had one thing completed, it was always better to take one's time on it, and work at little bits to chip it away. Better ideas were generated that way. The group decided to take a quick break. Leo stretched out, though he still chose to wear pants and sweaters, for certain purposes, he was much more comfortable with keeping his hands out of his sweater sleeves. The boys noticed this:

"You're looking better Leo," Nicholas smiled. Leo looked at himself, then back at Nicholas:

"I suppose yeah."

"No, I'm serious Leo, you really are looking better not only physically, but mentally."

"Well, I stopped cutting."