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“All we're asking for is a little effort…”
It was certainly something easier said than done. It was almost four AM and Lars was still staring blankly at the textbook in front of him, having spent the last several hours TRYING to get something from it and all he could actually understand was the first two paragraphs before his mind just shut off and sunk into the abyss.
He wasn't stupid. He wasn't stupid. He just needed to put the work in. That's all it was. He could succeed if he really tried.
His family's words were meant to be supportive but they only reminded Lars of how stupid he really felt.
‘I mean what else could it be?’
He didn't have dyslexia, he used to be the best reader in his class.
It wasn't test anxiety. Regular anxiety did enough.
Going through all the possible reasons why he wasn't able to do better in school, all Lars could surmise was the plain and simple answer: He really was just stupid.
Well that or something else that felt stupid.
Sadness. That's the only emotion that seemed to overpower everything nowadays.
He slowly rest his head on the desk, and screwed his eyes shut. A few tears of frustration leaked out, but Lars was quick to dry them. He cried a lot, but not actual crying . He hadn't really cried in years. All the sadness was sinking down into him and so much of it was in a well untapped, it only could manage to leak out on its own in small, meaningless amounts. He couldn't afford to let that dam burst now.
His sadness was nobody else's business.
He managed to sleep for a few hours until his father cheerfully reminded him to get up for school.
Lars gave a finger to nobody in particular. Any happiness that was directed at him would just have to find a way through the aggressive wall the sadness had created.
Dante certainly tried to connect with his boy. He often asked him how he was feeling, ask him how work went, even point out the marginally average grades on quizzes or homework he sometimes got and praise him, but it never really amounted to much.
“It must be a little embarrassing, to be a school principal and your kid getting straight D’s”, he'd overheard another teacher mutter to another in the lounge.
“Unwise words to say in earshot of your boss, Mark,” Dante warned his colleague, who went white as a sheet.
Lars wasn't even a student at that particular school, so it hardly seemed any business of those teachers anyway.
He didn't know where things went wrong. For the first several years of his life, Lars was a cheerful and sweet child. He'd proudly bring home gold stars and ribbons. He'd tell his dad he loved him. Dante had pictures of him by the bunch. His favorite being of the memory when he took the boy on his trips to Empire City. And even with all the bright lights and noise and excitement, Lars’ favorite place always seemed to be the old secluded park with the swing set and playground and he'd always want to stay until it got dark.
But when he got closer to his tween years, everything just seemed to shut down. He stopped smiling, he started to hate going to school, and that's when he started to be more of a delinquent.
After years of this without explanation, they took Lars to a doctor, but they didn't get any straight answers.
“Physically there's nothing wrong with him,” the doctor surmised, “Perhaps it's something else”, they gave a discreet tap to their head.
They took Lars to a children's psychologist, and they tried and failed to get him to open up.
“I think he's worried about saying the wrong thing,” the psychologist explained, “Teenagers are pretty perceptive.”
They gave it another couple years, and things only seemed to get worse and worse. To the point they just bothered with Lars less and less out of fear they'd push him to the point he would shut them out completely or go mute in their presence.
Nowadays if Dante wanted a positive moment with his son, it would have to be through the pictures on his desk at work.
The day was going particularly bad for Lars.
He failed that test at school miserably, he wasn't able to focus. His teacher basically humiliated him in front of the other students by asking him if he had remembered to read for once.
His locker was broken. And it made him late for his next class. Another detention slip.
The afternoon shift at the Big Donut was terrible and two customers yelled at him for messing up their orders, one of them using some select slurs pointed at his supposed intellect and his appearance. Sadie yelled at them to get out, and told Lars to leave, still sounding steamed. She had to reiterate her tone to clarify he should go on break to calm down from the incident. Lars just went home.
He had an argument with his mother over the tv being broken and whose fault it was (because he was damn certain it wasn't his) and it just resulted in her crying and Lars feeling horrible all over again.
He tried to make dinner as way of saying he was sorry, and he burnt his hand on the stove and gave up, and went to bed early.
It resulted in him waking up at 3 AM and wide awake. He decided to see about re-reading his school book in case the teacher was merciful and gave him a second chance.
But he couldn't even read past the title of the chapter, his eyes blurring with tears of exhaustion.
He sat on the side of his bed, and rubbed the heels of his hands in his eyes.
Even when he was all alone, he couldn't bring himself to embrace his own sadness.
