SNAPPED.

[westedge]

"Just-- my mom got sick and then she got real sick, and then… this kid, Timmy Finster, threw a baseball at my head, and yes he was joking, but… I don’t know, I just popped."
-Jonas to Alex, Epiphany Fields

***

You probably should have gone home last night instead of passing out in someone else's basement, but too little too late for that. Likewise, you probably should have just skipped school today because it's not like you're going to retain any of the information you're being taught in the first place.

It's not like your teachers always care about what they're teaching you either. It's another one of those days where you really have to wonder, again, what's the point of it all? This has been life in Westedge for as long as you can remember. The sheer amount of people who really don't give a fuck is pretty impressive. You've always known this town is just a place where people go when their dreams are dead. Everyone's a farmer or a banker, and if you're not one of those there's no sense in bothering to do much of anything else about it. You accept your lots in life and do your best to avoid getting stabbed, shot, or mugged.

Sometimes you think it's not exactly fair. You think about praying to a God your mother believes in, but you don't have the heart to tell her you're not even sure he's really there. If there really was such a being as God, would he really let your life turn out this way? Would you really be a kid from a lowerclass family whose mom is slowly dying right before your eyes while your dad works as many extra hours as possible to generate enough money for treatments? Would you really be stuck in a deadend town without any opportunity to escape? Would you really be rapidly losing the hope you once held onto so tightly if there was supposed to be someone you could believe in?

These are the things you fell asleep thinking about the night before and now, half-slumped over your desk in homeroom and blatantly ignoring that you forgot to shower this morning, they continue to circle your head. If there was a God, why would he let the treatments start to fail your mom? Why would the cancer begin spreading even further and latching on to more vital organs? Why would someone who's supposedly going to grant everyone salvation and forgiveness and loves everyone find it fitting to punish a woman who had only ever done her best to try and make your life less miserable? It didn't make any sense. But, then again, it's not like the last several months have made a whole lot of sense to begin with so what the fuck do you know? You're a slacker and an idiot and you're probably not as different from the people here as you think you are.

Going through a morning of classes is easy enough when you remember none of it really matters in the long run. Don't people realize there are more important things than trig and world war whatever and that essay you were totally going to do but decided to blow off instead? It's frustrating, mostly. The whole…everything just sort of pisses you off in a way you can't actively describe. It's just another reminder how unfair the whole world is that people can go about their normal lives without thinking about anything else. People with all the money in the world could afford the expensive treatments and do something to try and save the people they love. People with ambition could make a good plan to get the hell out of dodge and make it somewhere else. People with a better hand in life get to experience things you never could even dream about, and all you can do is watch.

You should have gone home last night, but your dad came home from the hospital with the news of your mom's treatment starting to waver again and the only thing you saw was red. It wasn't fair to blame the doctors or modern medicine, so it was easier to blame the world as a whole and ignore the problem entirely. But the problem with ignoring a problem is that it festers. You know yourself better than anybody, and you probably should have seen this coming. The longer you ignore the problem, the more agitated you become because it's just another reminder of how powerless you really are in this life. You can't take away her pain. You can't beat every obstacle that's been thrown at you. You just have to take it and accept it and learn to live because that's life.

By the time gym rolls around, you really, really realize you should have just skipped. You can feel every last shred of your patience wearing thin anytime someone so much as looks at you, tension thrumming through your body as your brain continues on its endless loop.

"Why. Why don't people understand? Don't they see how lucky they are?"

It's not the most charitable thought, but hey. You're not really in a charitable mood. You're more than happy to mind your own business, because you're pretty sure if someone so much as looks at you wrong you're going to bite someone's head off. You're usually good-natured by default (mostly), but the repeated thoughts of the previous night's conversation continue to sour your mood and most people give you a wide berth.

If only the same could be said for Timmy Finster. It's not like you don't know the guy. You've shared classes with him on and off all the way through high school so far, and while you're not exactly friends, you're not sworn enemies either. The thing about Timmy Finster is that the guy can't take a hint. You can hear him trying to get your attention. You don't particularly care about what he wants, so you ignore him. Focus on stretching. Focus on trying to pretend to give a shit about phys ed when you're so tempted to duck under the bleachers and smoke a cigarette or three before the bell rings. Focus on literally anything but the slow impending doom known as your family situation. He continues to call after you, and you take that as a sign to turn and try to walk away.

He takes that as a sign that you can't actually hear him, and the baseball barely whizzes past your head before you register what just happened. You turn slowly to see Timmy with his arm still poised in throwing position, smirking at you now that he's gotten your attention.

…you don't really remember what happened next.

White noise filled your ears and there's a sound like a feral growl ripping out of your throat. The only thing you remember is a fist connecting with Timmy's jaw before you seem to black out entirely. When you come to, you hear so many sounds above the white noise that it takes you a few minutes to identify them all. There's the sound of your classmates yelling and chanting and egging you on. There's the sound of other classmates begging you to stop. There's yelling from your gym coach, though the words aren't really reaching you despite the way you can feel him grounding you in place. And intermingled in it all are two noises you've grown intimately familiar with: the wail of an ambulance, and the warning of a cop car.

You look down at your hands and see the split, bloody knuckles and the slowly blossoming bruises. You see a crumpled up form of a person, limp and unmoving and bleeding from a few places. And as the stretcher arrives on the field to load Timmy up, you see the principal and two officers swarm the field. There's questions and kids with their cell phones out to text their friends and take pictures as you're brusquely escorted from the field. You barely stumble over your feet, and you don't even flinch when the cold metal of handcuffs slip their way around your wrists as the back door opens and you're shoved into the squad car.

And it's only when you're separated from it all and you're left with your thoughts again that you realize you really, truly have fucked this one up.

If there really is a God, it's not like he can save you now.