Pyromaniac.

8. high lights and bold boy.

(2009 by Mac Miller)

| 8. | high lights and bold boy

After deciding that it was, quite frankly, stupid to avoid the one place that I got a free fix, I'd found myself stumbling back into Inked one day after school.

I had plans with Pricilla to go over her newest chapter, she was getting ahead of the class because she hadn't wanted to fall behind again while making up for all her other classes and honestly, her dedication to her schoolwork was admirable. Amidst those plans, I also had plans with a cheerleader who wanted some xans and apparently, I looked like I knew a guy.

And I mean, I did but why would I tell her that? Especially when she was willing to do backflips on my dick just for the hell of it? As far as she was concerned, she could suck me off and I'd find her someway off school grounds to bring what she would give me money for, I wasn't fucking stupid.

With a brief text, I'd told her maybe tomorrow and instead of getting into her car with promise and I'd taken the walk to Inked, my body ready to collapse with exhaustion due to the heat of the day. It was weird, acting as if I didn't care what Logan would say, I did but the difference was: as much as I cared that he cared so much about how this would affect my mother, I still wasn't a fucking pussy and I wasn't going to let him threaten me into staying away.

He could tell my mother, with no evidence and the preconceived idea parents all had that drugs affected your schoolwork, she wouldn't believe him. I was acing all my classes, I was fine and her truly believing otherwise would break her heart too much for her to actually let the information sink in.

Or, at least, I hoped so.

Making my way past Skid at the front desk, I ignored the greeting, I hadn't even stopped to ask Bobby why the fuck she was in my business enough to tell my brother. There wasn't any money in my pockets so with a hand over my rib, I pretended as if there was something wrong, a resting place was what that backroom was to me -not a trap room. I didn't have the energy to stop and pretend when Logan called me or even let him in before I was closing the door, locking it, and grabbing whatever I could before the people in charge would notice the commotion.

Quickly, I ripped open drawers, memorized from the many times before Oliver would find me fucked up after a fight -before he came back from juvie and nothing really mattered after my mom's boyfriend made a punching bag of my face. I would leave the house, my mother out for work and I wouldn't really return home until my bruises had healed.

I'd gotten pretty good at hiding things from her then, gotten really good at concealing a broken nose with I was at Ian's and he accidentally hit me with his controller or I fell off Colin's skateboard, this is why I don't skate. I'd laugh as she inspected the injuries, Seth staring me down with a mix of fright and slight remorse at the idea that he'd get caught. I had a big mouth, I did, and I would have told her but I didn't have the heart to break hers when half the men in her life were incarcerated and the one she loved hated me.

I sucked that shit up, let her believe that he was a great guy as long as he didn't put a hand on her. It was always me, I'd catch a beating and then pick a fight once my excuses got a bit too repetitive. Hearing that her son had a temper was better than hearing that the man that slept in her house, in her bed, and made her so happy was a closeted drunk who took his frustrations out on her 15-year-old son.

It was when Oliver had moved back that things got complicated, he'd witnessed Seth on a rampage one night and his temper got the best of him before he could control it. That was the second person he'd nearly killed and mom hadn't been the same since. He was always the one who could figure me out and it almost always caused her pain, I had everything under control but that just wasn't enough for him.