How Was Your Day? - Chapter 28.2

Note: There's some depression and suicide mentioned and hinted at in here, so this is just a little heads up if that bothers you. 

Finnley had no idea where he was running to, nor did he have the legs to go any great distance. Mia was the athletic one. Still, he ran on through the neighborhood, cars and houses passing in a blur of meaningless color. He couldn’t believe that his mother had sent for Dr. Lark to get him to talk about his sister’s death a year earlier.

It hurt him to have the memories rousted from their safe slumber in the back of his mind. He hadn’t thought the word ‘suicide’ since the day they told him that’s what it had been. Now it was the only word he could think. It rang in his mind and in his heart, striking dischord wherever it went.

Though his lungs were heaving for the chill November air, Finnley was afraid to stop. He was afraid of what might happen when he did. Still, when he came up to a public park, his legs wobbled beneath him and he sank down onto the stiff ground, cradling his head in his hands.

The memories came at him in an unstoppable rush.

Allie had been his protector. Finnley was too young remember his father’s death, but he did remember moving to a new school. None of the other kids would play imagination games with him, they called him a weirdo and a dweeb, they teased him for not being able to pass a soccer ball or throw a baseball. Once or twice they even asked where his dad was, and he could only tearfully reply that he didn’t know.

His sister was older and had her own group of friends, but when she found out that Finnley was constantly being bullied, she broke away from them one day at recess to confront the boys. He never found out what she said to those boys, but they left him alone after that. Every time they would open their mouths to say something to Finnley, they would stop and glance over their shoulders, as if the threat of Allie was lurking right behind them.

Although the bullying stopped, school was a constant, eternal struggle for Finnley. He felt like he was drowning. The schools were big in California, and he was just one of many his age, all alike in the eyes of the teachers. His grades were fine but they did little to comfort him because he was alone alone alone.

The days were an endless slew of homework and helping his mom out and writing poetry alone in his room. He slogged through the days, but he didn’t want to. Oftentimes he couldn’t see a point to life, but something always told him to put on a smile for his mother. She needed him happy, and just like a game of pretend, he could try to be happy for her. It was a game he still played.

Allie would talk to him about it. She was the only one. It wasn’t a big sit-down talk like adults always thought was the best way to go about it. She would pass him in the hall, touch him on the shoulder, and murmur that the district was hosting a poetry contest, that she thought he had a poem which would be a good contender for it. It was what Finnley needed to get through another day, to make him smile, if only for the next class period.

Finnley and Allie hadn’t been best friends, like some siblings; they both had their own ways of life. Her friends were classy and sarcastic and full of endless mall trips, and Finnley had none. But Allie was a constant uplifting presence. It had crossed his mind a few times that the constant stream of sadness might be bordering on depression, but it was Allie that kept him from that edge. She kept him from the self-pity, the self-hate that threatened to consume him. It was why he had never expected her to kill herself.

She was in college when it happened, and Finnley was a junior in high school. Allie’s weekly phone calls kept him grounded. She always sounded fine. He never would have suspected anything. When the school had called to tell him and his mother, it had been like the world was ending. It was ending. What would his world be like without Allie in it?

It was hardly a world at all. His days, which had been hard to get through before, were now turned bleak with carelessness. They were easier because he only felt nothing, numb. His head felt full of cotton balls, and there was always a dull roar in his ears. If he paid any attention to it, it sounded like “allieallieallieallie” echoing off the narrow confines of his head. It had taken forever to get it to disappear.

The screaming thoughts crowding out his mind subsided to pale whispers at the sound of his name from the outside world. As he came to himself, he was startled to find that his cheeks were wet with tears, that his knees were tucked up and he was entirely curled into himself. He lifted his head at a touch on his shoulder only to see his mother. She was looking down at him with such sympathy. Sympathy. As if the incident had been something he alone had gone through. In a way, it was.

“I’m so sorry for startling you with Dr. Lark,” she was saying, but though Finnley heard the words, they passed through his mind without sticking. “I didn’t think she would be here this early and I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I’m so sorry that she brought things up so suddenly, I’m sure it’s really hard for you…”

His mom helped him to his feet and they began to walk home. The tears dried up on his cheeks, his feet walked forwards, and his right hand was held in his mom’s left, but he didn’t feel it. He was numb, numb again.

His mom was still chattering on, in a sort of low, nervous way. “You know, you never talked about it, so I thought with friends you might finally be getting back to normal, but I was worried that you ignored it so much, didn’t mention it at all…”

“You never talked with me about it, any of it,” Finnley replied shortly, not in the mood to be gentle. “Maybe you should be seeing a therapist.” His mother stiffened beside him, and didn’t say anything the rest of the walk home.