Alters

Twenty-Five

~Micah~
"Woooow!!!" I yell happily. "It's so pretty!"
"Oh hi Micah," Casper laughs. "What are you doing out?"
"I wanted to look at the stars with you!" I shout.
"They sure look extravagant, don't they?" Casper says a big word and I get confused.
"Extra-what?" I ask.
"Never mind." He laughs at me.
Both of us look up at the sky quietly for a while. Casper is super duper quiet lots of the time. I don't know why, it might be 'cause of his MD thingie that Roslyn also has, but Roslyn is miserabler than Casper.
"Micah, can I ask you something important to Lyric and I?" Casper suddenly asks, and I turn my head to face his.
"Okay." I simply say.
"Do you mind telling me what you went through with Miles?" He suddenly asks.
I look at him blankly and seriously. Did he really ask me that? That is super personal and I don't want to talk about it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
"I don't wanna talk about it." I say softly, looking at his eyes.
"You'd be doing Lyric a favour, Micah." Casper explains.
"They always tell people that. 'You'll be doing a favour!' I don't want to do favours for anyone. Lyric gets enough from me. I help her with everything that hurts. I'm living the childhood she never had in her own body so it's like she's getting it. She knows I don't need to do her any more favours than I already do." I pout angrily, sitting up and folding my arms.
"Micah, please. You can trust me." Casper says to me, his eyes looking sad at me as he sits up also.
"I can't trust anybody except Lyric and the psychogist or whoever they call Dr. Jensen." I say.
"Both Cecilia and Meg have put their trust in me, so why can't you?" Casper asks, and the words surprise me. What are Cecilia and Meg doing telling random boy people about our life? Why didn't they tell me about this? They're so rude to me. Just 'cause I'm little doesn't mean I'm the least important alter. I was the first one, which makes me older and more respondable. I think that's the word, I dunno. Why don't they tell me anything? Ugh. Meg usually sticks up for me, so why doesn't she tell me stuff? Then again, it's not normal for her to tell boy people things. Maybe I should.
"You know Lyrics mommy?" I ask him.
"Yeah?" He asks. "She's a very nice lady, isn't she?" He smiles happy.
"No, her other mommy." I respond. "Her one you never met and only Lyric and I met. Her one that birthed her."
"Oh, no, I don't know about her." Casper responds.
"She was a super duper nice and pretty lady." I say. "She looked lots like Lyric, except her hair was brunette and curled and she had a crooked nose. She also had rosier cheeks and her teeth were more crooked too. I know 'cause of a picture Lyric has."
"Oh, then she must've been extremely pretty if she looked like Lyric." Casper smiles, and I giggle.
"There, now you have an image of what she looked like so you can see things better." I say. "It all started when Lyric was 5, just like me. I was the first one to actually appear, but Cecilia was there not too long after. The first injury I witnessed myself for pain was a baseball bat to the ribs. I thought it was bad, but it was nothing to what I dealeded with later. It's hard to remember stuff because even I get some dissociation I think so I only remember super duper bad ones. Like look at this cut!" I stood up and lifted my shirt slightly to show a huge scar on my side. "It was the last time he ever hurted me. I also have this one, which is why Lyric rarely ever puts her hair up." I turn around and lift my long, red hair up to reveal the ugly burn scar on my neck. Casper looks at me, a combination of shock, sadness, and disgust on his face.
"What did he use?" Casper asks.
"Well, I don't remember fully. I think an iron?" I say, trying to remember. "I don't remember lots of things. I don't even remember Miles' face. Lyric thinks that it's Miles who hurt us, so we go with it. We can't remember anyone's faces."
"An iron..." Casper trails off, looking down. He must be thinking of how much it hurted me. "Tell me about the baseball bat injury."
"Oh, that." I say, fidgeting as I look down. That one is my least favourite. "I don't like talking about it 'cause it would make Lyric sad. She doesn't know about it."
"If I promise to keep it a secret, will you tell me?" Casper asks.
"Why do you even wanna know?" I pout, folding my arms shellfishly.
"Because you need to vent; get all your feelings out to someone." Casper explains.
"Fine. I will tell you what I remember, but I think it was Miles and Sally. I don't remember the faces so that's how I name them." I tell him.
"Sally?" Casper asks.
"That's Lyric's mommy." I reply. I take a deep breath and prepare myself to tell the story.
