Rich Bitch // malum & lashton

one

BEGINNINGS. Beginnings, for Michael, were never good. Like that time when he tried to start a new beginning because he was in a new school, but apparently his hair wasn’t the right colour or some shit for people to be very accepting. Or the beginning of his very first crush, to a boy that was straight.

And there he was, three years later, down the bottom of the school food-chain and still infatuated with Calum Hood, the school’s ‘it’ boy. He could do everything, apparently. But the teachers didn’t know that he flirted his way to some of the other smart student’s papers, nor did they realise that he already knew the answers for a test they had, because his buddy Ashton Irwin had a copy of it that he had to do when he was in their year.

Michael absolutely positively envied him. He had it all. The girls, the popularity, the look, the smarts and everything else in between. And, oh yeah – he wasn’t swimming in debt like Michael was. Michael and his mother were struggling, because it was just them and no one else to bring the money in. Michael worked the midnight shift at a twenty-four-hour grocery store and after school he worked at the ice-cream parlour. Both of his bosses were really rude. The owner of the grocery store said that he got the midnight shift because nobody would ever come and get scared by his face, and the guy at the ice-cream parlour called him mentally disabled.

His friend, Luke, always walked with him to work. He hated that he did, because he’d always complain about how horrible his bosses treated him and then he’d always say that he’d do anything to help his friend out with his money situation. But really, what could Luke do? Ask his parents for four thousand dollars?

The landlord always liked to bang on the door and yell about the four thousand dollar payment they were behind on, so everybody in his street knew him as the poor kid. He wished things were different. He wished he was straight and he wished he had money and he wished people liked him.

“Luke,” Michael muttered after walking home from work, frowning when he saw his friend try not to look disappointed at the state of his house. “Please don’t look at my house like somebody kicked a puppy right in front of you.”

“’M sorry, I just . . .”  

Luke was in the upper-middle class side of things. He didn’t have to worry about not having food or clothes or a working toilet or electricity, his parents would just pay for it. Then he went to Michael’s house and he got really sad, because he felt like he had everything and his friend was much worse.

“I know, you’re used to good stuff.” The older one sighed, pulling his hand through his white hair that Luke dyed.

Michael went and changed out of his work shirt, then into another one his friend lent him that was a little too long because Luke was a fucking skyscraper. Michael took a look at his house and almost blushed. He hated when the younger one came here, because he was used to so much better, and he didn’t deserve any worse. But when Luke took one sympathetic look at his leaking toilet, empty fridge, old TV, or anything else that was fucked up, Michael crumbled. He was so embarrassed.

“Let’s go.”

They walked to the skate-park. They never actually skated, though. The human skyscraper always fell off and the white-haired boy never had the urge to. They always sat on the upper-middle-class’ skateboard, just talking, waiting for the sunset to come and be pretty.

“Do you still like Calum?” Luke asked, cocking his head to the side like a confused puppy. “Because I haven’t heard you ramble about him for a while now, and I’m getting worried, Mikey, really,” he teased.

“Yeah, I do. I just don’t wanna talk about it though because I don’t want anyone else to hear that poor kid Michael Clifford has a crush on lower-high-class guy Calum Hood. If he found out he’d probably laugh and throw money in my face.” Michael pouted, leaning his head on his friend’s shoulder.