2005-09-29 - 2:24 p.m.
cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome/ and I don't feel right when you're gone away/ you've gone away, you don't feel me, anymore/ 'Cause I'm broken when I'm open/ and I don't feel like I am strong enough . . .
Dear Donovan,
I am a deeply selfish girl. I had thought that maybe I had become less so with dying three times, but it seems that I have not.
The lead technocrat, Emily, who snuck onto the jet to speak with us told us that they were trying to contact us via email to help with the impending Vormas strike for the past few weeks. After much nagging, I have gotten marginally better at keeping up with my email but I know Charlotte and Jon are so plugged they should have a jack in the back of their heads (wait. Maybe Charlotte does? I don't know). No one had known anything about any of this. Emily, the technocrat (who is about as wired for sound as Charlotte is), expressed disbelief (though she held up pretty well under interrogation, I will give her that). I asked why they didn't just call us or show up at our door (like everyone else does. All. fucking. day. and. all. fucking. night.) and she said that she didn't think we would let her through. Now. I am still skeptical at best about the technocrats' involvement, but I would be pretty stupid to not see that cannon fodder is cannon fodder.
And it's not like things haven't been ethically rough enough with the Portland Children's Cabal (not what they call themselves, but close enough in my head) volunteering for deployment. For some reason, everyone, including Asha, thinks that they are old enough for duty, citing that I was when I was their age. And I know it's naive and foolish of me, especially since they are so hardcore, but . . .Donovan, I had my childhood taken away from me and continue to have my young adulthood taken away from me and I know that was *my* choice but what does a sixteen year old know about choice, really? I felt like I had nothing left to loose . . .mom was dead, sky was dead, my dad was mostly absent, I still had leukemia in remission . . .I was dying anyway. I had no one to care if I lived or died, especially myself. I feel like everyone in the cabal forgets that I am only twenty. I never had a chance to do a lot of things . . .I was in the clinic in time for my sixteenth birthday and then was swept away by the Euthanatos to learn to kill people, who are now supposed to be my allies. While everyone else in the cabal was worrying about what to wear to prom, or running around on the road like a free spirit because hey that was the times, I was out in the Midwest putting bullets in the back of people's heads. I never finished high school. I never went to college. I don't know what it is to be normal. I was sent to boarding school from the time I was six. I don't know what it's like to have parents who could be involved in my life. Anybody that I was serious about romantically has been a mage. I don't feel right about sending these children into danger and to die, even if that's what they want. I know what it's like to never have had a chance at a normal life and now it's too late for me to ever get that.
I don't talk about this a lot because it sounds very self pitying for one thing and for another, honestly, no one in the cabal has been where I been. I've never thought to run away from my duties and responsibilities, because . . .what would I do? I don't even know. I don't know anything but boarding school and mage work. I don't want that for these children. I don't. I can't help but think there has to be another way. There just has to be. But maybe it's too late for them too. Maybe it's too late for all of us anyway.
I am feeling morose. The cabal would say, as usual. But in addition to all of this, we have one cabal member who is now a vegetable and I've been so caught up in my own problems I haven't even asked Sarah how she's doing about it. Selfish. Wrong. And now at the age of twenty, I have the dubious honor of voluntarily going witterslainte. Fabulous. Oh and Mike? He's in the digital web (which Zack may have ascended to . . .maybe) and the cause of blocking the emails, we think. He always did have a major vendetta about the technocracy. I just cannot fucking believe this. After so many years together, our disjointed family has come to this, even more disjointed and more dysfunctional than we were to begin with. If I felt like I had any more tears to cry about this, I would. But there comes a point where you just . . .can't.
So, because all of this isn't enough misery, after we sort Emily out and promise her that we would keep her advised on everything on the impending Vormas struggle, I started to put my headphones back on and my sleep mask back on to zone out, she said to me very carefully, "They called you Becca?"
"Yes?" I said cautiously.
"Becca Stone?"
"Yes?" Already my heart was in my throat and I knew it couldn't be anything good with a Technocrat who knows who I am.
"Were you in Iowa?" she said softly.
"Yes . . ." Everything in my body was screaming.
"Henry was my brother in law . . ."
"I, I thought there were no survivors," I said dumbly.
"I couldn't go out in public because of the way I look . . ."
"Everything went bad so fast . . .I couldn't go to the funeral . . .I wanted to . . .They sent me to Guatemala . . ."
"They had a very small closed funeral for Henry . . .and then another small closed funeral for my husband . . ."
I nodded numbly and excused myself to the bathroom to vomit for the rest of the trip.
It was decided that Emily would join us for planning in Tahiti. My birthday is in three days.
I can't eat. I can't sleep. I miss you. I miss what I could have been . . .before all of this.
Just tell me . . .if you could . . .When does it become too much for one soul to bear?
always,
your becca
