I'm fine i'm just beyond repair

Chapter 11

"So, practice today?" Ashton asked as the four boys walked out of their school. Five weeks had passed since their first cover, and they already had over 200 subscribers, mostly family and friends.

"I can't, I've got a dentist appointment." Michael lied. He was running out of excuses.

"You're a very busy man Michael Clifford." Ashton joked and Michael could feel Calum's eyes on him.

"I am, sorry. But we could practise tonight?" The three boy's agreed.

Maybe you should tell the boys a bit.

Calum had texted him only one hour before he had to be at Ashton's. Michael didn't know what to tell Calum. The younger boy didn't know Michael liked Luke yet. Michael wouldn't be surprised if he had already figured it out, since they knew each other well, but it still was a bit scary to actually tell him.

Michael hated everyone who had ever told him that 'it would get better.'

It didn't.

The boy was turning eighteen in just a few weeks and senior year was about to start. He was not ready; not ready to celebrate a birthday and pretend everything was okay and he was not ready to make tests and go to prom and do meaningless shit every single day.

He was, in his own words, 'to suicidal to function'.

His mum had been the first to tell him that things would get better. He was eleven when he came home from school, cheeks wet from the tears. It wasn't the first time and it most definitely wouldn't be the last. He didn't even know why the kids were bullying him; he had never done anything wrong.

He had been bullied since third grade, and it was only getting worse. Michael felt like an outcast. He had one friend, Calum, who stuck with him through everything, but Calum couldn't stop the bullying and he couldn't stop Michael from hating himself. He didn't even know why, but he had learned that something was wrong with him, because why else would he receive all this hate?

Michael was eleven when he thought about suicide for the first time. Not that he planned on doing it, but he just thought about all the people who had ever done it. He had never understood how someone could take their own life, but now he was starting to. He understood why they did it, and he knew that if things weren't getting better, he'd eventually do it too.

The boy had started cutting at age fourteen, and now, four years later, his whole body was covered in scars. He tried not to cut on places where people could see though, but his upper arms, upper legs and his entire torso were covered in scars and fresh cuts. It wasn't enough. He felt like he deserved more.

He didn't just cut because he thought he deserved the pain. It was a way of escaping his thoughts for a while. Whenever his thoughts were too loud, and his whole body was hurting from the stress he felt inside of him, he would just bleed it out.

If someone had told him he'd hurt himself like that back when he was eight, he would've never believed them.

Michael was a punk. He had never felt like he belonged, so he liked to stand out, to be different. He felt different. He wore black all the time, because that was what he was. Black.

His hair was always another colour because he thought it looked cool and because it made him special. He figured he'd rather embrace his differentness than hiding it and feeling even more miserable.

Calum had accepted it a long time ago and he listened to the same music and wore the same band shirts as his best friend. Even though he looked way too cute to be punk, Michael appreciated everything the boy did for him. Calum stuck with Michael through everything and even though he had other friends and Michael did not, he still spent most of his time with the suicidal boy.

Calum knew a lot about Michael, though not everything. He knew the boy harmed himself, but he didn't know how bad it was and he had never actually seen it. He knew Michael thought about killing himself every now and then but the older boy had never told him it was all he could think about.