Château Éboule (English)

cinq

July 30th, 2016

Dear Larry,

I did something very bad.

No, but you don't understand. The thing that I did was very, very bad, or perhaps it was very, very good. It's still too soon to tell. But consider later on it's not too soon to tell, and I can tell that it was very, very bad, it is also very stupid, and very extremely confusing, and I don't know how to handle it.

I suppose it's different for other kids my age. I suppose they know how to handle situations like this. I suppose they have parents who love them and who want to help them and support them and they have friends who always know the right things to say. I wish I had friends.

I feel weak to say that at this point in my life I find myself craving human affection. But that's just how it is. I want a friend. I want to touch someone, to hug someone, to have a shoulder to cry on, to share my secrets with. I suppose most kids my age have that. I suppose I'm different from most kids my age; I cry when boys aren't supposed to and I keep a diary when boys aren't supposed to. So I really can't complain, can I? I've chosen the underdog life and this is what I get: evening after evening of quietly sitting, staring at the blank wall. I suppose I could stare at the mirror across the bed in my temporary room in the cottage, but I don't like my face. It looks too soft, and innocent. It looks too sad, and I can't bring myself to smile.

The Day That Sucked started out with another Youth Circle early in the morning, and we all talked about how that one argument between our parents made us cut ourselves, and about how that one thing our sibling said made us almost strangle them with a tube sock, and about how we feel like our friends just don't understand the sheer scope to our problems. I didn't say any of this: I refused to speak. Mathieu didn't talk much either, and writing that just made me really anxious, because he's the reason why there's this thing I have called the Day That Sucked.

Penny winked at me as we all filed out of the recreation hall. I shivered. Penny was twenty-five.

I walked back to our cottage alone. Family counselling was the next day, and that made me nervous. It meant three hours of quietly sitting in a small room with my thin, lunatic mum, my idiot, fat dad, and my bratty teenage sister, but I would have to be forced to talk. Counsellors always did that: forced you to talk.

My sister was sitting on my bed when I walked into my small room. She looked very sad. I almost walked out, but she looked too sad to leave behind, and she had already seen me, so instead I closed the door behind me and stood there, staring at her.

"Nathan," she said quietly.

"Angela," I said quietly. She gave me a pleading look, one I've never seen before.

"Thank you for the makeup," I said instinctively, because I had forgotten. She disregarded this.

"Nathan, remember Mike?"

"Sure," I said.

"I'm pregnant." She said.

"Okay," I said.

"Nathan," she said, "I'm pregnant."

"Okay," I said.

And she started crying.

I realized then that she was sitting on something. With her face buried in her skirt, she pulled out a clothes hangar from underneath her, and she held it out to me.

"I need you to help me," she sobbed, her extended arm trembling, and I stared from the clothes hangar to my crying sister, and I started crying too.