Love Letters to the Dead

She nodded, and her old white Beetle pulled off through the parking lot.

When we got home, it was like I’d never been so tired. I told Aunt Amy I still wasn’t feeling well and went to lie down. For some reason I started thinking of this game called the dead game that May and I used to play with Carl and Mark, the neighbor boys.

In the summer, after a day at their pool, we’d go home for dinner, and then afterward they’d ring the bell to ask us to come play basketball in their driveway. May would look beautiful, giggling and dribbling the ball, her bikini top still on and bleeding through her tee shirt. She liked to run across the court, but when she got to the basket she’d pause and laugh and never make the shot. But sometimes Mark would pass the ball to me. I would concentrate until I couldn’t see anything else, and I loved the swish that meant he’d high-five me afterward. I loved his hand against mine, if just for a moment.

Then when it started to turn to dusk, before the streetlights came on and we’d have to go in, May would usually say it was time to play the dead game. It was the perfect time of night, when parents would be watching TV and the light was low and sticky. She loved the game because she always won.

She got the idea for it that summer before she started high school, just after Mom moved out. Once our basketball game was over, we’d started playing truth or dare. May thought that Carl’s and Mark’s dares—stuff like flashing the neighbors’ houses—were boring, so she said she had a better dare, for all of us.

The dead game worked like this. You’d lie in the middle of the road on your back with a blindfold—it had to be the dead middle, we made an X with chalk—and wait for a car to come. Whoever could last the longest before they got up and ran out of the way won. The thing is, since you had the blindfold on, you could only know if a car was coming by the sound it made on the road.

Sometimes, the car’s driver would see us in the street and screech the brakes. But lots of times, because it was dusk, the driver couldn’t see. May would wait just a second too long before she rolled away. The first time we played, I thought the car would really hit her. I ran out into the street in front of it, waving my arms up and down, until it came to a screeching stop. An old woman got out and started yelling at us. When she was gone, May turned to me. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get it? That’s not how the game works.” The point was that when you were the dead one, you and only you knew exactly when to run. My cheeks turned hot with shame.

So after that, when it was May’s turn, I would stand on the sidewalk, curling my bare toes into the cement, still warm from the day’s sun. I would try not to look at the street. I would look instead at the coming stars and wish for May to be okay. But at the last minute, I couldn’t help it. I always looked down and saw her body there, motionless. When she’d roll away in time, I would wipe the hot tears from my eyes. And then she would be so alive, grinning and panting in the summer night air, high on it.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River,

In chorus today, Hannah held my hand almost the whole time. I kept thinking, Don’t look at Sky. But I couldn’t help lifting my eyes, just once, to where he was like a mirage across the room, and remembering how his chest felt rising up and down with breath. I would have given anything to go back to his arms around my body. I would have given anything to be someone different, someone he wouldn’t have left.

After class, Hannah was waiting for me, but I told her I’d meet her in the alley. When the room cleared out, I sat down, putting my head against my knees and trying to stop breathing so fast.

Eventually I walked out to the alley and found Natalie and Hannah with Tristan and Kristen. When they saw me, they all got quiet and looked at me, in that way that makes you certain about why you never wanted to talk about anything in the first place. If it had just been about Sky, they would have found something to say. But it was more than that. It was May. I guessed that Natalie and Hannah had told them that I’d finally admitted that I had a sister who’s dead.