Love Letters to the Dead

Once we were in the car, I didn’t look at Sky. I looked out the window at the treetops. I wanted to say something to make everything that was bad get better. But I couldn’t think of a single thing. I guess Sky couldn’t, either. So I closed my eyes until we got home.

I felt the car stop and heard the engine purring in stillness outside my house. I sat there, feeling so sick. Finally I said, “Sorry.” And I reached for the handle.

“Did you do drugs or something?”

“I took some pill they gave me.” They weren’t caffeine pills, I realized now. Maybe I always knew.

“Why did you do that?”

I looked at him. “I don’t know,” I said.

I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to go back to the fall and the night when I was dressed as Amelia and I could fly over everything. I wanted his hands to burn on me and make me new again. To erase everything else. Everything that was wrong and bad and dirty.

I put my lips near his mouth. Then I put them closer.

“You’re messed up right now,” he said.

He was right. I was too messed up, in every way. “I know,” I said. “It’s not supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be in love.”

“Do you ever think that for one second you could forget about how it’s supposed to be and just deal with the way it is?”

“You don’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to leave me. She was supposed to love me.” I started to cry.

“Who? Your sister?”

I nodded. I tried to erase what I was feeling. I tried to get rid of the anger that seared me. I was sobbing now. I opened the car door. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I have to go.”

His engine idled as he waited for me to crawl in through the window. And then I heard his car pull away. I felt sick with regret. I wanted him to come back. I wanted to tell him everything.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Kurt,

May and I are going to go to the movies. She just got her driver’s license, from Roadrunner Driving School, where they don’t much care if you pass the test or not. The teacher just puts you on the highway to go somewhere to buy him fireworks. This is what May told me, but she didn’t tell Mom and Dad. So Dad decided that she could drive me to the movies. It’s his week with us. She and Dad get in a fight first, because May is wearing this lace-up shirt. Dad must think she is too pretty, because he says she should change out of it. He says she gives people the wrong idea when she dresses that way. He never usually says things like that. He usually lets her do what she wants. May cries, and I do, too, because this is our night together and I don’t want Dad to ruin it. Finally Dad says softly, “Just change your clothes, May. And you can go.”

May and I used to always do everything together, before she left for high school. But now I am thirteen, a for-real teenager. And now we are going to be friends again. In my head, I am begging May to do what Dad said so we can still go to the movies in her car together.

Finally May says, “Okay.” And she goes to her room and puts on a giant sweatshirt. A Christmas one with puffy reindeer on it. It looks funny with the kitten heels she still has on. She wipes away the tears and she says, “Can we go now?”

“Go ahead,” my dad says.

We are going to see Aladdin at the dollar theater. Lots of times they play old Disney movies there, which May and I still love. We are in the old Camry with May’s pink beads hanging from the mirror. As soon as we are down the block, May pulls off her sweatshirt. She fixes the mascara smudged from crying and grins at me. I am wearing the shirt that I love, the one that I’ve had since fifth grade, with a picture of a rain forest and rain forest animals that snap on and off. I hope that it’s cool to wear again, the way that Rainbow Brite and the Smurfs are. I wonder now if I should have worn something else. But my hair is clean, and I can smell the sweet green apple shampoo. I think that the night is not ruined after all.

It’s the end of November, but we roll down the windows anyway and blast the heater, and May turns up the music. She sings along to “Heart-Shaped Box,” and then she looks at me and asks, “Do you like it?” I nod that I do.

She kisses my forehead. She says, “I am going to meet Paul at the movie, is that okay? You can’t tell Dad, or Mom, either.”

I nod. I am a little sad that it won’t be just me and May, but the most important thing is that she let me in.

When we stop at the light before the movie theater, she tucks her hair behind her ears, and then ruffles it up, and then tucks it again. And then she puts on lipstick.