#fobd

The project in green has 80k words all smashed together, plus a couple of ‘chapters’ of letters. They’re getting moved into a shiny new home so I can start carving them up into actual chapters, and from there I can actually think about finishing this thing. So if you asked me for FOBD for the last WIP Weekend, you made me do this. Bless your hearts.

Listen, because of you, and @hbyrde who also dropped me an ask, I finally opened it and tried to get it into some kind of structure. You broke the fear, I love you both. ❤️

🔒

“Congratulations, Eddie.”

Mr Schulman hands him the envelope. He knows it’s his diploma without opening it.

It’s 1988 and Eddie Munson finally has his fucking GED. 

“You worked really hard for that, and you completed it faster than anyone else.”

Eddie can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, well, I was on my third go round of senior year before I got here, so… I had a head start.”

It’s not an achievement, it’s not anything in the scheme of things, he has no use for it here. But it will make Wayne happy and it gave him something to do in the evenings so maybe it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

“So you struggled in school?” Schulman asks him.

“Understatement.”

“What was hard about it?”

Where to fucking start with that? Teachers that wrote him off, classmates that laughed when he put his hand up, a father that had other things for him to be spending his evenings on. Until he lived with Wayne, anyway. He doesn’t want to explain that he felt like an idiot and it was just easier to let it slip by him. Easier to get lost in his music and his games and his drugs. He already knows he’s a cliche, you could pull any random inmate from their cell and they’d tell you a similar story. He’s nothing special.

Eventually he shrugs, all the answer he can muster.

“Thing is, I think you could do more. You write beautifully, well structured arguments, creative use of language, you ask the right questions. I know it took you a while, but from what I've seen I don’t think that was on you.”

The praise sits weirdly on him, uncomfortable, itchy wool on sensitive skin. 

“We have inmates working towards college degrees.”

“Okay,” Eddie drawls, confused.