What Now ⇔ Muke ✓

[23] Miller and Simon

switch of POV's in the middle :// sorry for any confusion.

MICHAEL

I can still remember dying my hair for the first time. It's not exactly a welcoming memory, not one I think back on very often. I was sitting on my bathroom floor, fixing the cuts I received from cleaning up the splinters of glass left on the living room floor by my dad. He had thrown his beer bottle at the mirror and caused both objects to shatter. As usual, I cleaned up his mistake. But after I bandaged the cuts and stood up to look at my reflection in the mirror, I froze. I don't even know why I did, considering I looked the exact same as I did the day before. But I had the sudden urge to yank every single hair out of my scalp and toss them into a fire- I hated it so much. I wanted to cut it all off, I wanted to do something to it, but I couldn't stand it just lying there.

So I dyed it.

It wasn't a pleasurable process, full of excess dye and too much water, but I somehow made it work in the end, developing the lilac purple hair I have now. I remember staring at it, gazing at it like how I gazed at the churning river from the stone. I remember being happy.

I also remember my father coming home and hitting me for dying it such an outrageous color, but that's beside the point.

I remember being happy for the first time in a dangerously long time, and that's how I felt when I was with Luke. That's how I felt far away in that cave. That's how I felt when the blonde boy sat down at the stone with me and stared at the screaming river that matched his eyes. But now that all that has been taken away, I'm left as far away and drifting as mist, trying to reach a life that is too precious to fall in my tiny hands.

My eyes unwillingly open to the aggravating sensation of someone shaking me- which is completely out of the blue considering nobody in this family has even touched my skin, in fear that the physical touch might make me go into an anxiety attack or something. Not that I minded. I needed my space, and they seemed to understand that.

But this morning, on an aggressively bright and sunny day, I wake up to Linda, her gentle hands on my shoulder as she softly nudges me awake. For a moment I am disoriented, expecting alcohol in my face or cigarette smoke in my hair, but instead Linda's face comes into view.

"Hey, I feel bad for waking you up, but I needed to ask you about something before it was too late." Linda says, and only half of her words filter through my brain. I grunt slightly and push myself up, leaning against the headboard of the bed. I rub at my eyes with two balled fists and then blink expectantly at her.

"There is a school downtown, pretty close by. You can catch it on the train. There's a station just a block down from here." Linda tells me, and my heart palpitates in just the mere mention of the word 'school'. Linda continues to talk about the outstanding education records of the school and how she feels it will be safe and reasonable option to attend there, and all of these things that I completely block out of my mind. I eyesight falters and the woman in front of me becomes slightly blurry, edges faded and too sharp, like glass.

"Do I have to go?" I interrupt whatever she was in the middle of saying and her voice cuts off in surprise. For a moment she doesn't say anything, looking completely stunned that I had spoken. I admit that I haven't said much (if anything) to her or the little girls since my arrival, but my heart is throbbing in my chest and I really need her to answer before I dig my own grave.

"Do you hav- No, I suppose not, I-" Linda looks flustered. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to." Her voice wavers at the end like a question mark, and I mentally breathe in deep.

"I didn't go to school when I was in Greenwood either. I dropped out when I was young." I say softly, but getting straight to the point. Linda takes this in and nods quickly, a bit too forcefully.