“Did Laramie go to school early?”, Dante had asked, having seen his son's room was empty.
“I don't know,” Martha murmured as she rummaged through her purse, “Have you seen my credit card? I can't find it anywhere in here.”
“Did you check the coffee table?”
“Twice,” she grumbled, “Maybe I left it on my dresser,” she wandered upstairs, leaving Dante alone to drink his coffee. When she came downstairs again several minutes later, she looked angry, stamping over to her purse to shove the card back inside.
“That boy knows better than to go through my purse-”
“What happened?”
“It was in Laramie’s room!”, she snapped incredulously, “I can’t believe he’d use it without asking me! That boy is in huge trouble,” she looked none too pleased as she grabbed the phone to dial his cell so he could get an earful from her, “After this I’m calling the credit card company to cancel whatever charges he made on it, and-”
Laramie’s phone chimed on the end table near the door.
Martha huffed, “Great, he left his phone here, I’ll have to wait until he gets home to ground him-”
The telephone in her hand suddenly rang, and she answered, surprised, “Uh- erm, hello?”
Dante figured this was a good time to avoid his wife’s repressed fury if their son was the one calling, and decided to wash his dishes, not listening to the conversation.
“What? No, he’s not here...yes...I see, well, please let us know if anything changes,” Martha mumbled, before hanging up, looking at Dante with concern, “That was the high school. Apparently Laramie never showed up.”
“Really? That’s strange,” Dante frowned, “Do you think he skipped to go to work?”
“Maybe,” Martha chewed her thumb in thought, “He’s probably done that and called in sick to school before,” she surmised, and called the Big Donut.
Sadie hadn’t seen him all day.
“Dante, I’m a little worried now,” Martha frowned, “We don’t know where he is.”
“Maybe he’s just playing hooky.”
“You’d think he’d have remembered his phone,” she sighed.
Dante rubbed her arm, “If it makes you feel better, we could go into town and see if we can find him. He couldn’t have gone too far.”
The two wandered all around Beach City for the next several hours, asking whoever they knew if their son had been seen. Nobody was able to help.
By the time evening fell, there was still no sign of Lars, and both parents were incredibly worried.
“Dante, I can’t wait any longer, I’m calling the police-”, Martha covered her mouth anxiously, “If he’s in danger or hurt, I don’t want to wait another minute-”
“Look, I’m sure he’s out with his friends and-”
“We asked all his friends, none of them have seen him!!”, she suddenly snapped at her husband, on the verge of tears, “He hasn’t ever done this before!”
“...You don’t think he’d run away?”
“If he did, it’s all my fault!”, she cried, “I was too hard on him about the damn TV breaking!”
“Now now, Martha,” Dante hugged her, “I doubt he’d run away over that…”
“ I feel so awful!”, she bawled, “He’s never been happy these days, and we’ve done nothing to cheer him up! It’s all my fault-”
Martha gasped as her phone rang and picked up immediately, “Laramie???....Oh...s-sorry, um….no that was charged by my son- wait...what was it??...I...I see,” she puckered her mouth, “Thank you...goodbye.”
She looked at Dante with a worried, but perplexed look, “...It appears Laramie bought a bus ticket to Empire City last night….but it doesn’t explain where in the city or why…”
Dante furrowed his brow as his wife sat on the couch again, nervously playing with her hands, and he opted to walk into the kitchen to think. He took a look at the most recent ‘achievement’ Lars had done on the fridge, four months ago, an essay from English class that garnered a C- for its short word count.
“ Where is your favorite place to go when you’re sad?
I can’t go there anymore. It’s too far away.”
Dante didn’t read any further.
“I know where he is,” he suddenly spoke up, grabbing his car keys.
What a waste of travel.
Lars had stayed cramped up in the back of a smelly Bloodhound bus for four hours, and what he’d come for wasn’t even standing anymore.
They’d torn out the swing set to leave room for some vacant lot space, fenced off and empty concrete in its wake.
“...If you’d asked, I could have told you they ripped the playground out sometime before my last business trip,” Dante had spoken up.
Lars jolted upright on the bench overlooking the lot, looking almost terrified to see his father for a second before he slowly relaxed into a disdainful slouch, avoiding his gaze.
“I’d checked it out the last time I was here, and there was a bulldozer sitting right there,” Dante pointed with his finger.
“That sucks,” Lars hoarsely muttered.
