Love Letters to the Dead(16)

“Hey,” I mumbled.

She glanced back at the guy she was with, and I wondered if she was embarrassed to be talking to me. “Hey, Laurel.” She paused for a moment, and I hoped that she would just go inside. But she walked up closer and touched my arm, the way you would if you were a doctor who had to tell someone they were dying. “How are you?”

“Um, I’m fine.”

She pursed her lips into a sad smile. “I miss you,” she said.

“Yeah, you too.”

I was about to ask her what she was doing when the XTC guy came out of the store with a bottle of Jim Beam. I knew I had to grab the bottle and run. So just as Janey gave me a freaked-out look, I said to her and the XTC guy both, “We gotta go,” and I grabbed the bottle and ran as hard as I could, Natalie and Hannah chasing behind me.

When we got far enough away that we slowed down to catch our breath, Hannah asked, “Who was that?”

“Oh,” I said, “just a girl I used to know. From middle school.”

I didn’t tell them that Janey and I had spent the night at each other’s houses every weekend when we were kids, or that we used to put on Wizard of Oz performances with May and charge our parents quarters to see them. I didn’t tell them that the last time I’d seen Janey was at May’s memorial six months ago, or that over the summer she’d called and left messages a couple of times to see if I wanted to spend the night. I didn’t tell them that I never called back. Because I didn’t know how to explain that after May died, all I wanted was to disappear. That my sister was the only person I could disappear into.

Suddenly I wanted to let it all come spilling out, but when I thought of saying May’s name, I froze up. If I tried to tell them, they’d want to know what happened, and I wouldn’t know what to say. They’d feel bad for me, and when you are guilty, there is nothing worse than pity. It just makes you feel guiltier.

There was something between me and the world right then. I saw it like a big sheet of glass, too thick to break through. I could make new friends, but they could never know me, not really, because they could never know my sister, the person I loved most in the world. And they could never know what I’d done. I would have to be okay standing on the other side of something too big to break through.

So I did my best to forget about Janey and to laugh with Natalie and Hannah when we got back to Natalie’s and opened our bottle of Jim Beam. In all of the excitement, I forgot to specify that we wanted something with fruit flavor in it. Straight whiskey, it turns out, is not so good, so we had to mix it up with apple cider.

Apple cider reminds me of when we would go apple picking in the fall with Mom and Dad. May and I always wanted to get to the apples we couldn’t reach. High up, they were shiny and spotless and best. We would run ahead of Mom and Dad, and when no one was looking, we’d hide in between the rows of trees and climb up. Once I fell and skinned my knee. But I didn’t cry. I let it bleed under my leggings so no one would know the secret and make us stop. After the apple picking, we’d get cinnamon doughnuts and apple cider, hot.

I wanted my whiskey cider hot, so I put it in the microwave. It smelled like memories mixed with fire. It didn’t taste that good, but Natalie and Hannah and I drank it anyway, and took off our shirts and ran around the backyard twirling in the rain. We fell down laughing.

I ended up lying there a long time, just looking at the rain falling and trying to pick out each separate drop. They started coming so fast. I thought of Janey and how during sleepovers at my house we’d stay up late and eat root beer float bars and ask May to paint our nails. I looked down at my hands, the purple polish now chipped down to the shapes of foreign continents. I thought about how in middle school, after I started going out with May, Janey and I had fewer and fewer sleepovers. It got harder to be around her, because I didn’t know how to tell her about the nights at the movies, and the guys, and how it made me want to slip out of my skin.

All of a sudden, I didn’t want to be alone. The rain was blurry, and I was scared of something I couldn’t see, but it felt close enough to breathe on me. And I got worried that somehow the XTC guy at the store that we ran away from would come back and find me.

So I went inside and found Natalie and Hannah in the bedroom. They were kissing again. Or more like making out, really. Their shirts were still off and their wet hair was stuck to their heads. When I opened the door, they didn’t notice for a minute. Hannah saw me first. She jumped off Natalie and started laughing.

Natalie said, “We were just cold. We were trying to get warm.”

“Come on, you can, too,” Hannah said.

“That’s okay,” I said, and closed the door.

I don’t think they worried as much, because last time I didn’t tell anyone. They probably kept kissing. I went to the den, and I found where the heat comes out of the floor and fell asleep next to it until it was time to go home.

Maybe Hannah wants to kiss Natalie even without any booze, but she can’t admit it. Hannah says that Natalie knows her better than anyone in the world. She says they are soul mates. But I think maybe Natalie loves her as more than a soul mate. I wonder if Hannah loves her like that, too, and if there’s a reason she’s too scared to say.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Kurt,

When I was in English today, I looked up from my test to see Mrs. Buster staring at me with her big eyes, bugged out like I make her sad. After the bell rang, she said, “Laurel, can I talk to you for a minute?”