"It was when Lyric was 5, just like me. She was with Sally and Miles. Sally told me that she was gonna have a baby, and I got super duper happy because yay siblings! She kept it a secret from Miles until the baby started growing more and Miles told Sally to go on a diet. She then said to him that she was having a baby. He didn't seem as excited as I was. He slapped her, then started yelling. I got super scared. I went to hide behind Sally, but Miles had a baseball bat and hit me in the ribs. Not hard enough to break them, but they hurted a lot. He then started shouting at Sally as I sat on the floor with tears because I was hurting lots. That's when Miles began to beat Sally with the bat. That's how come Lyrics mommy isn't around anymore." I explain. "That was the short story 'cause I don't wanna talk about it a lot, but that's what happened. He had then thrown the body on the street late at night and ran her over so it looked like an accident and people never knew what happened. Lyric counts as one of the people who don't know what happened. What happened in the house has always stayed in the house."
Casper looks at me in shock and awe. I think he can't believe what I just said.
"So Miles killed his own wife and framed her death as a hit and run?" Casper asks, though I don't know if he's asking it to me directly.
"Yeah." I say.
"Oh Micah, that's awful. Why haven't you told Lyric?" Casper asks.
"Because it would make her super duper sadder and I don't like it when Lyric cries 'cause it makes me cry and I don't like crying." I tell him. "Lyric doesn't deserve to cry ever at all. She did nothing wrong ever."
"I believe you. Plus, you said you can't place the faces of the people you saw so you just say it's Miles and Sally. It could've easily been your parents or something in your past life," Casper explains. "If those actually exist."
"I think they do exist, and since I was a good boy, they sent me to save Lyric from pain 'cause they knew I wouldn't mind. Lyric is my best friend in the whole wide world so I guess you can say I love her." I say to Casper happily.
"I love Lyric too." Casper smiles at me. "You're lucky that you get to spend every moment of your life with her."
"You could too!" I giggle. "That is if you ever got married with her. That would be weird for me though 'cause I'm a boy and you're a boy and I like girls. But not too weird 'cause Maria and Hailey love each other, except they aren't married. Oh, did you know it's Hailey's birthday on Tuesday? Lyric is gonna buy her a birthday present tomorrow and do you wanna know a secret? Maria is gonna purpose to Hailey and they're gonna get married I hope!"
"It's 'propose', and that's so cute." Casper smiles. "Does Lyric know what she's gonna get Hailey? I can go shopping with her if she wants a bigger present."
"I don't know what she's gonna get. Maybe she'll get new curtains or something. Maybe even those cup things that go right here!" I point to the weird things that girls have on their chest and Casper giggles at me. "What?" I yell at him.
"Those cup things are called bras, and those things on your chest are called breasts." Casper explains to me.
"Endora called them something like bobs but I don't remember what she said." I say.
"She used a slang term for them." Casper tells me and I nod. "You also probably don't want to just point at those in public because they're a girls private part."
"Oh, I didn't know that." I giggle in embarrassment. "Do guys not wear bras cuz they don't have them?"
"Exactly that reason." Casper says.
"That's silly. Boys have a part Lyric doesn't have, and I know that cuz I saw it in one of her classes." I tell him.
"Probably family studies." Casper laughs. "I hope you don't talk about these things very often."
"Why, is it weird?" I ask.
"Just a bit." Casper laughs.
"So are you calling me weird?"
"No."
"Then what are you trying to say?"
"I'm trying to say that nobody talks about things like that, especially when you're five." Casper shouts.
"I'm technically thirteen Lyric says, 'cause I've been around for thirteen years now. Cecilia would be the same age as me but I'm a little bit older by a few days. Meg is like six or something, and Endora is two. But that's our physical age, I'm five mentally." I tell Casper. "So really I'm not too young to talk about this."
"You didn't even know what a bra was; I'm pretty sure you're too young." Casper laughs.
"Am not!" I pout.
"Whatever you say." Casper says to me.
"I should know all of this! I know everything about Lyric! I know how many pills she has a day and where all her scars are. I know her favourite colour and her pastime things, and I even know she bleeds from between the legs once a month!" I announce. "So I know lots!"
Casper giggles at me and I feel even weirder. Was it weird for me to know one of those things?
"Her bleeding is called her period. All girls get that." Casper giggles.
"Well I'm not really a girl so I don't get why I get it too." I sigh.
"That's because you're a boy in a girl's body, and you can't help it." Casper tells me. "That's just the way things are."
"It's weird and I'm tired." I complain. "Casper, can I go to bed?"
"How about you let Lyric out instead?" Casper recommends.
"Ugh, fiiiiine." I pout. "I wanted to sleep in the bed tonight."
"You don't want to keep Lyric locked up in there though: it probably confuses her when you take over and she wakes up suddenly when she remembers being somewhere completely different." Casper tells me.
"I guess so, but it's not fun for me either!" I shout.
"It is her body though," Casper tells me. "So she has the right."
"Wow, pertistant." I mutter, hoping I said the word right.
"Casper's being a meanie and telling me to let you back." I tell Lyric, even though she won't remember me telling her. She comes back once again.