donnie hayver . d10 . fin

Dead. Your best friend is dead. He'll never come back, and it's your fault. You should have volunteered for him. The thing is, you promised him you wouldn't, and you are a man of your word. You've never been one to break promises. You've always been an honest and trustworthy person, and lying or breaking a promise gives you a knot in your stomach.

You try your best to just focus on the memories you have with Thad. You try not to think of those two tributes ripping him apart on his last day in the arena. No, instead you focus on the times where you'd play football together, or when you'd help him out on his family's farm from time to time. You focused on thinking about when you managed to drag his reluctant-ass self to parties with you so that he could meet some girls. Then he even became a partier himself.

Before you met Thad... well, you don't remember much from then. The two of you met when you were only seven, so it's hard to remember much before that. What you do remember, though, are all the good times with your brother. Marty always pushed you to be your best, even when you were only four or five years old. He motivated you, even if the way he did it wasn't always the most conventional or friendly all the time.

Marty's a nice guy, and you suppose his reason for being a bit harsh sometimes is how much older than you he is. He never really interacted with anyone younger than him for years, so he wasn't sure how to talk to kids. Now that you're older, though, the two of you get along much better. Marty's married and has a kid now, so you don't see him a whole lot, but when you do, the two of you always seem to be even closer than you were before.

Your parents are supportive, too, sure, but they don't quite understand why you're so broken up about Thad's death. You suppose that's because they've never really lost anyone close to them. They both have their entire families, and they've never lost a single friend to death's grasp. You still have your entire family, too, of course, given the fact that they have theirs, but you lost your best friend, and you imagine that that's just as hard as losing family, especially when you blame yourself for it.

Recently, since Thad died, you've been spending less time at home and more time with the Pepperwoods. They're very welcoming to you, and are very understanding of what you're going through, since they're going through the same thing. Even if they weren't going through the same thing, you'd imagine that they'd understand.

You spend time helping them with farm work when you can. Otherwise, you spend your time at your own job. Your day job has an irregular schedule, but you spend it as an on-call maintenance person for a bunch of different places in the District. One probably wouldn't think there's a lot of maintenance to be done in a place like Eleven where it's mostly farms, but there are definitely some things to do.

You just hope that things start to go back to normal soon. The thing is, you know they never really will. With Thad gone, you're not sure what normalcy really is anymore. It makes it sound like you were a clingy friend by saying this, and sure, maybe you were, but you really cared about him. It's so different without him here.