Who Will Fix Me Now?

When I enter my home again, I’m greeted by the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen and my mother singing softly to herself. My stomach churns again at the thought of having to eat food.

I quickly, but quietly, creep upstairs to my room, hoping not to catch her attention. I’m thinking that maybe I can come up with an excuse to not eat food today…

Maybe I can tell her I’m not feeling too well..? I kick my shoes off and nudge them so that they’re against the wall and out of the way. Maybe I can tell her that I already ate? I pull my sweater over my head and drop them on top of my shoes so I can just worry about it later. Maybe I can tell her that I don’t really care for pancakes? I grab a random shirt I find sitting around my messy room and decide that it’s clean enough to wear again before putting it on. Maybe I can just get in bed and go to sleep and hope she doesn’t try to wake me? I slip into bed and decide that it’s the perfect escape route.

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“Son.”

There’s a shove to my shoulder, but I swat the unwanted touch away and pull the blankets up over my head.

“Son.”

They shove me again, but with a little more force this time, and I grunt at them and wave them off.

“Get out of bed, son.”

“Ugh,” I groan, tightening the blankets around me. Then the blanket’s ripped away from my body and carelessly thrown to the other side of the room, leaving me to just curl up into a fetal position.

“I’ll sit on you if you don’t get up!”

I then finally open my eyes at the threat to meet Xavier’s gaze, who sat at the edge of my bed.

“How the fuck did you even get in here?” I ask him as I sit up in bed and moving so that I’m seated next to my tall friend.

“Your mom let me in,” he says with a shrug, looking around at the mess in my room. “How did your room get so messy so fast?”

I can only shrug sheepishly before we’re left in a moment of silence, until he speaks up again.

“How’s your day been?”

“Well, I walked Sushi to school this morning-”

“Who’s Sushi?”

“It would be nice to talk without being cut off, you twat.”

“That’s such an ugly word,” Xavier lectures me as he shoots me a disapproving look, which I can’t help but roll my eyes at. “But really though, who’s Sushi?”

“He’s my friend,” is my reply with a shrug. “Met him a while ago at the park.”

“How come you’ve never introduced us?” Xavier asks as he gets up and grabs a handful of shirts and putting them in a pile to wash later.

“Never thought about it, I guess,” I say as I get up to help.

“Can you today? Are you walking him home too?”

“I think he’s gonna get one of his friends to walk him home.”

“Oh. Can we call him or something when he gets out of school?”

“Not to be rude or anything, but why do you wanna talk to him so badly?”

“I don’t know,” Xavier answers, but something tells me that there’s more to it. I don’t push him, though.

“But yeah, I guess I’ll introduce you guys today.”

Xavier smiles at me and we clean in silence afterwards.