I awoke the next morning immediately feeling a sense of panic. My heart raced, my lungs burned, my eyes stung. I was terrified just thinking about telling Cade I was the letter writer. I still wasn’t sure why he’d stopped writing me, but it didn’t seem like a good sign that right now both the letter-writing version of me and the real version of me weren’t necessarily on his good side.
I wouldn’t tell him.
No, I would tell him. At least if I told him it would be over and I could move on with my life.
I rolled onto my side. The pile of money my siblings had given me the night before—almost a hundred dollars worth—sat on my nightstand and gave me a boost of strength. I could do this.
If hair cooperation was any indication of how this day would go, I was in trouble. My hair refused to be tamed. When I showed up to school, my waves were a wild mess.
I searched for Isabel with an extra sense of urgency to see if she’d changed her mind, if she felt weird about me and Cade potentially being together. I was trying to find a good excuse not to do this. I’d been trying to find an excuse not to admit that I liked Cade for a long time now.
But when I found Isabel, her smile was even more radiant than the night before. “You look like you’re going to puke,” she said, abandoning our normal greeting.
“I feel like I’m going to puke. And by the way, that’s the last thing I thought before I went to bed last night, too.”
She laughed. “So I take it you made a decision.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t have to ask me what that decision was. She knew. “Just relax. I read those letters, Lil. I’ve never heard him talk like that to anyone. You’ll be fine.”
I’d be fine. I’d be fine.
At first I thought I’d just march up to him and tell him who I was, but that wasn’t me, that wasn’t us … not that there was an us.
Sometime in the middle of fourth period I knew that the way to tell him was in a letter, tucked carefully beneath the Chemistry desk. Then he’d have time to process it, to think about it. He wouldn’t have to give an immediate reaction. Maybe it was another way of protecting myself, but it felt right.
I wasn’t going to risk Sasha seeing me write that letter though, so I pulled out my clean white sheet right there in the office where I was supposed to be sorting mail into teachers’ boxes. And I began writing the letter. I started it how I had never started one of these letters before. With his name.
Cade,
Hi. As you can see, I know who you are. A couple weeks ago, I was delivering some packets to Mr. Ortega and saw you writing to me. I was shocked, and to be honest, horrified. If you knew who I was, you’d understand why. We don’t get along very well. Mostly because I hold grudges. Even if they’re based off of misunderstandings, apparently. (I didn’t know this about myself until recently.) I guess I want to start by saying, I’m sorry for that. I’ve come to know you through the letters first, which have always brought me so much joy that I should’ve known that the person writing them was someone who would both challenge me and understand me. And then I came to know you outside of the letters, and you surprised me. In so many good ways. I’m not sure why you stopped taking my letters or writing me back, and I hope you take this one or else I’ll be forced to be brave and say this all to your face. Don’t make me do that. But I hope whatever the reason you stopped writing me is that it’s just another one of our misunderstandings. (There’s a song in there somewhere. Do you want to try your hand at writing it?) So now is the part where I tell you who I am so that you can be horrified.
Lily Abbott
I folded up the letter, not even wanting to reread it because that would ensure I wouldn’t give it to him. I tucked it in my pocket and tried to forget about it until Chemistry.
In Chemistry, I couldn’t free myself of the letter fast enough. I waited for a moment when neither Lauren nor Sasha were paying attention to me, and slipped it in place. As I pulled my hand back, I felt the edges of a new piece of paper. I sucked in a tiny breath and freed it. A letter. After a week, he’d written me a letter.
As I tried to carefully unfold it, I ripped a corner. I forced my hands to be still and finished, flattening the paper onto my desk.