Love Letters to the Dead

I think that it makes Tristan feel like she doesn’t want to be here, with him. But the thing is, even though Kristen wants to go, I think she wishes he would come, too. See, last month she gave Tristan this stack of college applications in the cafeteria at lunchtime. She smiled a little smile and said, “Hey, baby. I got you something.” Like it was a good surprise. Then she pulled them out from behind her back and handed them to him.

He took the stack of papers. He said, “What’s this?” already with an edge in his voice. He flipped through them and then he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I can see the headlines now! Tristan Ayers attends backwater bumfuck college in the city of Poughkeepsie.” He said it like he was joking, but his voice had a razor in it. Then his eyes got really angry, and he turned to Kristen and said, “That shit’s not even in New York City.” Like, Who do you think I am?

Her eyes were still as usual. She said, really quietly, “It’s close.”

“It’s not close. It’s a fuckin’ world away.”

She told him he could transfer after a year if he got his grades up. Tristan just looked at her and said, “I’m not good enough for you. We both know it.” He tore the stack of applications in half. And threw them on the table and walked out.

Kristen turned her head and watched him go. Finally she said, so close to her breath you could barely hear it, “You’re wrong.”

I’d never seen her cry or get emotional in front of people. Her face always looks the same. But when she swept the torn papers into a neat pile and then off the table, she wiped her eyes with the long sleeve of her gypsy shirt. She walked through the cafeteria and threw out the applications in the trash by the door.

Now they both act around each other like you do when you know something is going to end and you’ve decided not to know. But for today, they are still here. We were happy, smoking cigarettes and laughing in the alley under the December sky, bright with possible snow. Everyone liked their oranges. Ha

When Natalie walked up, she was carrying a painting-sized package, wrapped in a sheet with orange paisleys on it and tied with an orange cloth bow. She giggled and pushed it toward Ha

Ha

Natalie shifted back and forth between her feet. “You don’t like it.”

But Ha

Ha

When we were walking to the parking lot, Natalie said to Ha

At least that’s what I imagined, because I know that it can be hard to believe that someone loves you if you are afraid of being yourself, or if you are not exactly sure who you are. It can be hard to believe that someone won’t leave. Since that night at his house a week ago, things have been strange between me and Sky. He’s trying to act like they’re not, and when I asked him if he was mad at me, he said, “No. Forget about it, all right?” So I am trying my best.

Yours,

Laurel

Dear River,

I watched My Own Private Idaho last night. In the movie, you’d changed, like I have. You weren’t the kid from Stand by Me anymore. You’d grown up, and I could see that it hurt. You play Mike, a narcoleptic who lives on the streets as a hustler. The movie opens on an empty open road. You are stuck there, alone, waiting for sleep to take you over. The clouds roll away, so fast through the wide-open sky.

When you fall to sleep by the side of the road, you dream of your mom rubbing your head, telling you everything will be okay. “I know you’re sorry,” she says. In the movie, your mom abandoned you when you were little, and you want more than anything to find her.

My mom went away, too. I know how it feels to be sorry for something you can’t say. If I could have walked through the screen, I would have taken you in my arms. And I knew what you meant when you said, “The road never ends.” I know a road like that. It’s the last road I drove on with May.

It stretches past the cottonwood trees lining the river and the railroad tracks and the bridge. It stretches past when me and May were kids making spells, past climbing trees and picking apples and past the first time I saw her wearing lipstick, past the look on her face when she met Paul, past the movies that we never saw. It goes into a place where none of it ever existed, where it always did, where there is no such thing as time, but just a feeling that goes on forever. A feeling I can’t escape from. I’m sorry. I made her leave me.

It’s the feeling that I am afraid will make Sky go, too, eventually. And it’s the feeling that was with me all night when Tristan and Kristen took us to a senior’s party before they left for their trip. They said it’s a big holiday party that happens every year, where they like to go to watch the straight-edge kids cut lose. It was at a huge house with a Christmas tree and parents who were out of town and spiked eggnog and lots of kids I’d never seen before, some of them from other schools, I guess. Kristen wore a necklace that lit up with mini Christmas lights. She’s the kind of girl who can do stuff like that and make it seem cool, paired with her long tangled hair and her broomstick skirt.

Kristen had hijacked the iPod, and she and Natalie were dancing together and singing “Freedom’s just another word…” at the tops of their lungs. Ha

I was standing off to the side, thinking of calling Sky. He’d said he was tired and didn’t feel like coming out tonight. I wished I were somewhere with him, instead of there. I was feeling like some kind of strangely shaped balloon whose string he was holding, and if he let go, I’d float off into the ether.

I was thinking about that, how high a balloon could fly before it popped, and what the world would look like from there, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Janey, my old friend from elementary and middle school. She was with that soccer player she’d been with when I saw her outside the supermarket. I tried to look for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. She’d let go of his hand and was walking over. Her already rosy cheeks were a few shades brighter than usual, and I guessed she’d been drinking.

“Laurel!” she shouted, throwing her arms around me. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but Natalie and Kristen were now dancing to “This Is What Makes Us Girls,” and Ha