I hear him sigh as he walks away and closes my door.
****
Finn
I sit in my sister’s desk chair and watch her sleep. I stare at the tears streaked down her face, the way her hair is matted and wet.
This is pathetic.
Her pain causes me to hurt.
FixItFixItFixIt, the voices chant.
I can’t. That’s the bitch of it. I can’t fix it.
She’s fragile and scared and alone, and now she’s broken.
He broke her.
Scowling, I pick up her phone, making sure that he didn’t text again. I deleted his answer before, the pitiful I miss you too.
Fuck him.
Fuck anyone who wants to hurt her.
I can’t save her if she keeps getting hurt.
But the world is like that. The world is ugly and painful and that’s how I’ll fix it. The answer comes to me as clear as a bell. The world is too painful. There’s only one way to stop it, to fix it.
Fix it.
I will.
I will.
Fix it.
Consider it done.
I tell that to the voices and it seems to appease them because they’re silent for a minute as I bend and kiss my sister’s forehead, then crawl in bed behind her.
There’s a way. Only one Only one Only one.
Fix it.
37
TRIGENTA SEPTEM
Calla
Sunlight floods my room and I wake up feeling… alive again.
I don’t know why.
Maybe it was Finn’s indignation last night, his plea, his demand to get my ass out of bed in the morning.
I’m not sure what it was that worked, what broke through my self-pity, but here I am, sitting on the edge of my bed.