The Re-do #2
Working at Sequest, I felt closer to myself.
I decided it was worthwhile to stick around, even as Benji’s ghost lurked in every corner and I still couldn’t bring myself to refer to his office as mine.
Now, though, with my head in my hands and that letter mocking me incessantly, I had regrets.
If I hadn’t been around, Mary wouldn’t have thought twice about telling Violet the man she was looking for was gone.
She thought the letter going unsent was a bad ending. She had no fucking idea.
“You look like shit.”
I snapped to attention, bleary eyes focusing on a pink-haired girl standing in the doorway.
She smirked at me with the confidence of a self-righteous teenager, wearing a T-shirt so big it fell past her knees and Converse so dirty I couldn’t tell what color they used to be.
I was familiar with this sort of attitude; the kids who came to Sequest were often reserved, but many exuded an arrogant facade as a shield. It never took much to see a crack.
“Gee,” I said, and her smile widened. I didn’t have an appointment today, so she must’ve wandered in after school. Walk-ins weren’t uncommon, but Mary usually handled them.
The pink-haired girl approached the desk, narrowing her eyes. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
I was excellent with faces—if this kid had been here before, I’d know. I studied her for a moment, trying to pull the memory out of my brain, coming up empty. This seemed to delight her. She settled in the chair across from me, dropping her backpack on the floor at her feet, and grinned.
“I’m Phoebe,” she said. The name set off an alarm in my head and I leaned back in my chair without meaning to, as if the realization physically shoved me backward. “Violet’s sister.”
This was my life now. I’d be haunted by Benji for the rest of my life, stuck in the grief like quicksand, fighting so hard to get out that I sank and sank and sank. Sand in my lungs, no way up.
“I was under the impression,” I said coolly, and she only smiled harder, “that I’d never see you again.”
“You’ll never see Violet again,” she amended. “I wasn’t a part of that deal. You should’ve clarified because I am way more annoying than she is.”
Outside, I could hear the rain picking up, spattering the window behind me.
I wanted to kick this kid out of Benji’s office.
I wanted to walk away and never come back.
I wanted to stop thinking about Violet in that dress while she looked at me like maybe I was the answer, and I wanted to stop wondering what her question was.
“So, anyway,” Phoebe said, shifting in her seat to look around the room.
“What does this place do? Help LGBT kids, sure, yeah, but what does that actually mean? Like, is it only kids who are kicked out? Or do you also help fourteen-year-old lesbians whose only parent was killed in a car accident and now they’re bullied at school and pretty sure they’ll never be happy again?
” She turned to me, her wide eyes cocooned in smudged black makeup. “Hypothetically.”
“I don’t believe for a second you’re here to talk about Sequest,” I said.
“Two things can be true at the same time. Am I gonna bother you about the letter? Yeah, obviously. But I’m also a queer youth in crisis, so you’re kind of obligated to help me.”
“What’s your crisis, exactly? Are you thinking about hurting yourself or others? Are you displaced? Because if not, I’m not obligated to do anything.”
“My crisis,” she countered, completely unfazed, “is that I am a lesbian and I am sad. Also, I got a blister on the way here. My life is a nightmare.”
“Wow,” I said. “This might be the most serious case I’ve encountered.”
A sharp laugh burst out of her, and she clapped her hand over her mouth, seeming startled by it, and whatever defenses I had locked in place suffered a direct hit.
The first visible crack in her facade. Two things could be true: Phoebe was here to interrogate me about the letter, but she was also drowning in the loss of her father and struggling with the transition of moving with her sister to a new city, feeling utterly alone.
If she was anyone else, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
But she’d held my brother’s words in her hands and let them carry her here.
I dragged my hands down my face and let them fall in my lap. Phoebe’s smile faded.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. She sat up straighter, that unsettling confidence dipping in favor of something more genuine.
“I want a re-do,” she said. “Our first impression sucked. But when Violet came to see you again, she made it seem like you’re not an asshole. I get why you were mad and I really am sorry we read your letter. But now… I don’t know why, but I think we’re supposed to help each other.”
I let out an exasperated sound. “Come on.”
