Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves (True Stories) (37 page)

Jennifer Rush

Dear Teen Me,

In the fall of 2001, your friend will call you late at night and ask you to go for a ride. She doesn’t have a destination. She’s just bored and wants to hang out.

Here’s my first bit of advice:
Go.

Around 2:00 am, your friend will take the highway back into town. The road stretches on for twenty miles, but you know that somewhere on that road your cousin owns a house. To pass the time, you look for his vehicle in the slide of headlights. Since he just recently moved there, you’re mostly curious to see what the place looks like.

Ten minutes from the main road, when you’ve given up the search, you’ll see flashing red and blue lights.

Here’s my next bit of advice:
Sit up.

There’s an ambulance in a dirt driveway. A cop car. You twist around as you pass.

“Something crazy’s going down there,” your friend says.

Don’t look away.

An hour later, back at home, the phone will ring. “I need to talk to your mom,” your aunt says in a voice so strained you can barely hear her.

“She’s sleeping—”

“Wake her up. Please.”

You rush down the hallway. Shake your mom awake. Hand her the phone. You step back and wait. Wait. And wait. It’ll only be a few seconds, but it’ll seem like forever.

Just when you think you can’t stand it any longer, your mom will let out a choked sob and somehow you’ll know this is connected to the cop car, to the ambulance. You’ll feel it in your heart and in your gut.

“Chad’s dead,” your mom will say. Your cousin.
That house was his.

He committed suicide, you’ll learn. He was your favorite and you let him know it. And maybe it seemed like a joke to the family, but it was true. You adored him. He was smart. And funny. And happy. Wasn’t he? He was so much more than you ever thought you could be.

Why would he do it?
you’ll wonder.
Why?
This is a question that will never have an answer, but you can’t stop asking it.

The next day, you’ll be lost and numb and everyone will be crying and you can’t take the crying. Call your friend Wes.
Call him.
He’ll help you escape.

At dinnertime, you’ll realize you haven’t eaten all day. At the fast-food place, Wes will know the boy behind the counter. You won’t catch his name. He’ll give you extra fries. On a day like this, the fries mean more than they normally would.

Remember him.
It’ll be a hazy memory, but keep it tucked away.

Three months later, a boy will come into the Laundromat where you work. He’ll ask you out.
Say yes.

It will take you a few weeks, several dates, many hours spent on the phone, before you realize he was the boy behind the counter. The one who gave you the fries. That boy will become your husband.

Somehow, on one of the worst nights of your life, you’ll meet the most
important
person in your life. Fate may seem a silly notion, but sometimes, tiny, inconspicuous moments will connect to something bigger, something profound. So my last bit of advice is this:
Take nothing for granted
.
Keep your heart and your eyes open.
You never know when you’ll meet someone extraordinary. Or, even if it’s for a second in the dark, in a car on the highway, you’ll get your only chance to say good-bye.

Amy Kathleen Ryan

Dear Teen Me,

I know you hate to be told what to do with your face. Elderly men in particular love telling you to smile—for which you reward them with a sarcastic smirk. Good work. They should mind their own business. But since I’m you, and your face is mine, I have every right to make this suggestion: Slap a grin on your mug.

You know how you never get asked out on dates? That’s because you lurch through the hallways of your school with your head down as if you were ducking enemy fire.

I can’t blame you. High school isn’t easy. You’ve got all types—from motorheads to eggheads to potheads—crammed into a single building at high density, and you have to get through the day without erupting into civil war. I have news for you, too: Adults wouldn’t be able to do it. In adulthood, people have self-sorted into pockets of like-minded compadres. The computer geeks work together at Microsoft, the debate members have all joined law firms, and the drama kids are launching off-off-Broadway plays in Minneapolis. So don’t listen to adults telling you these are the best years of your life. It gets infinitely better when you can choose what you do, where, and with whom. But until that day comes, smile!

I’m not saying you should be one of those plastic, ever-chipper girls who bounce through the hallway swinging their ponytails behind them like bullwhips. These girls will grow up to be real estate agents, politicians, and PTA presidents. Their smiles will become like debit cards, earning them professional capital, but depleting them in the soul department.

Nonetheless, there are occasions when it would be eminently appropriate for you to smile. For instance, you know that cute guy in the leather jacket who was ogling you at the football game? And you know how you were so nervous you could barely glance in his direction? When you did look at him, it was oh so casually, as though your eye was actually drawn to the overboiled hotdogs behind him, and you just happened to look at his manly shoulders by accident. Did it never once occur to you that you could actually
smile
at him? Give him a
little invitation? A little facial tic that says, “Hi. I am receptive. Please initiate.” If you’d managed to contort your frown a mere thirty degrees upward, he might be dating you and your fuzzy 1980s perm right now (instead of that girl with the bubble butt and colored contacts).

Because here’s the thing I don’t think you realize: It is actually possible for a guy to be attracted to you. No, you’re not the prettiest girl in school. And you’re definitely not the most popular. But that doesn’t mean that some nice, cute guy couldn’t notice you. And if you encouraged him with a friendly grin, he might be able to overcome his nervousness enough to say hi. And then you might have a date for homecoming instead of being forced to hang out on the bleachers with your wallflower girlfriends mouthing the lyrics to “Forever Young.”

You won’t be, you know. Your looks will fade, and you’ll spend money on creams and tinctures to try and buy a few more minutes of youthfulness. That’s what I do now every night; I scrub away dead skin cells by whatever means necessary. I’m trying to look like you. That’s because you’re beautiful.
All
teenage girls are beautiful. Your eyes are clear. Your skin is wrinkle-free. You’re energetic and lovely by virtue of your gorgeous, enviable youth. So don’t waste it. Pull your face up out of its foxhole. Take a chance on the world. Smile.