So when I started writing this it was supposed to go in a totally different direction that actually obviously fit the prompt. Then it went somewhere else. So this can be considered "prompted" by the required lyric insofar as it got me started? I guess? I thought about trying harder to make it fit, but I was vibing with it as-is, so. *shrugs* Anyone who comes up with a way to reverse engineer this into the prompt gets a cookie.
"Matthew?"
Mattie lifts his head groggily from his desk when he hears Arthur calling. "Yeah?"
There's a knock on the bedroom door, and Arthur comes in. "How's it going in here? How are the college applications coming?"
Mattie looks blearily up at his foster father, then meaningfully at the blank document on his laptop screen.
Arthur nods and leans over Mattie's shoulder. "Essay?"
"Yeah. Typical stuff, I guess. 'Talk about the greatest challenge you've overcome,' you know."
"Well."
Arthur trails off quickly, and Mattie almost laughs, but thinks better of it. It's not that he actually has a sense of humor about last summer, but sometimes, in retrospect, it all looks so patently ridiculous. And anyway, he doesn't really think of that as a challenge he overcame—more of a deadly mistake that he survived through luck more than anything.
"I know," he says wryly. "It's kind of hard to choose."
Arthur winces and stands up straight. Mattie waits for some kind of reprimand, but none comes. It seems like maybe he's about to say something, but he just sets a hand briefly on Matthew's shoulder and then leaves the room quietly.
Mattie drops his head into his arms once more and tries to think, but his brain feels like a white noise machine. It's never quiet. Never. He actually can't remember the last time he didn't have this meaningless static ebbing and flowing endlessly through his mind. Every so often it coalesces into fragments of dialogue, or snippets of an idea. Memories. Things he wishes he could say. Things he wishes other people would say to him.
There's a lot of that last one, these days. And he can't tell whether he's somehow picking up on the things people leave unsaid, or if it's just wishful thinking. Whether, just now, Arthur really wanted to apologize for not protecting him, for letting him encounter so many challenges he had to overcome on his own, or if Mattie himself just hasn't forgiven him. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe he wants Arthur to spend the rest of his life being abjectly sorry for fucking him up. That's not a very pleasant thought.
All this tumbles through Mattie's brain, only half-registered. The greatest challenge he's overcome, he thinks to himself, is learning not to look too hard at the things that go on in his head. When he does that… Well. It might not end as happily next time.
He lifts his head and places his fingers on the keyboard.
The greatest challenge I have overcome is myself.
He smiles wryly and holds down the backspace.