What Now ⇔ Muke ✓

[8] All The Small Things

LUKE

Thankfully it's Sunday, and I don't have to go to school today, trudging through meaningless classes and stoic teachers. Even school here, in this silent ghost of a town, is worthless. I've met plenty of friends through basketball and Ashton, but the process of dragging myself like a corpse through the classes makes me want to toss myself in front of a train.

I crash through bushes and do my best to avoid slamming into trees as I walk the path to the stone hanging like a cliff over the river. Squirrels leap away at the sound of my feet hiking ungracefully through the leaves, scurries away to the safeties of their own homes. I don't mind, the hope that Michael Clifford will be at the stone like he said he would coursing like ice through my veins.

It was so random, so unexpected to find the silent boy leaning against the tall tree like a skeleton, staring at me beneath his dark eyelashes to get my attention when I was talking with my friends. The moment I turned to him, he slipped back into the darkness of the woods and I was terrified I would lose him in the shadows, but instead he was there, leading me wordlessly through the trees like it was the most casual thing in the world, after weeks of keeping quiet.

My feet carry me to the stone, where a figure sits slumped over the edge, a shock of messy, lilac purple hair confirming my suspicions of the body's identity. I walk quietly over to him, sliding down beside him and leaning forward to get a view of the river below me, making sure my feet were tucked safety under me. Michael, however, fearlessly let his legs dangle over the sides, his bum hardly on the rock at all. As though if something happened and he slipped over the edge, he wouldn't care at all. Michael turns his head to look at me, his pale eyes eying my blue ones silently, and then a smile embellished his lips.

"You came." He says softly, the deep timbre of his voice sending palpitations to my heart and I put down the guard I had up.

"Yeah." I say, and look up to the horizon. "Of course." Michael turns back to the river and his eyes draw up, up to the mass of green trees and shrubberies creating a wasteland for animals and hidden adventures people have yet to seek. Michael lifts one of the hands that had been curled in his lap and points it somewhere in the cluster of land.

"Do you see up there? There's a cave." He says tenderly, as though if he lifted his voice the world would disintegrate. "I've always wanted to go up there. I haven't been able to." I follow his small finger up to the greeneries, until I found a gap in the shrubs, revealing grey rock that dipped into a dark structure. However, as my eyes returned to Michael's small pale hands, I see the sleeve of his sweater has been tugged back a bit up his arm, revealing a series of dark bruises adorning his skin.

Without thinking, I reach out and grasp onto his arm. Michael jumps, nearly falling straight off the cliff, and I can feel the pulse beat to the timing of trill under his pale skin. The boy yanks his arm away from my grip, pulling his sweater down to cover up the welts from my sight. He refuses to look at me, his face drained of any color.

"Michael, how did you get those?" My voice comes out rough, and I clear my throat to soften it, but the words are out and hanging like bricks in the air.

"I-I just ran into some trees. I spend a lot of time in the woods and I'm not c-careful enough." Michael stutters out, his voice sounding a bit desperate. He turns and focuses his grey eyes on me, doing his best to look sincere but I see right through it. I'm about to call him out on it to get him to tell the truth, but I'm scared he'll run away into the obscurity of the woods and never return. So I nod, but I've been in fights before, back in the city, and I know what it looks like to get beat up.

"So, how did you find this place?" I force myself to ask, and Michael's seems to deflate a little.

"I was-" he stopped, his breath hitching, and then he restarted, "I was just wandering around, and I stumbled across it." he leans over riskily and admires the rushing river below. He nods toward the ground, where a thin strip of slippery rocks decorate each side of the river. "I sometimes go down there. It's really slippery though, and it's easy to fall. I prefer to stay up here."