“I’m not strong enough for this,” he said. He cried then. “You’re tough,” she said. “I—” She placed a hand on his cheek. “You are. We sense our own kind. Kids dealt a losing hand. We look at others with fucking trivial problems, and we think how long they’d last with a taste of our childhoods.” He sobbed. She smoothed his hair, her voice a whisper. “When you make it out of here no one will know how you lost everything, how you stared at an ending they can’t comprehend. It’ll give you power. It’ll make them wish they never fucked with you.”
