Loneliness (Caitlin)

Landon and I sat at a cafe together, both of us awkwardly nibbling vanilla bean scones. He wrung his hands, a clear sign of anxiety. It looked like something weighed heavily on his heart.
          "If you wanted to know why I mistreated you earlier, here's why." He breathed in and sighed. "I felt lonely." Lonely? I felt lonely all the time and never felt compelled to mistreat anyone. I don't understand why people make things harder for others if it has no benefit for themselves.
          "I know how that feels." Many people did, really. I'm sure all four of my students have felt lonely at one point in their lives or another. I'm sure Steve felt lonely despite the masses uttering his name practically every five seconds. Alice knew that kind of pain like an old friend. I'm sure Nathan feels alienated due to the way his idiot director sees him and that Carmen, who is rather out of the box musically, shares his sentiments. One teacher flat out refused to give me a lesson because she thought I came as a joke, she said to me during her first lesson. Alex was recently accused of being a "diva" because she gets solos in choir on a regular basis. Why does everyone call me the diva? Just because I get a lot of solos doesn't mean I only want solos."But I don't know why you feel like you have to hurt people."
           "I'm not like you, Caitlin. I can't just suck stuff up and take it the way you do. I've done, horrible things, inexcusable even, all because I've felt lonely."
           "Such as?"
           "You don't want to know."
           "Tell me. It can't be much worse than stealing small amounts of my sisters' things when I didn't need them." It was stuff like makeup, pens, and bracelets, but it was still wrong.
           "Okay, fine. But don't assume I'll do it again." Landon sighed and threw up his hands. "I shot up my school." At that, he hid his face, but went on. Due to the recent increase in mass shootings including the ongoing Samantha Netherfield attacks, I worried about everyone I knew. It did not help me cope with these recent events. "It was in my sophomore year of high school. I was bullied all the time. I spent half the time just trying to not get beaten up or thrown into a dumpster. I got my backpack chucked into a pool so many times I started putting my homework in my shoes. And my teachers? At best, they didn't care. At worst, they actually encouraged it by making sure I got group projects with my bullies and then giving me a bad grade for not working enough. My GPA started plummeting so fast I didn't know what to do. Even the people who were my 'friends' started picking on me. I sat alone at lunch so often that it was obvious that everyone hated me. My worst bully, George, left me unconscious outside of the school. But it gets worse. A group of girls told everyone that the birthmark on my face was a highly contagious rash. That rumor spread like wildfire, giving everyone even more cause to avoid me. Another even had the nerve to say 'It's okay to make fun of Landon. He can't understand what you're saying.' That was the last straw. I loaded up my bow, enchanted with Fire Aspect II, and she was my first victim. The other ninety included complete innocents, even people I sort of liked. I'm sorry. I regret it to this day. Their agonized screams still haunt me every night. Luckily, I was released pretty quickly, but I still can't legally own weapons." He winked casually, but his eyes showed a pit of agony deeper than the void. I took another scone and chewed on it, digesting what he had said earlier. What could I say to a mass murderer? But what I saw in front of me and what I saw from his memories were completely different. Could I give him advice? No. I wanted to show him that I really cared, that I wasn't just curious.
          "Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me." I left it that and we both headed in the same direction, to visit Steve. All the same, both of them had my respect and my trust. Both of them had their faults and foibles. I loved both of them, but I loved them differently. Landon made the world more pleasant to be in. Steve, however, was the world. I began to see pieces of them in each other, yet still managed to keep the two separate. I still believed that Samantha had good inside of her. Even if I never saw it surface, I still knew it was there.