Young Writers Society

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It wasn't an unusual night at all. The weather was pleasant and the sun had only just set. Finnley was doing his homework, mundane, dying of boredom, measuring the time until the weekend would come and give him a temporary reprieve. His mother had turned the radio on and was humming along to some old song, reading a book. When she still felt that she had enough time to listen to the radio, to read books.

Finnley remembered that he was about to laugh at her for listening to the radio, a laugh which might have turned into a bitter remark given his present state of mind. It never got there.

The phone rang and his mom turned down the radio to pick it up. Though she was silent, Finnley could still see the hum in the back of her throat, her foot tapping the ground.

He didn't watch her while she talked on the phone, but he heard the moment when there was only silence. And he heard when that silence changed. Then he looked, turning to see what had been said. She held the phone to her chest in both hands, face crumpled and eyes staring out at the wall as if seeing something a thousand miles away.

"Mom?"

Silence.

“Mom?”

In the present November afternoon, Finnley’s lips mouthed the word, finding more purchase in those three letters than he could ever get in the landslide associated with ‘Allie’.

“My mom,” he said, “she never let on much. How much it hurt. I remember she cried that first night. I cried with her. After that, it was talking to people and sorting things out and accepting condolences with tight-lipped smiles. I know she had to be strong, to get us through it, but…”

Finnley took a deep breath, and his surroundings fully came into focus. He was talking to Dr. Lark. She was listening, though. Just listening. She watched him with a sort of openness, an understanding that he was hurting inside and that the talking was helping.

“I just don't know. I guess she's trying to protect me. She's a good mom. But I hate how much she's pushing me to talk about… about my sister, when she won't talk either.”

When Finnley fell quiet, Dr. Lark tapped her own thoughtfully against the notepad. “What about the town here?” she asked, catching Finnley off guard. “I know you moved here pretty recently. How are things going?”

“Good,” he answered, the reflex response. Things weren't good: he'd hit someone in the hall and gotten a detention, Mia was stuck in bed, Monica was stuck in the spirit world, and there were monsters and magicians afoot. Yet somehow, the word didn't ring as hollow as it had before. He had friends, he had reasons to do things, present ties to help him move on from the past.

“I’ve made friends,” he explained to Dr. Lark, simplifying it for both their sakes. “I have a job, too. I do homework and take tests, and I think it's generally okay.” That wasn't the half of it, but there was some rightness to it. Dr. Lark nodded along with his words.

“Look, I know you don't like me, or you don't want to hear what I have to say,” she said, “but I want you to hear me out. You won't ever have to talk with me again. I know you're not telling me everything, but it seems to me as if things are generally looking up — you have some more motivation in your life. You're coping with Allie’s death somehow, though it's not the healthiest way. I think for several reasons you're passing out of the area where I can help.”

Finnley started in surprise. He was pretty sure that where a sister had died, a therapist would be needed for a long, long time. “You still need to face what you're feeling about Allie,” Dr. Lark elaborated, “but not with me. You don't like me; you think of me as a stranger. It's easy to share your whole life story with strangers. Maybe it won't be soon, maybe not even after months and months, but you need to talk with your mom. You're going through the same things, and you need to rely on each other. You need to trust her with your feelings.”

Finnley felt tears of frustration pricking at the corners of his eyes and rubbed them viciously away. After all he had done to try to talk to Dr. Lark and he had to turn around and try to connect with his mom. It was too much. I'm doing just fine without talking! he told himself, but deep down, it didn't feel right. Maybe he wasn't moving to a new place, but he was running away just as surely as his mother had.

“Why?” he whispered. “Why is it so hard?” Maybe it was the tears, but Dr. Lark’s eyes seemed less like ice and more like lakes, or deep pools of understanding.

“Because anything worth doing is hard,” she answered, voice plain and unremorseful. “Because Allie’s death was hard and it still is hard and will always be hard. Because it's hard to face the things you fear. But I know you will be the better for it.”

There was a pause, and Finnley looked down at the scuffed toes of his shoes. Dr. Lark cleared her throat. “I know you're trying. And I know you'll come to terms with it, one day. I'll tell your mother that you're doing better — I know you two have a deal. I'm not going to check up to see if you're doing what I've said, because I don't mean much to you. It's something you've got to do by yourself.” When Finnley didn't say anything, there was a light slap as Dr. Lark closed her notebook. “Goodbye, Finnley.”

He sat there, still, even after the clicking of the therapist’s shoes against the pavement had faded. Tears still gathered in his eyes, and there was a slight tremble to his hands. When the sun sank below the horizon, his scuffed shoes slowly carried him home.