TMBT II: UNBREAK ME

Chapter Seven: Welcome To The Ghetto

A dent. Me. Me, Marcus Bruno Acha, a dent. All through from my junior secondary school, I had served that team well. Represented them in out-of-school games, won trophies, medals, reputation for that bastardly, ungrateful team. And now that some childish rumors are going around, they still thought to to be enough grounds to kick me off.

And, they didn't even have the decency to do it in person. Sending me a flimsy letter on email as if it's a fucking breakup text. Without regard or respect for anything and everything that I had done for them, forgetting how badly they had needed me in the past.

So much for being the School's Golden boy.

I didn't even look like a golden boy anymore.

Dark circles under my eyes. Eye bags. Tattered twists that started to look like overgrown locks on my head. Cracked lips. And that deep wounded cut that drew itself diagonally across my bushy eyebrows, slowly morphing into a life scar. A scar that would one-day be a testament to every harm I once subjected my entire body and soul to. This rough, beaten up and bruised version of me. That was all I saw when I looked into the mirror, not the cool, free spirited and cheerful golden boy I used to be.

Or rather, I used to be seen as.

Cold hands ran slowly through the side of my neck and stopped right at its back, head cocking to the side as I observed my own reflection through eyes that had completely lost soul and life in them. Dead, hazy, sleepy, and hooded eyes. My biceps tensed as my hands rubbed roughly against the back of my neck, the lines, definitions and muscles all around my body straining by the second. Tensing with every abrasive touch against my own damn skin.

It only took me the illusive smell of gasoline to know that if I didn't leave that mirror and put on something else other than the white towel that wrapped around my waist, I was at the verge of a panic attack.

That was how I resorted to wearing my school uniform, an action that I did painfully slow as a thousand thoughts ran through my already filled up head.

In all frankness, the only reason that I was showing my face in school today was because there was a deluded hope that I would see Dabeluchi...

And, she would talk to me.

Whether she liked it or not.

With that, I made sure to shove my laptop into my bag before throwing the heavy backpack over my shoulder and heading for the door. I had grown more attached to my search on Dabeluchi, more obsessed with the blogs, articles, every thing that had anything to tell me about Dabeluchi or the Bridge girl I suspected to be her. So bad that I could not see myself going to school without something, anything that could lead me access to the Internet.

Or, my email at least.

My life may have been falling apart, but I was a man on a mission.

I was at the door of my room, inches away from the handle when I started hearing faintly the instrumentals of Psycho by Post Malone playing from a distance.

It froze me on the spot.

That was my ringtone.

That song was my new Samsung Galaxy's ringtone.

In an instant realization, I flew. I wasn't sure how I did it, but one minute, I was at the door and the next minute, I was shoving down my consoles at the other side of my room to find the phone that I had nearly abandoned to check who was calling. To check if it was Dabeluchi that was calling me.