Sam was behaving like a coward. That was a fact that was hard to swallow as he held a letter tight in his hands. It had been so long since he had last seen her, and inside he worried about the reaction he would get just showing up on her doorstep. The dark haired boy wanted so much to just so say hello, but had no clue how best to approach those he, and his family, had abandoned in the chaos that was and seems to always be Destiny City. So Sam was taking the cowardly way out, and wrote a letter. That way he could speak his mind without having to actually speak, and she could come to him, if she desired to.

The thirteen-year-old (and a half) boy had grown so much over the last year; anyone who saw him shuffling along his old neighborhood might not have recognized him right away. Samson Colt was taller, roughly 5’7” already, and looking far more rested and healthy than he probably had before he left town. There was some good in disappearing, but during his time away there seemed to be a void in pit of his heart; it was a void that he was perhaps a bit too young still to make much sense of, but all he could do was chalk it up to missing her.

As he approached the mailbox, Sam looked around him. Everything seemed the same, but was it really? Letting out an audible sigh, he slipped the paper into the box and turned to walk away, leaving his words on the page to do all the talking for him.

And so it read:

“Ainsley

Sorry I left last year so suddenly. I tried to see you before I left, but Mom and Dad wanted to get out as soon as they could. I tried to tell them it was fine, and we could stay, that things couldn’t get any worse here. But what with all the disasters that have been going on here over the last few years, my parents ‘wanted to keep me safe’.

We went abroad. They went to stay with my grandparents outside of Venice, in Italy not California. They put me up in an international boarding school all of last year in the city. Practically a convent there, there were a lot of books and not much technology. You probably would have liked it. Doesn’t smell too great during the summer though. I wanted to write to you, but nothing seemed appropriate to say from so far. I should have. Sorry.

We’ve come back though. Dad had to come back for business and Mom couldn’t argue out of it any longer. I would have come to see you, but … I dunno. I’ll be around if you want. Hope you're good.


Samson”

There was a lot left unsaid, but that was all his young teenager mind could find the words for: a sad sorry and keeping it simple.