What Now ⇔ Muke ✓

[26] Blue hair, huh?

Warning: This chapter mentions sensitive topics that may be triggering, and also contains slight violence.

short chapter. also the second to last chapter. i'm double updating to make up for it. i hope you like it.

MICHAEL

Staying in the house, I've found out, is nearly suffocating.

Ever since my slight breakdown with Linda, the small family has been walking around me on their tiptoes, hushed words and silent gazes following me like ghosts around the halls. It's infuriating-it makes my skin itch. It swallows the oxygen with their clouded breaths and makes it impossible for me to even breath in that home, so I've resigning to staying as far away as possible.

It's not that I don't appreciate their concerns. That's not it at all. I've just grown accustomed to hardened eyes and cold stones for hearts, and the sudden change is still unbearably hard to transition to. I've grown used to hiding away when anyone gets to close, and I'm not intent on breaking the pattern.

Which is why I've resigned to staying out on the streets as my alternative for the woods behind my old home in Greenwood. It's not perfect, and there really isn't much fresh air or trees to speak of, but it'll do. There's a lot more people watching, if anything.

The only comforting thing about living in the city in comparison to my own bitter home in the woods is that I know Luke is somewhere in a city too, breathing in the same toxic air as I am. I know Luke hates the city. I know why, now. It's self-degrading in a way, all the words and unspoken thoughts traveling around the streets clouding up your mind until you can't form a single thought. The city's brain and yours mash together to form one throbbing mess of atrocity that makes my eyes sting just thinking about it.

I've been leaning up against the wall of the city for about an hour now, maybe two, possibly even three. It's easy to lose myself out here in the bitter cold, shielding myself from the icy wind and watching people scurry around the streets, scarfs draped around their necks like a noose.

It's late afternoon, people returning from work and hurrying to get home in the cold weather. Everyone around me is rushing to get someplace while I am fighting to stay still, a lone sculpture in the middle of an aching city.

I push myself off the wall, feeling the rough surface of the brick building scratch my skin as I step into the fast moving mass of people on the sidewalks. I walk on the edge of the crowd, pressed up against the sides of buildings and openings to side streets as I watch my feet, heading towards the quieter neighborhood roads. I've never liked the crowds, never liked the feeling of being pushed around by the shoulders of too many busy people. It's better than sitting under the watchful gaze of my adoptive family back at the house, though, so I've learned to deal with what I have.

Suddenly, a hand reaches out and grips my wrist, yanking me off the sidewalk and behind a building, fingers held frighteningly tight around my wrist as I stumble to catch my footing. I see a flash of dark hair, a scruffy jaw, hardened eyes, before I have to squeeze my eyes shut and yelp out at the intensity of the grip on my wrist.

"You really thought you could get rid of me, huh?" a voice growls, and my blood runs cold in my veins. I glance up to see an all-too-familiar face glaring back down at me, sweat covering his skin and alcohol poisoning his breath. His beady eyes make my heart throb, and he grabs my other wrist to keep me in place as I begin to panic.

His voice brings back too many nightmares, hot flashes of remembrances that fill my mind with pain and blood, shockingly painful inside my head.

"Thought you could just get a new family, did you?" my father snaps, shaking me roughly. I tense up, breath quivering. "You can't send me away. You're mine."