“I know it sounds like bullshit. And you owe me less than nothing.” She leaned forward, eyes searching mine. “I know that letter means something to you. I think maybe it means everything.”
That letter was a black hole, sucking my whole life into it the harder I tried to ignore it.
“We can help each other,” she said earnestly. “Please, just… Hear me out.” When I didn’t say anything, she cautiously extended her hand across Benji’s desk. “Phoebe St. Clair.”
I should’ve turned her away. This only prolonged the hell, but if I was already choking on it, what did it matter? Ben had never once turned away a kid who needed help.
I shook her hand and said, “Dex.”
This was the part where I should have explained that Benji was my brother and this situation was more complicated than Phoebe ever could’ve anticipated when she opened that letter.
Just the thought of saying those words out loud stung my throat.
I could barely talk about Ben with Bree or Gav, let alone a random teenager.
I told myself it didn’t matter. Phoebe would walk away from this with a satisfactory level of closure and we’d never see each other again. I wanted to believe it.
“Dex,” she repeated, the small smile on her face laced with hope. And then she started talking.
A lot of kids experienced a moment where they couldn’t hold in the pain anymore and it spilled out in a clumsy rush.
I wasn’t a therapist. My job wasn’t to heal them, or even try to make them feel okay.
My job was to provide support, understanding, a safe place, a fresh meal, and in some cases, aid in finding sufficient housing.
To be someone they could trust. A government official once told me Sequest worked in small potatoes. It never felt small to me.
Phoebe started with last September. How one morning she woke up with a sore throat and went to school because she didn’t want to make up a biology test, and now every day her first thought was if she’d stayed home, her dad would be alive.
She told me her sister didn’t hesitate to accept custody, it ultimately ruined Violet’s life, and yet she pretended everything was fine for Phoebe’s benefit.
She explained how relieved she’d been to start fresh in Boston, but the kids at school were cruel, throwing slurs and insults at her in the hallways, and even making digs about her dad to get a rise out of her.
She looked me in the eye and said she felt lost until the moment she held that letter in her hands, and then she knew exactly what she needed to do.
“Catalina deserves that letter,” she said.
“Maybe you think it’s a sign that it never got delivered, but I don’t think that’s true.
I think…” She let out a sharp breath, her eyes glassy.
“I think it’s supposed to be me, Dex. And Violet.
We’re supposed to help you with this. Why else would the letter end up with us? ”
“You live in that apartment,” I said. “If it showed up last year—”
“But it didn’t! We were the ones who ended up with that letter and we were the ones who returned it instead of throwing it out like someone else might’ve.
” Her tone was heated, but her eyes gave her away.
This girl was as desperate as I was, and this realization cut to the bone.
She was just a kid. “I know those words by heart, Dex. I can’t stop thinking about them.
You poured your fucking heart into that letter and Catalina deserves to know. She deserves to know you were sorry.”
I swiveled around in my chair, burying my face in my hands.
I hadn’t read the letter. I had my own last words from Ben memorized, an email that would live in my inbox until I died: Broke my phone but I know how you get when I don’t respond.
Maybe I’ll come crash on your couch for a bit.
Boston hasn’t been so good to me lately.
Don’t worry about me. It’ll pass. Always does.
He was gone two days later.
I’d offered to drive to Boston after he admitted he was having a hard time and he refused, claiming he had everything under control.
Then he broke up with Cat on a whim, obliterating them both, and I knew I needed to get to him.
But work was chaotic and I was too much of a fucking coward to get on a plane. I kept putting it off.
I wasn’t there when he needed me and somehow, I was in possession of his last words to Cat. And now I knew he was sorry.
Fuck. I couldn’t pretend there was any other resolution to this than getting that letter to Cat. Not when she was under the impression that their last words were a goodbye.
“You’re right,” I said, turning to face her. Her cheeks were a ruddy shade of pink, her fists gripping the arms of her chair.
“We can get the letter to her, Dex. I want to help you.”
“Help me how? You wanna buy the stamp?”
She fixed me with a stern look. “You can’t mail it.”
Thunder cracked, rattling the window. Phoebe jumped, eyes widening.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because she deserves more than that. You know she does.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “It’s been years. You can’t mail it with no explanation. She’ll think you’re a creep.”