In Your Own Words

11. SUBJECT: MY DATE

Texts sent February 22, 2017 at 10:06pm

Weston Maguire: How are you?

Peter Moore: Better.

Weston: Yeah? You don't have to sugarcoat it.

Peter Moore: I'm not great, but I'm okay.

Weston Maguire: Okay. Do you want to catch the end of the game?

Peter Moore: Sure, but I can hear the play by play from my room. Why so loud?

Weston Maguire: I'm trying to get a rise out of Will. He ate my leftovers.

. . .

to: cassandra.belford@baderu.com

from: weston.maguire@baderu.com

subject: Going on a date tonight

sent: February 23, 2017 at 12:18pm

Dear Cassie,

Your email was appreciated. You said a lot of helpful, sometimes forward, things that I haven't stopped thinking about. So, thank you.

You are a bit crazy, by the way... but I dig it.

Simon sounds like a good guy. It must be great to have a friend who isn't afraid to tell you what to do for your own good. I wish I could do that with Peter.

But I don't feel like I have the right to tell him anything, regardless of whether or not it would help him. It feels like any advice I give is invalid since I have no experience with what he's going through. Another burden of the well-adjusted, maybe.

Nothing bad has ever happened to me. I mean, yeah, my parents aren't married anymore, but that's not very original; practically everyone's parents are divorced. And, as far as divorces go, it isn't so bad. My mom and dad are still on okay terms.

When I was a kid and they first separated, I got sent to a Divorced Kids Camp. No kidding. I had to play soccer, make crafts, and talk about Jesus with other kids with divorced/divorcing parents. My family isn't even religious, but I guess they couldn't find a secular divorced kids camp for us.

There was one night when we made those paper cups and string telephones, and a girl in my group crushed her cup in her hand. Like a tiny blonde Hulk. The camp leader, who was obviously annoyed, and maybe a little weirded out, asked her why she did that. She huffed and said that she didn't want to make a telephone because she had no friends.

Even I, who was seven at the time, knew that her attitude was the root of the problem.

The guy sitting beside me, I think his name was Gilbert, said that she could play with him and his friends.

Nice kid, right?

But you'll never believe what this girl did: she rolled her eyes and said she didn't want to play with Chinese people. Like, the way someone might say they don't eat potato salad. It was so unnecessarily mean.

So me and the rest of the kids are incredulous while Gilbert just shrugged. "Okay, but maybe if you played with Chinese people you'd have friends." A fucking king.

The camp leader looked like she was going to pass out. I can't remember what happened after that, but I will never forget how unfazed Gilbert was by that girl. It was like her hate didn't touch him. It's a good thing he didn't get upset because as much as I'd like to think I would have stood up for him, I don't really know what I could have said. And that fucking sucks.