Becoming Punk Rock | M.C.

03: Everybody Hurts

I’m With You – Avril Lavigne

   I push Michael away, out of our hug. He looks like he’s angry – about to sulk or something. It’s not my fault I could possibly have the worse memory in the whole of Los Angeles. My throat is dry and I feel like beating myself up purely because I don’t understand why it does that. I’d say ‘I’m thirsty’ in front of Michael but he’d interpret it in a different and rude way. Michael was impossible. Most of the time, anyway. I like to think I have ways around his dirty mind.

“Shit, Michael, I need to get to Calum’s party. I’m going with Luke and I—” he cuts me off from finishing my sentence. I can already tell he’s about to spew a load of shit out of his mouth. Typical Michael.

“Luke? You're going with Luke?” He looks hurt and almost betrayed. But after all he's done to me lately; he doesn't get to feel betrayed about me making other friends. Michael and I would never bicker like this. Sure, we’d bicker over stuff like what pizza topping to have, or what soda to buy, but it was never like this. He has never brought up me not being allowed to have other friends – he was too busy being fucked over by Nellie. “Luke and Calum aren’t the type of people you want to be friends with.”

I can’t believe he’s telling me who I can’t be friends with. Next he’ll tell me I can’t be fucking friends with him.

I scoff. “Shut up, seriously. If I want other friends, and if they happen to be two people that make you very jealous, then I don’t care.” I cross my arms and look away from him, at all of the photos of me and my family on my wall. He’s so frustrating I’m halfway to ripping his hair out and shoving it down his throat. Hate to See Your Heart break by Paramore is playing in the background like this was one of those Romance films where they start off as best friends but then realise their feelings for each other. Too bad that I don’t have feelings whatsoever for Michael – at least I hope I don’t.

“Just let the pain remind you hearts can heal.”

He rolls his eyes like an immature twelve year old prepubescent boy. “I’m not jealous of them, sweetie.” The way he calls me sweetie as if I’m a five year old makes me want to puke in the hood of his jumper. There’s a photo of Michael and I (taken on my fourteenth birthday) on my bed side table and it makes me want to build a time machine to go back to the time where everything was a lot easier than now. Yeah, I realised I liked liked him when I was fourteen but then I started dating when I turned fifteen and as easy as that, I got over my ‘stupid little crush’.

“Then how come I'm not allowed to be friends with them!” I shout, pushing Michael away when he comes closer to me. This is what breaks our friendship; argument after argument. I slap the photo of Michael and me with my left hand so it slams – but doesn’t break – on to its face on the table so I can’t see it anymore.

He laughs like a little child or annoying toddler and I want to punch him so he would just shut up. He is so inconsiderate and he doesn’t stop until he gets his own way. Just like me. “Because you have me!” he almost shouts, wary my parents and siblings are snoring away.

“Fuck off, Michael Gordon.” I spew furiously; annoyed because he was being absolutely ridiculous and I wanted to punch him. “What am I meant to do when my only best friends goes off with some twenty first century whore?”

I ball my fists, on the edge of my breaking point. “Nellie – she isn’t a whore.” I’m surprised he didn’t swear at me for saying his middle name as well as his first one. He hates when I do that because it means I am incredibly mad at him.

“She screwed you over and she’s probably at Calum’s party screwing him over, too. And then maybe she’ll move on to every Tom, Dick and Harry in LA.” He was being a miserable git, vouching for something that wasn’t true. If Nellie wasn’t a whore, what was a whore? She acts like one. Perhaps because she is one. Of course she is, she’s probably the freaking definition of ‘whore’ in the dictionary.