SLEEPSONG (BoyxBoy)✔️

Chapter 50

People had drawn me and my sister in many ominous situations, but the theme from back then had been the two of us shining brightly, holding each other's hands and carrying microphones, surrounded by things like creepy shadows and an ominous woman's silhouette.

My Kickstarter had quickly blown up on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter, and people who'd known about my fucked up home situation had started letting things loose, including photographs of the bruises that had always been beneath my shirts, pictures I had never even known existed.

People had begun buying the hell out of my music, which had allowed me to use it for things like basic necessities such as a bunk bed, toiletries, and best of all, food. Something we'd been lacking for nearly six months due to penny pinching.

I'd known that the moment our mother found out where we were that things would collapse and Kim would be taken away if I didn't have what we needed. I'd struggled and hustled so hard that I'd ended up seriously sick and completely unable to do anything, but the people helping with the kickstarter had been miracle workers.

When they found out just how desperate I was to keep my younger sibling safe from our mother's grasp... thousands, and thousands, and thousands of people had gotten together and created a go-fund-me page for the two of us, allowing me to get our apartment situated.

Thanks to them, when our mother finally burst into our home all those years ago with child protective services and a few police officers, they hadn't actually been able to take Kimberly away from me despite the fact that I wasn't her legal guardian.

I'd provided a stable living environment for her, she was still attending school and keeping her grades even, she'd been eating properly, and all of her basic needs were being met. I had also been making a stable income by that point, too, since people had been buying my music.

Our mother had been livid, of course, and I'd been forced to fill out a fuck ton of paperwork to get myself emancipated, but in the end, Kim and I had been independent by the time I'd turned seventeen. I'd been forced to go back to high school as a requirement for her being there, though, and as a result I'd worked myself into the ground to keep things stable.

Kim hated seeing me looking tired from dealing with working and school. Back then, there had even been times when I'd stayed up for days on end just to work. It was during the moments when I'd been the most run-down or dejected that she'd used her own savings to buy ice cream.

I smiled sadly as I remembered all of this since it left a bittersweet feeling in my heart.

In the end, she'd left me behind just like everyone else.

"Mom was right. You really are a sick freak."

"Are you... all right?"

I twitched, jolted out of my reverie, then shook my head and said, "yeah, I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"My little sister," I admitted, then jumped to add, "when I was sad or upset or too exhausted to do anything, she would always get us ice cream. I think, more than anything else, I miss not being able to eat food."

"You can eat food," he said flatly. "I've seen you eat pizza before. You seemed fine."

He had a point.

"It's not like I'm incapable of eating food," I said a little solemnly, "I mean, to be honest I can eat it, but... well, what about you? Would you ever a eat wet cigarette that you found in a toilet?"

"Fuck no."

"Exactly," I snorted, shaking my head. "For me, it tastes disgusting. It's not even the fact that I'm eating it that makes me sick, it's the flavor of it... soggy paper, ash, burnt grease, it reminds me of a wet cigarette. Food tastes like flavorless ashes to me... even ice cream."