Muke Fluff

Galaxy

“I can’t see constellations in your hair.” Luke looks so upset when he says it that Michael can’t resist the urge to cuddle him.

“I told you I was basing it on galaxy tights, you silly thing. I didn’t mean I was dyeing it like an actual galaxy,” he laughs, ruffling his hair and nuzzling his temple with his nose “Poor confused baby.”

Nevertheless, Luke spends the rest of the school day pawing through the kaleidoscope of pink and purple and blue trying to find patterns in the strands. Michael complains that he’s killing his hair style, and their teachers tell them ‘this is math class, not a hairdressing salon,’ at least twice a day, but Luke is determined that he’ll find the Big Dipper if he looks hard enough.

Luke has a black ring in his lip and rips in his skinny jeans, and Michael has his coloured hair and his shirts for bands no one has heard of, and between them they make the most passive-aggressive punk rock friends anyone has ever seen. Luke is the school nerd that people trip in the corridors, and Michael the weird new kid who has a tattoo and a Gameboy in his bag instead of textbooks or drugs.

In their free periods, they hang out in the shoebox that the school calls a music room, and they hook up guitars and play whatever indie rock song was on the underground radio station the night before. There’s a senior boy who sits with them sometimes and beats out the percussion on a Cajun, and another who doesn’t actually go to the school but who always seems to be there, his bass guitar, forever at the ready.

At lunch they like to sit in the shade under the science windows with their phones out, and sometimes Michael reaches up and picks the flowers the year nines are growing for their agriculture unit, threading them into flower crowns he makes Luke wear because they clash with his own hair.

He wears them all day, and the girls gush and say that he’s such a good boyfriend while the boys snicker and say that his guy has him whipped, and Luke spends those days with a very confused pout on his face, because he and Michael aren’t dating. Michael just giggles and readjusts the flower crown where it’s drooping over his eyes.

“If we were actually dating you’d know about it,” he says reassuringly.

Luke thinks this is a good answer, because Michael is very cute, and has an amazing personality even if he tries to hide it behind his punk-rock attitude and a rebelliously colorful exterior, and he would be sad if they were dating without him knowing.