January 22nd

“I killed my dad,” the boy said, sitting across the table from the social worker in the school’s musty closet, the only place they could cram a him to do his job.  “It’s my fault he’s dead,” he said looking down at his black and white shoes.  

“What do you mean it’s your fault, bud?” he asked, concerned.  There was no prior information the social worker was given, just the boy’s name and age, thirteen.  “How old were you?”

“Seven,” he responded, still avoiding eye contact.

“How is that you’re fault, though?”

“It is.  He was coming home for me.  He was coming home to apologize to me.  To tell me...”  There was a pause, and then silence.  

“What was he going to tell you?”

The boy waited a minute, until finally looking up.  His brown eyes looked deep into those of the social worker’s, as if the two of them finally were able to connect to one another.  “He was going to tell me he was sorry, and that he would always love me.”  

“What happened when he was coming home?”  

“He had the green light, he was the first car when the light changed… but that didn’t matter.  Someone blew through the red light just as he entered the intersection, and the other car crushed him.  He was stuck in the car, nobody to help him.  At that point he didn’t need help.  He was too far gone already, and any amount of help wouldn’t do anything.”

The social worker looked at him sympathetically, prepared for anything that would come next.  “Have you talked to anyone about this before?”

“Just you,” he said, further indication that the boy trusted him.  “I’ve tried to talk to other people, teachers, friends… they just tell me it wasn’t my fault and then they go back to what they were doing.  They don’t have time to care, everybody’s too busy to be bothered.”

“Keep going, keep telling me more… whatever you want to say.”  He adjusted how he was sitting, making himself more open so that the boy would continue talking.  

“They don’t care,” the boy continued, “nobody cares, why are you even here?”

“Why do you think I am here?” the social worker asked.  The boy just shook his head, but held on to what little eye contact he was willing to make.  “I’m here because I care and because your teacher cares about you: she’s said that you’ve been having trouble.  I want to help get you through that trouble.”

The two made full eye contact during a long pause.  “She said that?”  The social worker silently said yes, shaking his head in accordance.  “No she didn’t.  She doesn’t care.  Nobody does.”  

“I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.  Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” The boy started to get angry and upset, becoming rebellious.  “Tell you how my dad is dead?  How my mom hated me and wished I was dead?  You want me to tell you that she’s dead now, too, and I have nobody?”

He got up and started to walk out of the room, but looked back and saw the man still sitting at the table, his right leg crossed over his left, not moving.  The boy looked confused.  “You’re not gonna come after me to keep me here?  You’re just gonna let me walk out?”  He had one hand on the doorknob, waiting for a response of “sit down, we’re not done here,” but he didn’t get it.  

“Nope, if you want to, you can leave.  It’s up to you.  I get paid if you leave or stay, do whatever you wanna do.”  Hesitantly, the boy took his hand off the cold, brass handle, his hand still bent as if still holding the spherical knob.  He walked back to the chair in the middle of the room, across the table from the social worker, and sat down.

“Why do you care?” he asked upon returning, calming down since he first stood up.

“Why shouldn’t I care?  I started doing this job because I care--and if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be working.”  The boy smiled, starting to warm up to him again.  “Hell, I don’t really have a choice to care, do I?” he said, as the two chuckled quietly to themselves.  “I can’t say that I know exactly what you’re going through, but I understand it, and I want to help you with whatever it is that you need to keep living your life.”  He hunched over and rested his elbows on his knees.  “I care, and I’ll do what I can.”

The boy took a deep breath, settled into the rickety chair that was old even before he was born, and started.  

“My dad and I were arguing… as much as a seven-year-old can argue.  I told him he loved his job more than me.  It was a Saturday, we had our day all planned out by nine o’clock and that’s when he got the call from his office.  He tiptoed around telling me like he always did, but I always knew what that meant.  He sat me down and told me he was sorry, but he had to go to work again, and he would make it up to me tomorrow.”  He closed his eyes and let out a single ‘I can’t believe it’ chuckle before continuing.  

“I told him he was just like Mom, he hated me and had to get away from me, too.  He tried to convince me otherwise, but before he had the chance I told him I hated him and went to my room and slammed the door.  I never realized that those would be the last words I ever said to him, ‘I hate you,’” he repeated.  “My mom told me that he had died in a car crash during his lunch break.” 

“How do you know he was coming home to apologize?” the social worker asked.

“That’s just the kind of person he was.  He either ate lunch at his desk or he came home.  I guess it just makes me feel a little better that I think he was coming home for that so I know he really did love me.  He’ll never know that I loved him though, he died thinking I hated him…”  

The social worker watched the boy as he recounted that early afternoon.  Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes.  “Your dad knows you loved him,” he said.  “We all say things that aren’t true, we might feel it at that moment, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know,” he said, “but it just hurts to think that that’s the last thing I told him before he died.  I just wish I could have told him something different, taken it all back.  Those next couple weeks were miserable.  My mom didn’t give a shit about anything, didn’t care what I did, didn’t help me with anything, didn’t take care of me.  

“The note said that she couldn’t handle it anymore.  She couldn’t handle me.  My mom overdosed five weeks after he died, and I was alone.  I know it sounds bad, but it was kind of a relief.  I was scared of her, and I knew that she didn’t want me there.  A social worker, a stupid one, the kind that really doesn’t care, came to school that afternoon and took me with her, and ever since I have been in the system.”

The social worker sat there, quietly, not interrupting the story.  “That’s where everything went down hill.  Nobody wants us, we’re throwaways.  We’re taken away or brought there for a reason.  We’re broken, why would anybody want to bring us into their home?  All of the time in that pre-placement home and I was still never cared for.  They all treated us like crap and had no time to actually care for us.  That’s where everything started: the drugs, the parties, everything risky.  It’s me though.  That place made me who I am now.  Nobody wants to help me.  Nobody cares.”  

He stood up, walked towards the door and held on to the knob.  He waited a minute, turned the latch and left the room.  The man stayed in his chair, dropped his pen onto the table and leaned heavily back in the chair.  Rubbing his hands through his hair he let out a deep sigh, realizing he had just broken through the first wall, and looked down the corridor of wall after wall, all needing to be broken.