a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

Dear Dex: how to keep the anger down (from behind the foggy glass)

Dear Dex,

I know what it's like to feel forgotten.

It's like you're trapped behind a two-way mirror, right? You fog up the glass with your breath so everyone else is just as removed from you as you are from them, but it's no use. The fog fades. The glass still doesn't break. You're invisible to them and they're out of reach to you. All your efforts to cause some damage to them are useless. Unnoticed.

Yeah, I get it.

You'll be blaming yourself for my disappearance, right? Because of Rex?

I want to tell you that it's okay to cry. You won't hear it from behind the glass, but I promise I said it. I promise I see you.

Just make sure the tears aren't because you blame yourself for me leaving. It wasn't your fault you were too scared of me (I don't care that I didn't feel your fear. You had to have been scared of me. I only detect head emotions, not heart). That was part of the reason I left, your fear (which I can say because you won't ever see this so I don't have to lie) but mostly, it was so I didn't hurt you more.

You know who your emotions match in our little group? A lot of the time, your feelings are similar to Stina's. Marella, Fitz, yes, but you and Stina have a special sort of anger brewing inside of you, and I don't think anyone else sees how deep it goes.

I think she needs that anger to keep going. I don't think you do.

Knowing that Rex was talentless, I think, made that anger worse. And, yeah, I could feel the resentment aimed at me. It's fine.

I don't blame you, and you shouldn't blame yourself.

Blame me instead, okay? I know you already do. The guilt wouldn't break me even if I were there to feel it.

The guilt is never what breaks me.

I would love to tell you I know you. I'm supposed to know everyone, aren't I? But you are terrifyingly accomplished at hiding yourself away. I told you earlier that I only read head emotions, not ones from the heart, and that's true.

I can't read you for the same reason you kissed Sophie: you are very, very good at convincing yourself to feel things that you don't want to. Your obsession with Sophie, guilt for things everyone has forgiven you for, and above all, how much you care. You care so much. It's kind of incredible, because I didn't know someone could want to make people happy so much and still believe he's a horrible person.

Take it from an Empath: you have been forgiven many times over.

I can tell you this because I haven't been forgiven, and I probably won't be for a long time, not until I'm a distant enough memory that you only remember the good times instead of the ending. Or... the endings, since I like repeating my mistakes.

The good thing about being trapped behind two-way glass is that you get to know everyone so well that nothing they do surprises you. The bad thing is that no one notices when you cry.

Thank you for trying your best with a lost cause.

Love,

Keefe

...

"You must be lost," Keefe said from his usual spot in the bleached white hallway, arms stretched out behind his head, sprawled across the bench like he owned it. This, he'd learned from his father: pretend things belong to you so that no one takes them away.

The girl shuffled back, eyeing him up and down. And he felt it, the curiosity, the nerves, a twinge of pain, all strong enough to make it through the wall that he'd built up over the past few months. Construction had begun just around the time Fitz stopped entering his mind during school, and now he was constantly reinforcing it. But her emotions were strong enough to penetrate his makeshift shield (it was cobbled together from tired debris), the only reason he said anything at all.