Love Letters to the Dead

I keep thinking she is about to come back. I can hear cars in the distance like ocean sounds. I am listening hard to engines rolling by like waves. Like the silence that isn’t silence when you put a shell to your ear. And then sometimes something gets louder, and I hear a car, and I think it is getting closer. And I think it is May. She is about to come back. And it will stop. As soon as May comes, it will stop. But all the getting closer cars turn away. They go back on the highway. Maybe they are going to California.

When he is done doing that stuff, Billy drops me off outside the movie theater. The sign shines with the movie times. It still feels like there is a sliver of the Jolly Rancher stuck in the back of my throat. I am sitting there on the sidewalk, trying to concentrate on something. I look at the pale scattered stars in the sky, and then at the concrete and the pieces of glass glinting in it, like brighter stars. And then I read the numbers on the movie sign, over and over, trying to figure out what time it is so I could know when my sister would come.

People must be coming out of the movie, because there are voices around. When May jumps out of the silver car and it pulls away, everything is real again. She looks worried. She says, “Laurel! Why are you alone? Where’s Billy?” I shrug. I tell her that he was late for something and had to go. “Were you waiting long?” she asks.

“No, not that much. He just left.”

She tilts a little on her kitten heel, and when she thinks I am okay, she giggles like something good happened, but almost too much, like too happily. She says that Paul likes HardCore Cider, which is even better than the cider that we used to have at the apple farms in the fall.

When we are back in the Camry, I smile at her. And even though I don’t feel well, I think maybe the world is back to normal again, because now we are in the car driving home, and May is my sister. I don’t say what happened or anything about Billy. I know that it’s not what was supposed to happen, and if May knew, she would always be sad. Too sad. She would go away from me. I didn’t want that. And if only I’d never said anything, maybe she’d still be here.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Kurt,

The day after the party was Sunday. I stayed in bed as long as I possibly could without Dad getting worried, and when I got up, I felt like I was walking through the thickest fog, like the kind that comes off of dry ice. I snuck into the bathroom and washed off the party makeup that was giving me black eyes.

Evan and Sky and May and the movies—it was all this frozen blur. I saw Jason’s face in my mind. I called Natalie and Hannah a bunch of times, but neither of them answered. So I asked Dad to drop me off at Natalie’s and said that I’d walk to Aunt Amy’s from there.

When Dad pulled up and parked in front of her house, he hugged me and held on for a long time, which I thought was strange.

He looked at me and said, “Are you okay today?”

I worried that somehow he could see through me. “Yeah,” I said. “Love you,” and I hurried out of the car before he could ask me anything else.

When nobody answered the door, I went around to the back and found Natalie lying on the trampoline, crying. Hannah was sitting on the edge of it, her knees curled in a ball against her chest.

I stood toward the edge of the yard, listening. Natalie asked, through sobs, “Do you even love me?”

“Of course,” Hannah said flatly. “But people won’t understand. They’ll take it apart and turn it into something else.”

Natalie looked crushed. “Love isn’t a secret. I can’t act like it doesn’t count. It counts, doesn’t it?” Her voice went up at the end.

“You don’t know my brother,” Hannah said. “He flipped out, and he’ll flip out even more if he finds out we’re, like, together.” I couldn’t help thinking of the look in Jason’s eyes. The kind of anger that could make anyone turn small.

“Are we even? You’re with Kasey and whatever other guys. Like I don’t even matter.”

“That’s not true,” Hannah said. “Of course you matter.” Then she said, more softly, “It’s just better if I’m not around so much,” and she got up. “I’ve got to get back. Jason thinks I’m at the library.”

As Hannah turned around to walk out, she saw me standing there. “Hey. What happened to you last night? You opened the door on us, and then you just disappeared after that?”

“I know. I, um … I’m sorry.” I knew that I should tell them what happened with Evan. I knew that I should. But this horrible panicky feeling was all over me, and my voice felt choked.

“Laurel? Hello? Where did you go last night?”

“Sky took me home.”

“Oh, great. So you open the door on us and then go off with Sky? Well, FYI, things are pretty much ruined now. Do you even care?”

“No, I mean, yeah, I…” May was falling off the bridge. I was falling with her. It was all my fault, all of it.

“Forget it,” Hannah said. “It’s done now.”

She hopped over the low wall. Natalie watched her go, but Hannah never turned around to look back. Natalie cried harder. I tried to go and sit by her, but she curled into a ball.

“I’m sorry,” I said before I got up.

On the walk to Aunt Amy’s, I put your voice on my headphones and listened to you singing “Lithium.” I shouted along with you, “I’m not gonna crack,” and it’s exactly—not just the words, but how your voice sounded singing them—how I felt.

Yours,

Laurel