Chapter Ten
By four thirty, Quinn has woven through another labyrinth of bus routes and transfers, and made it to the Douglas County Hospital in Omaha. The final condition of his release: attending his exit interview with the detention center’s counselor.
While incarcerated, Quinn kept his head down, got his GED, even started to enjoy his sessions with Helen Yang.
He liked the perky counselor; she threw starfish back into the ocean for a living but was always cheerful and optimistic.
She works at the hospital, and Quinn thinks her weekly visits to the juvenile detention center are pro bono.
It tells you a lot that she’d do this stuff for free.
She put up with Quinn’s silence during group.
Seemed to immediately understand he wasn’t one to talk out his feelings; that he was “internal,” as she termed it.
Helen noticed that Quinn read a lot and scribbled in a journal, so she suggested he try writing a story.
He liked the idea but didn’t think he had anything new to say.
The world doesn’t need more sad stories.
When that didn’t work, Helen asked him to write letters—even if he never sent them—to express how he was feeling. So that’s what he did.
He wrote a letter to his father, asking for the strength to get through it all, apologizing for letting down his family.
He wrote a letter to his mother, asking for forgiveness, saying he didn’t mean it when he said Dad would be ashamed of her, and apologizing for not being there to protect her.
He wrote a letter to George, vowing he would find a way to reunite, the same pledge he made just a few hours ago to his brother’s vacant stare.
He wrote a letter to the scumbag who killed his mother. Told the man he would find him.
And he wrote a letter to Jules. That was the curious one: Why write a girl he barely knows?
He wrote so many letters his hand cramped clutching the rubber pen. It would bend with even the slightest pressure, a safety measure to ensure no one used it as a shiv.
Of all the letters, he sent only one: to the kid he’d nearly killed when his skull cracked against the pavement at the concert.
The boy recovered, which is the only reason Quinn won’t spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The other letters are in a bundle in the garbage bag he grips as he walks from the bus stop to the hospital.
It’s an old fortress-looking structure out of a Batman comic. Quinn asks the information desk where to find Helen, and he’s directed to the lower level.
When he locates the small room in the basement, Helen offers him a warm smile.
She introduces Quinn to the group of teenagers sitting in molded plastic chairs, tells them that this is Quinn’s last session before going off to serve the country.
She doesn’t mention that Quinn is one of the kids she worked with at juvie.
As always, Quinn doesn’t speak. He just listens to the other kids who describe their struggles with drugs and alcohol, with their parents, with the world. Each story heartrending in its own right. He wonders if he’ll ever have the courage—that’s what it is, right?—to speak in group.
Afterward, as they stack the chairs and Helen says her goodbyes, a young woman appears in the doorway. She seems flustered, or maybe high or drunk, Quinn isn’t sure.
She clasps a paper and approaches Helen. Quinn watches as Helen apologizes, says she can’t sign the form because the girl missed group. The girl bats her pretty eyes, tells a sob story about traffic, but Helen simply gives her the time of the next session.
It’s then the girl catches Quinn’s eye. And she stops talking. Tilts her head to the side.
“Quinn Riley?”