"At this point I'm beginning to suspect that the moral I'm supposed to get from this entire sequence of events is 'don't save your friends from zombies', or something equally depressing."

"Well, if you regret it you can fix it."

" - no. I think the universe is perverse, is all. 

"I'm sorry. For the sarcasm and the mocking you for not being able to read. If I've been other kinds of awful you're gonna have to tell me, because apparently I'm very dense."

"It's not because of school, that I can't read. My brothers could when they were three. My father spent all his time on it. It was his favorite thing, teaching his kids to read. They didn't send me until I was seven because they wanted to try more things. I'm just really stupid, and you were right, you shouldn't listen to any of my opinions about anything, and it's supposed to torture stupid people so we'll - die of zombies or whatever - so that the government can hum along nicely being for the smart well-behaved ones -"

"I don't think you're stupid.

" - I don't think I'm stupid, either. I can do stuff right when I try. I just don't try, most of the time, because it's effort, and I don't like putting effort into stuff, I guess. But if there weren't schools I'd just be doing the same thing somewhere else, probably, because my parents want to teach me how to put in effort, and I think I want to but I never actually do, and until I want to it's always gonna be like this, I guess, no matter where I am. So it seems - misplaced, or something, to be mad at school about it. I guess."

"That doesn't sound right but I don't know what's wrong with it exactly."

Shrug.

"Anyway we should probably just not talk about school."

"This doesn't feel like a genre of solution that is going to lead to us talking about more things."

"We could talk about Zana. She built a beaver lodge."

"That is cool. - but I mean, like, if every time we talk about something and it's upsetting we decide we're just gonna never talk about it again, that seems like we're gonna end up talking about fewer and fewer things, and in particular never talking about anything that we have annoying feelings about, and it won't - that's not what being able to talk to someone looks like."

"Fine. I think that school is horrible for people who are bad at it and you think those people just suck and would be just as miserable anywhere and I think they wouldn't and also that that's one of the ways schools deceive people, into thinking that not being shaped for school is just what being a bad person is."

"I don't think those people all just suck. I think I just suck. No opinion on anybody else. - or, like, sometimes I kind of think you suck, but not because you can't read or because you don't go to school, mostly when you say things like 'such a good compliant slave'. That sucks."

"Isn't that what you want? For the - system - to tell you how cooperative and worthy you are, and give you a nice job far away from the zombies?"

"No! Or, like - I wanna be able to do useful stuff that helps people. And I wanna take care of my family enough that they get to do cool useful stuff, when they grow up. And - yeah, okay, sometimes a lot of what I'm doing is keeping my head down so nobody notices all of the rules I am breaking, but that doesn't mean you should go framing that in the most horrible way possible and then pouring salt all over all of the - I'm never gonna get to be better than this and that hurts, okay, because I feel like if I'd worked harder I wouldn't be stuck where I am."

"Oh. 

I didn't mean - I don't think you deserve to belong to -" he gestures at the office.

Sigh.

"I just - maybe it's stupid, okay, to keep bothering to pretend to try when I know it's too late for it to make a difference, but the pretending's - easier. And maybe that's not a good reason, but I'm still gonna feel like you're being a jerk if you - say stuff like that.

"I get why you'd say it, though, if you felt like school was just awful and it would've been awful no matter what you'd done. That makes sense."

"You could take the money from my father and then run away somewhere where he can't ever find you to - have opinions in your direction or whatever you're scared of."

"Still not a legal adult, cannot actually open bank accounts without one. Or legally ditch school. Or drive."

"Okay, well, you can do that in a couple years, at least. Instead of resigning yourself to being miserable forever."

"I guess."

"It feels wrong. Like, probably the responsible thing to do is get over it and accept the wrong and stop whining, but it feels really really wrong."

"...none of the suggestions I am thinking of are going to be helpful."

"...well now I'm really curious about your definitely unhelpful suggestions."