Finn
Aged fifteen
Dear Mom,
I don’t need therapy…
I wish you could tell that to Dad.
And the lady with the mustache.
While you’re at it, tell her she smells like hobo socks and ask her what she’s writing in that damn notebook of hers—I bet she’s drawing bunnies and shit.
I’m currently stuck in some stupid office, on some stupid green couch, writing you stupid letters that you’re never going to get.
I tried telling Hobo Socks that you’re gone, but she says that’s the point of the exercise.
To pretend.
To talk to you like you’re still here and not hanging out with the fish at the bottom of Lake Belmont…
And they say I’m out of touch with reality.
You haven’t missed much, in case you were wondering. Dad still thinks I’m a nutcase, and he still secretly wishes Xavier was his son instead of me.
Apparently, my best friend is a “good kid” because he doesn’t, and I quote, “go around stealing the neighbor’s car and crashing it into a pole.”
Big. Fucking. Deal.
He doesn’t get it.
Xavier didn’t lose you, Mom.
If he did, he’d want to set the world on fire, too.
Hobo Socks keeps saying I’m on a path to “self-destruction,” whatever the fuck that means. Sounds fun, if you ask me.
Sign me up.
It doesn’t help that I should be in juvie right now. The car thing would’ve been strike three. Good thing Dad bribed the neighbor, huh? I guess money really canbuy everything.
Wait, I take that back.
Money can buy everything except what matters.
It didn’t give me super strength that day, did it?
It didn’t stop your hand from slipping.
Because rich people don’t float.
Not even people with hearts as big as the ocean.
“Look, but don’t touch,” you used to say about painful things. You said it only hurts if you let it. That the flame only burns if you get close enough.
And I promise you, Mom…
I’ll never get burned again.
- Finley