Too Late: Day 7

 Word Count: 42,007

Summary of Events:

Callan mulled over how to help Amarina, wondering if he shouldn't get the family involved who'd helped him — and were part of why he wanted to help Amarina — as he was running out of ideas. Amarina was waiting for her class to start when one of her chief bullies covered her and her schoolbook with shaving foam; he was sent to detention while she was sent to the showers to clean the foam out of her hair, utterly mortified. Heading home from a match, Callan saw a piece of paper hanging in a tree; he fetched it because he was curious — getting soaked by a heavy rain in the process — and went home, where he found it was the third verse of the song; he sent a photo of it to Amarina privately before going to change out of his wet clothes . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

In comfortably dry clothes he returned to where he’d left his mobile and took it up as he went over to the couch to watch another episode of the programme he liked; maybe he’d watch two, he wasn’t altogether sure, he didn’t want to get through the series too quickly.

Before he turned on his television, however, he turned again to his mobile and checked to see if the little ant had replied to him.

He noticed that she had, and so went to the messages to see what she’d said.

Once again it was a profanity-laden response in which she told him to leave her alone because he didn’t understand, as well as declaring that he should leave the lyrics where he’d found them so that they could be found by the person she wanted to find them.

But hadn’t she said they were rubbish?

He scrolled back to the top of their conversation — which didn’t take long — before remembering that she’d said that in a public post, which he tracked down and was actually able to find reasonably quickly by way of scrolling back through the recent posts he’d made.

Taking a screenshot of his post preceding her response and her rather sedate response compared to all the swearing she’d done at him in their messaging, he went and trimmed it down to show just the two posts, instead of the rest of his mobile screen.

He then went back to the social media app and messaged her the photo, along with further enquiry.

What’s the truth? What you said before? Or what you’ve just said? Is someone supposed to find them or not?

Hardly had he turned his television on and headed toward selecting the next episode of the programme when his mobile sounded; he picked it up and found it was a response from the little ant again.

Going to see what it was, he felt a pang of disappointment as he read what was mostly just profanities. Indeed, the angry outburst that looked to have little coherence to it, struck him as being rather like when his mum had lost her temper at him.

Tears pricked at his eyes. All he wanted to do was help, but she wouldn’t let him, she was completely closed to him. She had no intentions of accepting his help. It seemed as if she was completely and utterly set on killing herself, and there was nothing he would be able to do to stop her.

He set his mobile aside and looked at the television; he couldn’t bring himself to go forward with watching his programme now. He felt too troubled.

Turning off the television, he got up and went into his room, where he dropped down onto his bed heavily and stared at the ceiling wearily, letting the tears of frustration and hurt run from the corners of his eyes across his temples and into the hair above his ears.