“And with how run down this place looks, I’m kind of surprised you haven’t been knifed by a mugger.”
Lars looked at his father incredulously, unsure if he was joking or not.
“Dante what the fuck,” Lars spoke, voice rough.
Dante’s amused look turned into a serious frown, “You know you worried your mother sick?”
“I was fine.”
“You left your phone at home, she thought something had happened to you.”
“I didn’t want anyone on my ass about this-”
“You could have really gotten hurt Laramie!”
“Look, I’m sorry ok?!”
“You used her credit card, and worried the school, and your workplace-”
“I was gonna come back!”
“Really?? With a one way ticket??”
Lars bit his lip in frustration, mumbling something.
“What?”, Dante wanted to hear it.
“...It was the cheaper option,” Lars muttered, cheeks red.
“So how were you planning to get home? Hitch hiking???”, Dante frowned.
“...I don’t know…”, Lars mumbled, starting to shake, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t KNOW!!”, he suddenly snapped, getting off the bench and stomping over to the chain link fence that closed off where the old swing set used to be, “FUCK!!”, he shouted at it, starting to unload his frustrations on it with swift kicks.
“Laramie!”
Lars didn’t stop, continuing to kick the fence over and over, his voice overpowering the rattling noise it made, “For once I think of something that used to make me happy and it’s not even HERE anymore!! Fuck it!!”
“ Lars, stop!”, Dante hurried over to him, not wanting him to keep walloping the fence.
“I’m so SICK of being so fucking sad and angry all the time!!! I hate it!! I hate this, I hate home, I hate you , and I HATE-”
Lars kicked the fence so hard it hurt his foot, “FUCK! I HATE MYSELF!!”, and he continued to keep striking the fence until he slipped and landed on his back in the wet grass and dirt.
Tears were streaming down his face.
Dante could only watch as Lars was left sitting in the wake of his furious tirade, and shaking as he finally had hit the breaking point that had burst the dam to all of his sorrow.
He wasn’t exactly that taken aback at the notion that his son hated him. It was that last part that was the kicker, since it was the one that had finally broken his boy.
Lars hated himself. And somehow that felt worst of all to Dante.
There wasn’t anything Dante could say to make Lars feel better. He knew it. He knew that wasn’t going to be what helped his son.
Instead, he sat on his knees, wincing a bit (age didn’t do his joints any favors), and watched Lars silently let his tears fall.
“...I don’t think you really hate me do you?”, he asked, not sounding angry.
“No I don’t,” Lars cried, voice watery, “I just-”
“I know.”
He decided to just sit this one out, only opting to gently rub his boy’s back when the sobbing got pretty noisy and painful. It was a lot to get through, years worth of pain. Dante could wait that long. While he waited, he texted Martha:
‘I found Lars. He’s ok.’
It felt like hours when Lars finally sat rigid again, and croaked tiredly, “I’m ready to go home,” he mumbled. He still felt awful. But the barrier that had kept him from expressing anything beyond his usual anger had been torn down enough for him to feel a little less constricted.
“Do you want breakfast? It’s almost 6 AM,” Dante pointed out the sunrise filtering through the trees.
“...Yeah,” Lars mumbled, and rubbed at his swollen eyes, and stood up, silently offering his father a hand to help him up. Without saying anything, once Dante was standing, Lars pressed against him for a tired hug. Dante soaked it in, glad to have the confirmation his son loved him, even if he might not ever say it until he was obligated to.
As they walked to the car to go drive to breakfast, Lars muttered, “I don’t even know what I was thinkin’...some stupid ol’ playground, like jesus did I fuckin’ regress or what?”
“Don’t even worry,” Dante pat his back, “Sometimes regression is the stepping stone to progress.”
“...Am I grounded?”
“In my book, no. In your mother’s case: 5 weeks no TV, and you’re paying for that bus ticket out of your own money.”
“Fine,” Lars wheezed without any aggression in his voice for once, just sounding tired.
“...We can perhaps reach a middle ground if you call your mother on your phone and apologize to her for scaring the living daylights out of her,” Dante proposed.
Lars sucked a breath through his teeth, “Fine,” and reached into his pocket, only to remember he had no phone.
Dante smiled with a bit of smugness, “Missing something?”
“...You’ve got a sick sensa humor, Dante,” Lars rasped, hiding the corner of a smirk behind his thumb.
He could relate to that.